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Housing crisis: The hottest political issue European politicians aren’t talking about
(www.politico.eu)
this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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This website won't like this. But it's a failing of the market and it could be fixed by capitalism.
Removing restrictions on housing density, and where houses can be built and adding a Land value tax would help things. Also obviously less immigration would solve the demand side of the equation. I think countries should stop focusing on the ever increasing growth of countries and we should focus more on things like free time.
But really the solution to this is A build a new city or B destroy large parts of a city that were built when the city size was 10% it size and built more density, modern building standards, public transport etc.
But the boomer generation don't give a fuck about the next generations so probably have to wait for them to die.
Only capitalism can save us from capitalism! - Capitalists
What'd the solution to a fundamental lack of housing stock then?
Government spending but capitalists don't like that answer unless they're the ones getting the money.
Government spending do to what exactly?
I have no issue with government spending. If fact I think the government should buy all the land. That's my proposal. But housing will be built more efficiently by the market. Governments are inefficient.
I don't see how this addresses the AIRBNB problem, or the corporations that are rapidly buying up all ~~analogous~~ available housing stock in order to rent it out.
Ultimately it is a supply and demand issue.
Supply is artificial restricted because no one will build because either they simply can't or the value is going up too much that there is no point (which can be solved) and population is increasing.
If you built a shit load of homes there would be both more houses to rent/buy and more Airbnb options. Honestly the airbnb option in a lot of places is a problem because large hotel can't be built.
There are 827,557 residential homes in Barcelona. There are 10,101 airbnb properties. That's about 1.2%.
What you think happens if Barcelona builds another 100,000 houses/hotels?
If there is a shortage of housing what do you actually propose to make more housing?
You can't possibly think 1% of housing will solve this problem never mind for a generation even for short term it won't solve anything.
100k hours and hotels is going to hit where exactly? And that 10-50 billion dollars of investment is funded by what exactly? Magical money printing machine?
The industry in Spain is worth $206.4 billion per year. Money would be found.
No one is going to loan an industry 20% of its yearly revenue.
I'm beginning to suspect you don't have an mba.
You're an idiot. You're not going to build that much in 1 year.
If you did have that much work being done in Barcelona money would flood in from elsewhere also. Especially the EU.
Congrats you lose the argument by resorting to personal attacks.
I never said it would be built in a year so it would appear the idiot is you.
Ah yes, let's make it even more of a hell to live in cities by paving over anything green and making people live like livestock in tiny cages. That will surely solve the problem!
Oh, and really it's the immigrants' fault! They're the ones buying up all of the houses with cash to later rent them as AirBnBs!
I didn't say any of that.
Airbnb is 1% of the stock having been formed in 2007. How much do you think immigration has increased by since 2007? Less than 1% of the population?
You really think freeing up 1% of housing stock is going to magically mean everyone that wants to buy a house now suddenly can?
Saying "Airbnb" is obviously an oversimplification - a ton properties seem to be bought by rental companies, not normal people. There's a ton of properties just sitting empty, as well.
The solution is to introduce more control for housing, not less. Less control means more cheaply made hell-scape skyscraper buildings housing hundreds of people each, with no green spaces anywhere in sight.
There isnt a ton sitting empty. Dome need to be empty obviously for people to move in and out and for renovation. But even that isn't enough to satisfy demand.
Your plan is more housing restriction and let me guess the awful idea that is tent control? Neither of these prevent the issue of lack of supply. Thats where the solution lies.
Of course governments need to enforce building standards. Things like public transport and density.
But at the moment the government is the one stopping more housing, especially higher density. If you allowed business to build more houses they would.
About 10% of homes in the US are considered vacant, 5.5% in UK, 18% in Europe. 0.02% of the US population is homeless, I believe it's 0.006% in UK, 0.07-0.33% in European countries.
Yet your solution is still to make housing even less comfortable for poor people by getting rid of density laws and blame immigrants for the housing prices, to boot.
I think you will find some of the most high density housing in the world is very expensive. What are you even on about. Land is expensive. You think detached housing is the cheapest way to build houses? You're out if your mind. Supply and demand. Locals could live in the houses if other people weren't coming in and buying them. How many immigrants are living in these countries? Why dont you compare that to vacant housing? The vacant housing is only a big issue in undesirable locations and you need some anyway. Like I said LVT is the way forward. Solves this problem.
No one ever claimed detached housing is the cheapest form of housing... Way to build a strawman.
You're talking about keeping density low as a means to keep house prices low. It's stupid.
No, you're claiming that that's what I'm talking about.
What I'm saying is that making density even higher is not the solution to the housing problem. There are other, better ways of making houses more affordable than forcing people to live elbow-to-elbow with their neighbors.
What are you proposing then. Shoulder to shoulder includes everything that isn't detached.
How would less dense housing be cheaper when you need to buy more land and land is the thing that is expensive? Never mind things like utilities, public transport, police etc.
Some ideas could include, but are not limited to:
You can debate how well each of these would work, but there are many ways to bring prices down without making it less pleasant to live in those houses. I'm most partial to a progressive property tax, rent control and government housing, myself.
You really need to look into why those things are bad ideas because they seen like good ideas until you actually more than superficially look at them.
Especially rent control it is an awful, awful idea and leads to bad outcomes for everyone. But people refuse to learn about it and think it's a good idea. Go look up some YouTube videos on what's wrong with rent control. That will have comparisons to a lot of other things.
The problem is there isn't enough housing. Stop housing from being rented doesn't make more housing, it will actually make less.
The only actual good idea on that list is government building. But the issue governments have is the exact same issues as what companies have. Laws and NIMBY stop people from redeveloping areas that people live in or near. There just isn't any more land to build on that's available and with governments forcing population to increase and how everyone wants to live in big cities the issues gets worse and worst.
The solution lies in building more housing, nothing else. If there isn't enough housing literally nothing makes more housing than building more housing or converting no other solution works.
I'm sorry, but you won't be able to convince me that allowing a single company to own hundreds of apartments is a good idea that won't contribute negatively to housing prices.
We are on about new ones.
If you won't accept the most basic, basic, basic ideas about economics. Then yes congratulations you can't be taught something. I wouldn't be proud of that.
Ah yes, advocating for basic human dignity is now "not understanding basic ideas about economics", and none of the SIX different solutions I provided (which I didn't invent myself, btw) could ever work in any capacity.
I won't be continuing this conversation, as it is clearly not productive.
Dignity is great and all but it doesn't make houses when there aren't enough. That's two different problems.