It's caused by corruption in local governments. Not enough housing is being built; this means that prices rise until enough people are living with their parents or with enough roommates to cover the shortfall. The reason not enough housing is being built is because local governments are preventing it, using zoning. If the restrictions were loosened, rents would fall. If the restrictions were eliminated entirely, they'd fall precipitously.
Its a bit outdated, but the numbers have not radically changed[1] - around 10% of all housing is unoccupied in the US. Sure, its a huge place, and I can imagine few people want to live in Nowhere Nebraska, but that does not change the reality that we have some ~6x more unoccupied houses than homeless, and the vast majority of new construction is the same old unsustainable unaffordable suburban sprawl we have had run rampant with McMansions in this country for the past twenty years.
What we need is not the creation of new houses, but new cities, or the dramatic rebuilding of the old ones. We need high density urban environments with low cost of living built around foot and public transit, no cars, and with mixed use building again, without the zoning hell that currently cripples growth in almost every corner of the US today.
Actual, real-world people vote against high-density urban environments with their feet, and pretty much always have. It's just that in past ages it was only the rich who could afford a country home. That's changed, thanks largely to modern transportation making it possible to work in the city and live in the burbs.
This coffee's claim to fame is that the beans have been eaten (and then excreted) by a cat-like animal called a palm civet.
Now, does that high price mean that most people want to drink this coffee? Nope. Most people would avoid it at all costs. There is a small group of connoisseurs who enjoy this coffee. The price is high because, as small as that group might be, the (tiny) supply is insufficient to satisfy their demand at any lower price.
Similarly, there's a subset of people (mostly, though not exclusively, young, single, and childless) who actually enjoy living in dense urban environments, and will drive up the price accordingly. Those people are not the norm.
"We" is society at large. And half the point of this article is that "young Americans" cannot afford those country homes with long commutes, and thus still live with their parents.
For the current upcoming generation, they do not have the means to afford those homes either. If you want to house them independently they need denser Urban living since modern transportation in the form of personal automobiles is also incredibly expensive.
Society at large has decided that it likes suburbs and McMansions just fine. You don't get to make that decision for other people, just because you use the word "we".
'And half the point of this article is that "young Americans" cannot afford those country homes with long commutes'
Well, then, that's the problem needs to be solved, rather than patching it by forcing people back into the crowded urban environments that they so obviously do not want to live in.
'denser Urban living since modern transportation in the form of personal automobiles is also incredibly expensive.'
1) Why does it need to be dense and urban?
2) No, they aren't. In 1950 a median-priced new car cost about $1,500, somewhat more than half the median annual wage. Today you can get a new Ford Focus for about $17,000, which is... somewhat more than half the $32,140 median annual wage for those over 25.
Also, most families in 1950 had one car, period. Most families now have at least two. That doesn't tend to support your claim that cars have gotten more expensive.
'Society at large has decided that it likes suburbs and McMansions just fine.'
No, the people with the money and land have decided that they like suburbs. I am sure that if a millennial could buy a small patch of land and build a small house on it for cheap, they would.
This is the reason given for why housing costs are high in the bay area, but is not really the reason why housing costs are high, at least in general. Only a small percentage of people actually want to live in shitty apartments in polluted, concrete cities. You can make a million apartments and it is not going to reduce the price of houses where most people actually want to live.
