this post was submitted on 03 Sep 2024
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Why are politicians doing nothing for first time home buyers? (self.asklemmy)
submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by filister to c/[email protected]
36 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I am anxiously following the real estate market and prices are far outpacing the wage growth, making real estate really unaffordable for a lot of people, and yet there is very little political will from politicians to do anything about it.

This is especially true for desirable areas and big cities, and slowly pushing low earners to the outskirts and even outside towns. I know plenty of people who hoarded multiple properties and now they simply rent them through Airbnb or booking not to mention big corporations trying to snap even more and rent them at outrageous prices. While plenty of people cannot afford even rent in those cities.

Mind you I am not US based, but I know that this is pretty much a world phenomenon for quite a few years who got really accelerated by the COVID pandemic, but its effect will cripple future generations severely who will never be able to purchase their own roof over their head and they will forever be stuck with ever increasing rents increasing enormously the financial burden of those people.

I don't know for you but I believe this is completely unsustainable in the long term and this will become an even bigger problem in the future and I wonder why there is so little done to tackle the problem now, and what are those politicians hope, that this will magically disappear tomorrow and all will be roses?

Why aren't universally some laws against home flipping and people owning more than one residential property? I think the right of having a roof over your head is a basic human right and every person out there deserves to have a decent home and not be forced to live on the street.

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[–] Lauchs 38 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Anything that makes housing affordable would also remove a significant amount of wealth from the elderly, who outvote and (I think) out donate other demographic groups.

Pretty hard thing to do politically.

[–] not_woody_shaw 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

In 20 or so years, when there are more voters unable to buy houses than there are voters who own houses, this should autocorrect.

The recent US trend of corporations buying up real estate to rent out is very scary because it will prevent this autocorrection.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago (1 children)

How does it prevent the autocorrection? Wouldn’t future voters still not own housing?

[–] jaycifer 7 points 2 months ago

I think what they’re implying is that it would not be feasible to seize or remove properties already owned by corporations, and by the time reforms are actually attempted they will own a significant portion of properties, making it extremely difficult to get those already-owned houses in the hands of first time buyers.