People are definitely part of the problem. Adult communities could certainly help too, but without a consistent aging population to continually move in to keep those communities filled, there's now just excess housing stock limited by age that's going to inflate property values, because we didn't build enough housing for everyone, and there's fewer people paying taxes on the necessary budget for the municipality, so taxes across the board will need to rise to make up that difference. The average birth rate continues to fall, so that situation is going to happen sooner or later no matter what, unless there's a massive influx of elderly people relocating to the state, but they typically do the opposite and leave here.

People having fewer kids means people moving into communities aren't having the same strain on schools as they used to. But the more people that move in, the more people that can be taxed to pay for the increase in services. When the density being thrown up is nothing but hundreds and hundreds of units of rentals, yes that hurts in the long run, but increase the density of tax paying citizens in addition to rentals, attract non-residential uses in close proximity that can serve them, and those too get taxed to reduce the tax burden on residents. Infrastructure costs will drastically scale down for the greater the population they are being built/improved for.

Free birth control and vasectomies etc. is definitely an interesting idea that could help some areas of the country/world that don't have the educational infrastructure to sustain the growth. Not this state though I'd argue. We don't have wild rates of unexpected pregnancies driving population growth, and we luckily have ample access to family planning resources including abortions, pills, etc when necessary for an accidental pregnancy. I understand your thought process, but it wouldn't do anything for our state.

Home Rule and awfully managed land use and zoning decisions are what need to change. Anything people based will fail once the demographics it was based on change. A systematic overhaul of how growth/development/redevelopment occurs and adapts to changing demographics here is very much needed for long-term change here.

Thanks for the convo! Always good to hear differing opinions.