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Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

thetyee.ca

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Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#61
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These economist rankings are done from the point of view of rich expats. I very much doubt that their lives have much in common with the lives of people living in Vienna's public housing.

Yeah, it's a provincial backwater; even as an expat - it's pleasant for awhile, but notice how people never want to go these top 10 cities... LA, NY, SF, London, Paris, Tokyo etc are not in these lists.

There are different definitions of livability. Evaluating NYC in the same vein as, say, Nashville seems pretty much impossible.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#62
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to all those jobs. [1] 2523.4/1798.7 = 1.4 from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN

Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

Alternatively, just limit office space and thus local jobs. Except that’s not what local residents want.

SF is doing everything it can to maximize home prices while minimizing rent and property tax increase for current residents. Which is arguably exactly what’s in current local voters best interest.

Democracy working as intended?

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#63
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to all those jobs. [1] 2523.4/1798.7 = 1.4 from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN

Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

> Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

That doesn't work either, though it may slow the rate of price growth.

If you want to reduce the price of housing, tank the local economy. It's the only thing that works. Supply side policy is neutralized by its own effect on accelerating/decelerating economic growth, e.g., the attack you suggest doesn't work because reducing the growth of the cost of housing in the short-term accelerates local economic growth which creates upward demand-side pressure on housing, and eventually there are limits to supply in any geographical region (and even moreso in any commute time radius, since density shrinks the radius for any given time.)

If you want to reduce the ratio between median wages and the cost of housing (which is probably more important than nominal or even real housing prices), attack the distribution of income.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#64
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to all those jobs. [1] 2523.4/1798.7 = 1.4 from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN

Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

Somehow, no one in SF has realized this: that they can institute rent control... and increase housing supply... at the same time.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm your neighbor to the south (slovenia)... here, your house is practically untouchable if you mess up, but most people want other people to be taxed for owning a house. They also want owners of vacant properties taxed a lot more (which they believe would create more rentable apartments, but vacant apartmnts in big cities are rented out without contracts and without tax - usually to students, who prefer a risky chea…

Do people still have apartment rights left over from ex-YU?

There was a law passed in the 90s, where people who were assigned (government) apartments, could buy them from the government for really really cheap, and get government loans to do so (+ we had a lot of inflation, so we're talking 20year loans, where people would pay around an equivalent of ~50eur monthly... basically nothing).

So yeah... those who bought the apartments are happy, those who paid for the construction (the rest), and didn't get any, were not, and government currently has just a few "social apartments" for poor people. On the other hand, if the government was a landlord to all those people, that would mean a lot more administration and a lot more work (basically, back to yu-levels, or even worse, because people expected more after the fall of yugoslavia).

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#66
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet employment increased 40% from 1990 to 2019[1]. Increasing employment while maintaining a cap on the number homes drives up the value of the homes closest to all those jobs. [1] 2523.4/1798.7 = 1.4 from https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/SANF806NAN

Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

You can also work on reducing demand. Reducing population growth to negative numbers will bring benefits across the economy and ecology of the planet.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact, if you want to reduce the price of houses, increase the supply instead of instituting rent control and hoping for spooky action at a distance.

Somehow, no one in SF has realized this: that they can institute rent control... and increase housing supply... at the same time.

If the state is willing to be activist and damage the (paper) wealth of very influential people, like senior bureaucrats and policy wonks - who decide the states policy...

I do not know what it is really like in SF, but here in Aotearoa that is where we find ourselves. House prices and rents double what they ought to be and no state actor willing to take the hit of doing anything about it

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#68
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't that the solution to all - tax those who have (or are not part of our tribe) to pay for "us".

It's a great way to reduce inequality, sure. It's one way to reduce housing prices, but generally just increasing supply is simpler and more palatable.

I guess it addresses it on the effect side more than the cause side (inequality).

This is the way they are increasing supply.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#69
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general and total real estate property tax. I will pay at least as much property tax over the next 50 years as what I paid for my house.

Thanks! I'm curious -- if it's not weird to ask, does your property tax bill happen to separate out how much is due to improvements and how much to ground rent?

It doesn't specify. But looking at vacant land in the area, it looks like 5-10% is land and the other 90-95% would be the house.

Re: Vienna has a 100-year history of building public housing for all (2018)

#70

Singapore does something similar, with 80% of the population living in HDB accommodations [1]. The other 20% is a free-for-all near as I can figure. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore

I think Singapore also has some particular relevance to the US because of its multi-ethnic nature. Often when I talk to Americans about public housing a really common argument is the image of public housing as a sort of racist thing that creates enclaves for certain (usually low-income) groups. Yet Singapore, with its integration policies has virtually completely avoided this, and it basically can only do it effectiv…

Singapore is "multi-ethnic" in the sense that it broke off from nearby Malaysia in order to have a Chinese majority city state, and adopted explicit policies to try to manage the Malay and Indian population in order to ensure that it is an ethnically Chinese run government. You can listen to some of Lee Kuan Yew's speeches to see how multi-ethnic it is, and what he thought of the US approach to diversity -- e.g. "multiculturalism will destroy America." (https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/02/13/singapores-...)

The "integration" policies you refer to are there to limit non-chinese representation -- in the US we would call it a gerrymandering-support policy. Singapore also has an immigration policy meant to attract successful entrepreneurs, with no citizenship path for cheap labor, only temporary work visas. It does not accept any refugees or political asylum seekers. Being born in Singapore doesn't make you a citizen (no soil-based, only blood-based criteria).

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