4 ms·

All that and no mention of rent control...

ajsnigrutin 3y ago
If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.
- wildrhythms 3y ago
  That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.
  - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
    50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...). After 1991 all of this has stoped. I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all over both always-capitalist and former-socialist countries (mostly europe), and most of them are old with just a few newer buildings, mostly replacing the demolished old ones. It really doesn't matter, slovenia (my home), or germany... you see a bunch of large apartment blocks built in the same style, for many many people to live in, and you just know it was built somewhere between 1960s and late 1980s, and not after.
    - em-bee 3y ago
      vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern
      - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
        I'm guessing the first time in 20, 30 years? :)
        em-bee 3y ago
        well, it appears there is another one that i didn't know about which started a few years earlier: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei but there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City from the 90s (though it has only 20% residential use) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa from the 70s in general vienna has a long history of large public housing projects going back a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau it should be noted that until the 1990s the population of vienna has actually been slowly declining (from 2 million more than 100 years ago to 1.5-1.6 million) and most projects before then were more likely needed because a lot was damaged in the world wars. but in the last few decades vienna has seen unprecedented growth, now reaching almost 2 million inhabitants again. consequently in the last 20 years several new building projects have been initiated. the ones i linked are just a few examples. i keep finding out about more as i search.
fallingknife 3y ago
Yes let's trap people in apartments they can never move from and force newcomers to pay excessive rents to cover it. Also let's give landlords an incentive to try to make it as unpleasant for those long term tenants as possible. And of course we will need an expensive and unaccountable bureaucracy to manage all the inevitable conflicts of interest. But it's a small price to pay to avoid the horror of building enough housing units to match population growth.

If you have enough realestate, there's no need for rent control, because landlords will have to lower prices to get anyone to stay in their apartments, and empty apartments are still a huge cost to the owner. High costs of rent and (buying) houses is because there's not enough supply in the first place.

wildrhythms 3y ago
That policy has been tried for 50 years and all we've seen (and the topic of this thread) is prices gone higher and higher, and properties become more and more consolidated under megacorporations.
- ajsnigrutin 3y ago
  50 years ago, this place where I live was a socialist country and we built HUGE apartment building neighbourhoods (literally thousands of apartments) + all the infrastructure needed (schools, kindergardens, stores, parks,...). After 1991 all of this has stoped. I don't know where you are from, but when was the last time you guys built a new neighbourhood for 10, 20 thousand people to live in? Because i've been all over both always-capitalist and former-socialist countries (mostly europe), and most of them are old with just a few newer buildings, mostly replacing the demolished old ones. It really doesn't matter, slovenia (my home), or germany... you see a bunch of large apartment blocks built in the same style, for many many people to live in, and you just know it was built somewhere between 1960s and late 1980s, and not after.
  - em-bee 3y ago
    vienna is doing that right now: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seestadt_Aspern
    - ajsnigrutin 3y ago
      I'm guessing the first time in 20, 30 years? :)
      - em-bee 3y ago
        well, it appears there is another one that i didn't know about which started a few years earlier: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viertel_Zwei but there is also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donau_City from the 90s (though it has only 20% residential use) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alterlaa from the 70s in general vienna has a long history of large public housing projects going back a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemeindebau it should be noted that until the 1990s the population of vienna has actually been slowly declining (from 2 million more than 100 years ago to 1.5-1.6 million) and most projects before then were more likely needed because a lot was damaged in the world wars. but in the last few decades vienna has seen unprecedented growth, now reaching almost 2 million inhabitants again. consequently in the last 20 years several new building projects have been initiated. the ones i linked are just a few examples. i keep finding out about more as i search.

fallingknife 3y ago

Yes let's trap people in apartments they can never move from and force newcomers to pay excessive rents to cover it. Also let's give landlords an incentive to try to make it as unpleasant for those long term tenants as possible. And of course we will need an expensive and unaccountable bureaucracy to manage all the inevitable conflicts of interest. But it's a small price to pay to avoid the horror of building enough housing units to match population growth.