alt Hacker NewsI don't understand why we can't just copy another country's housing strategy. There are many countries in the world where housing is affordable, relatively high quality, and the homelessness rate is low. What are we doing that makes this problem so seemingly intractable? Why is our approach to public housing seemingly worse than any other approach in history?
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What makes the problem intractable is that we have a system where for a huge chuck of the country your retirement is based on housing prices appreciating. It's clear if you directly own a home but even if you don't lots of the places you park your money to watch it grow are ultimately investing/speculating on real estate.
Some might call it housing asset based welfare. Even if you don't like that mouthful another simple example is the University of California putting 4 billion into Blackstone's REIT with "a minimum 11.25% annualized net return through January 2028." That REIT is 90% rentals. So probably at least a few people will feel the squeeze from it.
https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/university-californ...
It's the other way round:) Europe is salivating at the American real estate market. Some European countries don't have capital gains tax on real estate and real estate is the only investment vehicle without this tax. The only country where real estate prices haven't skyrocket looks to be Finland but their general situation is very specific and it's hard to say whether it's by design or by accident.
Social housing in Europe while exists, distribution of it is extremely corrupted process. Applying and waiting will give you something in 5 years or never, you'll know in 5 years. You have to be young couple both employed with perfect portfolio, or whatever the role model in that time and location is. Young couples both employed in desirable city basically don't exist anymore, even if you are after two rounds of waiting suddenly you are not a young couple anymore:) Usually you have to know someone and give a bribe.
You mean like in Sweeden, where you have to wait 20 years for assigned flat?
Europe has no homelesness, because migrants are housed at hotels at great expense!
A bit of a misnomer. Housing is, actually, extremely affordable across the US - just not in major cities.
You can plunk $10-$20K and get land and a homestead in dozens of states.
Agree with the other comment that overbuilding is a reasonable strategy, but if you look at Detroit downtown (mid 2010s) having an overbuilt downtown is bad too.
It's a hard problem.
Far fewer than you'd think: The vast majority of Europe is in the same boat as the US.
Whenever there's value in agglomeration (ie, all the time), the value of well placed properties just skyrockets, because growth is only going to make that land better. That's why a common recommendation is to up the tax of land as to make speculation with valuable property a bad investment: It's already price like an auction, so higher taxes cannot increase rent prices. The problem is political, as countries with housing problems have a whole lot of individuals have a big percentage of their net worth in housing. Big tax increases would make their property values drop, and they'd be quite upset. So it solves the problem while losing elections.
Instead, governments are happy providing tax advantages to existing residents, in practice making prices go up even faster.