# [Market-Rate Housing Isn’t a Bad Word, and We Won’t Solve the Housing Crisis Without It](https://artplusmarketing.com/market-rate-housing-isnt-a-bad-word-and-we-won-t-solve-the-housing-crisis-without-it-ce67c06aff4d)
> While the new apartment or condo project down the street is expensive, so is the 75-year-old house or apartment you’re trying to buy or rent. It’s *all* expensive, and that’s not because it’s “luxury.”
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> It’s because it’s scarce.
> Just to be crystal clear: Anyone who advocates that we ignore these process and zoning problems and instead focus our housing policy exclusively or dominantly on subsidized, income-based housing is advocating to perpetuate the housing crisis. They’re advocating for housing a small subset of low-income people while leaving everyone else — both low-income people who don’t win a subsidized housing lottery and almost all middle class people — to play a game of musical chairs with a limited housing supply that is the result of our state’s refusal to reform our housing creation process.
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> And, anyone who perpetuates the myth that building new market-rate housing makes housing more expensive should remember that his or her own home is likely yesterday’s “luxury” market-rate housing. Oh, and that house or apartment was almost certainly built by a developer who (*gasp*) made money by building it. And, now someone gets to live in that home! Imagine the gall!
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> Who pays the price for our exclusionary housing policies that make it so hard to create housing? Low-income people suffer the most, at least the large majority of low income people who don’t win the lottery for a subsidized unit. Next is the middle class, which has almost a zero percent chance of winning a subsidized unit and which cannot afford to rent or buy due to the lack of enough overall housing. The exact same homes that were once affordable to young families and middle-class workers are now within reach to only our very highest earners. It’s not that all this housing is luxury housing — it’s that we have created a world where it is a luxury to have housing at all, given public policies specifically designed to stifle housing production.
