5 ms·

Should European housing politics be Americanized?

12 points by JumpCrisscross 4mo ago

irdc 4mo ago
The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage. The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.
- tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
  [dead]
- paulddraper 4mo ago
  What causes the lack of building?
  - kazen44 4mo ago
    a combination of many things. For one, Cities in the netherlands are already quite dense, and the dutch are focused on building family houses attachted to each other mostly (row housing). Also, thanks to the massive agricultural sector and a lack of oversight on industry, the netherlands has a massive problem with nitrogen in its soil which prevents building because building stuff generates more nitrogen. Speculation and the liberalisation of the housing market has also massively contributed to price increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherl...
    - y-curious 4mo ago
      This is news to me and interesting re: nitrogen crisis. That said, isn’t construction a very minor contributor relative to the agricultural nitrogen impact? Like, taken to an extreme, preventing construction based on this is like preventing people from having children because children will produce nitrogen compounds
      - jeroenhd 4mo ago
        The nitrogen problems has been ignored for so long and nitrogen compound deposition has been so intense for a long time that you can't really do anything anywhere without depositing nitrogen compounds in an area already suffering from the environmental effects. The Netherlands is a very densely populated country compared to the most of Europe. Furthermore, there are industrial hubs bringing in polluted air through the wind from the west, south, and east, making up a significant source of the nitrogen compound deposition. All efforts to solve the problem have so far upset very powerful lobbyists whose income relies on being allowed to pollute more to stay ahead of the competition (not to mention caused violent protests). There are many factors to the housing problem, it's not just nitrogen compounds. In my opinion, the entire construction sector coming to a standstill after the 2008 crisis was probably what kicked off a storm of seemingly unrelated issues, from population pyramids to the water table levels to investors using property to accumulate wealth to hyperintensive farming practices. New measures to supposedly solve the nitrogen compound crisis have been announced. By the looks of it, I expect the agriculture lobby to riot again, and new elections by the start of next year when the government inevitably collapses itself again in an attempt to use populism to gather more votes.
    - PeterHolzwarth 4mo ago
      Thanks for that link and info - I had never heard of this issue, even obliquely!
  - ako 4mo ago
    It’s expensive to build (many rules, not enough construction workers, expensive materials), expensive land, nitrogen policies, economic crisis 2008-2013 when there were no buyers for new houses caused a backlog of new houses.
  - ben_w 4mo ago
    Lack of building is the default natural state, one should (in general) ask what causes building. Even with the stuff in the sibling comments, the Netherlands also famously makes new land.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building Why isn’t the latter an effect of the former? I believe the Netherlands restricts building height by parcel unless a deviation procedure is granted, something I understand to be expensive and risky.
watwut 4mo ago
That is weird article. Suburban zone nobody really cares about exists in some places therefore Europeans should make it big polarized political issue on the assumption that any suburban zone is the reason of all issues. But like, did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue? The issue was already polarized by the NIMBY’s. They just had a political monopoly. Pro-growth policies have resulted in new housing and abated price increases in several American cities.
xienze 4mo ago
Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.
- paulddraper 4mo ago
  You’re going to be downvoted to heck.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration Do you have a source showing price increases correlate with migration? (The article seems to show a timing relationship between zoning and prices.)
  - xienze 4mo ago
    Yeah I do, it's called supply and demand. To have a growing population, every couple needs to have an average of 2.1 children. Let's say a couple have two children. From t=0 until approximately t=20, all four people require one housing unit. If that same couple does not have children (guess what's happening in every single western country!) and we instead lean on migration to increase the population for them, at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people. It's not complicated.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      This is not how one attributes principal causation among multiple potential causes. > at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people Plenty of families immigrate. And at least in America, immigrant households seem to be denser than native-born ones. You’re assuming immigrant households are smaller than average, which would indeed be surprising unless they’re all quite wealthy.
secretsatan 4mo ago
Could it be the author only read english articles? The assertion that no one in europe speaks about housing shortages does not reflect my experience. There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. ( apart of course from the uk, but the author makes the distinction)
- secretsatan 4mo ago
  Actually, just typing any search query with a member of the eu and “housing shortages” does bring up results, so this assertion is even more bizarre
- ben_w 4mo ago
  > There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. And Ireland. Yes they also have the Irish language codified as primary in their constitution, but in practice 95% speak English, 39.9% claim some ability to speak Irish, and only 1.7% actually speak Irish daily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ireland IMO, one of the things Europe does wrong is something the US also does wrong: There's plenty of cheap housing around, it's just in Detroit, Liverpool, and Chemnitz. How do we make those places desirable to live in once more?
- balfirevic 4mo ago
  In Croatia, which is (and has been) seeing a tremendous rise in real estate prices, everyone talks about the high prices, but rarely can you hear about about housing shortage. Indeed, building new housing is sometimes brought up as one of the reasons for rising prices. The economic illiteracy is just that bad.
felooboolooomba 4mo ago
> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media. No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.
- cindyllm 4mo ago
  [dead]
- drnick1 4mo ago
  Lol, Europeans are quick to adopt all the worst things from America related to tech, including social media, streaming services, proprietary software, iPhones, and random IoT garbage.
  - ben_w 4mo ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.svg Every European you meet on social media is necessarily the subset of Europeans who adopted social media. A subset of the population adopting a subset of the stuff doesn't mean adoption in general is as universal as you might assume. e.g. podcast I was listening to the other day had a German complaining about their bank, after the bank suggested they send a fax.
  - general1465 4mo ago
    Chinese adopted them too, so what is the differece?
- constantius 4mo ago
  America does dominate social media in Europe. Most Europeans probably know more American politicians than they do their own, and have opinions about every American event. During US elections it's impossible to talk to anyone without their starting to opine about things they have no control over within a minute. American culture wars are polarising societies that share nothing with the American one. The last thing Europe needs is more Americanisation.
yladiz 4mo ago
Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want to live outside of the city center because, well, they want to be in the city.
- JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
  > people don't want to live outside of the city center Are home prices just outside the city center stagnant?
  - yladiz 4mo ago
    No, but they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers, and it's mostly irrelevant to the point I was making, because it doesn't matter how the prices are outside of the city center if you want to live in the city center.
    - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
      > they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers Pick the low-hanging fruit. More housing outside the city centre (with requisite transit infrastructure) still means more-affordable housing. That, in turn, should relieve pressure on the centre.
      - yladiz 4mo ago
        Many cities and areas close to major European cities have good transit infrastructure, yet people don't want to live there, they want to live in the city. So making more housing outside of the city, again, doesn't solve the actual problem facing major European cities.
        4mo ago
tim-tday 4mo ago
You must be truly desperate to come to us for help. We have basically the worst housing outcomes you could ever hope for.

irdc 4mo ago

The issues around zoning are not comparable. For one, here in the Netherlands we have plenty of density and not a lot of missing-middle, but still a giant shortage. The problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building.

tjwebbnorfolk 4mo ago
[dead]
paulddraper 4mo ago
What causes the lack of building?
- kazen44 4mo ago
  a combination of many things. For one, Cities in the netherlands are already quite dense, and the dutch are focused on building family houses attachted to each other mostly (row housing). Also, thanks to the massive agricultural sector and a lack of oversight on industry, the netherlands has a massive problem with nitrogen in its soil which prevents building because building stuff generates more nitrogen. Speculation and the liberalisation of the housing market has also massively contributed to price increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherlands https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_crisis_in_the_Netherl...
  - y-curious 4mo ago
    This is news to me and interesting re: nitrogen crisis. That said, isn’t construction a very minor contributor relative to the agricultural nitrogen impact? Like, taken to an extreme, preventing construction based on this is like preventing people from having children because children will produce nitrogen compounds
    - jeroenhd 4mo ago
      The nitrogen problems has been ignored for so long and nitrogen compound deposition has been so intense for a long time that you can't really do anything anywhere without depositing nitrogen compounds in an area already suffering from the environmental effects. The Netherlands is a very densely populated country compared to the most of Europe. Furthermore, there are industrial hubs bringing in polluted air through the wind from the west, south, and east, making up a significant source of the nitrogen compound deposition. All efforts to solve the problem have so far upset very powerful lobbyists whose income relies on being allowed to pollute more to stay ahead of the competition (not to mention caused violent protests). There are many factors to the housing problem, it's not just nitrogen compounds. In my opinion, the entire construction sector coming to a standstill after the 2008 crisis was probably what kicked off a storm of seemingly unrelated issues, from population pyramids to the water table levels to investors using property to accumulate wealth to hyperintensive farming practices. New measures to supposedly solve the nitrogen compound crisis have been announced. By the looks of it, I expect the agriculture lobby to riot again, and new elections by the start of next year when the government inevitably collapses itself again in an attempt to use populism to gather more votes.
  - PeterHolzwarth 4mo ago
    Thanks for that link and info - I had never heard of this issue, even obliquely!
- ako 4mo ago
  It’s expensive to build (many rules, not enough construction workers, expensive materials), expensive land, nitrogen policies, economic crisis 2008-2013 when there were no buyers for new houses caused a backlog of new houses.
- ben_w 4mo ago
  Lack of building is the default natural state, one should (in general) ask what causes building. Even with the stuff in the sibling comments, the Netherlands also famously makes new land.
JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> problem here was never zoning, it was a lack of building Why isn’t the latter an effect of the former? I believe the Netherlands restricts building height by parcel unless a deviation procedure is granted, something I understand to be expensive and risky.

watwut 4mo ago

That is weird article. Suburban zone nobody really cares about exists in some places therefore Europeans should make it big polarized political issue on the assumption that any suburban zone is the reason of all issues. But like, did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue?

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> did that polarized angry rhetorics actually solved the American issue? The issue was already polarized by the NIMBY’s. They just had a political monopoly. Pro-growth policies have resulted in new housing and abated price increases in several American cities.

xienze 4mo ago

Funny how everything worked pretty well, zoning restrictions and all, until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration. An immigrant needs a house _today_, a baby needs their own separate housing unit in roughly 20 years. One approach towards population growth flattens the housing demand curve considerably, and it's not the one we're pursuing any longer. That's what's changed.

paulddraper 4mo ago
You’re going to be downvoted to heck.
JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> until public policy shifted towards papering over population decline with mass migration Do you have a source showing price increases correlate with migration? (The article seems to show a timing relationship between zoning and prices.)
- xienze 4mo ago
  Yeah I do, it's called supply and demand. To have a growing population, every couple needs to have an average of 2.1 children. Let's say a couple have two children. From t=0 until approximately t=20, all four people require one housing unit. If that same couple does not have children (guess what's happening in every single western country!) and we instead lean on migration to increase the population for them, at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people. It's not complicated.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    This is not how one attributes principal causation among multiple potential causes. > at t=0 you have at least 2, maybe 3 housing units required for the same number of people Plenty of families immigrate. And at least in America, immigrant households seem to be denser than native-born ones. You’re assuming immigrant households are smaller than average, which would indeed be surprising unless they’re all quite wealthy.

secretsatan 4mo ago

Could it be the author only read english articles? The assertion that no one in europe speaks about housing shortages does not reflect my experience. There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. ( apart of course from the uk, but the author makes the distinction)

secretsatan 4mo ago
Actually, just typing any search query with a member of the eu and “housing shortages” does bring up results, so this assertion is even more bizarre
ben_w 4mo ago
> There are no countries in europe who’s native language is english, and all online discourse would be in european languages. And Ireland. Yes they also have the Irish language codified as primary in their constitution, but in practice 95% speak English, 39.9% claim some ability to speak Irish, and only 1.7% actually speak Irish daily. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ireland IMO, one of the things Europe does wrong is something the US also does wrong: There's plenty of cheap housing around, it's just in Detroit, Liverpool, and Chemnitz. How do we make those places desirable to live in once more?
balfirevic 4mo ago
In Croatia, which is (and has been) seeing a tremendous rise in real estate prices, everyone talks about the high prices, but rarely can you hear about about housing shortage. Indeed, building new housing is sometimes brought up as one of the reasons for rising prices. The economic illiteracy is just that bad.

felooboolooomba 4mo ago

> European policy debates often become Americanized because of the American domination of social media. No it doesn't. And America doesn't dominate social media in Europe, except repeated administration scandals, paedofiles and history's largest pedo ring cover-up.

cindyllm 4mo ago
[dead]
drnick1 4mo ago
Lol, Europeans are quick to adopt all the worst things from America related to tech, including social media, streaming services, proprietary software, iPhones, and random IoT garbage.
- ben_w 4mo ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Survivorship-bias.svg Every European you meet on social media is necessarily the subset of Europeans who adopted social media. A subset of the population adopting a subset of the stuff doesn't mean adoption in general is as universal as you might assume. e.g. podcast I was listening to the other day had a German complaining about their bank, after the bank suggested they send a fax.
- general1465 4mo ago
  Chinese adopted them too, so what is the differece?
constantius 4mo ago
America does dominate social media in Europe. Most Europeans probably know more American politicians than they do their own, and have opinions about every American event. During US elections it's impossible to talk to anyone without their starting to opine about things they have no control over within a minute. American culture wars are polarising societies that share nothing with the American one. The last thing Europe needs is more Americanisation.

yladiz 4mo ago

Am I understanding that the solution proposed in the article is to allow more dense building in suburbs/outskirts of cities in Europe? This doesn't solve the actual problem that many European cities face, which is a housing shortage in the actual city center, where people want to live; there's generally not that much a lack of housing the further you get outside of a major city center in Europe, and people don't want to live outside of the city center because, well, they want to be in the city.

JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
> people don't want to live outside of the city center Are home prices just outside the city center stagnant?
- yladiz 4mo ago
  No, but they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers, and it's mostly irrelevant to the point I was making, because it doesn't matter how the prices are outside of the city center if you want to live in the city center.
  - JumpCrisscross 4mo ago
    > they are don't rise nearly as much as real estate prices in city centers Pick the low-hanging fruit. More housing outside the city centre (with requisite transit infrastructure) still means more-affordable housing. That, in turn, should relieve pressure on the centre.
    - yladiz 4mo ago
      Many cities and areas close to major European cities have good transit infrastructure, yet people don't want to live there, they want to live in the city. So making more housing outside of the city, again, doesn't solve the actual problem facing major European cities.
      - 4mo ago

tim-tday 4mo ago

You must be truly desperate to come to us for help. We have basically the worst housing outcomes you could ever hope for.