Dysfunctional policies have broken Americas housing supply chain

The U.S. has failed to build enough homes to meet the demand created by population and job growth since the Great Recessionand even earlier in some parts of the country. The shortfall is particularly apparent in metro areas with an abundance of well-paying jobs and amenities; the places where many people want to live consistently build too little housing. For instance, the San Francisco Bay Area added only one home for every seven new jobs created between 2010 and 2015, while rents increased more than 40% during the same period. Similar patterns are observable within cities: Affluent, high-amenity neighborhoods such as Georgetown in Washington, D.C., Greenwich Village in New York City, and Hancock Park in Los Angeles have added minimal amounts of housing over the past 30 years.