One thing is for sure: as long as any private housing ownership is allowed, rich people aren't going to be the ones left high and dry.
I'm fine with short term patches to help with the acute issues, but fundamentally unless a lot of housing is built, there are going to be some people suffering in the housing market. Either it will be poor people paying a lot for housing, or it will be poor people who are unable to win lotteries to get into public housing who then cannot afford housing at all. Whether the housing is publicly or privately owned is just pushing sand around the sandbox. It just changes exactly who the winners and losers are, but not the number of people losing.
> I think where we probably fundamentally don't agree is that not all things need to be provided through a market.
I don't hold this belief. There is no fundamental disagreement on this score between us.
I live in a district that was originally working class, and is being very fastly gentrified now (yuppie myself I guess), and it just sucks that people who've lived here all their lives have to move to completely new environments because this is now an area desirable desirable for rich people.
Same with small businesses, one of my favorite bars closed down recently due to some English billionaires wanting to turn the house into higher margin living. Vice did a documentary on it called "Punks vs. Billionaires". For the people living here, who live in small flats and still pay half their income to it, these "living room" bars, where you do not have to buy to be welcome were absolutely essential. But they all get destroyed now.
Almost all new private housing is for richer people, because they are the most profitable, and lots of them move over at the moment. The state needs to step in to make sure that normal people can still live a decent life around here, too, lest we become a horror show like London.
Whenever people say stuff like this, I wonder if they’ve ever taken a moment to look around themselves and see that it is already that way. The current housing problem is also orchestrated by the same political elite…
Obviously we need more housing but until then we also need to ensure that people with normal incomes can also afford to live _in_ the City.
Even if only new luxury apartments are being built, it is more housing that takes pressure off the market. The wealthy people can move into those apartments, freeing their old less luxurious apartments for "poorer" people.
And there is no "free market" for housing here - it is very difficult to build, with lots of regulations.
And who wants to invest, when the government will seize your assets as soon as you are successful? Last year they introduced a hard cap on rents, that applied no matter how much you paid for the house you wanted to rent out, and no matter where it was located.
In two weeks, there will be a public vote to seize thousands of flats at "way below market value" (quote from the voting sheet) from corporate landlords. These are not conditions where a "free market" can do its thing.
As a matter of fact, only big companies have the means to build under such conditions, it is much too risky for smaller entities.
But then, sure, blame the evil capitalists for the issues your socialist government has created.
[1] https://www.tagesspiegel.de/berlin/wohnungsnot-leerstand-in-...
Luxury housing construction can help, but can't really fix the issue on its own because it is also a relatively inefficient and expensive method of increasing the housing supply (since each added unit has high costs.)
This problem is one that a large number of municipalities have failed to solve. It seems very difficult to get the regulatory and tax incentive structure setup just right to get sufficient affordable housing built in large urban areas.
> As a matter of fact, only big companies have the means to build under such conditions, it is much too risky for smaller entities.
I would think that governments have the scale to take on those risks as well. At some point, I think it makes sense to stop struggling to get privately build affordable housing and do it publicly.
London is the poster boy for exactly why you don't do this.
The result is builders and landlords buying up land, "delaying" (often indefinitely) building the homes to artificially drive up the prices of existing housing, or building tiny, tiny, apartments in huge hive-like blocks and towers, with insane prices.
If I could sustain my work from abroad, I would be tempted to move to Wroclaw, actually. Unfortunately I need access to cheap shipping to Czechia, which means being in Czechia or at least going there pretty often.
Resetting taxes to LVT means that improvements on land won't be disincentivized. Buying them out means they get a lot of cash and won't be so opposed to you lowering the value of their owned property.
Also, the government will be able to afford to focus on cheap housing, not what makes them the most money, since their focus isn't private profit.
The sales prices in BW and many other areas of Germany are simply ridiculous.
And they are building: a few dozen lots are being offered by the city and there’s dozens of takers per lot.
private entities will only build luxury housing in these conditions
Building codes have become so strict that it's not worthwhile to build affordable housing for private investors. Especially since the government pays incentives (or rather gives out very low interest loans) to build houses of the highest energy standard.
Why build a "cheap" house when you can build a more expensive house with subsidies that has a lot higher resale value later?
What if a kid ran into a balcony glass and broke it, hurting or killing itself? Better demand that balcony glass be reinforced (and more expensive, to a great delight of the glass factories!) just in case. Even in old folks' homes.
No one wants to be known as the child killer, so here is a new demand making the construction a bit more expensive.
I am sure especially in those "hot" areas where prices are spiralling out of control, there is no shortage of entities with the "will" to build.
That is usually the point behind markets, rising prices give an incentive to increase supply.