This is a chronological list of references to Boulder having an Inelastic housing market.  Looking for any actual economists who can confirm or deny these claims.

Payton Kornblum 2009-08-28

There is only hope. That hope hinges on the assumption that there is some inelastic, fixed demand for housing along the Front Range, where a unit here is traded for a unit there.

Shoemaker 2015-12-05

The Hill houses over 6,000 students, and that number is growing; not because of CU’s enrollment (rezoning 28thStreet added more private student housing in the past five years than CU has added in students), but because of nearly inelastic demand of undergraduate students to live on the Hill at least one year during their tenure at CU, and the ability of parents to purchase a home for their student to rent and later flip for a profit.

Goldfarb 2016-10-1

The problem is, when we continue to deny limits, and balance, it won’t just be 60,000. It’ll be 120,000 or 180,000 more residents, if Boulder refuses to ease off the accelerator of aggressive economic development and recruitment. Further, and counter-intuitively, housing supply-side theory doesn’t work in inelastic demand markets like Boulder’s. Building more primarily just yields more high-priced housing, without fixing anything. (Think: Eastpointe development) And Boulder’s deeply flawed affordable-housing formula which requires many additional luxury units, to fund a few affordable units.

Goldfarb 2017-05-21

BNA has long supported affordable housing — aggressively, in fact. We support real affordability measures — ones that recognize the reality of Boulder’s inelastic demand housing market. Boulder’s legendary allure and hot job market will always mean more people wanting to move to Boulder than any amount of units we could build. Boulder’s market doesn’t display the normal characteristic of price as a function of supply.

Pomerance 2021-07-09

I discussed some issues with BAFP in my last op-ed, and I heard back from a number of people about its problems. Fundamentally, Boulder has an “inelastic” housing market. Prices and rents are escalating very fast, because Boulder is very attractive, and because rapid job growth and CU’s ever-increasing student numbers keep demand growing faster than supply. So adding more renters in existing single-family houses, or adding more bedrooms for even more renters, or then scraping off single-family houses and rebuilding the lots with apartments for yet even more renters, will not lower rental rates significantly. Demand is just growing too fast.

Krueger 2022-02-24

We continue to throw gasoline on the fire by building more commercial (usually high-end) space that is populated by more (usually high-paid) workers, ignoring the ongoing expansion of the university student population, while providing only half-hearted attempts to provide “affordable housing.”

The result is high demand/high prices and an inelastic housing market where supply can never meet that demand.

Mayer Feinberg 2022-03-02 in response to Burton 2022-02-21

The demand for housing in Boulder is inelastic, meaning more people want more housing than supply will ever be able to satisfy. It’s an economic fantasy to believe that we can change the trajectory of Boulder’s housing market by building until we burst.

Gerstle 2022-03-30

While we must address the huge imbalance between demand and supply, we must also recognize that we cannot build our way to affordability because Boulder is such an inelastic market.  This means prices will not go down even as supply increases because demand (due largely to continued job growth and increasing CU enrollment) will always be greater than the supply of housing.

Be Heard Boulder Occupancy Limits Survey 2023-05-26

26 anonymous occurrences of inelastic.  Too many to list them all.  Not sure who wrote this one but guessing their name rhymes with “song & dance”.

wish we had trained economists on Council. Council might then realize that Boulder is a textbook inelastic demand housing market. Adding supply doesn’t lower price in inelastic markets. Ask any PhD economist. Without affordability requirements, merely adding supply and/or permitting more units such as Council desires, will merely result in lots more expensive units (in this inelastic market), which will also open the door for national real investment company speculators.

Sadly, Council is ignoring the proven tools it already has, that do actually work in inelastic markets: increasing commercial linkage fees for affordable housing, and increasing inclusionary housing percentage requirements. Very frustrated that Council totally ignores tools that do work, and only focuses on ill-conceived supply side increases that won’t work in our inelastic market.

Reynolds 2022-11-10

Boulder is one of several heavily sought-after U.S. cities with totally inelastic demand in the real estate markets. Supply increases don’t lower prices in “infinite-demand” markets like ours. (Hence the term inelastic markets.) Adding supply simply creates more expensive housing in Boulder. That’s why we cannot build our way to affordability.

mountains-o-data 2023-03-24

That said – demand is totally inelastic here. We won’t build our way to cheaper rents in Boulder. Expectations should be extremely tempered that this will improve affordability here. I fully expect that this will only exacerbate the affordability crisis for single family homes in established neighborhoods across the front range. Families were already competing with investors – and now those investors have an easy path to increase the value of their investment.

Thrway69696969100 2023-09-17

I keep seeing people write about limitless or inelastic demand. When I hear those words, it immediately translates in my head to “we’ve tried nothing and we’re all out of ideas”. I’m one of those new rich tech workers (not remote though) and recently bought an expensive house. I only bought a house because there are not enough condos or duplexes available, making the prices for those not make sense for anyone who can afford a house. Why pay 800k for a 1000 sq ft condo when you can pay 25% more for 100% more space (and actual land)? So instead I have a house I don’t fully need and help further drive up house prices. There’s a massive mismatch between the housing that is allowed and what is needed, and that is the only difference I can see from many other desirable locations across the country that are still much more reachable for middle and working class folks.

Pomerance 2024-01-19

No one has a real clue as to whether a few hundred thousand housing units will “solve the housing crisis,” or whether the state would be forced to double or triple its housing stock (and population).

The concept of price inelasticity seems to have escaped everyone. If we added a few hundred thousand units, would prices drop significantly or very little, if at all? Or would it take a couple of million units?

Reynolds 2024-04-10

Regarding housing affordability, perhaps Keegan hasn’t heard of inelastic demand, which aptly describes Boulder. We’ve greatly increased our housing supply, but prices haven’t fallen. Consider: if the Boulder Progressives and their current City Council majority develop 20,000 more housing units, there’d be up to 100,000 more Boulderites, with occupancy limits of five people.

Pomerance 2024-05-03

Fully informing people would require acknowledging that complete information still has not been developed about long-term future housing demand and about price inelasticity (how little difference adding housing will make on prices or rents)

Pomerance 2024-07-26

adding housing into such a market won’t make much difference in price. Economists call it “inelasticity,” when no reasonable amount of supply increase will come close to satisfying demand.

Kendall, 2024-07-02

Sure, but that is not what is going to happen in Boulder. There is an unlimited demand for market rate housing in Boulder, the market is totally inelastic. Boulder market can handle and unlimited number of people moving in and paying extremely high amounts for housing. Less than 45% of Boulder residents own, compared to Longmont, Arvada, both of which have over 72% ownership rates. All we are doing is building for new upper middle class wealthy people to move into Boulder. This does nothing to eliminate workers commuting in because those workers want to own, and they will choose to own outside of Boulder at relatively affordable rates. Stop using trickle down economics to justify something that has never happened, and will not, happen in Boulder.

Krueger-Cunningham, 2024-07-29

Economic development agencies (including but not limited to the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, the CU Boulder Chancellor’s Office, the Boulder Chamber of Commerce) play an outsized role in driving unsustainable, inelastic demand for housing in Boulder, a city with a maximum sustainable population of 100,000 residents.

Fearer 2024-11-10 in response to Huemer 2024-10-25

First, let’s address the author’s central claim that housing follows simple market economics. In Boulder and similar high-demand areas, housing is what economists call an “inelastic market” — one where supply and demand don’t function as textbook theory suggests. That leads to the prevailing myth that we can build our way out of this affordable housing crisis, with more housing. We’ve seen this firsthand: Despite thousands of units being added to Front Range cities, rents continue to rise well beyond inflation.

The opinion’s characterization of rent control advocacy as simply blaming “greed” misses the point entirely. Nearly half of all renter households nationwide are now cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing. In Boulder, the situation is even more dire, with 62% who are cost-burdened, and many renters spending 50% or more of their income on housing.