3 ms·

The shortfall in housing is such a key factor here, as it drives higher childcare, healthcare, and general labor costs: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-hou

The shortfall in housing is such a key factor here, as it drives higher childcare, healthcare, and general labor costs: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every... And housing may just be a subset of the problem of not really being able to build anything anymore that's shared with the US.

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Lack of housing in the US is almost entirely confined to select urban areas. There's no shortage of land or legal ability to build housing across most of the country but if you want to build an eight-story condo in San Francisco, you're in for an exhausting battle. Try the same in downtown Des Moines or Omaha, and you're probably going to get the red carpet rolled out for you. Try to build a single-family house in a rural area and most counties will primarily just care that you have a way to treat sewage and that you're following basic building codes (and in some places, they don't even care about the latter).
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  Cities are where the jobs are, though, and at least in my (American) city of residence, most of the single family homes sold in the last year were bought by property management companies to become rentals or flipped.
  - spankalee 3y ago
    > most of the single family homes sold in the last year were bought by property management companies What's your source on this? I see similar claims, never cited. Even if true, that would be a symptom of under-production. Build more and there isn't the incentive to invest in an asset with government-boosted appreciation.
    - joker_minmax 3y ago
      I won't doxx myself but I found one here with a 30% figure with data from 2021 about Texas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36304142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36304142

3 ms·

The shortfall in housing is such a key factor here, as it drives higher childcare, healthcare, and general labor costs: https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-hou

by spankalee 3y ago

Mountain_Skies 3y ago
Lack of housing in the US is almost entirely confined to select urban areas. There's no shortage of land or legal ability to build housing across most of the country but if you want to build an eight-story condo in San Francisco, you're in for an exhausting battle. Try the same in downtown Des Moines or Omaha, and you're probably going to get the red carpet rolled out for you. Try to build a single-family house in a rural area and most counties will primarily just care that you have a way to treat sewage and that you're following basic building codes (and in some places, they don't even care about the latter).
- joker_minmax 3y ago
  Cities are where the jobs are, though, and at least in my (American) city of residence, most of the single family homes sold in the last year were bought by property management companies to become rentals or flipped.
  - spankalee 3y ago
    > most of the single family homes sold in the last year were bought by property management companies What's your source on this? I see similar claims, never cited. Even if true, that would be a symptom of under-production. Build more and there isn't the incentive to invest in an asset with government-boosted appreciation.
    - joker_minmax 3y ago
      I won't doxx myself but I found one here with a 30% figure with data from 2021 about Texas. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36304142 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36304142