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There’s really only one way out of this mess, and that is for cities of the world to get serious about housing supply. First, in most cities, it is far too dif

There’s really only one way out of this mess, and that is for cities of the world to get serious about housing supply. First, in most cities, it is far too difficult to bring new housing units to market due to slow-moving non-deterministic regulation. Replacing that with efficient and deterministic regulation is the most important thing, so that over time the market can supply enough housing to bring prices down. Second, in strained housing markets (most major cities), property taxes need to go up significantly to reduce the utility of housing as an investment, and there especially needs to be a substantial tax penalty on vacant and semi-vacant (second, third homes etc.). There’s no reason a housing strained city shouldn’t use that mechanism to raise funds from the wealthy and discourage vacancy. Finally, cities that are sufficiently strained should impose significant hotel and vacation rental taxes. That’s harder to implement ordinarily because it’s not actually that easy for the government to tell the difference between a normal rental, short-term rental, and vacation rental. Also, short-term rentals are actually a healthy part of a local economy. But assuming that they started by making it much easier to build new supply and reduce the housing shortage, in the short term the city should be profiting wildly from tourists rather than letting tourists displace local residents. That tips the economic balance by lowering the demand for tourism to levels that don’t distort the local housing market. Over time that should be able to bring housing supply and demand to an equilibrium that is affordable to the locals, and at that point taxes could be adjusted over time (likely reduced) to maintain the equilibrium. Sadly, most people who work in City government have a really poor understanding of economics. They lean utopian socialist and are really offended by things like low income housing which tend to be ugly, and so they strangely and unintentionally ally with the hyper wealthy to try and exclude anything that offends their aesthetic (ie the poor), then fail at providing state housing that has the aesthetics they prefer because it’s economically infeasible to provide luxury housing for all. I wish this would change, but I fear that things will have to get much worse before this deeply entrenched dysfunction can be rooted out.

spaniard89277 5y ago
There has been quite a lot of advocacy for a public housing model a la Vienna and better legal framework here in Spain. For some reason it just get dismissed in the left, as too expensive, and always gets overshadowed by arguments about price control. I even tried to get into a local party with this, and failed. All this while they advocate for increasing spending in all kinds of BS and and programs we already know are basically useless.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- llampx 5y ago
  Vienna keeps getting brought up in threads like this, but one fact is that the demand and supply is not completely off-kilter there like in some (many?) other European cities. Anywhere in Sweden, for example has a ton of public housing but a decades-long wait to get it.
  - spaniard89277 5y ago
    In General it seems that Vienna uses both private and public developments. Public for cooling down the market, private for faster adjustment of demand and luxury property. In Sweden they may just suffer from NIMBY syndrome or "building is capitalist speculation!" type of stupidity.
at_a_remove 5y ago
Interestingly, out in the more rural counties here (not Spain), we still have squatter problems. I posit that there exists in the human population a percentage of people who will always try to get something for nothing, no matter how fair the prices might be. You might be able to lower some theft and squatting by policy, but that will not eliminate that rock-bottom percentage of people, and therefore you must construct policy as to how to deal with that group.
- burlesona 5y ago
  This is a good point, and I agree with you. Ultimately that comes down to the top comment - the legal system has to take care of these cases quickly and effectively, or else people will just end up with corruption and vigilante justice instead.
elric 5y ago
You're absolutely right that (many? all?) cities need to get way more serious about housing supply. It's a difficult topic, and it seems to be a divisive one as well. Any property that is empty (and not actively being renovated etc) should be taxed to death. There is really no room for empty, abandoned buildings in urban areas. It's a huge waste of space and resources, and it's disgraceful that homelessness and abandoned buildings can coexist within the same city. There's a disturbing amount of negativity towards squatters in this entire discussion, calling them "scum" and whatnot. I hope none of these posters ever have the misfortune of becoming homeless. A squat is a damn sight better than living under a bridge somewhere.
- thehappypm 5y ago
  I don't think empty properties are a big thing. The market makes that extremely unlikely. Got a derelict house in Boston? That's worth $500,000 cash. 6 months later there's a new house there.
  - majormajor 5y ago
    IME it's much more common in industrial or commercial or office areas. You can often spot the empty and vacant ones because they're the ones that are easier for local homeless to sleep in front of. Whenever I see that I wonder why we spend so much time fretting about single family zoning instead of targeting these underutilized currently-non-residential areas.
    - thehappypm 5y ago
      that makes sense, but I also don't see how it's a huge problem. Commercial/industrial space can't be easily converted to housing.
  - matthewmacleod 5y ago
    That’s great if you need $500k cash. If you have a spare home, this probably doesn’t apply to you. Why take $500k of cash you don’t need now when you can take $700k or more in ten years?
SteveGerencser 5y ago
This was tried in many large cities in the 60s and 70s. The apartment buildings were ugly and generally became havens for gangs and crime. So.much so that most of them were eventually torn down. Cabrini Green is an example of this. Building housing alone does not solve the issue. There is a massive support issue that also needs to be addressed. Jobs, child care, food, and so on.

spaniard89277 5y ago

There has been quite a lot of advocacy for a public housing model a la Vienna and better legal framework here in Spain. For some reason it just get dismissed in the left, as too expensive, and always gets overshadowed by arguments about price control. I even tried to get into a local party with this, and failed. All this while they advocate for increasing spending in all kinds of BS and and programs we already know are basically useless.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
llampx 5y ago
Vienna keeps getting brought up in threads like this, but one fact is that the demand and supply is not completely off-kilter there like in some (many?) other European cities. Anywhere in Sweden, for example has a ton of public housing but a decades-long wait to get it.
- spaniard89277 5y ago
  In General it seems that Vienna uses both private and public developments. Public for cooling down the market, private for faster adjustment of demand and luxury property. In Sweden they may just suffer from NIMBY syndrome or "building is capitalist speculation!" type of stupidity.

at_a_remove 5y ago

Interestingly, out in the more rural counties here (not Spain), we still have squatter problems. I posit that there exists in the human population a percentage of people who will always try to get something for nothing, no matter how fair the prices might be. You might be able to lower some theft and squatting by policy, but that will not eliminate that rock-bottom percentage of people, and therefore you must construct policy as to how to deal with that group.

burlesona 5y ago
This is a good point, and I agree with you. Ultimately that comes down to the top comment - the legal system has to take care of these cases quickly and effectively, or else people will just end up with corruption and vigilante justice instead.

elric 5y ago

You're absolutely right that (many? all?) cities need to get way more serious about housing supply. It's a difficult topic, and it seems to be a divisive one as well. Any property that is empty (and not actively being renovated etc) should be taxed to death. There is really no room for empty, abandoned buildings in urban areas. It's a huge waste of space and resources, and it's disgraceful that homelessness and abandoned buildings can coexist within the same city. There's a disturbing amount of negativity towards squatters in this entire discussion, calling them "scum" and whatnot. I hope none of these posters ever have the misfortune of becoming homeless. A squat is a damn sight better than living under a bridge somewhere.

thehappypm 5y ago
I don't think empty properties are a big thing. The market makes that extremely unlikely. Got a derelict house in Boston? That's worth $500,000 cash. 6 months later there's a new house there.
- majormajor 5y ago
  IME it's much more common in industrial or commercial or office areas. You can often spot the empty and vacant ones because they're the ones that are easier for local homeless to sleep in front of. Whenever I see that I wonder why we spend so much time fretting about single family zoning instead of targeting these underutilized currently-non-residential areas.
  - thehappypm 5y ago
    that makes sense, but I also don't see how it's a huge problem. Commercial/industrial space can't be easily converted to housing.
- matthewmacleod 5y ago
  That’s great if you need $500k cash. If you have a spare home, this probably doesn’t apply to you. Why take $500k of cash you don’t need now when you can take $700k or more in ten years?

SteveGerencser 5y ago

This was tried in many large cities in the 60s and 70s. The apartment buildings were ugly and generally became havens for gangs and crime. So.much so that most of them were eventually torn down. Cabrini Green is an example of this. Building housing alone does not solve the issue. There is a massive support issue that also needs to be addressed. Jobs, child care, food, and so on.