Austin Slashed Rents to Record Lows. Families Left Anyway.

Solving America's Problems · Sep 14, 2026 · 20m

Austin added new housing three times faster than the rest of the country for a decade, and rents fell below the national average. Young families left anyway — enough that Austin's own schools are now closing for lack of kids. Ryan Puzycki sits on Austin's zoning board and says a decades-old code banned entire housing types, from fourplexes to corner stores mixed with apartments. He also ran a San Francisco preschool with a waitlist of hundreds, where teachers commuted 90 minutes each way just to afford rent.

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(00:00) The core stat – why "build more" isn't fixing housing…