Live data from Hacker News

Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

architectsjournal.co.uk

11–20 of 202 posts

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#11
post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

Singapore's HDB system is world class in this regard.

Key items being first time owners are highly prioritized (effectively no one else). Must be owner occupied for first 5 years before allowing rental or resale. Government sets initial sale pricing to be quite affordable with special loans being cheap for the BTO. Average 2 year wait from lottery to build. Was 5 during covid.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#12
post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

A lot of the cheap blocks of government made apartments in the UK are now being torn down. Without regular maintenance and updating, cheap housing can quickly become ugly ghettos. It isn't enough to just build houses. They need to be initially desirable and continually maintained to remain desirable.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#13
post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

Life expectancy, starvation rates, literacy rates

Ugh, that made me look at literacy rates in the USA at the 6th grade or below.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#14

We had a chance to defuse the housing crisis with remote work and we blew it. Opportunities are concentrated and building in concentrated areas is inherently hard. We still don’t know how to scale mega cities fast while still operating them at capacity. So the problem will not go away anytime soon.

High density is supposed to be good isn't it? And density of European cities is still nowhere near what people have in East Asia

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#15
post #6

Over the last 50-70 years the UK made the choice to stop building social housing and to sell off the existing stock with aggressive government subsidies. Complaining now is a bit like complaining there's no milk after you sold the dairy farm to build a casino. I read TFA but I'm not seeing anything but useless outrage that would have been better placed 20-30 years ago I became a first time property owner at 36 and it…

Its not even that, the restrictions on new homes in the UK make it impossible to build any significant amount of housing, social or not.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#16
post #4

It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why?

The population simply doesn't grow once and stop.

Actually it does. UK population growth is due to immigration.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#17
post #8
post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

Its kinda funny you mention this because a lot of communist countries did pretty much this with high rise apartments. They're still there too.

Ya good point, I see those all the time in Serbia. We need some kinda of base building for supply, and the rest of the bit where they can override local zoning, speed up permits, override reviews, etc.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#19
post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

A lot of the cheap blocks of government made apartments in the UK are now being torn down. Without regular maintenance and updating, cheap housing can quickly become ugly ghettos. It isn't enough to just build houses. They need to be initially desirable and continually maintained to remain desirable.

Ya I don't want it to be cheap, rather super solid and built for 100 years, but run on that type of time frame. I have some friends who build for universities and that is how they think when they build a project versus a cheap throw up that is barely expected to last 20 years.

Re: Waiting 100 years for a home isn't a housing crisis, it's a moral collapse

#20
post #2

IMO... one of the most important benchmarks for judging the effectiveness of a government is the cost of housing. Cheap and basic housing is so key for economic well-being. I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level to try to overcome the current situation. Like persistently have a department of government just building to meet needed demands in economic centers. What oth…

Maternal mortality rate.
Post reply on HN