7 ms·

I've been discussing housing a lot with my friend lately, and I think a large part of the problem is simply that democracy in it's current form does not incenti

by dottjt 3y ago

I've been discussing housing a lot with my friend lately, and I think a large part of the problem is simply that democracy in it's current form does not incentivise affordable housing. Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply etc.

lmm 3y ago
The UK is soon to be a majority-renter country, which will hopefully flip the democratic incentive. Although I guess the end result of that might be permanently oscillating in a narrow band around a 50% homeownership rate.
- cassianoleal 3y ago
  > The UK is soon to be a majority-renter country This just means assets are getting more concentrated, effectively increasing inequality. Increased inequality usually means the ones with capital become a greater force in the market, not a weaker one.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
grecy 3y ago
Housing can not simultaneously be affordable and a good investment. So the politicians either keep housing as a good investment (un-affordable) and piss off the younger people who can't afford to buy, or they make housing affordable (bad investment) and piss off the older people who already have houses. They can't win either way. I personally think housing should never have been made an "investment", and we should start taking steps to move it away from that. It's a basic human nessessity, and like water or food, everyone should have access, and it shouldn't be something that people make wild profit from. Go make wild profit from commercial real estate or cars or golf clubs. Not houses people need to live in. We need to take these steps: Step 1: Only humans can own houses (no corporations, no business, no hedge funds or whatever else) Step 2: Limit the number of houses any one human can own, until it's eventually only one per person (a rich couple could still have one each, but not more) These steps may take 10 years to phase in, but they will make a big difference and be worthwhile.
- genocidicbunny 3y ago
  Step 1 is good in my opinion, though you might need some carveouts for corporations/trusts as there are sometimes good reasons for those; it should be a whitelist though -- only some very specific circumstances are allowed, like say a property being held in a trust to be passed onto a descendant. For Step 2 though, what about instead of limiting how many houses you can own (as there will probably be significant legal challenges to that) what about progressively punitive property taxes on additional properties. Every house past the first pays 10% more annual property taxes than the previous one. By the time you're on your 10th house, you owe more than the value of that house every single year in property taxes. That gives those with really large amounts of fuck-you money the chance to still have those sorts of houses, but they operate at a pure loss, and we all get the benefit of that tax money.
  - grecy 3y ago
    > Step 1 is good in my opinion, though you might need some carveouts... like say a property being held in a trust to be passed onto a descendant. What you're saying makes logical sense, though I think as soon as you make a carveout, it will get exploited. Many countries around the world have a housing crisis. There is no reason for a house to be held for some decendant to have it later. People need houses to live in NOW, not for them to be tied up waiting for some person to have it sometime in the future. It's ruthless, but I would just as soon force them to sell it so someone else can use it. Like drinking water or food, it is not reasonable to horde a limited resource which then means others miss out. > For Step 2, what about progressively punitive property taxes on additional properties. That gives those with really large amounts of fuck-you money the chance to still have those sorts of houses, but they operate at a pure loss, and we all get the benefit of that tax money. Still doesn't fix the problem. We don't want more tax money, we want houses for people to live in. A billionaire could still own 100 houses and just run them all at a loss and not care. That's 99 people that now don't have a home because one person is greedy. > as there will probably be significant legal challenges to that Well, yes. We're talking about changing the LAW to make this thing explicitly illegal. That means there will be people that won't like it, and interestingly enough it will only be the greedy people who are hording and stopping other people having houses that will be upset. That is what we want. If those people are not upset, we're not doing enough to stop them ruining society for everyone else.
friend_and_foe 3y ago
Why is it democracy? Maybe it's treating housing like an asset? Why do people treat houses like financial instruments? I think it's a combination of the cost, dual functionality, and devaluation of money. When something costs a significant amount of your labor over your lifetime, you want to make sure it does a little more than keep you dry. If all it does is keep you dry you could live in a tent. If you're looking for a place to invest capital, and you need a place to live, why not have that serve both purposes? And finally, if you want to save your capital, sticking cash on a shoebox or a checking account simply won't do, it will lose purchasing power. I think these all have the same solution. Houses are expensive because they grow in nominal terms while our labor does not. People who want to invest can't afford that and a home at the same time and so have to use their home for both. And devaluation of money... I think the solution to the housing crisis we are in is simply money that cannot be devalued.
genocidicbunny 3y ago
> Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply etc. Which is a perfectly understandable reaction on the surface, but it ignores the long-term impacts of such a situation. Granted, we humans are terrible at thinking about the very long term. An example I think many of us that live in places like the SF Bay Area, Seattle, Boston..etc have seen is that at some point, high housing prices start damaging other parts of the local economy. Younger people can't afford to move to the area, so the demographics start slumping towards older people; eventually that will lead to the collapse of some pay-it-forward kinds of social services. Businesses have to pay extremely high wages to be able to find workers that want to work there and are able to afford to live within a reasonable distance; Some of this is solvable via automation/remote work, but I don't think you're going to have your mechanic or your cleaners doing telework. A lot of businesses cannot sustain those sorts of wages without severely increasing prices, but then you get people complaining that their local coffee shop has to charge $15 for a cup of plain black coffee. I think we just haven't yet seen the fallout from the housing affordability problem fully unfold yet. Unless something changes, we'll be seeing more and more effects from this in the coming years.
- angmarsbane 3y ago
  My small, private catholic high school in a county outside of Los Angeles is shutting down and the reason given is that there are not enough children / families nearby due to the cost of family-sized shelter. This school sits in what was once a family neighborhood, but is now full of empty nester retirees whose adult children cannot afford to live in the neighborhood they grew up in. A public school in the same county recently announced that they're shedding 80 staff/teachers for the same reason.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Future housing site potentially.
- dottjt 3y ago
  I think you basically summed it up by saying that we're terrible at long term thinking. But back to democracy, why should we care if parties are only elected for 3-5 year terms? Absolutely it's going to end in disaster, but also, that's just how the system is currently designed.
xtiansimon 3y ago
“Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply…” I’ve been paying more attention to the intractable social problems such as housing as similar to the talk about offshoring of US manufacturing 10+ years ago. I have family in the mid-west who suffered downward pressure on their wages. Meanwhile the technology industry wages are skyrocketing. Money in the economy, but not for them. They have turned towards the more radical political factions who promised to help. I witnessed suffering people welcome chaos as a force for change. I want to know who is benefiting from the housing crisis? I bet they’re entrenched in legal and moral loopholes, and lobbying that reforms will lower your home value and put your ‘investments’ underwater. That’s what I’m thinking about. And I’m reminded that leaving the EU seemed, as seen from the US, like it would be difficult. But the UK managed to do it, for good or bad.

by dottjt 3y ago

lmm 3y ago

The UK is soon to be a majority-renter country, which will hopefully flip the democratic incentive. Although I guess the end result of that might be permanently oscillating in a narrow band around a 50% homeownership rate.

cassianoleal 3y ago
> The UK is soon to be a majority-renter country This just means assets are getting more concentrated, effectively increasing inequality. Increased inequality usually means the ones with capital become a greater force in the market, not a weaker one.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

grecy 3y ago

Housing can not simultaneously be affordable and a good investment. So the politicians either keep housing as a good investment (un-affordable) and piss off the younger people who can't afford to buy, or they make housing affordable (bad investment) and piss off the older people who already have houses. They can't win either way. I personally think housing should never have been made an "investment", and we should start taking steps to move it away from that. It's a basic human nessessity, and like water or food, everyone should have access, and it shouldn't be something that people make wild profit from. Go make wild profit from commercial real estate or cars or golf clubs. Not houses people need to live in. We need to take these steps: Step 1: Only humans can own houses (no corporations, no business, no hedge funds or whatever else) Step 2: Limit the number of houses any one human can own, until it's eventually only one per person (a rich couple could still have one each, but not more) These steps may take 10 years to phase in, but they will make a big difference and be worthwhile.

genocidicbunny 3y ago
Step 1 is good in my opinion, though you might need some carveouts for corporations/trusts as there are sometimes good reasons for those; it should be a whitelist though -- only some very specific circumstances are allowed, like say a property being held in a trust to be passed onto a descendant. For Step 2 though, what about instead of limiting how many houses you can own (as there will probably be significant legal challenges to that) what about progressively punitive property taxes on additional properties. Every house past the first pays 10% more annual property taxes than the previous one. By the time you're on your 10th house, you owe more than the value of that house every single year in property taxes. That gives those with really large amounts of fuck-you money the chance to still have those sorts of houses, but they operate at a pure loss, and we all get the benefit of that tax money.
- grecy 3y ago
  > Step 1 is good in my opinion, though you might need some carveouts... like say a property being held in a trust to be passed onto a descendant. What you're saying makes logical sense, though I think as soon as you make a carveout, it will get exploited. Many countries around the world have a housing crisis. There is no reason for a house to be held for some decendant to have it later. People need houses to live in NOW, not for them to be tied up waiting for some person to have it sometime in the future. It's ruthless, but I would just as soon force them to sell it so someone else can use it. Like drinking water or food, it is not reasonable to horde a limited resource which then means others miss out. > For Step 2, what about progressively punitive property taxes on additional properties. That gives those with really large amounts of fuck-you money the chance to still have those sorts of houses, but they operate at a pure loss, and we all get the benefit of that tax money. Still doesn't fix the problem. We don't want more tax money, we want houses for people to live in. A billionaire could still own 100 houses and just run them all at a loss and not care. That's 99 people that now don't have a home because one person is greedy. > as there will probably be significant legal challenges to that Well, yes. We're talking about changing the LAW to make this thing explicitly illegal. That means there will be people that won't like it, and interestingly enough it will only be the greedy people who are hording and stopping other people having houses that will be upset. That is what we want. If those people are not upset, we're not doing enough to stop them ruining society for everyone else.

friend_and_foe 3y ago

Why is it democracy? Maybe it's treating housing like an asset? Why do people treat houses like financial instruments? I think it's a combination of the cost, dual functionality, and devaluation of money. When something costs a significant amount of your labor over your lifetime, you want to make sure it does a little more than keep you dry. If all it does is keep you dry you could live in a tent. If you're looking for a place to invest capital, and you need a place to live, why not have that serve both purposes? And finally, if you want to save your capital, sticking cash on a shoebox or a checking account simply won't do, it will lose purchasing power. I think these all have the same solution. Houses are expensive because they grow in nominal terms while our labor does not. People who want to invest can't afford that and a home at the same time and so have to use their home for both. And devaluation of money... I think the solution to the housing crisis we are in is simply money that cannot be devalued.

genocidicbunny 3y ago

> Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply etc. Which is a perfectly understandable reaction on the surface, but it ignores the long-term impacts of such a situation. Granted, we humans are terrible at thinking about the very long term. An example I think many of us that live in places like the SF Bay Area, Seattle, Boston..etc have seen is that at some point, high housing prices start damaging other parts of the local economy. Younger people can't afford to move to the area, so the demographics start slumping towards older people; eventually that will lead to the collapse of some pay-it-forward kinds of social services. Businesses have to pay extremely high wages to be able to find workers that want to work there and are able to afford to live within a reasonable distance; Some of this is solvable via automation/remote work, but I don't think you're going to have your mechanic or your cleaners doing telework. A lot of businesses cannot sustain those sorts of wages without severely increasing prices, but then you get people complaining that their local coffee shop has to charge $15 for a cup of plain black coffee. I think we just haven't yet seen the fallout from the housing affordability problem fully unfold yet. Unless something changes, we'll be seeing more and more effects from this in the coming years.

angmarsbane 3y ago
My small, private catholic high school in a county outside of Los Angeles is shutting down and the reason given is that there are not enough children / families nearby due to the cost of family-sized shelter. This school sits in what was once a family neighborhood, but is now full of empty nester retirees whose adult children cannot afford to live in the neighborhood they grew up in. A public school in the same county recently announced that they're shedding 80 staff/teachers for the same reason.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Future housing site potentially.
dottjt 3y ago
I think you basically summed it up by saying that we're terrible at long term thinking. But back to democracy, why should we care if parties are only elected for 3-5 year terms? Absolutely it's going to end in disaster, but also, that's just how the system is currently designed.

xtiansimon 3y ago

“Why would those who do own houses want to see their assets depreciate because of increased supply…” I’ve been paying more attention to the intractable social problems such as housing as similar to the talk about offshoring of US manufacturing 10+ years ago. I have family in the mid-west who suffered downward pressure on their wages. Meanwhile the technology industry wages are skyrocketing. Money in the economy, but not for them. They have turned towards the more radical political factions who promised to help. I witnessed suffering people welcome chaos as a force for change. I want to know who is benefiting from the housing crisis? I bet they’re entrenched in legal and moral loopholes, and lobbying that reforms will lower your home value and put your ‘investments’ underwater. That’s what I’m thinking about. And I’m reminded that leaving the EU seemed, as seen from the US, like it would be difficult. But the UK managed to do it, for good or bad.