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Comment by Traster | Hacker News Reader

I don't think this article makes a logical argument at all. It says house ownership is bad because it gives people a vested interest in constraining the supply of housing. That's true but that's not a problem. If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply.

I'm also not sure that reducing home ownership is a good idea - "let's make everyone poorer" doesn't sound like great policy to me, especially at a time where asset prices are inflating like mad. What's the actual alternative to people owning their own homes. Would we be better off all holding shares in housing companies?

I also take issue with this idea that we should all be living in skyscrapers. If you go off and build skyscrapers. Maybe some people want to live in skyscrapers but if the result of this policy is that the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life. It's like the problem we have with Houses of Multiple Occupancy in the UK. It's a fine concept to break up a 4 bed house into 3 flats and sell each individually but you need to understand you're making it economically unviable for anyone to ever afford a 4 bed house anymore in that area.

There are serious issues with housing, and the massive disincentive for people to downsize is definitely one of them, but a lot of these policy solutions are just trash.

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> If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply.

Yes, but constraining the supply is done through political means: planning laws, green belts, individual objections to developments, voting etc. All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets.

> the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life

People in Singapore really love their flats. I think what people don't realise is that the space between the skyscrapers is well used with lots of playgrounds, parks and sports facilities. It isn't giving up your garden: it's swapping it for a much larger shared garden with facilities you could never dream of affording on your own.

HMOs aren't a fair comparison because they have comical soundproofing compared to modern flats.

Some people in Singapore may love their flats. Some of them might wish they could buy a house. People should be able to choose. People who love flats can live in flats, people who live detached homes can save up and buy or build one.

It is odd that we have simply accepted that the government has the right to tell everyone if they can live in a flat or a house.

I could think that arranged marriages are much better than choosing your relationship; but that doesn't mean I think that it should be a government policy and government should ban your own choice of relationship. You can have an arranged marriage if you want, even in the West. It works for some people, doesn't work for others.

Some people love flats and renting. Some like owning a flat, some like renting a house, some like owning a house, some like living in the woods off grid, and some like backpacking around the world without a house. Choice is great.

There are detached homes in Singapore - their price and taxes just reflect the fact that about a hundred people would normally be living on the same ground, and those people have to be compensated.

I think a fairer comparison in terms of relationships is like polygamy: forbidding people to live above or below you is a bit like taking away extra potential spouses. I believe polygamy is illegal in most societies due to the inequalities it causes.

Inequalities never stopped societies in general. People making laws/regulations often like inequalities.

> All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets.

Well let's not forget lobbying, corruption (more important than lobbying in some parts of the world, e.g. my country) and the plain and simple fact that politicians are usually quite rich (in many countries, not all) and so will own and rent houses, while having great influence on local laws.

That's why I added the "in theory" caveat : )

I still think a shift would matter. There is some evidence for this in the UK because homeowners generally vote Conservative, but people are becoming homeowners later in life and less often. So the Conservatives are running around terrified that they're going to lose voters in the long term.

They have introduced quite a few inflationary policies subsidising the first purchases young fairly wealthy people.

I think also the way they have pivoted more recently to focus on the "culture wars" and (English) nationalism is a way to encourage older renters to vote for them.

Lobbying and corruption are problems, but do we really think they're harder problems than convincing the landowning majority to support policies that will make the value of their asset go down? I don't think so.

>All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets.

I guess they couldn't state it openly, e.g. like:

"Let's bypass democratic majority rule, by taking away something people vote to protect - and not just anything, but their homes -, and consolidating its ownership to fewer rich property moguls and conglomerates"

Because that would immediately strike people as a tad worse than North Korea...

> Let's bypass democratic majority rule,

The trouble is that it is only a local majority. There are a larger number of people who would like to live in high-demand areas, but they can't vote to make that possible because they don't live there.

> by taking away something people vote to protect - and not just anything, but their homes -,

No-one is suggesting taking away their homes. Just making it more uneconomical to sit on land that has been improved by the state and profit from the ensuing increase in value. I personally would advocate for making these changes to the tax system very slowly, perhaps over the course of 20 years or so.

> and consolidating its ownership to fewer rich property moguls and conglomerates

They don't necessarily have to be rich. I personally wouldn't ever invest in a property conglomerate - they're far too unprofitable and buffeted by political winds. Software is where the money is at, but if you're on this website you already know that.

>The trouble is that it is only a local majority. There are a larger number of people who would like to live in high-demand areas, but they can't vote to make that possible because they don't live there.

Any majority is a "local majority".

Would it be OK for third parties to come into your community / town etc, and decide for you?

That would be a nice racket for lobbyists, too: various interests could hire majorities to move from place to place and vote to overturn what those already living there want...

Yeah, within reason, more global considerations should be taken into account when making local decisions.

Sure, when the local desicions have outside externalities (e.g. pollution).

But this is a case where we're taking about outsiders making it more difficult for locals to hold to their homes, so they (the outsiders) have it easier to live in some place.

How is that OK? Ousiders "really" wanting to live to that place is not enough justification (people want lots of things. Many people want a pony too, doesn't mean they will get one or that they deserve one).

Plus, those outsiders only want to come live to a place (over other places) because the place has been developed well by the locals.

So they like what the locals have toiled and paid to build, and want to make it easier to throw the locals out of their homes, to rent there themselves. Doesn't sit right...

> where we're taking about outsiders making it more difficult for locals to hold to their homes

I'm predominantly suggesting making it easier to build new high density housing. The other side is to slow move to taxing estimated land values rather than house prices. This means that you pay for your share of the benefit you get from improvements to the land that you didn't make - a new metro line, for example, or a new supermarket or school. But if you renovate your house you wouldn't pay any more in taxes.

> Plus, those outsiders only want to come live to a place (over other places) because the place has been developed well by the locals.

Most infrastructure funding comes from central governments (at least in the countries I am aware of) so I don't understand what you mean by this exactly.

You could easily solve the immediate problem by exempting locals' primary residence - CA already has policies like prop 13 after all.

More generally, who could reasonably be considered to have a legitimate interest in housing policy? I can think of a few potential groups:

1) People who own homes in the locality

2) Renters

3) People who work in locality but commute

4) (This is the biggest stretch) People left behind by economic geography

On economic geography: as the economy evolves over time, the location of jobs changes. As farming is automated, there are less jobs in the rural Midwest. After the steel mills closed, Pittsburgh lost population. As the economy has become more knowledge and technology oriented, more jobs have moved to relatively dense urban areas that can support very liquid job markets and a high degree of labor specialization.

Obviously there's a lot of subjective trade-offs here. Personally, I feel there should be a middle ground (on policies around development) between "kick existing residents out of their homes" and "no middle class housing in areas with lots of job growth".

> Yes, but constraining the supply is done through political means: planning laws, green belts, individual objections to developments, voting etc. All of those in theory are based on "one man one vote", so if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets.

Genuinely curious: when has one-person-one-vote ever really constrained special interest groups, particularly in the US? Large corporations tend to get their way a lot during legislative sausage-making, and they have zero direct votes. Maybe votes actually don't matter that much?

> People in Singapore really love their flats. I think what people don't realise is that the space between the skyscrapers is well used with lots of playgrounds, parks and sports facilities. It isn't giving up your garden: it's swapping it for a much larger shared garden with facilities you could never dream of affording on your own.

Good for them! One question: could I add my own flooring to my flat for allergy purposes? If the neighbors are loud after my kids' bedtime, can I ask them to stop? Will that cause tension? Would I need to call the police if it escalated?

(I'd be much more interested in exporting Singapore's health care system to the US, which seems quite compatible with American cultural and economic constraints, than its housing policy, which seems entirely mismatched to housing constraints in 95% of America.)

> Maybe votes actually don't matter that much?

I think Brexit is a good counterpoint to this: almost every large corporation thought it was a terrible idea, but it still got voted through and carried out.

> Good for them! One question: could I add my own flooring to my flat for allergy purposes? If the neighbors are loud after my kids' bedtime, can I ask them to stop? Will that cause tension? Would I need to call the police if it escalated?

With a HDB flat you can do whatever you like - you buy a 99 year lease with the assumption that the building will be demolished after then.

I don't really know Singapore well enough to give you good answers on your other questions, other than that sound insulation is generally good and people really respect the police in general.

At the risk of sounding racist, Asian culture respect their commons to a significantly larger degree than non-Asian cultures. If the Singapore residential skyscrapers where in the United States, for example, the space between the buildings would be a no-mans zone of graffiti, illegal trade, and youth gangs.

I hear that a lot about Singapore. The thing most people don't seem to realise is that in 1960 Singapore was essentially a giant slum.

All these "collective" behaviours have appeared since then helped along by government campaigns: https://remembersingapore.org/2013/01/18/singapore-campaigns...

(Note that one of those campaigns - speak Mandarin - was encouraging people to abandon their native languages and learn a completely different one. It was highly successful. I think by comparison "don't throw litter" would be extremely easy.)

"At the risk of sounding racist, Asian culture respect their commons to a significantly larger degree than non-Asian cultures."

Your gross-generalization is so poorly constructed it's hard for it to be wrong, never mind right. So I'll ask you a few questions instead.

How would you even begin to test your claim in a realistic way? What time period/s would you select? Even if it were true, would it matter? Would efforts to solve these problems best be dealt with government policy/funding/enforcement or by pushing "Asian culture" in Europe or Africa?

Do you really mean East Asia? Does Bangkok, New Delhi and Manila count as Asian? Does a skyscraper in the Philippines surrounded by gangs, illegal trade and graffiti not count if it is made of garbage (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Mountain)? What if it was closed and re-opened elsewhere, does that mean the culture changed twice?

Is your generalization "significant" in understanding why Tokyo is cleaner than New Delhi or Bangkok or why Toronto has fewer youth gangs than New York? Was their "respect" for "the commons" in Singapore in 1964 when youth gangs and others engaged in race warfare? Or is it just more respect for the commons now that Singapore is no longer part of Malaysia?

How does a communal "respecting their commons" work when most people in a society think it is okay to conduct trade in ivory or whales, that are illegal under international law? What about dumping plastic in the ocean, where Asia in the main source? Or does the "commons" not count if it refers to the rest of the world? Perhaps how much money a society has to clean up pollution is more predictive than culture? Maybe individualism is useful when an entire society needs to change in some fashion and perhaps less useful when norms are reasonable?

Is there a chance that you are bothered by the problems you cite, but find it convenient to say "culture" because it allows you to wash your hands of these problems?

> It isn't giving up your garden: it's swapping it for a much larger shared garden with facilities you could never dream of affording on your own.

And for some people, that's great. For me, not living in a flat in the city (quite the opposite) isn't because I want a garden and facilities all my own. It's because you can't control how terrible your neighbors are, so if they're farther away from where you spend most of your time, even if they're terrible, they have little impact.

Take a loud neighbor who works nights. He'll play his music loud at hours you'd be sleeping, and pound on the wall at hours he'd be sleeping, because you're too loud.

Now add 5000 square feet of land between you.

"Good fences make good neighbors."

Most of those problems could be solved by good noise insulation which is fairly cheap to add during construction.

Terraced houses are common in the UK and are the worst of all worlds: poor noise insulation from neighbours, tiny dark gardens and very low density.

> solved by good noise insulation

You've obviously never met my neighbors. But noise is just one example; far more annoying when I was in an apartment was someone smoking below my balcony on a hot night when all I wanted was to open the windows.

And I suppose you'll tell me that filtration systems could take care of that, which is true, but staying locked in a closed apartment is, as has been recently shown, terrible for your health, physically and emotionally.

It's no use, I shall keep my yard and clear, dark skies where you can see the stars, and wildlife.

I don't have an answer for that - I can only say that I had the same problem in a semi-detached house in the UK with neighbours smoking weed in their garden and the smell coming up through our (quite far away) open windows.

Your stars sound good, but I don't be able to give up being able to walk everywhere.

> if you concentrate ownership of supply you drastically reduce the number of votes it gets

Unfortunately most of the influencing of politics isn't accomplished by voting, it's done by lobbying.

So it's sadly the opposite. The more you concentrate ownership, the larger those mega-landlord-corporations become and the more clout they have with the politicians.

What's astonishing is how drastically different cities in different countries look like.

Take Paris or Berlin with their 5-8 floor buildings as far as the eye can see. That's a moderate density for a modern city, leaves space for green spaces, infrastructure and is so dense that everybody can sort-of affort it while not so dense that everybody is just anonomous. You can still know all neighbors in your building by name. (That there is a problem with exploding rents is a separate issue.)

As contrast, take the average north american city with a million residents. most either live in a detached house or in a 30+ floor skyscraper. Of course the detached houses rather close to a city center won't have much space around them, so you hav 1.5 bushes and then there is the fence and next house. The lots are worth millions and out of reach for most unless the go super deep into debt and have a lot of luck. Or you live in an anonymous skyscraper silo. There is an alternative to all this, but all that's happening is that excuses are ruminated back and forth.

> the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life

Higher density has pros and cons. Living in higher density areas can increase quality of life significantly, if you can walk to work, groceries, pharmacy, restaurants, friends, etc. See https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/07/paris-mayor-un... for example.

Obviously the extremes (1 bedroom skyscraper flats and living 1h away from civilization) won't work for most, but there is a spectrum where people will choose different things depending on their individual preferences.

I can walk to all those things even though I live in a 130 m2 house with an 800 m2 garden full of mature fruit trees.

There are four supermarkets within 2 km, the doctor and chemist are 1 km away.

In many countries it isn't necessary to sacrifice living space for convenience. It is largely a political choice for the country as a whole even though it is an economic one for most of the individuals. Even in densely populated countries like the UK the population is very unevenly distributed resulting in huge conurbations.

Countries like the US have no reason at all any more to have people live in dense cities unless they really want to, after all there is a lot of empty space there and good physical and electronic communication.

US mean density 36/km2, UK 275/km2, Norway 15/km2.

I never posited a false dichotomy, I just said there’s a spectrum of conveniency and that it is related to density. The more density the more things closer, by definition, though; and the bigger the demand for real estate, so people end up with less space due to physics and pricing.

1km or especially 2km is not in any way a reasonable walk. It is just barely reasonable for a healthy adult in good weather, and still tedious. I personally find that mid-density is the worst of both worlds, and not just in this regard... I used to live in downtown Vancouver BC and it was great to have everything I use within 200m, now I live in the kind of area you describe (semi-urban detached houses) and I almost always drive, just as if I lived in the woods. In fact, after COVID I wish I had originally moved to the woods!

1 km not a reasonable walk? That's about 1300 steps for me, a fifteen minute dawdle or ten minute brisk walk.

I can walk to the nearest shop fill a small rucksack/daysack with the day's shopping and be back home in 45 minutes without hurrying.

Most people would prefer not to walk 25 extra minutes (1km two ways of standard 5kph ped speed) every day just to buy food, even in good weather. When it's raining, snowing, etc., or when they are old, have children with them, are not so fit, even more so. Many people have things to do with these 25 minutes, too.

When I used to buy groceries daily on foot, it took me about 5 extra steps, one way, to get to the store from the sidewalk that I was already traversing from the bus stop that was 150m from my apartment... and then I carried them 100m to said apartment. That is the density that most people can accept when they think about "walkable"... These days I pick up a week's worth of groceries (impossible to carry, and I say is as a backpacker) on my way from the gym, or occasionally in a separate trip that takes the same 25 minutes round-trip for travel, except I do it once a week, or could do it even more rarely. And if you drive, it doesn't really matter if the store is 2-3km away on the street (which it is), or if it was 10-25km away on a highway.

It's not 25 extra minutes. I just do it as part of going for a walk. We did the same with the children when they were too small to leave at home.

Ok, apparently for this situation to be livable you not only have to be healthy AND the weather has to be good (you don't go on a walk with kids every day when it's 100 degrees out or when it's blizzard of rain), you also have to have plenty of time for daily walks :)

Again, my point is, for most people, in most circumstances, 1km is a borderline unreasonable walk, and 2km is absolutely unreasonable and not "walkable" in any way. Sure, for some people in very special circumstances (and climates, or times of year) it might work out, but that is not a good basis for policy.

Also frankly it's just an inferior quality of life when your walk is to the grocery store thru dense burbs... I happen to have 2 large-ish parks nearby so I walk there, but not every day and in any case neither is on the way to any grocery store. I would never just walk around the neighborhood - instead, if both were 1km away, I'd drive to a park or a hike if I had to... then drive to a grocery store.

> Living in higher density areas can increase quality of life significantly, if you can walk to work, groceries, pharmacy, restaurants, friends, etc.

High density cities are not the only way to have that. Another one is small villages where everything is grouped together. I easily walk to multiples of every category of place you listed even though I live in a very small town.

Conversely, people who used to be able to live in a flat are now unable to live in the area at all because we've outlawed building flats.

Similarly, regarding: "unviable for anyone to ever afford a 4 bed house" - it's not like areas that ban conversions to flats have cheap 4 bed houses. They have expensive 4 bed houses, often filled with 4-8 roommates who likely would prefer their own flat.

The elephant in room is Airbnb et al. not home ownership.

It started as way to rent a spare room - fair enough - and if it had stayed like this, its impact would be bearable. But like it evolved - full residential quartiers acting as large hotels - made the housing market unsustainable for the inhabitants not participating in this game.

It would make so much more sense to just implement a progressive wealth tax combined with tax rules which make owning more than one home very expensive.

I would also be interested to see what would happen if the rental and sales markets were forced to only supply houses which matched the current building codes - it would make building much more competitive.

now that would be interesting. if an old flat or house became unrentable or unsellable once the current occupant moves out because it doesn't match current requirements, then landlords would be begging renters to stay.

on the other hand, individual home owners would be stuck unable to sell their property, because it would drop in value. (even if they could sell it, not everyone would want to buy it). i am not sure if that's good or bad.

in any case everyone would be forced to keep their buildings up to standard.

> individual home owners would be stuck unable to sell their property, because it would drop in value. (even if they could sell it, not everyone would want to buy it). i am not sure if that's good or bad.

It's good because it would motivate owners to own only as few houses as possible (to minimize work on updates), and many more people could own a home then.

It would cause prices to go up because in order to sell it has to he up to code, meaning renovations. It would likely cause consolidation of ownership, something like 70% of all apartments in my area are owned by the same company. And since they have consistent rules... It can be hard for certain people (those with criminal records) to find affordable housing.

> only supply houses which matched the current building codes

That would either destroy vast numbers of perfectly usable and often interesting or historic buildings or require the creation of a system for giving exemptions in order to preserve them. And of course this gives an opportunity for corruption and cronyism.

We sort of have that. Your primary residence gets tax advantages generally and your other properties don’t.

"If you go off and build skyscrapers. Maybe some people want to live in skyscrapers but if the result of this policy is that the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life."

What this fails to acknowledge is that the demand for density doesn't change when you outlaw it. All you've done is taken away people's choices, mandated your own preferences, and still in the end all the same demand for more housing goes on existing just the same, anyway, so prices continue to rise.

It may be true that all things being equal most people prefer detached single-family housing, but all things aren't equal! And so we have to acknowledge the tradeoffs and take the demand for more density seriously. (The fact that in order to get detached single-family housing in high-demand areas you have to make the alternatives illegal is I think pretty strong evidence for this.)

Harsh reality is that once a city reaches certain size option for semi/detached housing becomes unrealistic to house majority of population. Just numbers game.

100%! We need to find incentives for people to move to small towns. Small town life can be absolutely wonderful and can still take place close enough to population areas.

We already have an enormous incentive - incredibly cheap housing. Mine was under 100k. But I am far, far more expensive for the public purse than when I lived in the city.

> the middle class who used to be able to live in a nice semi/detatched house are now living in flats in a skyscraper that is a massive detriment to their quality of life

Having to own a car, maintain lawns/garden or pay someone for it, and having to commute for hour one side instead of 15 minute walk would be an extreme detriment to my quality of life.

It's good that you have the choice to rent and I and the other commenter have the choice to buy.

I don't think home ownership is the problem (apart from the NYMBYsm that sometimes happens) - owning ones home can give a sense of freedom and happyness to many.

But the quest of that goal can be a problem - mortgages (to expensive, to big), the choice of owning a property rather than living in a better property (size, quality, location) can be a blight on peoples lives.

Old Victorian houses in London have been broken up in to 6-8 flats or more since the 80s. The original properties are just too large for single owner occupiers.

Of course the resulting 2 bed flats are still on the market for $1M USD.

The original properties are just too expensive for single owner occupiers

> If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply.

This seems theoretically nice but is not in practice the case. Homeowners are immediately present, voting locally, political NIMBYs.

Homeowners who are ostensibly in favour of increasing the housing supply, still don't like it when it affects their own area (and know how to effectively campaign against it locally).

Landlords just don't care that much (in this instance) - an increasing local population heralds local economic growth and a potentially increased value of their property portfolio.

"If people didn't own houses then someone would, and that someone is still incentivized to constrain the supply."

that does not follow - if that someone does not want to sell them or make profit on the rent, why would he constrain the supply?

"What's the actual alternative to people owning their own homes."

The state, the city, not-for-profit entities owning them, for example.

"I also take issue with this idea that we should all be living in skyscrapers."

I agree with that and also think it's much better to live in about 5-story high buildings; the quality of life and price is much better with those.

> if that someone does not want to sell them or make profit on the rent, why would he constrain the supply?

Why wouldn't that someone want to make a profit?

> The state, the city, not-for-profit entities owning them, for example.

That'd just make each individual eternally indebted to the state, at the whims of bureaucrats and vulnerable to political punishments while the costs wouldn't come down by much, because the state generally sucks at doing these things.

> Why wouldn't that someone want to make a profit?

Because they are not a for-profit company or institution? Public housing is often owned or managed by such entities. Also there can be other incentives besides direct profit; a city can build flats to encourage people to move and live there. The city will profit from the economic activity this will bring. In that case the city has a motive to have a larger, not a smaller, supply of flats.

> That'd just make each individual eternally indebted to the state, at the whims of bureaucrats and vulnerable to political punishments while the costs wouldn't come down by much, because the state generally sucks at doing these things.

The state may generally suck at doing these things, but nevertheless this is the way it works in some places and works good in some of them. In a different thread I mention Vienna where around 220'000 flats are owned by the city and another 220'000 are indirectly influenced by them which together housing about 25% of the population. The city started this program at the beginning of the 20th century when 300'000 people didn't have a place to live - it's obviously much better now. So maybe it's not a completely broken way of doing things?

> The city started this program at the beginning of the 20th century when 300'000 people didn't have a place to live - it's obviously much better now. So maybe it's not a completely broken way of doing things?

Hard to say. How would Vienna look, and how many people would be able to live there at what cost if it hadn't? I'm absolutely not opposed to the state getting involved when there's a crisis, or the investments required are too large, e.g. creating the first power plants, railways etc. But if you let it remain with the state, you typically get crumbling infrastructure at high prices with lots of bureaucracy.

We have public housing in Germany, and it's nice-ish because the rents are cheap. But generally, the bureaucracy is large, the inefficiency and corruption runs rampant, the quality is subpar and they're constantly at risk to be sold off when the next mayor wants to spend money on a new air port or some policy their voters like.

The interest of the state are not aligned with those of renters. The state could certainly build great apartments, but only for a small number of citizens, while the rest would have to fund it. It then becomes a lottery: are you lucky enough to get one of the lottery apartments? Congratulations. For everyone else: well, sucks. We can remove the middle man bureaucracy in that case, just make everyone spend half their money on the lottery.

If you want the interests to align, just use a private entity, like cooperative housing. And the best thing about that? It's completely voluntary, no need for state involvement, no need to force others to fund it etc.

> But generally, the bureaucracy is large, the inefficiency and corruption runs rampant, the quality is subpar and they're constantly at risk to be sold off when the next mayor wants to spend money on a new air port or some policy their voters like.

I completely believe all of that. It's still much better than here in Slovakia where public housing is pretty much nonexistent, most people own their flat/house outright and if you live in a rented property people are looking down on you. As a result there are on one side scores of people who live in their own house in so-called 'hunger valleys' where they can't find work and on the other side lots of available employment roles but no affordable living in the cities.

> If you want the interests to align, just use a private entity, like cooperative housing. And the best thing about that? It's completely voluntary, no need for state involvement, no need to force others to fund it etc.

I already mentioned Slovakia, so I can continue with that: a private entity first would have to acquire land suitable for flats and get all the planning permissions. Land is scarce and regulations complicated. It's made worse by the outdated building code, and the state is not really incentivized to update it. So I think interests would be better aligned if the state decided it wants to really support building new housing instead of only paying lip service to it.

Wouldn't the state have to acquire the land and keep up with building codes as well?

Cooperatives are member-owned, so essentially you + 100 other people would get together, each put up a bit of money, get a loan from the bank, and build a house for all of you to live in. They're not-for-profit entities, they exist to apartments to their members. But they're explicitly not the state, so they're not a tool being (ab)used by politicians.

> So I think interests would be better aligned if the state decided it wants to really support building new housing instead of only paying lip service to it.

I agree, but I believe that would only be temporary, and as soon as they no longer accidentally align, you'd be in a tough spot. This is different in a cooperative entity, where renters = owners.

Why aren't more rentals being created in Slovakia? Just because of social stigma of not owning?

> Wouldn't the state have to acquire the land and keep up with building codes as well?

The issue is to acquire land suitable for housing, which is scarce. The suitability itself is defined by various regulations. The state can (and should) change the regulations. The state can (and should) update the building codes, too.

> Cooperatives are member-owned...

Yes that is clear, but as they are explicitly not the state, the state has sadly no incentive to help them. The state also does not help the cities to build housing. The private developers always find a way to build flats, but as you can probably imagine, sometimes corruption can be involved and that makes the resulting product expensive.

Also cooperatives are problably not really trusted here; people fear being taken advantage of, so they mostle care about themselves. Each one for himself, that is our society in a nutshell. See also Covid mortality. Sorry for the off-topic.

> Why aren't more rentals being created in Slovakia? Just because of social stigma of not owning?

Partly that. Also the aforementioned complications mean that new developments are expensive and are marketed as luxury. And the demand for housing is huge so the developers are catering to the high-margin end of market and are not interested in long-term rented property management.

> That'd just make each individual eternally indebted to the state, at the whims of bureaucrats and vulnerable to political punishments while the costs wouldn't come down by much

In the 1970s in the UK, some on the left saw council houses as a bit like people see Universal Basic Income these days. That the state should provide everyone with a (modest) rent-free house.

That might seem extreme, but it was actually pretty moderate when the competition was soviet communism. And at the time interest rates were >10% so mortgages were a big risk and put a lot of money into someone else's pockets.

Some of the housing stock built in that time was really good quality; the council built it, and knew they'd have to maintain it, so they went for durable options even when they weren't the cheapest. Modern homes are lower quality in some regards, as the house builders know the maintenance is someone else's problem.

> the state generally sucks at doing these things.

Most European states do a great job of this - the suck part comes (like in the UK), when the state stops supporting this and a generation of people are left without decent housing options.

I live in Germany, and I can assure you, the state does not do a great job in this regard. I don't know about France, but seeing the satellite cities surrounding Paris, I have some doubts. Where are they doing a great job in Europe?

I have lived in Germany, France, UK and US, and I can assure you that Germany does a comparably great job.

No structural homelessness problem (beyond the rare addiction victim), new social housing being built rather than relying on housing built 60+ years ago, no/few state subsidies to a private rental sector preying on social tenants etc etc. Just because it is not perfect doesn't mean it isn't better than 95% of the alternatives.

One place that does it better is Austria - the Vienna model of social housing provision enables lower classes to live well in what is one of the world's most expensive places to buy housing in.

> No structural homelessness problem (beyond the rare addiction victim), new social housing being built rather than relying on housing built 60+ years ago, no/few state subsidies to a private rental sector preying on social tenants etc etc.

I'm not sure what you're referencing -- most social housing is done by private entities with state subsidies. Many local governments have set a minimum amount of social housing for new projects, so e.g. 30% of apartments (or by square meters) have to be done as subsidized housing. That aside, I'm sure that it's possible to do worse, but that doesn't make it great.

If Vienna has found a way to make the state work efficiently, I'd love for them to export it. So far, I've not seen that happening in any of the industries it is involved.

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