Building “Affordable Housing”

Does the need for more housing that is affordable mean simply low-income housing? Projects that are being proposed focus on building small condos as the path to creating more affordable housing. That does not address what most residents want. If you look at the Santa Clara house prices vs. Santa Clara condo prices, you will see that the price of houses has been growing faster than condos. In fact, the price of condos has been essentially flat since 2018. The increase in mortgage interest rates would imply that recent condo buyers have higher payments but the demand vs. supply for condos is less than the demand vs. supply for houses, judging by price trends.

Reducing government fees and regulations is rarely done. Adding more fees and regulations is unfortunately the path our different governments take. Making housing more affordable is about removing costs, not adding them.

If our governements simply changed regulations to allow higher density housing, builders would probably mostly ignore studios and one-bedroom units and instead build three or more bedroom units. Doing that would make it easier to recover the building costs and would actually drive down the cost per square foot. (Kitchens and bathrooms are much more expensive to build than bedrooms.) Regulations that encourage building larger homes sounds like the government is helping those who are better off at the expense of those who are less well off, but is a studio condo or even a one bedroom condo appropriate housing for a family?

Is adding more regulations and spending more tax dollars on small housing units creating more housing that is affordable for families?