Stockholm's 20-year waiting lists for rent-controlled housing
bbc.com
bbc.com
For a lot of people it's the normal - and indeed only - way to get an apartment in Stockholm. And it's actually not difficult to get one in the city if you're a Swede with a decent salary (meaning you can get a mortgage loan). (I.e., just about any IT salary.)
"Like many foreigners, she’s reluctant to buy, following a price rise of 14% in the city in last year alone" -- another way of seeing it is of course that prices will probably continue to go up (they've certainly been doing that for the last decades, this is no temporary bubble), meaning buying your apartment can be a good investment.
People having been worrying about rising prices since... a long time.
If you were unlucky enough to buy your apartment in Stockholm city at the "peak" in 2007, right before the prices went down slightly during the financial meltdown of 2008, it'd still have increased in value with about 60% by now. Meaning if you sold it today, you would have essentially lived for free and quite possibly earned some money on top. Whereas had you rented, you would've paid say 864000 SEK (~92000 EUR) during those years for an 8000 SEK per month rental.
Apartments in the city have historically not been a a risky investment; I know which one of renting vs. buying that I'd choose.
Not saying that all is fine. There are many good reasons why one might not want to (or can't) buy an apartment, and in those cases the situation can be very tough indeed.
I think neither is a good housing policy.
"Sorry, but we're full" is a completely valid response if maintaining affordable housing is more important than accommodating fervorous growth.
And the article sure makes it sound like folks in Stockholm move often. Why does it matter if they're 'kicked out' by someone with more money, versus being unable to find stable housing because of the Swedish policies?
It's fairly blind to say that Sweden's solution works so well, while completely ignoring the intended consequences. I see folks in housing policy doing that often -- if your system doesn't work as intended, it doesn't matter that the intent was good!
"Would-be renters without a first-hand contract have the option of either subletting from someone with a long lease or renting from a private landlord. But contracts are often for a year or less, since individuals who choose to let out their homes are usually limited to a fixed period agreed by the building’s housing association and only for a valid reason such as travelling abroad or moving in with a partner."
Owning has the same problem. Rich people move into a neighborhood and jack up property value, making taxes affordable for original residents, who are then forced to move.
Of course one ought to be consistent. For example, apply this on a national level and the implications re: immigration policy are obvious.
Why should a store that has had groceries all day be forced to give away their groceries when someone with more money comes along?
1) Starving Alice buys a loaf of bread for 1 dollar and obtains 10 units of happiness.
2) Rich Bob buys a loaf of bread for 10 dollars and obtains 1 unit of happiness.
To use your example in the same vein, why should people be forced to starve because somebody with more money bought up all the food in the region? Oh, and they get to raid their pantries too, but instead of paying the person for the food they get from the pantry, they pay the grocery store they bought it from.
Some people think it's perfectly fine to feed the rich first and let the poor have the scraps. That is the essence of capitalism: scarce goods are distributed based on the willingness to pay. But it's perfectly valid for a society to reject this notion.
Sorry to be so blunt, but you probably can. I would assume you can also get bumped higher up on lists for organ transplants etc if you have the right connections (read: are willing to pay, i.e. by donating a nontrivial amount of money to support research the hospital is doing).
Listen to/read this: http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2015/09/tina_rosenberg.html
Summary: most of the world doesn't allow selling internal organs, but Iran does, and it's been interesting to study how that's developed.
Explicit exchange of goods for kidneys isn't allowed in the US, but you can join a "donor chain" which, when you donate to another person, through a chain of people, someone you care about can eventually get a kidney. The chain acts as a central clearinghouse in the absence of direct monetary exchange.
Because they are renting and that's what renting means?
Also, where do you live now then? In a non rent controlled apartment?
There is no magical solution to housing shortage. A waiting list is shit system, but I'm sure the Guinness Book would have no difficulty finding depressing record for rental price in other major cities.
This makes sense to me. An "above average" salary should make it possible for you to live in "above average" areas; to live in the "best" areas should require the "best" salaries.
Obviously it's a bit more complicated than this, since different people have different rankings of locations and some people will choose to live in "worse" areas so that they can keep more of their income for other purposes; but in the limiting case where there is public consensus on which areas are "better" and everybody lives in the "best" area they can afford, percentiles of income will exactly match percentiles of housing location.
I find people in Vancouver who are confused by this concept on a regular basis. Vancouver has 900,000 households but only has space for 300,000 detached houses; as long as detached houses are viewed as being superior to other forms of housing, there's no way the median household will ever be able to afford a detached house.
Building more houses works pretty well, and has the benefit that no magic wands are required.
In addition to that dense housings can lead to social problems and therefore crime, which is highly undesireable.
Especially in Europe you also have the problem of having a lot of old buildings that are protected, so you can't change or replace them.
Housing is a very complex problem and supply and demand only gets you so far. If it were really just all about that, places like London, NY and SF would never have become so expensive.
Some of those political limits are understandable, like not wanting to tear down an ancient building. Others are pure NIMBYism.
Where do you think the existing transport came from?
The issue with housing is Stockholm has existed way before it became popular to blame all problems on the immigrants.
edit: had unclear language
People in Stockholm generally don't vote for the people that want to build public/rent controlled housing, so there is no mystery there is a shortage. It has also been enormously lucrative to own your home the last 25-30 years or so as the interest has plummeted from 8% to 1.5-2%, so almost all rentals has been converted to bostadrätter (a kind of co-operative building society apartment) which you have to buy in to.
To me it sounds like Spotify and many other tech startups are just being babies and not trying to solve their own problems - they want to be in Stockholm because it is an attractive place to live, but they don't want their employees to have to pay for the fact that the city is attractive ? Tough luck.
I'd be kind of incensed if I were stuck paying black market rates, too.
There are no queues in health care to speak of and schools are good and available.
As I always say to you and others on the other very well off depressed mid 30s persons who has yet to face hardship, try living in just about any other country for a year and compare.
http://www.thelocal.se/20150127/swedens-health-care-is-a-sha...
https://expathealth.org/healthcare-news/global-patient-wait-...
And please leave personal comments, you have no idea about my situation. I had job offers from Sweden, but with children its simply not affordable.
Not that I think their answer is very good.
Holding pricess below market rates helps ensure that over time current housing will be less maintained as money goes elsewhere, and as current housing can be converted into other more profitable land, it will be, thereby reducing housing overall.
There are 100s of papers showing this, which is why rent controls being bad is one of the things most economists agree on.
Higher prices = more incentive to build. It's that simple.
There's plenty of space left in places like New York or San Francisco, especially vertical space. Whether that's legally available to use (or impacts local infrastructure) is another matter, naturally.
Because of the zoning laws - the opposite of a free market.