Economic diversity is a mix of uses that merely includes housing, high-density or not. Productive occupations downtown are mostly filled by suburbanites who have little choice to reach downtown but by driving. To construct an economically ideal diversity downtown, the more glaring lack of diversity in the suburbs must also be addressed. When fewer suburbanites chauffeur automobiles to parking spots downtown, then will market forces be less able to dictate cost of living downtown.

That said, maybe I wasn’t clear enough in the post that we shouldn’t let the density/supply argument obscure the fact that increasing supply alone won’t deliver affordable housing to a large chunk of households, and that means we need much more support for housing subsidies of all kinds.

One also has to remember that most private developers of rental multi-fam are not invested in a long-term hold of a property. They buy it, develop it, rent it up, stabilize it and then a few years later sell it for an enormous profit over what it cost to build it. This means that they aren’t interested in long-term affordability, superior building techniques (that are very expensive or have a long pay back) and neighborhood desires. They are interested in one thing, profit and whatever it takes to get it – usually a fully leased building.