Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by satvikpendem 707 days ago
Supply. The answer is and has always been to build more housing. NIMBYs around the world are the primary force stopping that from happening, that is why there are housing crises everywhere in the world. Contrast that with somewhere like Singapore where government housing is pretty good and plentiful in supply, they do not have such issues.
2 comments

> Supply. The answer is and has always been to build more housing.

IMHO not really

The supply of affordable housing in the place where it's needed often can not be increased due to physical limitations and building luxury flats being more profitable. And the "demand" is often not driven by people living there, but investment stuff.

I.e. if we purely look at "supply of housing" (ignoring price) and "demand of housing" (to live in) there isn't a problem at all in most cases.

Through I agree with NIMBY making it worse, especially given that it's often not even their backyard. But the neighborhood of properties/land bought as investments and them blocking things for investment reasons.

Through the main reason is IMHO still housing being used roughly "like stocks".

Luxury flats absorb demand that would otherwise outcompete locals for the existing housing

Unless you make all existing housing so shitty that local professionals would turn their nose up at it, in which case you have bigger problems

Not building luxury housing at all would only be a solution with domestic mobility restrictions like China

> locals for the existing housing

no it doesn't

that would only happen if the demand is based on people who want to move there

but if it is based on interest/dynamics more similar to stock markets like we currently have then there isn't a physical limit on (artificial) demand as such local housing gets bought up first (to potentially be upgraded to luxury flats) and then they still build more luxury flats

It's been statistically shown that any type of housing reduces market pressures simply because it is more supply in the market and over time that makes a difference.
NIMBY's and clueless, greedy politicians.

Here, the county owns some land that it is going to put 100 houses on. They are going to put houses that cost 3x more than the locals can afford. Why? More money from property tax, and to hell with the average person.

The knock on effect is that regular houses will become more expensive, and in 10 years, only the top 10% of earners will be able to live here.