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Comment by esotericn | Hacker News Reader

This is prioritising having a very short commute in Tokyo over anything else. It's a good thing that such an option exists.

A few years back in London, I had friends living in small house/flat shares in Zone 1 who would be paying the same amount as I did for an entire 1 bedroom further out.

I didn't want to have flatmates, they saw it as an acceptable compromise.

The majority of people I speak to outside of the big city bubble see living in flats/apartments at all as subpar/odd. It's a compromise for city living.

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>It's a good thing that such an option exists.

I totally agree. It makes me irrationally mad that some cities like London and Los Angeles enact policies meant to prevent small apartments on a pretense of lofty words, completely ignorant to the fact that commute distance is one of the largest factors in one's happiness and well-being.

This is one of the best examples of "no skin in the game" decision making, as the vast majority of decision makers live in relative comfort and it costs them almost nothing to pass this type of policies which signal value, don't have immediate obviously bad effect and are not strongly opposed by anyone. However, the cost is paid by the countless people who spend hours in traffic and, consequently, the environment.

Pretty much any zoning policy is based on protecting incumbents over newcomers.

I'm slowly coming around to the idea that trying to move to a major city is just daft unless you're very wealthy. You're intentionally choosing to compete on a stage that you don't have to compete in and there are generally huge stacks of rules set up to ensure that it's difficult for you to do so.

> Pretty much any zoning policy is based on protecting incumbents over newcomers.

And why shouldn’t it? They’re already living there, paying taxes, participating in the economy, and participating in the community. Everyone else, however, only might live there. There’s no guarantee.

“My friends and I would make much better use of your grand piano than you do, so it should be taken from you and given to us.”

I don't think it shouldn't.

Hence the second half of my post. Let them have their fun.

Because you shouldnt get to tell me how I live and the size of an apartment I should live in.

If I want to live in an 80 square foot box, as long as I'm keeping it clean and safe, you really shouldn't have a say in it just because you have a place down the street.

One of the worst parts of democracy is the deletion of individual rights and the majority telling the minority how they should live.

If nobody had ever been kicked out of their normal apartment after having their rent artificially raised to build those 80 sqft apartments, I might agree with you. If nobody had ever had their house forclosed for the “greater good” and had efficiency apartments put in their place, I might agree with you.

Both of these scenarios have happened. I don’t agree with you. This isn’t democracy in action, this is fighting back against unrestrained capitalism which would make everyone’s living conditions equally miserable in an effort to extract the most money possible out of them.

And as an aside, it’s not as if the apartment owners have no say in the process either; its worth wondering why they aren’t throwing their considerable power around as well.

It gets worse than that. With a minimum unit size you remove options for people who otherwise might not be able to afford a dwelling at all. Yeah, housing further away from the city is probably cheaper, but now you likely need a car to get to your job which again not everyone can afford to buy and maintain.

I recently saw a report that showed an older man who worked as a dishwasher in Hong Kong. He lived in what could be described as the upper half of a bunk bed in a closet. Certainly undesirable, but definitely better than homelessness.

Edit: formatting

I don't think that is right. What happens is that homes get built to be in compliance with minimum size regulations. Just as employment opportunities change to be in compliance with labor regulations. Neither minimum wage nor maximum work hour limits have removed options from workers.

>I totally agree. It makes me irrationally mad that some cities like London and Los Angeles enact policies meant to prevent small apartments on a pretense of lofty words, completely ignorant to the fact that commute distance is one of the largest factors in one's happiness and well-being.

Meanwhile all of northern England suffers from underemployment. The obvious solution is to not concentrate jobs in one place. It makes me irrationally angry that people can't see the obvious solution when it's staring them in the face.

If most of your jobs revolve around serving those with money, in person, then they're going to be centered around wealthy areas.

That's as far as I see it how the UK has evolved. Basically everyone with money lives in London or the Home Counties, so service employment is heavily biased towards there.

I don't see how you can fix that without forcibly moving people.

Economies of scale and knowledge spillovers cause large labor markets to be more productive than smaller ones, and thus not trying to concentrate jobs will be an uphill battle. Increasing mobility in areas with more unemployment will probably be more effective.

London has a counter-productive policy on this.

They consider that 'micro' accommodation is exploitative and have minimum surface area regulations, all of this while having a rhetorics about "affordable housing"...

In my opinion they should focus on enforcing standards and amenities and let people be creative on the rest.

For example, there are very creative things being done in Asia (e.g. Hongkong, Japan) that create comfortable, modern flats in very small spaces by using sliding, folding, and making use of the whole volume.

A famous example in Hongkong: http://www.edgedesign.com.hk/2007domestictransformer

The UK as a whole does not care about housing policy (and by extension the wellbeing of the population at large).

In the mid 20th century we engaged in a huge campaign of housebuilding, the result being that my relatively poor family were able to rent a terraced house with garden front and back for decades. I owe pretty much everything to that.

Today? Nothing.

Local governments don't care, landowners don't care, the national government doesn't care, no-one is seriously protesting, it's just not a thing.

I'm considering moving out of the country soon, and if I do, this will be the number one reason - we've basically gone back to a feudal society in which you either already own property, or else you fight over increasingly small scraps.

My best understanding of why this is happening is that this is all based on some sort of silly ponzi game in which everyone pretends that their home is worth lots of pictures of the queen's face, and when the majority landowning generation retires, they'll all swap houses and somehow loads of money and labour will appear from somewhere to look after them.

It's not just the UK -- housing prices are rising everywhere. I think it's a consequence of low interest rates. Because interest rates are so low, people can afford a 30 year mortage -- nobody would have been able to afford the interest rates on this in the 80ies or 90ies. This means that property owners can now ask for insane prices, and someone will pay them.

Also, since interest rates on savings accounts are practically zero, people look to real estate as a safe investment -- further driving housing prices.

House prices are just a matter of allocation; deciding in the competition whether you or I get to live in a small or large place; or indeed any place (tempered by our preferences on % of income/wealth to spend on housing).

Nah, I'm talking about the actual existence of places to live. We used to _build new places_ all over the place, speculatively.

The local and national governments used massive plots of land to build huge estates.

We stopped doing that. The numbers and prices and stuff are besides the point. The home that I am currently occupying will, barring nationalization or excessive tax, be in my family for the next 60 years. The price of it is essentially irrelevant. What matters is that it exists, as one house which homes one family.

I think the population of UK increased a lot since mid 20th century, while the land is the same, increasing the population density and competition for resources, driving prices up. Economy 101.

The land remains static, sure.

The housing doesn't have to. It's effectively unlimited, only bounded by construction materials and political will.

We have the former. The latter is severely lacking.

In London the population decreased throughout the second half of the 20th century and has only recently reached its previous peak of the early 1950s.

Outside of London there are many areas were real estate price are low.

The main issues in the UK are that most of the jobs are around London and that the public transports infrastructure is poor (actually even roads) yet expensive. So many people end having to live around London while paying up to £500 a month to commute on unreliable trains.

Another issue is that flats are frowned upon and usually poor quality.

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