>>1738714There is truth to it. You can't bust your ass working 40+ hours a week at an entry level blue collar job and have a car, house, and be able to raise a family anymore, for instance, and it's only gotten worse.
>>1738733There's some flawed argumentation there. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Houston was "affordable" because so much housing built there, apartments were going for rock-bottom rates (like $200 a month, being less than $600 today) but a lot of those apartment-based neighborhoods became shitholes permanently.
Furthermore, bringing up highway induced demand isn't an argument because the actual numbers are just an average increase (so Boston's freeway construction grew very little in the time frames observed, but driving grew exponentially, while Madison's freeway construction outpaced development).
>>1738779The issue with multifamily development is that there's no incentive to maintain it and keep up property values. The occupants are transient with no ownership of the property or incentive to improve the property, and the owners of it can keep sponging money off of it as long as possible.