Nashville Is Booming. Locals Fret About Their Future in Music City.

[Del Tachi]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

[Del Tachi]

I worry for the day I read this story about Omaha.  Thankfully the cold (or at the least idea of it) keeps most of the weak away.

I'm thankful this will never happen in New Orleans. It is simply too difficult to live here!

[Del Tachi]

For the life of me, I will never understand why local and state governments never, EVER think to be proactive and do everything they can to build/increase the housing inventory when their state/city is in the early stage of a boom. It perpetually seems like every city in the US that experiences huge growth (Columbus, Austin, Denver, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, etc) does not even begin to THINK about about building new housing on a large scale to keep rents and mortgages affordable until it's like 5-10 years too late.

Local and state governments do not "build housing."  Private developers do.  The role of the government is to plan appropriate land-uses through zoning, but states like Tennessee are more lax in these regulations than many others. 

And what do you expect to happen when jobs and investment are flowing into cities like Nashville at rapid clip? It will become more desirable/expensive to live there, and adding more housing can only alleviate it so much (in fact, increasing money tied up in speculative land developments may only push prices higher.)

And private developers have little incentive to build affordable housing unless they are given government subsidies. Far more profit in building McMansion for retiring boomers than starter homes

Private developers build McMansions because that is where most Americans would prefer to live.  A dense city is a very unfriendly environment for (normal) people.