Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market • Hacker News Board

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#71

Post by at-fates-hands » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:42 PM UTC

mgfist wrote: post #24

MangoToupe wrote: post #13

It's a nice victory story for the YIMBYs hoping to win over the upper-/middle class trying to retain the narrative that the market will provide "affordable" housing (not what this even demonstrates, but anyway), but this isn't going to get people off the street. We need a public housing sector to appropriately meet everyone's needs. Otherwise this is just a game of justifying "who deserves housing", a discussion over…

0.2% of Americans are homeless. Why is housing always about the homeless? Yes, getting people off the street is important. But there's few other topics where a solution that helps 99.8% of people is dismissed because it doesn't help 0.2% of people (I don't even agree that it doesn't help them, but I'll be charitable for the sake of making my point).

Right now in cities homelessness is often associated with addiction or mental illness. We spend billions every year giving these people resources to get off the street, get treatment for addiction or mental illness. Right now? Many, many, many of those people have no desire to get off the streets or get clean or get treatment for their mental illness - despite the copious amounts of safety nets and other programs designed specifically to help those people.

I agree, we already have programs designed to help those who need it - focusing on the larger percentage of the population just makes sense if you're concerned about having bigger positive outcomes.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#72

Post by tptacek » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #61

jmye wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just residency. Fix the cost (and capacity) of the education system as a whole, especially for mid-levels. There’s no reason this country should have such a chronic NP shortage, and you don’t need MD/DOs for most of the healthcare gaps we have. You also make rural care viable when you don’t have folks who need to pay off astronomical loans.

How are NPs not just the trend of enshittification? Most doctors already aren't very engaged in the tiny 15 minute slices of appointments, and now we're supposed to be happy that they'll be even less educated? The most straightforward way to address the doctor shortage is to make it so doctors are spending most of their time on healthcare, rather than appeasing "insurance" company bureaucrats with onerous paperwork.

Nurse-Practitioners work harder to get their certification than almost anybody who comments on HN and it is not OK to talk about them this way.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#73

Post by seanmcdirmid » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

aynyc wrote: post #33

Just because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis, doesn’t mean it’s not a good start. We have to stop looking at magical solutions that will solve all our problems in one shot. We have to start somewhere.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.)

That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really isn't true as long as the city remains popular for jobs/climate/nature/etc.... People not moving to Denver because the rent is too high will decide to move to Denver if rents decrease (and the demand they add will cause rents to increase, wash/rinse/repeat until an equilibrium is reached). You also have cases where a city becomes even more attractive because of growing density alone (NYC, Hong Kong, Tokyo).

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#74

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #61

jmye wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just residency. Fix the cost (and capacity) of the education system as a whole, especially for mid-levels. There’s no reason this country should have such a chronic NP shortage, and you don’t need MD/DOs for most of the healthcare gaps we have. You also make rural care viable when you don’t have folks who need to pay off astronomical loans.

How are NPs not just the trend of enshittification? Most doctors already aren't very engaged in the tiny 15 minute slices of appointments, and now we're supposed to be happy that they'll be even less educated? The most straightforward way to address the doctor shortage is to make it so doctors are spending most of their time on healthcare, rather than appeasing "insurance" company bureaucrats with onerous paperwork.

There are NP mills that will take you from high school, put you through an accelerated RN and prereqs and basically have you as an independent provider in just a few years out of high school (well, 4-5), that’s ridiculous.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#75

Post by chrsw » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:43 PM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #67

unethical_ban wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it wrong to want to have equity in the place you live? "Ownership" could be a house, it could be a townhome, it could be flat. But in the US, "owning" an apartment is very rare, while real estate investors buy up all the valuable land in the urban cores of cities and rent it.

If you want equity in real estate nobody is stopping you. The problem is when people get this idea that we need to discourage investors from building very greatly desired rental housing.

This is the big problem with treating your home as an investment. People who just want a place to live near where they work now have to play this game too. And it's not cheap game.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#76

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #25

koolba wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should try this with medicine. Instead of subsidizing insurance (demand side), let’s spend the money to bring doctors to the USA from all over the world and have them work in free clinics (supply side).

You basically can’t or it won't have the same effects because medicine doesn’t really follow the same dynamics as most other markets: the supplier (doctor) has an information asymmetry and thus makes most of the decisions, while the buyer (patient) is not usually the payer (insurance) so aren’t really incentivized to save. Kenneth Arrow famously analyzed the healthcare market and made the above insight: https://asset…

Fixing a severe shortage is actually likely to have some impact.

For instance, if there's a lot more doctors, the payer may be able to negotiate lower prices. We already have insurance mechanisms that drive patients to the providers that the insurer has negotiated with...

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#77

Post by FredPret » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:46 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

That's why you have to allow large-scale building everywhere. Then the market will find its own level.

The inverse of this situation is that everyone lives somewhere they consider unpleasant because the rent is affordable there.

The megacities you mention are enormously economically productive per capita. All sorts of efficiencies pop up when a huge number of people live near one another.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#78

Post by FireBeyond » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

jmye wrote: post #70

mindslight wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are NPs not just the trend of enshittification? Most doctors already aren't very engaged in the tiny 15 minute slices of appointments, and now we're supposed to be happy that they'll be even less educated? The most straightforward way to address the doctor shortage is to make it so doctors are spending most of their time on healthcare, rather than appeasing "insurance" company bureaucrats with onerous paperwork.

What a weird comment. What do you think you need an MD for, in your primary care visit, that an NP can’t do? What do you actually know about their education? What do you actually know about licensing? How much time, in a day, do you think doctors are spending on “insurance”, and what specific experience leads you to believe that? (Because the actual answer is “near zero for literally any provider who isn’t completely…

You can be an NP in as few as 4-5 years out of high school with some courses. That’s to me the definition of not knowing what you don’t know. I’m a critical care paramedic who has corrected many NPs on fairly fundamental learning.

I’ve found that nurses with significant field experience do very well, but there are plenty of courses who will “zero to hero” you fresh out of high school.

Meanwhile, PAs go through a program near as rigorous as medical school and have to have physician supervision while NPs are not subject to oversight.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#79

Post by koolba » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:47 PM UTC

hangonhn wrote: post #62

elictronic wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said free clinics.

But then you're just shifting the cost somewhere else. The doctors aren't working for free. Someone is paying them. It's just not the patients in the case of free clinics. In addition, doctors aren't the only cost centers in health care either. Even if they're free, which is sort of already the case or fairly inexpensive for the insured in the US, the overall cost of healthcare will still be high. Plus if you want co…

> It isn't as simple as supply and demand.

It really is that simple.

Giving people insurance without actually increasing the supply of doctors or clinics increases the number of people willing and able to seek treatment. It does nothing for lowering costs of said treatment. Per basic economics, that’s shifting the demand curve (i.e., increasing demand).

With no changes to supply that leads to higher prices. So every time the government makes a new program or expands anny existing one that provides insurance coverage, costs for everyone will go up.

In contrast, my proposal for explicitly bringing in doctors and creating clinics increases supply. People who would have gone to see a doctor elsewhere may now choose to go to this new free clinic.

The demand curve itself would not change, though with the lower cost due to the supply curve shift you would have a larger overall market.

This is clearly oversimplified. There’s some second order effects where if primary care market increases, you’ll need more X-rays and CAT scans. So there could be an increase in those prices. But that’s could be solved in the same way too.

Re: Denver rent is back to 2022 prices after 20k new units hit the market

#80

Post by maxerickson » Thu, Jul 31, 2025, 9:48 PM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #73

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because this doesn’t magically solve the housing crisis It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) [1] http://censusreporter.org/pr…

> It does. Twenty thousand units represent about 5% of Denver's housing stock [1]. Commit to adding this many units to the housing stock every year for the next 10 years and you'll have solved the housing crisis. (You'll probably need to bail out recent homebuyers, who will be permanently underwater, but that's a separate issue.) That is only if you believe that more capacity does not induce more demand, which really…

Better to have good problems than to have bad problems.