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Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

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Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#111

Post by ajsnigrutin »

em-bee wrote: post #102
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...). After 1991 all of this has stoped. I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all ov…

vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern

I'm guessing the first time in 20, 30 years? :)

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#112

Post by giantg2 »

dagw wrote: post #105
giantg2 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what else are you going to do with the vacant building? Seems like it's a bigger waste not to. I guess we'll see how it turns out in NYC since they're proposing it right now.

This weeks 99% Invisible podcast is on this exact topic. The bottom line is that while it is technically possible, it is really expensive and only makes financial sense if you create luxury apartments that can charge the very highest levels of rent. Also the legal and regulation red tape is a massive problem making many projects impossible to do, even if on paper they might be viable. In most cases the most practical…

The NYC project is focused on low cost housing and is being supported by the mayor. So it sounds like cost and red tape won't be a problem there.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#113

Post by nunez »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

This story is being repeated across countries and cities. It really is high time there is some serious regulation around home ownership, especially as an investment vehicle. I would even say this is an existential issue for our current civilizational model - the unaffordability of housing is contributing to demographic decline globally.

How is this possible without governments controlling housing supply and distribution?

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#114

Post by danaris »

LeanderK wrote: post #10
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The last thing the world needs is more housing construction, especially with the insane CO2 footprint of anything involving concrete. That self imposed limit is exactly what keeps prices high. Every city has some run down areas that serve no purpose but are wasted space and could be turned into housing. Also, as some others already said it, living in urban areas reduces your footprint versus living far away in the c…

I wouldn't return to more rural areas if 100% WFH is possible. Some left it for a reason and not to get better internet. And, at least in germany, many rural areas are not so unattractive. I know plenty rural villages with great internet. Especially in BW public transport is solid, the next bigger population center is close by and there are many jobs. It's just conservative, culturally boring, inflexible and really s…

> I wouldn't return to more rural areas if 100% WFH is possible.

.....Then this isn't about you?

Not every solution has to be 100% perfect for every person. What FirmwareBurner suggests is a very good idea, and would unquestionably be helpful and attractive to many.

If you don't want to take advantage of it, then just...don't?

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#115

Post by spaceman_2020 »

nunez wrote: post #113
spaceman_2020 wrote: post #13

This story is being repeated across countries and cities. It really is high time there is some serious regulation around home ownership, especially as an investment vehicle. I would even say this is an existential issue for our current civilizational model - the unaffordability of housing is contributing to demographic decline globally.

How is this possible without governments controlling housing supply and distribution?

Taxation and regulation. Not very hard to limit who can buy property (forbidding large funds and overseas buyers, for instance), and how much taxes they pay on non-primary residences.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#116

Post by em-bee »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #111
em-bee wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern

I'm guessing the first time in 20, 30 years? :)

well, it appears there is another one that i didn't know about which started a few years earlier: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei

but there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City from the 90s (though it has only 20% residential use) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa from the 70s

in general vienna has a long history of large public housing projects going back a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau

it should be noted that until the 1990s the population of vienna has actually been slowly declining (from 2 million more than 100 years ago to 1.5-1.6 million) and most projects before then were more likely needed because a lot was damaged in the world wars. but in the last few decades vienna has seen unprecedented growth, now reaching almost 2 million inhabitants again. consequently in the last 20 years several new building projects have been initiated. the ones i linked are just a few examples. i keep finding out about more as i search.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#117

Post by em-bee »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #107
rft wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very few roles offer 100% WFH here, but if you only need to show up once a week tops in your office, you can tolerate a longer commute. So it might not make the most rural areas that much more attractive, but it widens the area around a city you can consider commuter area. For reference, this is mostly the model my mom works with, she is employed in the public sector. Of course, she commuted before WFH every day…

>but if you only need to show up once a week tops in your office, you can tolerate a longer commute Depends on your family situation. Sounds fine for couple with kids but most single and childless people still want to live in the big city close to their friends and support network. Moving to the countryside could mean you get to live for cheap in a big house all by yourself, but it could also mean a crushing lonely d…

actually with kids i want to live near the school. because while i could tolerate the occasional 1-hour commute to work, having kids needing to travel that far every day to get to middle or highschool is even worse. (primary schools and kindergarten are more likely to be local, so that's less of an issue)

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#118

Post by FirmwareBurner »

em-bee wrote: post #117
FirmwareBurner wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but if you only need to show up once a week tops in your office, you can tolerate a longer commute Depends on your family situation. Sounds fine for couple with kids but most single and childless people still want to live in the big city close to their friends and support network. Moving to the countryside could mean you get to live for cheap in a big house all by yourself, but it could also mean a crushing lonely d…

actually with kids i want to live near the school. because while i could tolerate the occasional 1-hour commute to work, having kids needing to travel that far every day to get to middle or highschool is even worse. (primary schools and kindergarten are more likely to be local, so that's less of an issue)

>having kids needing to travel that far every day to get to middle or highschool is even worse

In Austria I see highschool kids having >1h commutes every day. I wouldn't like it, but culturally it seems normalized and accepted here.

Re: Housing Is a Labor Issue: Land owners are taking all the wage gains

#120

Post by em-bee »

wildrhythms wrote: post #89
cpursley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate more about what you mean and how this would work? Where do young adults live? Where do new residents in a city live?

Public/social housing. Vienna already does this.[1] Another example: in 2021 the city of Berlin acquired 15k units from corporate landlords bringing the total publicly-owned units to about 20% the total of rental units in the city.[2] >Experts refer to Vienna’s Gemeindebauten as “social housing,” a phrase that captures how the city’s public housing and other limited-profit housing are a widely shared social benefit:…

In Vienna, a whopping 80 percent of residents qualify for public housing

but only 0.5 million out of an almost 2 million population do live in public housing, and it takes several years before you can get such a place.

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