Texas Proves Housing Supply Increases Are the Only Real Solution to Housing Crises
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/by/the-ezra-klein-show. "Opinion | Why Texas Is Winning the Housing War - The New York Times." April 29, 2026. www.nytimes.com
The Gist
Texas cities like Dallas and Austin have solved their housing problems by simply building lots of housing, which has made rent actually go down even as hundreds of thousands of people moved there. This proves that the housing crisis in expensive cities is caused by making it too hard to build, not by billionaires or corporations.
Conclusion
The only real cure for a housing crisis is an aggressive, unrelenting surge in housing supply, as demonstrated by Texas cities
Premises
- Austin built an enormous number of homes in the 2010s and early 2020s, resulting in average rents going down over the last 18-24 months
- Dallas added a population equivalent to urban Boston (hundreds of thousands) between 2019 and early 2020s, yet housing prices have actually declined over the last three and a half years
- Dallas builds more housing today than any other metro in the country and construction increased per capita during the population boom
- Housing is not a special kind of good but responds to supply and demand like other goods - restricted supply raises prices, added supply stabilizes them, and enough supply can lower prices
- Texas has the same market pressures (billionaires, corporate interests) as expensive cities but different rules, customs, and permitting regulations that make it easier for supply to respond to demand
- Texas achieves better outcomes than rent control policies - actual rent decreases rather than artificial price freezes
Assumptions
- Housing markets function like other commodity markets when not artificially constrained
- Regulatory and permitting barriers are the primary cause of housing supply restrictions in expensive cities
- Population growth and demand pressures are similar across different metropolitan areas
- The Texas model of housing regulation can be replicated in other states and cities