So there’s a ton of countries that I’ve heard have had truly unaffordable housing for decades, like:
- The UK
- Ireland
- The Netherlands
And I’ve heard of a ton of countries where the cost of houses was until recently quite affordable where it’s also started getting worse:
- Germany
- Poland
- Czechia
- Hungary
- The US
- Australia
- Canada
- And I’m sure plenty others
- It seems to be a pan-Western bloc thing. Is the cause in all these countries the same?
- We’ve heard of success stories in cities like Vienna where much of the housing stock is municipally owned – but those cities have had it that way for decades. Would their system alleviate the current crisis if established in the aforementioned countries?
- What specific policies should I be demanding of our politicians to make housing affordable again? Is there any silver bullet? Has any country demonstrably managed to reverse this crisis yet?
Japan has.
Japan is an outlier for numerous reasons, the biggest of which is that housing value there decreases over time (without going into the causes, the result is a feedback loop where housing isn’t built to last because it’s a poor long-term investment, so it depreciates like other semi-short-lived products, such as cars). This isn’t something the government planned, it came about naturally. So I wouldn’t say they’ve “solved” housing so much as their situation has made it a non-issue.
This is both false and true. Japan has a few things happening that are keeping rates lower, but the primary thing keeping costs low in Japan is the fact that the units are tiny. I’m not talking a little on the small side, I’m talking 200 square feet or less per person in a family home. No yards either.
If you compare Japan to the dwelling sizes of other nations, it’s just as bad or worse per square foot.
The end goal for solving housing should not be to make the rooms as small as possible. Especially in countries where land space isn’t the limiting factor.
I mean there are a ton of efficiencies to be gained with using communal resources.
Why can’t a bunch of people share a park rather than needing their own back yard?
Not saying it shouldn’t be an option, but the American obsession with detached housing at the cost of higher density housing is a major contributor to insane housing costs.
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The housing I remember in Japan was the coffin box. A little space long enough for you to lie down in, with a small cubby for items. I think it was about 30 sq. ft. and maybe 90 cu. ft.
Finland only has approximately 1000 willfully homeless people. I’d call that solving the crisis.
They also have a relatively small monocultural population and really cold winters.
True, but they could just decide to ignore homeless people like most of the US and other capitalist countries have, but they didn’t.
What specific policies should I be demanding of our politicians to make housing affordable again?
- Ban corporate ownership and excessive individual ownership (ex: > 10) of homes.
- Remove most barriers to building lots of new and higher density housing (ex: four-story multi-unit buildings) except legitimate safety and ecological concerns.
I was impressed with Singapore when i was there a while back: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board
Yea, the technique of the government simply owning all the land and doing all the development does work. It just can’t really be applied to any western country without a massive revolt when they confiscate all the land from private owners. The government could never afford to pay for all of it, so it would have to be seized without payment.
Downtown Los Angeles has a high rise that was abandoned by the owner/builder. It’s covered in graffiti. They could start there.
Every time I see it i die a little inside
Would the ruling class want this problem solved if it’s the only commodity that can’t be produced?
I suppose it depends on how you’d define “solved”. If we’re talking about basically eliminating homelessness, Cuba has done immense work in that regard. Say what you will about the Cuban government, but Cuba has a near-zero homeless population because the government has built a ton of housing and caps rent at 10% of individual income in that state-owned housing. Cuba is also a country with a tradition of multi-generational extended family homes, so there’s a greater chance that you’d be able to move in with a family member if you fell on hard times. Home ownership rate is around 85% compared to 65% in the US. All of this is nothing new, though, so it’s hard to say if it’s the answer to current issues of housing that’s largely driven by corporate greed, but it certainly sounds like it couldn’t hurt. Granted, I’ve seen people give examples of homes that are rather small and spartan, where the walls are made of bare cinderblock and generally aren’t very pretty, but that’s way better than being homeless even if some of the housing isn’t as nice as others. I’ve also examples of state-owned housing lived in by the same kinds of people, but are really quite nice as well. Whether the US government would ever do this, though, seems unlikely. Not at the scale we’d need and not for so cheap, anyway, especially not with Trump coming to office. I can’t really speak for the governments of other countries, however, and I’m no expert on Cuba either, so I could have gotten some things wrong. The US embargo to Cuba since the 90s also means that Cuba has had a more difficult time procuring building materials for the low-cost housing that’s helped so many, which has led to an increase in size and number for those extended family homes over the years.
I live in the United States, and as I understand it the housing crisis is caused by several factors.
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The lowest level of zoning is typically residential single family. This means small scale owners and developers cannot increase supply by taking a house and adding to it. Either by adding extensions, subletting, or even building a mini-apartment building. To add to this, US regulations require apartment units to have access to 2 staircases, in the event of a fire. This is good for safety, but greatly restricts style of apartments to hotel styles, and increases costs, so smaller apartments don’t make as much sense. This requirement should be able to be waved in the case of fire resistant building materials.
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Speculative land owning. Some property owners simply sit on properties in developing areas, waiting for its price to increase, and since tax is based on the value of the total property (land+building), a decaying building reduces the cost of owning that land. To fix this, we should be taxing the value of the land instead, punishing speculators, while incentivising people to improve their land (by building housing).
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Overuse of cars. Even when places want to expand housing, the complete and utter reliance on cars as transportation in the US leads to backlash for increasing housing, as the perception is that it will increase traffic. To combat this cities need to rethink their transportation strategies to radically increase things like bus and bike lanes. Even when cities do have buses, the strategy funded by the federal government is abysmal. For example instead of running buses that can hold 15 passengers and run every 15 mins, cities will instead run buses that can hold 50 people every hour, and so these buses run mostly empty with 2-3 passengers.
The main policy changes that we need are less restrictive zoning, tax speculators, and diversify urban transport. But resistance is heavy, many politicians themselves are land holders and do not want to implement these changes, or to anger those that do. Landholders generally have more political voice, power, and wealth.
By “resistance” you mean “rich people and their money, along with the laws that have kept them rich”
While yes, the rich are the main problem, the bulk of resistance is the middle class. They don’t want to see the value of their property go down, or see increased traffic. Even though the suggested policy changes would help them too! The brainwashing is strong among people, not just the rich.
It’s also hard, because to make meaningful changes, you need progress in at least 2 of these areas at the same time, which means you need to get people and politicians to agree on how to fix the problem!
I see many people blaming corporate ownership as a problem, and in our current system is it is. But implementing my proposed changes would make it unpalatable for exploitive corporations, without needing to explicitly ban them!
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China has essentially zero homeless iirc. Most people own their homes
That depends on if you consider the migrant workers living in encampments as homeless or not
I have no idea if China has those but I can tell you that America does. I’d still rather not have humans suffering on every street corner.
Right, instead it’s better to shove them into camps on the city limits, where the well-off population doesn’t have to watch the other 20% of their total population live in utter poverty and suffer.
Thinking of China’s answer to the problem of poverty and homelessness as a solution is an insult to human rights.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340706113_Homelessness_and_the_Universal_Family_in_Chin
China has a roughly 20% migrant worker population living in notably unsanitary conditions who do not own their homes. This is a direct result of their economic policy.
They have a massive homeless population. It just looks different than in other parts of the world.
I will take your word for it for now but will definitely be doing sone research on this. I should know more about china than I do right now
This is why I linked a published academic paper on the matter. You don’t need to take my word for it.
I’ll be reading it when I am not drunk anymore, should have mentioned.
Vienna is not as good a situation as it may look. Their public housing stock is only great if you can’t get into it. There are waitlists years long, and you have to live in the city already to be eligible to get on the waitlist. Private housing is still expensive.
Look at places in the U.S. who have built a lot more housing – rents and housing prices have gone down.
- Relax/change zoning requirements
- Give subsidies to developers for affordable housing
There’s a bunch of available housing in my area, but it’s just super expensive. I guess building more might work. My only concern is I only see larger 3+ BR housing or shared housing behind built. The days is affordable 1 to 2 bedroom houses are over. If you want something smaller, you are stuck with condo and high HOAs. Personally, I think they should bring back trailer parks and force ownership to be local.
Japan with a very unique method
Oh, that wonderful unique method.
