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

architectsjournal.co.uk

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

#121

Post by greenie_beans »

logicchains wrote: post #23
bwb wrote: 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…

Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.

good lord the unsubstantiated zenophobia. please share some data to support this claim.

here is counterpoint: i live in a place where housing prices rose higher than the national average during a time period when the state experienced out migration.

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

#122

Post by ReptileMan »

logicchains wrote: post #23
bwb wrote: 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…

Governments caused this problem by fighting tooth and nail to keep immigration levels high. Without that, house prices in most developed countries would be falling now, like they are in Japan, because a decreasing population means less demand for housing.

Immigration is not to blame. Gulf states have massive immigration and expat populations - multiple times that of the locals and yet they manage to manage and house them just fine.

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

#123

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

thrance wrote: post #39
oytis wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Paris, where I live, is three times as dense as Tokyo... The entire city is mixed-used 6 storey buildings.

Yes but the average size of a flat in Paris would be shocking to an American.

500 square feet for a couple is standard (that would be seen as a small appartment in the USA) and living in 300 square feet or less is fairly common for someone single.

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

#124

Post by petesergeant »

tarkin2 wrote: post #65
petesergeant wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%, and it’s not clear there’s any solution to that, because voters will punish anyone who tries to fix it.

Well, the renters will reward any government that pushes down house prices i.e. builds more houses. And I assume there are more renters than home owners.

> The 2011 Census tells us … around 64% of UK households owned their home

That’s not the same as the number of voters, obviously, but I’m not sure it’s a safe assumption, even before it gets into the actual voting dynamics from FPTP… there’s also presumably a lot of renters with their eyes on Mom and Dad’s home as an inheritance.

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

#125

Post by jsk2600 »

tryauuum wrote: post #109
jsk2600 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would love to see very basic, small, apartments created by governments on a mass level As someone living in a country where it can take five or more years to get approval to build a new house and 10+ for commercial buildings due to the government bureaucracy, I'm scared by the idea of getting the government more involved. The key issue is that the government makes it very hard to build -> less housing -> expensive…

what country is that?

Czechia. Also, it's very inconsistent depending on local governance. Even Microsoft bailed out their data center project near Prague for this (and other) reasons...

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

#126

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

SettembreNero wrote: post #40
brap wrote: post #4

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

> It always comes down to we don’t build houses fast enough. Why? because we can't say that real estate is basically a cartel [1] and that big cities (where everyone is supposed to move because all the jobs are there + RTO) have staggering levels of empty houses (e.g. 19% in Paris [2]), and god forbid to apply any type of policy to adjust the situation. [1]: e.g., Berlin - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Wohne…

The situation is significantly more complicated for Paris and Berlin which are touristic hot spots on top of being big cities.

For exemple, the 19% you quote in Paris include occasional occupation which is partially driven up by the insane price of hotel for which people who need to spend time in Paris regularly have to compete with tourists.

But I disagree with you on the absence of policy to adjust the situation. Paris has been doing a lot in the past few years.

The city severely limited the ability of owners to turn their property into short term rentals to try to increase the long term rental offering.

Then there was the rent cap but its impact is more difficult to estimate. On the one hand, it made renting properties less interesting and probably incitated some owners to keep their appartments empty. On the other hand, it severely limited the possibility of borrowing money for buy to rent project as it doesn't make much sense financially and therefore lowered the market pressure for people buying to live.

Last year, they significantly increased the vacant property tax. It's calculated on the rental value and quickly raise to 34% of it so it rapidely doesn't make sense to keep an appartment empty if you are not going to be in Paris very frequently.

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

#127

Post by helij »

carlosjobim wrote: post #81
thrance wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing I never see addressed. Wouldn't fixing the housing crisis necessarily involve slashing down property values? Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? Genuine question by the way, I would like an answer.

Yes. But that's just like any fake token being used by olds as a retirement plan. Seeing as the olds control almost all of the wealth of industrialized nations, they should as a group be held entirely responsible for paying for entitlements and benefits for other elderly. The young should not be burdened with this. They have more burdens than they can handle already and are soon genetically extinct unless the olds ta…

Please stop spreading generational divide. Those olds were burdened with this just like today's young. Somehow some people think olds had it easy. Housing issues are not us(young) vs them(old).

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

#128

Post by thrance »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #112
thrance wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the thing I never see addressed. Wouldn't fixing the housing crisis necessarily involve slashing down property values? Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? Genuine question by the way, I would like an answer.

> Which are for a lot of people their only form of savings? It's fake savings unless you are speculating on properties. Most people only own the place they actually live in and only resell to buy another place. A general property market crash doesn't affect the value of your house compared to other house so it's mostly neutral in this regard. Of course people who borrowed before the crash will be in debt for longer t…

Thank you, that makes a lot of sense.

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

#130

Post by thrance »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #123
thrance wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paris, where I live, is three times as dense as Tokyo... The entire city is mixed-used 6 storey buildings.

Yes but the average size of a flat in Paris would be shocking to an American. 500 square feet for a couple is standard (that would be seen as a small appartment in the USA) and living in 300 square feet or less is fairly common for someone single.

To be fair, the average size of a flat in Paris is shocking to Frenchmen living outside the city.

Same thing with New York I guess. I had a cousin move from Paris to Manhattan, and it didn't really feel like an upgrade.

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