361–370 of 764 posts
I don't see this as being any different than the numerous REIT's that you can invest in.
California and the Sun Belt have too many people relative to the innate ecological fragility of the regions, and manipulating the market to cram even more people in there than the economy or environment can support is foolishness and irresponsibility masquerading as a moral crusade. Foolishness and irresponsibility always masquerade as moral crusades.
The best method we have for distributing a luxury good with limited supply and excess demand is through markets and prices. Every alternative we tried have always lead to a lot of troubles.
Like another comment here mentioned, housing is complicated. People don't want to live in a random house in the middle of nowhere ('roof over your head'). Some people prefer to be homeless on the street versus getting to a roof over their head that they don't like. People want to live where they want to live (near family, jobs, culture etc) Take NYC for instance. Politicians try to address the NYC housing crisis from…
Do you have a reference to back up this statement? Have you ever spoken to any homeless people and asked them what they think about this?
Clearly there are some limits in which your statement holds; I would prefer to be homeless in a city in the UK than held in a forced labour camp with housing for example. I think once you include some basic minimum requirements very few people would prefer to be homeless.
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Sure, and you can say the same for sports cars, stocks, cell phones, yachts, and basically anything that can be bought and sold.
You aren't permanently consuming a portion of the most important finite resource in a state (the land) by buying a cell phone or a sports car. You're certainly taking advantage of public resources and services on a global scale with those other purchases, which I also think is worth addressing. But in the case of land ownership the correlation is very local and easy to draw.
Your argument confuses cause and effect. People that gain large benefits from the state do so because they are rich. And because they are rich they can afford expensive land.
No, because governments' ability to procure it for the needy is a very separable problem. But let me play Devil's Advocate: agriculture, the foundation of the food supply, is one of the most commoditized markets that exist. Does this bother you too? Why not? If it's because food is generally a smaller part of income, highly responsive to market pressure to keep prices low in addition to some stabilizing subsidies fro…
It does bother me
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> There is nothing inherently wrong with landlords and rent. Anyone that says otherwise is a tankie. Landlords provide a valuable service. What valuable service would that be, I wonder. Having a signature on a deed? Also nice, argument: "my opinion is right and anyone that says otherwise is wrong". x)
It takes considerable effort and funds to keep a house not just livable, but well kept, insured, managed, etc. If not for landlords, how else would all of that happen?
The main issue at the root of the OPs concerns is that as a society we have attempted to make real estate ON AVERAGE a good investment, which by definition means increase faster than inflation. There are demand side subsidies for home ownership, but many supply side issues as well. For example free parking and minimum parking requirements and max height restrictions. Many others have pointed these out. If we as a society tried to increase entrepreneurship in real estate by opening up more options, we could see a flourishing of options for people, with more range than ever, including lower cost options.
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housing is complicated My bullshit detector went off right here. Housing isn't complicated. It's only complicated by investment money being involved. Having a roof over ones head is a basic human right. In Australia, the market is so hot, very few young people can afford anything, if you're living in a nice place, you can easily be kicked out after your rent doubles. I know of good, professional people who migrated t…
But you need someone else to provide your ’basic human right’ Is housing expensive in popular cities or everywhere? What is preventing people (you?) from building cheap houses on cheap land? Is it regulation? We are headed for a massive population crash almost everywhere, the housing market will completely collapse in the next 10 years and will not recover. You can look at Japan and Italy as a head up, they are start…
We're not. Many countries predict stable populations at worst for several decades still. Some continue to predict population growths. Politicians are all too eager to use immigration as a way to band-aid low birthrates, and many are already subsidizing children more.
Your last line gives it away too. Japan is primarily crashing in the countryside. Tokyo is lagging behind by almost two decades, only just starting to drop. The high housing prices globally are primarily in urban and suburban areas. Many of those areas are still growing tremendously at the expense of rural areas. People don't want to live in rural areas because there are no jobs. Even if there was a crash, it hardly matters if populations continue to rise or remain stable in areas where housing is getting too expensive for the jobs provided.