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The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

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Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#441
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically most people didn’t live in single family homes. They lived in very crowded, multi-generational and small dwellings connected to many neighbors. Shared public spaces were used for getting together, etc. Most dwellings did not have kitchens, etc. Our idea of a home for “regular people” is radically different than what people have lived in. People need to probably drastically limit what they think of when t…

or you could just legalize building anything other than single family dwellings. there's a lot of room in between quarter acre lot suburbia, and a crowded favela! look up "missing middle housing". the problem is purely a matter of restrictive zoning.

The cost of materials and labor is really high for most people, not to mention land. And then there’s maintenance. It’s out of reach for most people. Populations are so much larger than they were 100 years ago and people want increasingly large dwellings.

I think the tiny home concept makes sense as it’s trailers without the stigma. But yes, we probably need to think of a new type of town built around small properties that are pre-fab and disposable outside the connecting infrastructure.

I don’t think dense towers are the answer though.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#443

Very difficult to change because, in the "Pax Neoliberalia" world we live in, profits are Sacrosanct - and the higher the capital concentration, the holier so. But some straightforward fixes: 1. Flood the market with affordable state housing, Austria-style - with the bonus of building new, boosting the national economy. 2. Create very progressive (rapidly rising) taxes based on property value - making untenable the c…

Yes I’m sure inflation has everything to do with price gouging and nothing to do with the trillions of dollars printed by the Fed. Because of course, money printer go brrr with no repercussions right?

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#445

This sounds like what happened in the SFbay area(south bay/pennisula), I grew up there and it used to be a great place to live, center left politics, lots of families and a diverse set of industries with many middle class opportunities. right around 10-15 years ago things started to change dramatically for the worse, housing and costs everywhere skyrocketed, homeless population exploded, politics veered hard left. Mo…

That is an anecdotinal data point.. I live in a building with 6 units in the Mission district of SF. Until a few years ago my neighbours were people: families, (gay) couples,.. We now have 3 startups in our building. One of the startup (YC-backed!) moved out yesterday. The guys just threw what they didn't want into the street from the windows of their second floor apartment. And disappeared, leaving a filthy mess on the pavement.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#446

This article makes me realise how fortunate I am to be the children of immigrants. My parents are very family oriented and were somewhat upset when I left my home country (which isn't my parents' original home country) for greener pastures, but if there's one thing immigrants understand, it's that if things are hard, you should move to where things aren't hard! I'm sure the author has their reasons or whatever, but w…

I am not sure why you got downvoted, but you couldn’t be more right.

Many young Portugueses fail to benefit from being part of the EU.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well #1 is not 'straightfoward' fixes at all. Massive Real Estate buildouts are 'gigantic' industrial projects. A 'straight forward fix' is to ban foreign ownership of homes and AirBnB. Poof. Now, I wouldn't support that, but it would be 'straight forward'. #2 is reasonable. #3 is a big glib tough. "Hey, everyone should just get a raise!", if it were only that easy!

> Poof This has pretty much already been done in Vancouver, which has layers of Foreign Buyer Taxes, Speculation Taxes, Empty Home Taxes and strict Airbnb regulation. It absolutely did not make the problem go 'poof.' All these things were well worth doing and helped in various ways, but it remains that the core underlying problem is that there's not enough homes for everyone and scarcity ensures high rents and high p…

It has not been done in earnest in Vancouver. There's a 15 point 'one time' fee but it likely should be more, and/or an ongoing assessment i.e. higher annual taxes. Moreover, Canada gives away citizenship like candy and families have their kids live there.

AirBnB is still running strong as well, which should be much more heavily taxed.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels that way too. America’s increasingly tough stance on exports to China are a sign of things to come. I’m not even sure if this Globalization was worth all that much. It’s made some people very wealthy, some people well-off, but its also made lots of people very poor and very angry. I’m okay with living in a world with fewer millionaires but also fewer people sleeping on the streets.

Actually I listened to an interesting talk yesterday by Peter Zeihan, just discovered he has some interesting ideas. One of his theories is that the reason we have globalization isn't economic but it was rather America's attempt to win and keep allies during the cold war. You could participate in a global world trade network and economy (kept safe and maintained by American military might) as long as you were willing…

combine that with fossil fuels making transportation too cheap for their real environmental costs; agree

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe most EU countries do this in some form, but Austria by far has the largest and most successful public housing scheme. It is very effective at controlling prices.

How so? It makes it cheap for the people inside the system but expensive for those that are outside of it. You don't solve a housing crisis by essentially subsidizing the cost.

No, the Austrian government builds a large amount of housing, which increases the overall supply of housing. People living in social housing do get lower rent prices, but having a massive builder in the market that keeps pumping out new inventory helps to make it a buyer’s market and keep prices low. Simple supply and demand.

Re: The Portuguese can no longer afford to live in Portugal

#450
post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people moved into the bay area for the good jobs, nice weather and nature. Once housing demand pushed above supply, prices started shooting up. Those locals whose incomes didn't grow were pushed out of their homes. The bay area is boxed in by the hills so hard to expand out. Also a lot of the land was already build up with single family homes and other low density housing a long time ago so upgrading the den…

Actually California natives have one good thing going for them. Prop 13. So if you or your parents have lived in the house for 30+ years you're likely to pay $2K in property taxes on a $1M house (annually). The lack of middle-class jobs is a whole different story.

Not everyone bought the homes they lived in back then.
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