Quote Originally Posted by Bham1982 View Post
If you believe that there really is some great demand for housing downtown, why hasn't a single building been built or renovated absent significant subsidies?

That's all the proof I need. Not a damn thing gets built without taxpayer dollars. There just isn't sufficient demand right now.
That's because it takes time for rental rates to catch up with demand, and right now despite there being demand for new units the rental rates are not yet high enough to actually build the new units without subsidies. However, rates are rapidly rising and you should expect to see developments with fewer or no subsidies soon. I'd have to go check but I don't recall there being any subsidies mentioned with the developments announced in the spring, so this point might have already happened.

And you should call up the big downtown property owners, because strangely they have lots of advertised vacancies. Lafayettte Park has highrise doorman rentals available from $575, which is extremely affordable and not remotely indicative of some huge shortage of living space.
A better way of phrasing that is that despite essentially being owned by a slumlord, the building is still managing to get $575. Meanwhile the nearly identical building that has less amenities [[no parking garage) but is properly managed is getting 700-900 for a studio and 900-1200 for a one bedroom.


Now, there is a shortage of hard stats about the population, but it's factually known that rental rates have been rapidly increasing, and it's factually known that vacancy rates are very low. There's no question about demand.

The only remotely legitimate discussion here is how much of the demand is translating into population growth.