31–40 of 53 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As long as foreign wealth can continue to buy up properties as they are built, the actual housing supply doesn't really increase That's a pretty large part of the problem
The actual housing supply also doesn't increase if you prevent building houses...
The article vaguely alludes to why this trend could appear but unfortunate it couldn't devote at least a paragraph to it. It's such an important issue, but given that this the industry impacted is considered small and niche it's so under discussed. Decades of political opposition toward any and all redevelopment of existing low density single family dominated residentially zoned areas has meant that practically all c…
Seems like another symptom of the age demographic imbalance. Old people have taken over the political power and have seized all the land exclusively for themselves.
The article vaguely alludes to why this trend could appear but unfortunate it couldn't devote at least a paragraph to it. It's such an important issue, but given that this the industry impacted is considered small and niche it's so under discussed. Decades of political opposition toward any and all redevelopment of existing low density single family dominated residentially zoned areas has meant that practically all c…
Seems like another symptom of the age demographic imbalance. Old people have taken over the political power and have seized all the land exclusively for themselves.
One of the worst developments in the history of government is this incessant creep of regulations and codes that specify, in excruciating detail, how residential land must be developed. How wide the streets are, how many lanes of traffic there are, how far the sidewalks are from the road, how far the front door is from the sidewalk, how much of the back yard is visible from the sidewalk, how houses must be arranged, how wide a house must be relative to the property width, how short/tall a house must be, how many separate entrances are allowed, … and on and on and on the regulations go. This has the effect of making old style neighbourhoods (with real character) impossible to build in the modern day. It also highly restricts the usage of the land and the number of structures in a way that make it impossible to have multi-family dwellings, studio apartments above houses, artists’ cottages in the back yard, coach houses, small used book stores or cafes in residential neighbourhoods, etc.
The new urbanist movement [1] talks a lot about this. They’ve argued for the return of streetcar suburbs [2] and I agree with them. These places are extremely beautiful to live in. They foster a far deeper sense of community than modern suburbia. They are wonderful spaces for humans to live in rather than places for urban planners who want to play SimCity in real life.
I don’t blame old people or any other particular group though. This is a widespread phenomenon of cultural and regulatory evolution by people who did not anticipate the final result. Now we’re stuck with this morass and the political will to fix it is still in its infancy. There’s also simply the hard problem that we can’t just bulldoze whole neighbourhoods to rebuild them the old way.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, in Whitehorse in Yukon the average house was $420k (or $550k inflation adjusted to 2024) in 2015, and $660k in 2024. So less than 20% growth after inflation within the last decade. These are already insanely high prices for such small, remote, and undesirable cities
Whitehorse is not undesirable, it's located in a beautiful valley and has a fairly mild climate. And I specifically took the worst case of price growth in YK. If you look at Watson Lake, the price there has not grown at all. My point is that smaller cities in Canada are not experiencing runaway price growth. This should make it clear that it's not a housing shortage problem. Otherwise, it'd be experienced equally acr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
For those motivated purely by fear of their home no longer increasing in value, faster than inflation, a scheme like this might help soften their opposition. Unfortunately, the coalition of people who oppose housing is not purely financially motivated. There our groups of people for whom low density living is all about status and excluding others, and there is no amount of money that would compensate them for loss of…
> Some have never lived in anything other than a single-family home, and their understanding of multifamily buildings comes from news media and cultural stereotypes. They believe that as soon as you have a multi family structure, it’s automatically a ghetto of some sort I grew up in single family homes and when I moved out on my own I lived in apartments Hearing my neighbours screaming through the walls and floors di…
I do like cities but, at this point, I can just travel to for trips and that makes more sense.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whitehorse is not undesirable, it's located in a beautiful valley and has a fairly mild climate. And I specifically took the worst case of price growth in YK. If you look at Watson Lake, the price there has not grown at all. My point is that smaller cities in Canada are not experiencing runaway price growth. This should make it clear that it's not a housing shortage problem. Otherwise, it'd be experienced equally acr…
It’s still a housing shortage problem if what houses there are, are situated where people don’t want to live.
The article vaguely alludes to why this trend could appear but unfortunate it couldn't devote at least a paragraph to it. It's such an important issue, but given that this the industry impacted is considered small and niche it's so under discussed. Decades of political opposition toward any and all redevelopment of existing low density single family dominated residentially zoned areas has meant that practically all c…
> The shortage of affordable housing is especially severe for low income working artists Once again, there is NO SHORTAGE of affordable housing either in the US or in Canada. None. Nada. Zilch. Ноль. 零 And that's important. A simple "not enough housing" problem is easily solved with "just build more". Instead, there is a shortage of housing _near_ _large_ _cities_. And it can't be solved. Simply "building more" housi…
> None. Nada. Zilch. Ноль. 零
Interesting. 零 means zero. But my (non-native!) instinct says that it's impossible to use it this way. I feel like you'd need 没有.
Classical Chinese has a negative universal quantifier 莫 (though in a technical sense it's an adverb and doesn't modify or stand in for nouns), but I don't think I've ever seen anything similar in modern Mandarin. I feel like I'd have to use a positive quantifier and a negative claim.
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It’s still a housing shortage problem if what houses there are, are situated where people don’t want to live.
That's just another way to say what I'm saying: people are being forced into ever-denser cities, into ever-more-miserable living conditions.
Also, no, we definitely aren’t saying the same thing you and I.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, in Whitehorse in Yukon the average house was $420k (or $550k inflation adjusted to 2024) in 2015, and $660k in 2024. So less than 20% growth after inflation within the last decade. These are already insanely high prices for such small, remote, and undesirable cities
Whitehorse is not undesirable, it's located in a beautiful valley and has a fairly mild climate. And I specifically took the worst case of price growth in YK. If you look at Watson Lake, the price there has not grown at all. My point is that smaller cities in Canada are not experiencing runaway price growth. This should make it clear that it's not a housing shortage problem. Otherwise, it'd be experienced equally acr…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> For example, in Whitehorse in Yukon the average house was $420k (or $550k inflation adjusted to 2024) in 2015, and $660k in 2024. So less than 20% growth after inflation within the last decade. These are already insanely high prices for such small, remote, and undesirable cities
Whitehorse is not undesirable, it's located in a beautiful valley and has a fairly mild climate. And I specifically took the worst case of price growth in YK. If you look at Watson Lake, the price there has not grown at all. My point is that smaller cities in Canada are not experiencing runaway price growth. This should make it clear that it's not a housing shortage problem. Otherwise, it'd be experienced equally acr…
I think you have a somewhat skewed idea of mild climate, tbh, because the Territories aren't what I think most people consider mild
I'm also not talking about necessarily the scenery. What is the nightlife like? The job market? The restaurants?
Also being that far north you have the problem of the length of days and nights being very skewed throughout the year