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by barry-cotter
2348 days ago
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> the free market won't really address the needs of people below 30% of the median income. It will if it’s not illegal to build. SROs are illegal. Boarding houses are illegal. Houses below a certain minimum are are illegal. https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/01/16/what-is-... > From 2013 to 2017, Tokyo built many houses as the whole of England. > House prices in Tokyo are now 9% lower than they were in 2000, while in London they are 144% higher, adjusted for inflation. |
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Zoning in Japan is done at a national level, not local. Once an area is designated for housing, housing goes there. Because of this there is a constant flow of new housing, which drives the price of old houses down.
This is not possible anywhere zoning is done at a local level. Anytime one person has the ability to stop another from building you immediately create NIMBYdom and where the NIMBY exists, more housing does not because the NIMBY cares about nothing but their own property value. But that also feeds into the insane American idea of housing as an investment rather than a place to keep birds from crapping on you.
Until the NIMBY is eliminated, and housing is no longer sold as an investment, housing costs will not go down.