America’s Housing Dilemma: Building for a Future with Fewer People

“Bringing this back to the United States: While we need to address our current housing crisis, the goal should not be to build, build, build anywhere at any cost.”

America needs more housing! This is no longer the mantra of only YIMBYs or cash-strapped Millennials. Suddenly, the most prominent figures in American politics have taken up the call to build, build, build. In her run for President of the United States, Vice President Kamala Harris takes every opportunity to acknowledge, “There’s a serious housing shortage.” Former President Barack Obama echoes this sentiment, even calling for a housing market revolution. Likewise, former President Donald Trump (and current GOP nominee) stated: “We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”

I fully support this cause. Until recently, I was paying comically high rent to live in San Francisco. When my daughter was born and daycare costs came into the picture, there was no question: We had to move to a more affordable city. We found ourselves in Sacramento, which is lovely, but the median home price is still over half a million dollars.

The politicians are right: American families should not have to live like this. The rent is too damn high. And as YIMBYs love to remind the world: “Housing supply up, rents down.”

There is, however, one major caveat to my enthusiasm for the call to build, build, build. It is the fact that, by all accounts, our population is on the brink of declining rapidly. The global population, currently at 8 billion, is projected to peak at 10 billion in 2085, and then it will collapse. Unless fertility rates somehow pick up globally, within a few centuries, the human population will slide back down to the numbers of the pre-industrial era. (See graph.)