this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
168 points (82.8% liked)
Asklemmy
44151 readers
1627 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The reason there’s a global housing crisis is government ultimately controls the throttle on new housing development, and government always allows less than the demand.
Our supply doesn’t match our demand and the problem is getting worse as populations increase.
For example, there are countless places where an apartment building would be more profitable than a new house, but zoning density restrictions force people to either build a house or nothing.
The UK has some of the worst housing issues in Europe, yet the amount of houses (dwellings) per person has slightly increased since 2001
21,210,000÷59,113,0000=0.35 Houses per person in 2001
24,930,000÷67,350,695=0.37 Houses per person in 2021
Yet rents and house prices have absolutely skyrocketed. Supply exceeds demand, it's just greed, long term empty investment properties and government inaction.
Sources https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/dwelling-stock-estimates-in-england-2022/dwelling-stock-estimates-england-31-march-2022 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/articles/overviewoftheukpopulation/2020#the-uks-population-continues-to-grow-but-at-a-slower-rate-than-previously
That’s really interesting, thanks.
I recently did some research on this stuff for a school project and found pretty much the same thing. Also came across Houston as an example of a city where zoning is mixed and the laws are very loose, and it seems to work itself out just fine.
It's not just about new housing though, it's also about fiscal policy which makes housing a more attractive investment vehicle through things like negative gearing and capital gains tax minimization than other things such as the stock market; the result is that prices are artificially inflated and you create a "renter class" who can no longer afford to buy, ever. Right now we're financing Boomers' retirements.
The question is, will the politicians have the political balls to fix it once the boomers have died off, or will they just let the profit roll on down through the generations, ultimately letting birth be the sole determiner of your societal class in life?