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I don’t even know where to start. The buying and renting markets for houses are linked. These landlords need to rent their houses, so clearly they meeting a d

I don’t even know where to start. The buying and renting markets for houses are linked. These landlords need to rent their houses, so clearly they meeting a demand in the market. That demand would not go away and thus prices would not go down if the houses were owned privately. There would simply be more former renters, now trying to buy. You can keep blaming the messenger or you can just accept that the housing demand is real and work to increase housing supply. One of these things works.

deleted 3y ago
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jjav 3y ago
> You can keep blaming the messenger or you can just accept that the housing demand is real and work to increase housing supply. > One of these things works. If simply increasing housing supply is known to transform a city from having very expensive housing to having affordable housing, it should be possible to name a handful of previously-expensive cities which are now cheap. Could you name a few?
- konschubert 3y ago
  Tokyo, Vienna, … Most cities aren’t very good at adding enough supply. And sometimes that supply increases agglomeration effects and makes even more people want to move there. Which is a good thing, that’s what cities are for.
  - jjav 3y ago
    Tokyo is such a unique special case that I don't think it should be an example for anywhere else. I did not know about Vienna, spent some time reading about it! Seems that it had very expensive rents and government programs to build a lot of public housing cut those rents making it fairly affordable. So it is a good case study of this approach working. Although it seems most of that housing was built a century ago. I have to wonder how practical it would be to replicate that today. > Most cities aren’t very good at adding enough supply. Maybe it's just not that easy? Also, culturally in the US it's just never going to happen that a city owns half or more of all housing as a public service, so I suspect wishing for that is not realistic. So in the US, building housing doesn't happen unless it is profitable for builders.
    - konschubert 3y ago
      There is nothing wrong with builders making money. Most of the cost of housing in cities comes from the underlying land. And you can make that cheaper overnight by increasing supply through zoning.

deleted 3y ago

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jjav 3y ago

> You can keep blaming the messenger or you can just accept that the housing demand is real and work to increase housing supply. > One of these things works. If simply increasing housing supply is known to transform a city from having very expensive housing to having affordable housing, it should be possible to name a handful of previously-expensive cities which are now cheap. Could you name a few?

konschubert 3y ago
Tokyo, Vienna, … Most cities aren’t very good at adding enough supply. And sometimes that supply increases agglomeration effects and makes even more people want to move there. Which is a good thing, that’s what cities are for.
- jjav 3y ago
  Tokyo is such a unique special case that I don't think it should be an example for anywhere else. I did not know about Vienna, spent some time reading about it! Seems that it had very expensive rents and government programs to build a lot of public housing cut those rents making it fairly affordable. So it is a good case study of this approach working. Although it seems most of that housing was built a century ago. I have to wonder how practical it would be to replicate that today. > Most cities aren’t very good at adding enough supply. Maybe it's just not that easy? Also, culturally in the US it's just never going to happen that a city owns half or more of all housing as a public service, so I suspect wishing for that is not realistic. So in the US, building housing doesn't happen unless it is profitable for builders.
  - konschubert 3y ago
    There is nothing wrong with builders making money. Most of the cost of housing in cities comes from the underlying land. And you can make that cheaper overnight by increasing supply through zoning.