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In the UK our last chancellor did this to keep the ponzi housing scheme going. There are a lot of estates and bad places dotted around central London. So, firs

by Fifer82 10y ago

In the UK our last chancellor did this to keep the ponzi housing scheme going. There are a lot of estates and bad places dotted around central London. So, first, reduce welfare, and then cap housing benefit on increasing rents, and then introduce a bedroom tax. Once all of the scum has been displaced, the place is flattened, and then new buildings go up. "Affordable Flats" where a bedsit costs you 360k.

makomk 10y ago
This is the problem with the notion that micro-housing is somehow going to solve the affordable housing problem. The thing that seems to attract companies to it is that they can charge close to the price of a full-size flat for something much smaller, call it "affordable", and accuse opponents of being NIMBYs and not wanting affordable housing.
- pjc50 10y ago
  Charge twice the price of what flats were a few years ago, advertise it in China first, and ignore the new owners leaving it empty. That's the worst case that's been seen in a few places.
- zanny 10y ago
  This all relates to the fundamental problem with housing in most cities, in that the extreme regulation destroys all competition. This actually happens in almost every field nowadays - the proliferation of effectively Nanny state government "protecting" its citizens from making bad decisions by regulating standards into things like residential zoning or even things like crop production or materials processing dramatically reduces the ability for competition to ever enter the market, because the more regulation you burden the industry with the more impossible it is for an upstart to actually comply or even understand it all. That goes hand in hand with how another poster above commented about how regulations are written to look like they are for the common good but are only good for those writing the laws. And when you exist in a system where money buys politicians and the will of the people has no effective influence on politics, you end up using regulation to stop competition. I want to see one city who bucks the profiteering and greed and just dezones everything and just lets people build. Yes, you would need to be more responsible as someone moving there to know if the building is safe or not, but really you have always paid for that through taxes and increased home prices, so paying someone to appraise your potential properties or more likely having general agencies that organically do it would be so much more preferrable to just preventing any innovation in the space at all in the name of NIMBYisms and market capture.
  - makomk 10y ago
    There's an even more fundamental problem with housing in most cities: the fact that land in those cities is an inherently scarce resource and that people need homes to survive destroys competition and encourages speculation. When land owners can't sell new homes for rapidly increasing prices, they just sit on the land until they can.
beachstartup 10y ago
fyi: 'estates' in british english means the projects, not high end real estate.

by Fifer82 10y ago

makomk 10y ago

This is the problem with the notion that micro-housing is somehow going to solve the affordable housing problem. The thing that seems to attract companies to it is that they can charge close to the price of a full-size flat for something much smaller, call it "affordable", and accuse opponents of being NIMBYs and not wanting affordable housing.

pjc50 10y ago
Charge twice the price of what flats were a few years ago, advertise it in China first, and ignore the new owners leaving it empty. That's the worst case that's been seen in a few places.
zanny 10y ago
This all relates to the fundamental problem with housing in most cities, in that the extreme regulation destroys all competition. This actually happens in almost every field nowadays - the proliferation of effectively Nanny state government "protecting" its citizens from making bad decisions by regulating standards into things like residential zoning or even things like crop production or materials processing dramatically reduces the ability for competition to ever enter the market, because the more regulation you burden the industry with the more impossible it is for an upstart to actually comply or even understand it all. That goes hand in hand with how another poster above commented about how regulations are written to look like they are for the common good but are only good for those writing the laws. And when you exist in a system where money buys politicians and the will of the people has no effective influence on politics, you end up using regulation to stop competition. I want to see one city who bucks the profiteering and greed and just dezones everything and just lets people build. Yes, you would need to be more responsible as someone moving there to know if the building is safe or not, but really you have always paid for that through taxes and increased home prices, so paying someone to appraise your potential properties or more likely having general agencies that organically do it would be so much more preferrable to just preventing any innovation in the space at all in the name of NIMBYisms and market capture.
- makomk 10y ago
  There's an even more fundamental problem with housing in most cities: the fact that land in those cities is an inherently scarce resource and that people need homes to survive destroys competition and encourages speculation. When land owners can't sell new homes for rapidly increasing prices, they just sit on the land until they can.

beachstartup 10y ago

fyi: 'estates' in british english means the projects, not high end real estate.