[HN Gopher] Street Votes: A proposed response to Ireland's housi...
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Street Votes: A proposed response to Ireland's housing crisis
Author : MajesticFrogBoy
Score : 49 points
Date : 2023-04-19 15:34 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thefitzwilliam.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thefitzwilliam.com)
| einpoklum wrote:
| > Another example is Israel's approach to urban densification.
| Israel increased apartment supply in Tel Aviv by around half
| through a rule known as 'TAMA 38'. Under this rule, if 80% of a
| given apartment block's residents agree, they can vote for
| redevelopment, demolish the block, and build a larger one
|
| This was absolutely horrible. So, TAMA 38 was originally a plan
| for protecting buildings against earthquakes: If the residents
| undertake a fortification of their building, they get some extra
| rights in terms of built area on their property. In practice, the
| regions where an earthquake is more likely have seen almost no
| use of this arrangement - because fortification is expensive, and
| real-estate there is not very lucrative. But the Tel-Aviv/Gush
| Dan region, where there's a housing bubble, has seen massive use
| of this program - but of course not by residents. Rather, real-
| estate entrepreneurs make contracts with residents to perform the
| fortification, or an entire reconstruction of the building, in
| exchange for using the extra building rights for more apartments.
| But of course - nobody had any concern for the space around the
| building; the importance of unpaved ground, trees and vegetation
| for an urban environment; the extra pressure on all sorts of
| infrastructure to accommodate a denser populace etc. There are
| also aesthetic concerns, but let's put those aside. The result
| has been a massive windfall for such entrepreneurs, and a
| significant degradation of the quality of life where this occurs
| - not because of the density itself, but because of lack of urban
| planning to support it.
| golemiprague wrote:
| [dead]
| tmnvix wrote:
| I'm really curious to know what proportion of Ireland's housing
| is now in the short term rental market. Effectively removing
| dwellings from the housing stock should be heavily discouraged
| during an accommodation crisis.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| On daft.ie I see 626 places to rent (long-term) in Dublin
| County: https://www.daft.ie/property-for-rent/dublin
|
| Meanwhile there's 7,877 Airbnbs: http://insideairbnb.com/dublin
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Irish? Proposal to cure social ills? I seriously thought this was
| going to be a play on
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal
| YellOh wrote:
| I'm very interested to see how this goes, especially since I was
| not aware of Ireland's particular housing shortage.
|
| I'm a big fan of infill/increased urban density in general, as
| long as it is ~equally beautiful to the surroundings. (Ex. live-
| work units can be much more beautiful than single-family homes,
| but 5-over-1s are usually not)
|
| Some other topical sites I've been reading recently that I'd
| recommend:
|
| https://missingmiddlehousing.com/
|
| https://www.strongtowns.org/ (North America specific)
|
| One quote I'm unsure about:
|
| > [Popular housing reform] means having strict rules on parking
| and driving, ensuring congestion doesn't increase.
|
| I'm unsure whether to read this as strict rules to _increase_ car
| infrastructure as housing is increased to make way for more
| people 's vehicles, or to make sure new housing development holds
| steady car flow / implements alternative transportation so as
| _not to increase_ the number of cars.
|
| The first interpretation would make me concerned about induced
| demand.
| Paul-Craft wrote:
| I wasn't familiar with this term, so I'm dropping this here for
| the benefit of others who also are not:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
| CalRobert wrote:
| Ireland is an extremely car-dependent country and has copied
| the worst of US urban design patterns.
| wiredfool wrote:
| Yeah, the estates are crazy. Typical newer estates have one
| exit, and Walls/Fences surrounding them to make it difficult
| to cut through.
|
| Essentially, They're designed so that there's no reason to
| enter the estate unless you're going there. There's minimal
| network of paths for walking or cycling, and all the car
| traffic is funneled into increasingly difficult turns onto
| the main roads.
|
| Older estates might have a few footpaths out -- We're in the
| closest one to town, 3 different walking ways out, and the
| ability to walk places is so much nicer than farther out.
| (Note, there's a dog in the house that drives a lot of the
| walking we do.)
| CalRobert wrote:
| I live near Tullamore and it's horrifying how car-dependent
| even brand new estates are. My kid goes to school there (we
| drive, sadly, because I am hell-bent on her being in a
| secular school and not the local ones) and I was chatting
| with another dad about grabbing a coffee. We realized the
| only option even remotely near was an Applegreen a 22
| minute walk away. It's a wasteland.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> (Ex. live-work units can be much more beautiful than single-
| family homes, but 5-over-1s are usually not)_
|
| I'm not sure why this is presented as fact. Most single-family
| homes in the US are humble midcentury boxes, or bland suburban
| copy/pastes, or hideously garish McMansions. None of these are
| any prettier to look at than a 5-over-1.
| govolckurself wrote:
| It's moot anyway. You shouldn't be able to veto a building
| you neither own nor live in simply because it doesn't suit
| your aesthetic tastes (ostensibly. I'm not convinced the
| accusations of "it's ugly!" aren't just another convenient
| excuse to shout down new structures).
| xiaodai wrote:
| "other countries have delivered large increases in housing supply
| with popular support."
|
| Such as? Just pure bs
| Guthur wrote:
| Housing is another clear example of governments being solely
| concerned with continued enrichment of the few at detriment of
| the many.
|
| Solutions nearly always seem to come when these oligarchical
| groups can be bypassed.
|
| I've had to move my family numerous times over the last decade
| due to a housing market whose sole purpose seems to be enrichment
| rather than human survival.
|
| Western overly financialised and deindustrialised economies are
| now so completely dependent on continued asset price inflation so
| as to maintain the ongoing ponzi scheme that to change it will
| require huge pain to asset holders who hold all the power. And so
| it won't happen peacefully.
| govolckurself wrote:
| Except in the US, the government is... us. Show up to a local
| city council meeting sometime and tell me how many oligarchs
| show up to shout down new development, and then tell me how
| many of your own neighbors show up to do the same. You might be
| incredibly surprised by whom you see.
| kderbyma wrote:
| and if it starts to fall...they import migrants to show up
| demand artificially
| CalRobert wrote:
| Disclaimer: I study the Irish housing market and have a buggy
| site for finding houses at https://www.gaffologist.com/
|
| Interestingly Ireland has effectively no YIMBY party. The debate
| here reminds me of what I experienced in California 20 years ago.
| The left shrieks about "evil developers" and "affordable housing"
| and opposes new market-rate building. Meanwhile the right has
| mostly homeowners voting for them so they hardly have an
| incentive to allow more building.
|
| It's also a place where making a return through investment is
| horribly discouraged; ETF's are kneecapped with a 41% tax on
| _unrealized_ gains, and capital gains tax is high (33%). Income
| taxes are also punishingly high - the top rate of tax (52%) kicks
| in under 100k, much lower than e.g. Germany.
|
| But houses? Your primary residence is liable for only a laughably
| low property tax (a few hundred euro a year for most people) and
| you can sell it with no capital gains tax whatsoever, regardless
| of the gain. Even the US isn't so generous!
|
| Make a million quid in the market? The notions on you, we'll be
| taking that thank you very much!
|
| Have the gall to _work_ for it? Why we'll just take EUR520k,
| thanks!
|
| But you bought a house in 1992 and then shouted down all new
| development for the last 30 years and now can sell it for EUR1.5
| million more than you paid? Why, that's your HOME you can't tax
| HOMES can you??
|
| No wonder money all flows to homes.
|
| Not to mention that the government takes money from taxpayers and
| funnels it in to new house prices via help to buy, AND takes
| money from taxpayers and uses it to _outbid those very same
| taxpayers_ by buying property off the private market to meet
| social housing quotas. (Social housing is fine but for fuck's
| sake build your own, don't shrink the already tiny private
| market)
|
| Even better, mortgages are capped at only 4x your income and you
| need a 10% deposit, so you can pay 2500 a month in rent to
| someone like me, who bought a house in cash. Because we need to
| protect people from themselves, of course!
|
| (I live in my house, I don't rent it out, but you get the idea)
|
| Incidentally I'm probably selling my house an hour from Dublin a
| bike ride from the train with gigabit fibre on 3.5 acres soon if
| anyone's interested.
| acchow wrote:
| The tax-advantaged status of your primary residence is also a
| major driver of the housing bubble in Canada as well.
| anotherhue wrote:
| Best summary I've seen in years. I emigrated due to this
| nonsense.
| switch007 wrote:
| You add some excellent background and context. I was reading
| the article screaming "it's so much more complicated than
| this".
|
| > Incidentally I'm probably selling my house an hour from
| Dublin a bike ride from the train with gigabit fibre on 3.5
| acres soon if anyone's interested.
|
| I'm curious how much you're listing it above your purchase
| price. Show me a vendor who doesn't succumb to estate agents
| whispering in their ear about what you can get for it or a
| belief they _have_ to participate in 'supply and demand' and
| I'll eat my hat. (Yes, I'm just as guilty of this)
| CalRobert wrote:
| How would I not participate in supply and demand? I'll sell
| to the highest bidder, whatever that is.
|
| Though I suspect I'll take a loss when all is said and done.
| I was stupid enough to buy a protected structure and thanks
| to heritage's intransigence I now have a thatched cottage
| (recently rethatched!) with a beautiful 120 sqm extension
| with huge windows, high ceilings, engineered wood floors,
| heat pumps, insulated foundation.... and no insurance.
| Because of the thatched bit...
| biorach wrote:
| What do you think of Dermot Desmond's article?
|
| https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/dermot-desmond-everyone-h...
| CalRobert wrote:
| Haven't read it, though quickly skimming doesn't give much
| hope. All this talk about "hoarding" and not enough about how
| it's default-illegal to build a house until you satisfy every
| church biddy around. We need as-right zoning. I'd weep for
| joy if Ireland passed sensible ADU rules like California.
| toss1 wrote:
| >>By giving locals the power to enable extra construction, and
| get a share of the resulting economic benefits
|
| >>and get a share of the resulting economic benefits
|
| THIS, right there, is the key.
|
| Zoning rules of density caps exist to create & maintain a more
| pleasant environment. People building or purchasing into these
| areas pay higher costs initially and throughout their residency
| to maintain the better environment. These include everything from
| higher purchase cost, higher taxes, higher maintenance costs,
| higher regulatory costs, and more, and the benefits are worth it
| to them.
|
| ANY proposal to rezone at higher density essentially steals this
| extra value the existing residents have created over the course
| of decades (and generally transfers it into the pockets of the
| developers). Whether it is a medium-density city street with
| postage-stamp lots, a tight suburb, or an exurb with genuine
| wildlife habitat, the value of both the existing property and the
| neighborhood goes down. They get zero benefit, the benefits
| they've worked and paid to create are destroyed, and the
| developers extract the value of the land that is now worth more
| per square foot, building higher-density housing. So, OF COURSE
| they vote against it at every opportunity.
|
| However, this can all turn around if the existing landowners, who
| have paid for decades to create the value, share in the increase
| in values. If the property will devalue from 500x to 400x, but
| the compensation is 120x, then some will still vote against it
| because of the intangible environmental degradation (trees,
| wildlife, traffic, noise, etc.), but many will happily vote for
| it. The developers will still extract absurd amounts of money.
|
| That is how you make it work. An actual market mechanism, not
| expropriating value that homeowners have paid over decades to
| build with fiat dictates.
| hackerlight wrote:
| > ANY proposal to rezone at higher density essentially steals
| this extra value the existing residents have created over the
| course of decades (and generally transfers it into the pockets
| of the developers).
|
| The complete opposite is closer to the truth. The homeowners
| resisting rezoning are the ones who are essentially stealing
| unearned extra value, as per Henry George's analysis. The
| majority of their home values do not come from the local
| investments made by fellow homeowners in the same block. The
| vast majority comes from physical network effects and public
| expenditure in the city and country at large. Everything from
| the army, judiciary and police, which protects the very
| existence of private land titles and therefore their value, to
| the local public roads and shopping centres and distance to the
| city heart which make that location desirable, to the public
| healthcare and overall GDP/prosperity of the country, which
| makes the country itself desirable. These are all variables and
| private and public expenditures which they haven't contributed
| to any more than someone living across the country who would
| like to move into their neighborhood. They steal this value by
| making it illegal to create new housing stock, which then
| causes all that public value to interalize into their private
| hands. It is classic capitalistic theft via using government as
| a tool, no different in spirit to crony capitalism, yet done by
| private individuals with a financial motive instead of by
| corporations.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| Existing owners have paid nothing. They contribute next to
| nothing to make a neighborhood better. Public services do. They
| have bought the land years ago for peanuts and spent some
| resources keeping other people from doing the same.
|
| It's basically just pulling the ladder up once you're on top.
| toss1 wrote:
| Wrong.
|
| I can tell you specifically as an existing landowner in an
| area with a very healthy ecological preservation culture and
| strict conservation regulations, that we pay _A LOT_ more on
| a continuing basis to maintain this, and it benefits our
| values a lot less than aggressive construction.
|
| First, the "public services" you mention? Yes, we pay more
| for those, because they are maintained at a high level.
| Everything from good roads and maintenance, good levels of
| service, conservation commission with a full-time employees
| in a tiny town, etc. Those public services cost money, and we
| are the only ones who foot the bill. (Not complaining, but
| don't act as if you are free or paid for by the state,
| county, etc.).
|
| On top of that, everything is also more expensive. Merely
| getting an exception to a rule to change where the front walk
| comes from the driveway to the front door required a $2000
| engineering plan and $350 application fee for board approval
| (and that was to get a de minimus exception so we didn't need
| to get a $9000 survey) because a few feet of the stairs was
| within a 100' wetland buffer zone. We'll also have to take
| extra steps & costs during the construction to prevent any
| impact on the wetlands.
|
| There are also town taxpayer funds created to purchase open
| lands for wild area and recreational preservation. Again, all
| maintained OVER TIME by the town;s residents, and no one
| else.
|
| The original purchase price is meaningless; they are paying
| to build a better environment the entire time.
|
| It has zero to do with "pulling up the ladder", and
| everything to do with not wanting to do things like putting a
| 200-unit condo development on top of a steep wetland species
| harboring endangered species, multiplying traffic on rural
| roads by a factor of 20+, adding unpaid burdens to local
| public services, etc.
| tptacek wrote:
| In fact, zoning rules and density caps exist, in the US (where
| they were pioneered) at least, mostly to prevent Black families
| from moving into municipalities. They proliferated after the
| 1917 Supreme Court Buchanan case that outlawed outright racial
| zoning. This is also most of the reason for minimum lot sizes
| (they worked in tandem with mortgage underwriting restrictions
| for Black families to make home purchases viable for whites and
| non-viable for Blacks).
| notafraudster wrote:
| I moved from west Los Angeles (Mar Vista near Culver City) to
| Dublin and my rent is significantly higher in Dublin (renting a
| new-ish build 2br 800 sq ft near the Canal, city center).
| Dublin's a lovely city -- but it's a lovely city of half a
| million people in a country of 5 million, less than half greater
| Los Angeles county. London, Tokyo, New York, Los Angeles are
| major cities of the world. Dublin is a regional city. It's
| absurd. I never thought I'd live somewhere _more_ expensive than
| LA.
| reillyse wrote:
| The "metro area" is 1,270,000 so a lot more than the "city"
| count and I imagine if you added in the neighboring areas that
| are part of the commuter belt that would increase even more
| (e.g. Dublin county itself has 1.388 million not counting
| Meath, Kildare, Wicklow etc ).
| wiredfool wrote:
| Ireland is a lot like Washington State, in size and
| population, and the size profile of the cities.
|
| (though Washington has more real wilderness, and Ireland has
| a lot more small farm rural, but Seattle and Dublin occupy
| very similar weights in the regions)
| reillyse wrote:
| I'm not following your analogy at all. Ireland is 32k
| square miles, Washington state is 72k square miles.
| Washington State has about 16% more people with about 2.25
| times the land area.
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm somewhat politically engaged in my local municipality over
| this issue; we're a small suburb directly adjacent to Chicago,
| and every viable piece of residential land was developed,
| overwhelmingly SFZ, decades ago.
|
| The _problem_ we have here seems like the _solution_ this article
| proposes: any new development will, automatically, generate
| organized opposition from the block (and neighboring blocks) it
| 's sited on, and the challenge is ensuring that the planning and
| zoning variance process makes decisions for the good of the
| municipality, and not just to suit the preferences of the
| neighbors.
|
| I don't know how much our experience ports over to Ireland
| (probably not that much), but to me this is the opposite of what
| you'd want; rather, you'd want to do what California ostensibly
| does: moving control over residential zoning/planning to a level
| of government high enough that concentrated local interests can't
| derail the more important diffuse interest in getting more
| housing built.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Doesn't moving the control to a higher level mean the rich-and-
| well-connected-at-state-level people get to have their way and
| the "little guy" is powerless? At least with a local system
| there is local accountability - the local politicians pushing
| something locally unwanted will probably not get re-elected.
| With state governments, it is doubtful that the exact placement
| of a development in a neighborhood will become an issue
| relevant to their re-election.
| tptacek wrote:
| One serious way to think about this problem is that every
| hyper-local decision making body is corrupt, but states are
| only some of the time. There's no level at which you can make
| collective action decisions where there's no significant risk
| of corruption, but the narrower you go, the more natural and
| unavoidable the conflicts of interest become.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| Has anyone tried giving equity in the resulting property to the
| neighbours?
| dionidium wrote:
| Yes, so long as this appeal to a higher authority is about
| preventing localities from passing legislation that makes it
| impossible for residents to engage in ordinary economic
| activity and not instead about central planning by other means.
|
| We've made it impossible to build housing for about 70 years.
| Let's stop doing that for a while and see what happens.
| colmmacc wrote:
| Having lived in several places in Ireland and in the US, I
| think the dynamics are very similar. I live in Magnolia in
| Seattle, where the city planning meetings, Facebook groups, and
| NextDoor forums have many neighbors objecting to the first sign
| of real high density housing in the area, because they want to
| "preserve its character".
|
| In Ballyfermot in Dublin, I see the very same in the groups
| there in response to similar developments. Ballyfermot is a
| well connected inner city suburb - perfect for more density -
| but most of the locals still seem against it. In Ireland the
| political party who campaign on housing and stand to benefit
| the most, Sinn Fein, are often objecting themselves to these
| projects. The fundamental dynamic is that the people who would
| benefit just don't live in the area yet, and their future
| theoretical votes don't count yet.
| wiredfool wrote:
| We have a couple of new estates going in on old farmland next
| to our 1970's era estate, and the outcry over the fact that
| building was happening was amazing. There's periodic calls to
| close a walkway through the wall to the next estate, because
| the wrong people walk through. This walkway is part of a
| designated quiet traffic route between parts of town. There's
| (finally) bike lanes going in on the main road, with initial
| sitework happening, and the first thing that people yelled
| about was that they weren't consulted. (Full public comment
| on that plan has been going on for 5 years. Why it takes 5
| years to put a bike lane on .75km of a 50KPH road that
| connects 5 different schools. None of the students of those
| schools when the plan was proposed will be still there to
| take advantage of it.)
|
| At one point last year were 5 places to rent in Meath on the
| biggest rental site.
|
| We bought about 5 years back, when our rental went up for
| sale and we couldn't find a new rental then. Hindsight is
| saying it was a great move, even though prices in our estate
| have been pretty flat since then.
| arcticbull wrote:
| We need to federalize zoning just like Japan. You should be
| able to build anything permissible on your land - and if your
| neighbors aren't happy with that they should buy your land to
| stop it, or move. Exceptions to this policy should be
| meaningful enough that you need to get the federal government
| involved.
| thebradbain wrote:
| I think state-level zoning hits the sweet spot-- the US has
| some wildly different climates and geography, and I do
| appreciate that zoning in, say, Rhode Island, Nevada, and
| California have distinct enough geocultural situations to
| have their own codes. I don't expect federal lawmakers from
| Ohio to worry about the California coastline, for example.
|
| However, I don't see any reason why Atherton gets to have a
| different zoning than San Francisco, or Santa Monica/Beverly
| Hills an entirely different code than Los Angeles.
|
| Theoretically, it would be amazing to have a singular state
| zoning board pooled from all of the resources of smaller
| municipal offices, with one standard application and one
| process.
|
| Right now it's crazy that Los Angeles and Beverly Hills have
| two completely different zoning codes with two completely
| different processes-- so much time wasted on two different
| bureaucracies (and sometimes, both! If the project is big
| enough) based on if something is one block over or not.
|
| State level DOTs have shown, in a way, how effective this
| approach can be (though rather than encouraging sprawl, we do
| the same for density). If we built housing anywhere as fast
| as we do highways, imagine how much would get built.
| kderbyma wrote:
| Housing is a racket. Banks + Governments at the top of the
| pyramid....everyone else getting either screwed or doing the
| screwing for the guy upstairs to get their chance to get less
| screwed.....
|
| it makes the human centipede look charming.
| fpo wrote:
| Genuine question, how is giving _even more_ (hyper)local control
| gonna solve it? This is the exact breeding ground for NIMBYism
| and the like. The author doesn 't really present an argument in
| favor of that, just sort of drops it as an assertion in the end
| with a CYA "but yea maybe I'm wrong".
| Eumenes wrote:
| Whats wrong with locals deciding local issues?
| renewiltord wrote:
| I actually support that. That's why I think someone local to
| a plot of land is the person who should decide what to build
| there.
| davidsawyer wrote:
| Developer: "Hi neighbor, would you like me to build a house
| so that someone can live in it? Do keep in mind that it would
| increase housing supply in your area, thus increasing supply
| and putting downward pressure on your property's value. That
| okay?"
|
| Neighbor: "No, thank you!"
| Eumenes wrote:
| Sounds good to me. I'm surrounded by woods, I'd 100% oppose
| any development around me.
| SgtBastard wrote:
| Do you own the woods around you? If not, it's these
| attitudes as to why we can't have nice things.
| hackerlight wrote:
| Because "local issues" aren't just local issues, as much as
| NIMBYs hope to frame it that way for persuasion purposes.
| There are larger global effects. In this case, a crippling
| housing crisis, leading to disenfranchisement and alienation
| of large swathes of the populace, leading to human suffering,
| inequality, and political extremism.
| CalRobert wrote:
| They profit by blocking other people from becoming locals.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| This seems like an unwarranted assumption. Some people are
| going to want to keep others out, other people will have a
| different attitude. Why would you assume the incentives run
| the same way for everyone?
| tptacek wrote:
| When the phenomenon locks out development in an entire
| municipality, we can stop discussing it as a benign
| consumer/resident preference, and start discussing it as
| the public policy problem it is. That's where we're at
| now.
|
| In the US, I look at it this way: once you get your own
| school system, you surrender the moral authority to erect
| barriers to entry for new residents.
| cultureswitch wrote:
| They don't, but empirically the overwhelming majority of
| people who are property owners in some area will either
| do nothing or actively oppose new housing being built in
| their area.
| burnished wrote:
| Because the outcomes all seem to be the same.
| fpo wrote:
| That's a separate question. But I think all evidences points
| to that NOT solving any housing crises.
| tptacek wrote:
| The Collective Action Problem. Locals have a concentrated
| interest in preventing development. The broader public's
| interest in there being housing outweighs that, but it's
| diffuse. You see the same thing play out over and over again
| in cities around the world: it's so much easier to organize
| opposition to housing than support that no housing gets
| built.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Sounds good to me. I don't really care for the
| masses/others.
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| Just take this a step further, bring "local" all the way
| down to "the person who owns the land". Let the locals
| decide what to do on the land they own. If they want an
| apartment, or a store, or a giant mansion in the middle
| of 20 acres, as long as they own the land let them do it!
| They're the most local individual, right?
| Eumenes wrote:
| I'd rather just manipulate zoning laws to prohibit soviet
| style apartment blocks from appearing in my little slice
| of heaven
| govolckurself wrote:
| [dead]
| tptacek wrote:
| To a US suburban resident in a single-family lot, any
| apartment building is a Soviet-style apartment block.
| arcticbull wrote:
| You end up with people trying to optimize for their own
| personal well-being at a micro level leading to an untenable
| macro-level situation.
| Eumenes wrote:
| Sounds good to me. I tend to try and optimize for my own
| well being over the the macro-level of society, as most do.
| govolckurself wrote:
| [dead]
| arcticbull wrote:
| Which is why you shouldn't be in charge of making those
| kinds of decisions :) neither should I, for similar
| reasons.
| dionidium wrote:
| Nothing, so long as their decisions don't abridge other
| fundamental rights. I can't speak to Ireland, but we've
| pretty clearly in the U.S. created a regime that
| fundamentally violates foundational principles of private
| property.
| robocat wrote:
| Houses are a large part of the engine for the capitalist economy,
| so if houses are desirable and available the economy will grow.
| Housing is the #1 form of savings for most people in wealthy
| countries. Also people get a job, then they bid as _much_ as they
| possibly can to buy a house, then people spend decades working
| hard to pay it off. Making shitty dense housing doesn't work as
| well for the economy if apartments don't have a strong status
| signal (prestige /status-seeking drives housing which drives
| people working which drives economies). It feels wasteful, but it
| also seems how things currently work; although I would love to
| see us all find a better model.
|
| Homeowners need skin-in-the-game so this article is interesting.
| In New Zealand we get property developers creating problems,
| because they don't live in the houses they build and don't have
| to face the consequences of their decisions. Christchurch example
| 1: powerful lobbying by developers so they can subdivide high-
| risk land (liquefaction risks or flooding risks). Local example
| 2: developers letting houses rot for decades because they are
| waiting for prices to increase (I've experienced examples in
| city-centre and New Brighton). Auckland example #3: leaky homes.
| hackerlight wrote:
| You're talking about the wealth effect, but there's no reason
| you can't emulate that effect using stocks as the vehicle
| instead of housing. It is government policy, specifically
| additional tax breaks and SFZ, that drives capital into
| housing. The existence of the wealth effect isn't a coherent
| economic argument that justifies NIMBY policies.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Housing is the #1 form of savings for most people in wealthy
| countries.
|
| I believe this applies mostly to the anglophone wealthy
| countries. It is much less true (if it is true at all) for most
| people in non-anglophone wealthy countries. In many of the
| latter, the percentage of home ownership doesn't even make it
| to 50%.
|
| [ EDIT: while made in good faith, this claim is wrong.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...
|
| Sorry for the misinformation (and meme spreading that had
| already infected me. ]
| notahacker wrote:
| Home ownership is actually higher in many non-Anglosphere
| developed countries than the Anglosphere. Even with a
| relatively low home ownership country like Germany, it's a
| fair bet that the home is the most valuable item in the
| savings of most of the half of the population that own their
| home, and most of the half that don't own homes have
| relatively little in the way of savings...
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| You are correct, and I am wrong. I edited my post to
| reflect that.
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