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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)

#71

Post by aerosmile »

throwawayboise wrote: post #46
aerosmile wrote: post #37

Here's the gist: the government taxed the shit out of the landlords and forced them to sell their land cheaply. Europeans generally see nothing wrong with this strategy, whereas most Americans will feel shivers down their spines. This difference comes from different attitudes around ownership. In places like China and Russia, owning a house means you get to keep the house unless enough people would benefit from you n…

> In the US, you get to keep your house no matter how much anyone - including the government - would prefer you didn't. Not true at all. Eminent Domain is a real thing. The controversies have generally been when there is a dispute over whether the taking is for a public benefit, e.g. condeming property to make way for a private business.

> Eminent Domain is a real thing.

It's technically a thing but totally not a thing in the context of my comment and this topic in general. I doubt you'll make a case that China, Russia, or for that matter, even Austria have stronger private property rights than the US. Remember, the origination story of the US revolves around private land ownership attracting European migrants who were fed up with European feudalism. I am sure there are some carveouts here and there, but they are remarkably minimal to the point that it's sometimes worth making an observation without adding a bunch of footnotes.

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

#73

Post by Barrin92 »

rsj_hn wrote: post #70
Barrin92 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. "mul…

That's a fair characterization of the workings of the state, which has never really lived up to any democratic norm to be honest, but if you actually walk through Singapore and see how people live, honestly it is a successful multiethnic society. LKY might have a lot of non-PC views, but you wouldn't know it just by visiting the place. And that's I think what matters.

And on the humanitarian front, yeah Singapore has a underclass of foreign workers with little chances of citizenship, but then so has the US. Talk to agricultural workers in Cali. The undocumented labour pool is millions of people. Or Eastern Europeans on German fields picking asparagus.

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

#74

Post by vmception »

Retric wrote: post #62
arcticbull wrote: post #49

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.

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?

> Democracy working as intended?

0-day: San Francisco real estate prices vulnerable to 51% attack.

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

#75

Post by epistasis »

tw_hn_3_14_2021 wrote: post #64
arcticbull wrote: post #49

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.

These are not contradictory ideas.

The pro forms that will finance any construction loan/mortgage is not going to let the builder assume big increases in rents beyond inflation.

In fact, if the only way to increase rents is to build a larger building and collect from more units, rent control could actually incentivize building.

Where rent control gets into trouble is where it encourages "got mine, forget allowing anybody new here" sort of NIMBYism that accompanies home ownership. But that's a cultural problem, not a rent control or home ownership problem. And it's only a problem when the ability to build is gated by letting a tiny number of people veto new buildings.

This veto power of tiny minorities is the true problem with building more in SF and other supply constrained places. A more democratic process that took into account the broader views of the people would fix it.

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

#76

Post by refurb »

manicdee wrote: post #66
arcticbull wrote: post #49

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.

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

This is why we can’t have nice things.

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

#77

Post by epistasis »

larsiusprime wrote: post #3

From the article: > As both the Vienna model and Henry George[1] would suggest, the problem is forever and always the cost of land. Burdensome land costs, and the rentiers who gain massive wealth by passive land speculation, are the real enemies — not developers, not our homeowners, not our public officials. [1] https://thetyee.ca/Solutions/2018/06/04/Tax-To-Solve-Housing... (linked in the article) EDIT: From the loo…

When homeowners have the vast majority of their wealth ties up in land values, and not structure values, they become property speculators and rentiers just as bad as any other wealthy rentier.

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

#78

Post by bane »

A sorta aside. The absolute best AirBnB experience we ever had was in Vienna. Of course it's an anecdote, but we had absolutely no trouble finding convenient, cheap, and large places to stay under $70/night. This made us think that the housing market there must be quite cheap compared to where we're from. We ended up staying in an absolutely beautiful flat about 20 minutes from the city center via U-Bahn for <$60/night -- a price we've paid for old bedrooms in lesser cities. The same flat where we live would easily cost closer to $3k/mo.

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

#79

Post by cheriot »

worik wrote: post #67
tw_hn_3_14_2021 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's more about neighborhood level obstruction in SF. People will elect pro-housing candidates as Mayor and State Senator/Rep, but the local Board of Supervisors (the city council) is controlled by people that will say, "you should build that anywhere, but here." People are _very_ anti-change and especially don't want people different from themselves moving in.

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

#80

Post by mwerd »

kcorbitt wrote: post #8

The article states that Vienna's population in 1914 (at the beginning of WW1) was 2 million, vs 1.9 million today. I'm no housing policy expert, but isn't it possible that Vienna's rents are stable and low in part because they haven't had to increase their housing stock in over 100 years? It seems to me that a new-world city like Vancouver that has grown tremendously over that period wouldn't be directly comparable.

D.C.'s population has gone down since the 1950s and it still faces affordable housing and homeless issues. I don't think population growth or decline is a clear driver.
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