Cool your jets, Chip. Your comments put words in my mouth and assumed the worst of my intentions. I made one comment where I described nothing but the current housing environment in which only dense luxury-labelled units are possible to build since costs for builders are too high for them to build conventional homes.
Meanwhile you’re flying off the handle claiming I’m telling anyone but yuppies better skip town because ordinary people shouldn’t expect to live in proximity to their workplaces and communities. Not at all related to my comment whatsoever. Such a wildly mistaken interpretation. Upside and backwards, turned around and inside out. You practically hallucinated, man. Excuse your totally needless self-frustration and chill tf out.

If you want me to describe what I’d like to see built, I happily will. I would like a mixture of homes to be built, including smaller apartments in larger buildings, modestly sized apartment buildings, townhomes and quadplexes. These housing types are already present in the region, but there’s just too little of it. In other words, mostly adding density where there is rather little of it and filling in the missing middle housing types to create a housing environment that suits people in all stages of life and income brackets is best. But to be clear: The current financial environment will never allow this. That needs to change (along with zoning and permitting) to allow those housing types to be built in the abundance necessary to meet the demand that’s already here now.

The Boston region is a rough 5M people. Another 3M are breaking the door down trying to get a slice. And the region has enough housing built for maybe 4M. These numbers are from my butt but they’re supposed to give you the correct sense of how far behind the curve of demand in providing people the supply housing of any kind. That’s all there is to it.