Analysis: Build It (Housing) and They Will Come

What do the fastest-growing parts of the country have in common? According to a piece by Justin Fox in Bloomberg CityLab, it’s not lower taxes, better weather, or lower crime rates. It’s the availability of housing.

According to Fox, the South and inland West, home to 46.3 percent of the U.S. population, accounted for 65.8 percent of new housing construction between 2020 and 2022. Admittedly, “Many of these metro areas are able to build so much more housing in part because they’re surrounded by mostly flat land on which developers can easily plunk down new subdivisions.” Other, more geographically challenging, cities, like Seattle, have taken conscious actions to promote multifamily development. “Apartments also made up the majority of new housing permitted in and around Austin, Salt Lake City and Denver, and more than 40% in metro Orlando, San Antonio and Richmond.”

Meanwhile, while the nation’s biggest cities and walkable urban areas remain desirable—and, despite early pandemic predictions, nowhere near ‘dead’—they are also less and less affordable for most U.S. households.

See the source article for charts detailing the most and least affordable cities in the country, as well as rates of housing construction.