3 ms·

>If you treat housing as a public good, you make decisions to keep rent prices stable, and you build more housing to serve the need rather than the profit motiv

>If you treat housing as a public good, you make decisions to keep rent prices stable, and you build more housing to serve the need rather than the profit motive. This argument strikes me as the tail wagging the dog. Vienna has no motive to limit housing since they build such an enormous percentage of it. If rents go up because the government of Vienna doesn't build enough housing, they will be removed from office. Profit is profit. Developers will build anything and everything that they can. The issue lies in the extreme costs involved in building anything new at all, mostly in graft by local municipalities and residents. If a municipality with a broken real estate market allowed housing to be built with less effort, more housing would be built. Forty percent of Manhattan's buildings could not be built today. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-percent-of-manhattans-buildings-could-not-be-built-today.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/05/19/upshot/forty-...

skohan 6y ago
So would you advocate that there be no zoning/building regulations? The article you linked has a slightly misleading title; it would be more accurate to say: "with today's zoning laws, 40% of the buildings in Manhattan would have been replaced by slightly smaller buildings which allow more light to reach the street." I already find Manhattan overly dense, and I can imagine those regulations were put in place for good reason. In Berlin, we have had laws on the books forever which prevent tall buildings and excess density, and I'm glad because if developers had their way, they would build high-rises where all the parks currently are, and this would not be a city I would want to live in. In general I'm not a fan of over-regulation or excess government intervention, but when it comes to housing, I think it does make more sense to treat it as a public good. Government is not perfect, but people should have some voice in how their community develops, and this will not be the case if housing development is left only to private interests.

skohan 6y ago

So would you advocate that there be no zoning/building regulations? The article you linked has a slightly misleading title; it would be more accurate to say: "with today's zoning laws, 40% of the buildings in Manhattan would have been replaced by slightly smaller buildings which allow more light to reach the street." I already find Manhattan overly dense, and I can imagine those regulations were put in place for good reason. In Berlin, we have had laws on the books forever which prevent tall buildings and excess density, and I'm glad because if developers had their way, they would build high-rises where all the parks currently are, and this would not be a city I would want to live in. In general I'm not a fan of over-regulation or excess government intervention, but when it comes to housing, I think it does make more sense to treat it as a public good. Government is not perfect, but people should have some voice in how their community develops, and this will not be the case if housing development is left only to private interests.