Good, it's ridiculous in Amsterdam right now with investors buying houses left and right just to rent them out.
A city of renters is a soulless city; less people are long-term invested and no one really buys into the community they live in.
A city of renters is a soulless city; less people are long-term invested and no one really buys into the community they live in.
[1] https://mobilityexchange.mercer.com/Insights/quality-of-livi...
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/dec/12/vienna-housi...
Two things they do really well: Keeping rent prices low by "dumping" and preventing ghettoisation by creating affordable housing in every district, not just some crappy areas.
[1] http://milwaukeeclt.org/2017/07/10/how-vienna-ensures-afford...
I am beyond skeptical on this point. The young and dynamic people responsible for a city’s soul generally can’t afford to buy (I would guess, I have no data)
The intended consequences are more people being able to afford a house and home ownership has increased with most policies that I can think of. There are some consequences: rental contracts are very hard to find in Stockholm for instance, but those hardly seem unintended.
Thats only a first order approximation, but it seems plausible to me.
The local bands, and dances full of pretty single people? Mostly young people have the time and inclination for that, and they're less likely to be homeowners as you say.
But the volunteer coach of the children's football team, or the people who organise the annual artists' open studio? You can't take those sorts of responsibilities if you're moving away in a year or two, you'd almost be handing it over to someone else before you'd finished having it handed over to you!
Of course, hypothetically there's no reason a person renting a house can't rent it for 5 years or more - just in my country, that's rarely how it works out.
It's almost impossible for most people working in soulful / desirable / economic powerhouse locations to get a mortgage on a property there, so you see lots of wealthy investors take up the properties there and rent-seek to make themselves even richer.
That's before we even mention the children factor.
I’m not thrilled about renting, but neither do I want to gamble on purchasing housing in an expensive market when I may have to leave my job or even the state. My landlord is taking that risk with her capital and therefore deserves to be rewarded for it.
Unfortunately this works by making property less attractive to investors, who are the people with a large amount of capital, who typically are those people who have influence over the political classes...
Even simple things like not being able to charge random fees makes it much easier to compare two or more properties on level terms.
A city of renters is a city of dynamic ideas, young people, and social movement.