The Strong Towns Podcast

The issues that are discussed here are identical to what we experience in my home town, College Station, TX. The key difference is that in College Station, we have two commercial uses for family housing -- short-term rentals, and high-occupancy student rentals that have inundated our city because the university has built now housing while they added 40,000 students. In both cases, families are being pushed out and prices are cascading. The state legislature just passed a law eliminating occupancy restrictions, which means that now families have to compete not with just 4 students (with parental-backed budgets) but 5 or 6 or however many they feel they can cram into the house. I find it ironic that on the one hand Strong Towns is pointing out that cities need to get rid of regulations in order to increase the housing market -- arguments that were used in the arguments for the recent legislation -- but these arguments are drastically eliminating housing in my city.