Building Won’t Buy Affordability

A growing body of research and recent local policy shocks suggest that adding housing supply alone may not materially reduce rents or improve affordability within politically relevant timeframes. Combined with implementation scandals (fee waivers, poorly evaluated incentives) the evidence is shifting the debate from pure supply expansion to governance, subsidy design, and demand‑side controls. — If true, this reframes national and municipal housing debates: lawmakers must stop assuming more units automatically lower rents and instead focus on program design, enforcement, and distributional tools.