Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution • Hacker News Board

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#141

Post by anonymous5133 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:04 PM UTC

choeger wrote: post #17

Everyone and their cat wants to live as close as humanly possible to the hip center of the hip city. But of course, they literally do not want to pay the price. Why is there a vegan bakery specialized in Afghan Bagel[1] around the corner? Because there are enough hip, young professionals to pay for even the most unlikely specialty. Business can afford to cater to the most extraordinary taste, but only because there a…

I view it from a different approach. The city centers are the most expensive because that's where all the good paying jobs are. Thus if you want to solve the housing crisis, you simply need to shift the density of where these jobs are located. Personally I like the circular city model where you have several CBDs on the outer rings of the city.

The current model basically has all the good jobs in the CBD. The further you go from the CBD - the less jobs and the lower paying they are. So of course you get a housing crisis the closer you get to the CBD.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#142

Post by pell » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:09 PM UTC

berlinerluft wrote: post #139

pell wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people with money are entitled to it then?

They are not entitled to it, they PAY for it. Amazing concept, I know.

I don't understand why you need to be obnoxiously sarcastic here. There are quite a few situations where governments set limits on how much a good can be priced at. It definitely is entitlement to be able to rent to the highest bidder.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#143

Post by anthonybullard » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #119

AdrianB1 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taxes are not a punishment, it is a fair contribution to the costs of having a government and society. If you make it a punishment you turn it into the whip you use to herd cattle, recognizing you treat people like cattle.

Taxes are not a punishment. Taxes are the way of financing government and whatever government decides should be financed. What to tax however is open for debate. First you have to be pragmatic and tax things you can measure. If you can't reliably measure something people will just dodge your tax. Then you have to avoid taxing too much things that are necessary for the economy. What you can safely tax are the behavior…

That's actually not obviously safe at all, you are now basing your recent stands if behavior that in your own estimation is not desired. This creates a really weird incentive structure for legislators and regulators alike.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#144

Post by krautsourced » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:24 PM UTC

tyfon wrote: post #44

adrianN wrote: post #9

The truth is that rents in Berlin are exceptionally cheap compared to other major cities. Try finding a flat in London or Paris for The only way to keep rents this low in the face of rising demand is public housing that is rented out below market rates to low income tenants, or via a lottery.

One of the reasons for the cheap rent is the fact that the population of Berlin is still below what it was prior to WWII. I found it quite baffling at least when I read about it. The city got hit _hard_

Another, probably slightly more relevant, reason is that the average income in Berlin is significantly lower than other major German cities.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#145

Post by bobl » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:30 PM UTC

TomMckenny wrote: post #84

choeger wrote: post #17

Everyone and their cat wants to live as close as humanly possible to the hip center of the hip city. But of course, they literally do not want to pay the price. Why is there a vegan bakery specialized in Afghan Bagel[1] around the corner? Because there are enough hip, young professionals to pay for even the most unlikely specialty. Business can afford to cater to the most extraordinary taste, but only because there a…

Rents out pace wages in suburbs and rural areas too. They rise in SF, Fresno and Anchorage. Even places people flee like Flint Michigan, land costs rise. They are unbearably high even in tiny apartment Tokyo where a 4m ceiling means you have no roof. They rise in places with bad public transportation and good. The rise in supposedly under-priced Berlin and supposedly over priced San Francisco. Land is not a normal co…

While I do agree that land is different, sometimes I think the problem is that people see it as such. When housing markets rise people get rich, just like they do with e.g. stocks. The lack of affordability is a factor of inequality, and especially inequality in opportunities. That is why moving to a smaller cities isn't a solution for most people, because the problem is with opportunities which are appearing in cities and disappearing most everywhere else.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#146

Post by ip26 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:37 PM UTC

galfarragem wrote: post #103

Everything but freezing rents! Freezing rents literally destroyed Portuguese city fabric and renting market during that time: landlords didn't want to rent more houses neither repair the rented ones. Until recently wasn't uncommon to have old people renting a flat in Lisbon city center for 20€.

I wonder if cities that freeze rents also freeze property taxes?

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#147

Post by jk4930 » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:37 PM UTC

hawski wrote: post #91

tjansen wrote: post #50

I live in a different but still expensive Germany city and rent a apartment from a city-owned public housing company. The rent of the landlord's apartments is 20-30% lower than what you would pay in the free market, and in my neighbourhood I can get a pretty good idea of what people do to get one of those highly desired apartments. It's just crazy. I have heard everything short of bribing the person responsible for s…

Yeah, apartments is one part of it all. I'm trying to find a place in a kindergarten and it's hell. In Berlin kindergartens are free for some time and there are no free places. My wife today tried to find a place in a private kindergarten, no luck even in one for 800 EUR/month. If we knew German language and customs better maybe it would be easier. But then I would probably just think about creating our own. We're ge…

Sent you an email (from my sometimes blocked alumnus account, if it doesn't appear, let me know).

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#148

Post by thecleaner » Mon, Feb 25, 2019, 11:55 PM UTC

berlinerluft wrote: post #130

It's horrible. They do everything to prevent more housing from being built. The fact is, the city is just popular, so people are moving in, which drives the prices up. The government of Berlin consists of incompetent socialists. Just look at the disaster of the new airport for a popular example. Please don't take any cues from them. They only persist because Berlin get's a lot of subsidies from the rest of the countr…

The thing is what would happen if they respond yoy he growing demand and build more housing ? If the economy of the city slows down even a little bit it will be hit hard with bad debt. Companies are currently mushrooming in Berlin. Keeping rents affordable could in fact help the people and help create more companies there.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#149

Post by manicdee » Tue, Feb 26, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

All you people claiming that the only way to reduce housing costs is to build more housing are missing the other only way to reduce housing costs.

Remember, there is not only supply but also demand.

We need to reduce population growth to below zero. A sustainable world population is probably close to 0.9B, far less than the current level of about 9B, and significantly less than projected “stable” population of around 11B

Current world population is expansionist and we are down to less than 300 years worth of phosphates, with no plans to reclaim phosphates from the ocean.

Re: Berlin Builds Ideas to Stage a Housing Revolution

#150

Post by ucaetano » Tue, Feb 26, 2019, 12:25 AM UTC

vvillena wrote: post #87

areyousure wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The population of Manhattan is also below its pre-WWII level, and much below its ~1910 peak, but rent is not cheap.

The difference lies on the metropolitan area. The New York area is surely more populated than in WW2, even if Manhattan isn't.

Nope. The difference is that you had far more people living in the same dwelling units. The population of Manhattan peaked around 1910, at 2.3M, it is 1.6M today.