Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 817 posts

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#61

Post by newsclues »

pochekailov wrote: post #14

Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters. Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all. There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the…

I’m not sure.

At a certain point, if landlords strangle renters it can make hiring hard (workers can’t afford Cost of living if rents are too high), thus making the business environment uncompetitive.

Will the business community have more power than landlords?

I think so, eventually.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#62

Post by mamonster »

pochekailov wrote: post #14

Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters. Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all. There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the…

Biggest problem IMO is that "young generation" is already split among ideological lines(myself included), and kind of hard to imagine a concentrated "young vs old" movement that wouldn't at some point devolve into infighting.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#63

Post by Ekaros »

seper8 wrote: post #54
mschuster91 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just guessing, you already own a house? LOL, I wish. Renting in Munich for enough money that I'll never be able to save enough for a downpayment. If I ever want to own my home, I'll have to move to the German equivalent of Alabama, with all the issues that come with that. > The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-i…

Plot values have doubled BECAUSE OF regulations! Agricultural land here in the Netherlands sells at 6 euro per m2. With a single stroke of a pen that ground can become 300 euro per m2, when the municipality decides you can build a house there. Same process in Germany. There is more than enough space. Problem is the price of plots is kept artificially high by municipalities, because they rely on the easy money it prov…

On other hand if municipality is struggling to attract people in Finland, they will give those plots of lands for essentially free. Or that is nominal cost of 1€ . Actually transaction happens when construction begins.

Then again those prices are in dying areas with little going on.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#64

Post by choko »

pochekailov wrote: post #58
lambertsimnel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people find it difficult to vote, for reasons I suspect disproportionately affect renters. Where people must be registered with their home address in order to vote, renters are at more risk of being unregistered at election time, because they move home more frequently. People experiencing economic hardship (who are more likely to be renters) are less likely to make time for voting (especially if polling stations…

We probably need some service (an app or a site) that gives clear instructions on how, where and when to register. Yes, it is harder for renters, but it is designed to be harder. This is to prevent renters from having political power and making homeowner's houses more expensive. One more reason to fight, from my point of view.

We have all that and more. There are even groups that seek people out to teach them to vote. When you file a change of address with the post office, they send you a packet with all kinds of moving resources including how to re-register. In addition, a really quick Google search gives you all you need to know to register and vote. I don't understand why some people pretend the process is difficult. If people still aren't voting it's due to lack of interest, not because it's confusing or difficult.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#65

Post by choko »

pochekailov wrote: post #49
throwaway6734 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to this the upcoming social security and Medicare crises, the constant rise in healthcare prices driven by elder care, and a shrinking population that needs to support more retirees. We're in a weird place in the US where young people are unwilling to flex any political power to stop elder people from financially taking advantage of them.

Only one question: why are they unwilling? Is it that hard? They won't be killed or tortured, like in Belarus or Russia, then why not?

Perhaps they don't believe political participation will help, or maybe OP is simply incorrect in their assertions.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#66

Post by [deleted] »

siwatanejo wrote: post #51
throwaway22032 wrote: post #27

Our economic system is set up such that you either hit a bar at which you accumulate capital forever unless you make a mistake, or you're loss-making forever. Once you hit that bar, your job becomes buying up housing like it's a Monopoly board. As an individual you can either choose to win or lose this game. We're not going to change it, at least not within our lifetimes.

Exactly, and the ironic thing is that the most insightful comment in this page is coming from a throaway account (possibly because of the fear of reputation-burn or something...).

[deleted]

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#67

Post by throwaway22032 »

siwatanejo wrote: post #51
throwaway22032 wrote: post #27

Our economic system is set up such that you either hit a bar at which you accumulate capital forever unless you make a mistake, or you're loss-making forever. Once you hit that bar, your job becomes buying up housing like it's a Monopoly board. As an individual you can either choose to win or lose this game. We're not going to change it, at least not within our lifetimes.

Exactly, and the ironic thing is that the most insightful comment in this page is coming from a throaway account (possibly because of the fear of reputation-burn or something...).

Oh, I have no reputation to burn. My friends and family know me well enough :-)

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#68

Post by mschuster91 »

seper8 wrote: post #54
mschuster91 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just guessing, you already own a house? LOL, I wish. Renting in Munich for enough money that I'll never be able to save enough for a downpayment. If I ever want to own my home, I'll have to move to the German equivalent of Alabama, with all the issues that come with that. > The fix is to enable builders to build enough housing, and not just single family detached housing, by removing regulations which allow NIMBY-i…

Plot values have doubled BECAUSE OF regulations! Agricultural land here in the Netherlands sells at 6 euro per m2. With a single stroke of a pen that ground can become 300 euro per m2, when the municipality decides you can build a house there. Same process in Germany. There is more than enough space. Problem is the price of plots is kept artificially high by municipalities, because they rely on the easy money it prov…

> Plot values have doubled BECAUSE OF regulations!

Hard disagree here. Munich, Berlin and Hamburg simply don't have much land in their borders any more. In Munich, we only have two major unpopulated areas left - the SEM Nord (900 ha, 50.000 people) and SEM Nordost (600 ha, 30.000 people) [1], and the currently under construction projects Freiham (25.000 people) and Bayernkaserne (15.000 people).

The opposition to these projects does have valid points, too: a city as large as Munich absolutely needs recreational areas for the populace as well as green areas for micro-climate and recreation, and the amount of both is really really low - the traffic to the existing lakes or the nearby Bavarian Alps is already immense and the areas are all struggling with the regional-tourist population issues like overcrowded trains, trash being left everywhere including in natural reserves or on farm land [2], overcrowded parking lots and vandalism [3], leading to sometimes outright violence against tourists from Munich [4].

"Just build more dense housing" may sound like an easy way out, but (too) dense housing has immense followup costs as well as all these people have to have other options in their lives than slave away as corporate drones and sleep. Otherwise, you end up with Japan-style psychological issues.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A4dtebauliche_Entwicklun...

[2] https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/muenchen/umland/ausflue...

[3] https://www.merkur.de/lokales/region-tegernsee/dasgelbeblatt...

[4] https://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/bayern/tourismus-in-bay...

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#69

Post by throwaway290 »

pochekailov wrote: post #10
mantas wrote: post #2

Not housing per-se, but concentrating too many jobs in few locations. Which causes issues with housing.

It is very good for productivity when many jobs are concentrated in one location. This unlocks the possibility for serendipitous connections. It is awesome when you can meet a founder, a leading engineer, an investor, a designer and a PR person in a coffee line, forming a new company before finishing your morning coffee. Talents concentrated in one place gives significant boost to their productivity. This is called a…

You are conflating densely populated cities and areas with high concentration of jobs. They are not the same. And as an aside, SF/SV are not even dense by global standards. You can live in an actually dense city and enjoy your serendipity while working remotely.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#70

Post by throwaway6734 »

pochekailov wrote: post #49
throwaway6734 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add to this the upcoming social security and Medicare crises, the constant rise in healthcare prices driven by elder care, and a shrinking population that needs to support more retirees. We're in a weird place in the US where young people are unwilling to flex any political power to stop elder people from financially taking advantage of them.

Only one question: why are they unwilling? Is it that hard? They won't be killed or tortured, like in Belarus or Russia, then why not?

I think a lot of young people just are ignorant about the situation coupled with the rise of populists on the left and the right, there's always some abstract other to blame without a focus on concrete problems and possible solutions.

Whenever I talk to my young friends about Social Security's trust running dry in a decade they just handwave it away with stuff like: the government will just print more money or blame jeff bezos

Post reply on HN