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Comment by mrkickling | Hacker News Reader

I think there is an ideological difference. I saw in another of your comments that you only want to live in the city center of Stockholm, and that you could pay a high rent for that. This could lead to a city where all the rich live in the city center and all the poor live far out in the suburbs (probably past the subway line), and travel into the city center to work. This is in my opinion not a good society (even for the rich, considering that segregation is expensive for a welfare society). My ideological conviction is that a less segregated city is better, and that both rich and poor should live in the city center. Having both rentals (at different rent levels) and owned apartments mixed is a good way to make this happen. What is your idea of how housing should look like in Stockholm?

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I mean, ideally I don't want a Stockholm metro area that's (even more!) segregated compared to today's situation.

If I could dream, my ideal Stockholm area would be one where I (and other's like me) would be interested in living outside of the city center. Where the whole Swedish model of Soviet-style housing blocks along the subways didn't really happen, and instead that the city grew organically outwards. More like Aspudden and less like Solna centrum. Imagine if Vasastaden style of housing extended outwards!

But I also feel that the current system is very inefficient in alleviating the segregation. For starters, the most socially exposed people haven't been in Sweden long enough to even dream about a rent-controlled apartment (anywhere in Stockholm). Then we have all the people who have been standing in queues for decades, while living in a villa in Bromma, and now sells it to move into a large flat in the city center with a rent that is a third of "what it should be".

Finally, my opinion is that nothing good comes out of pretending that attractive locations aren't more expensive. They are! If we want to give low-income people the chance to live in expensive areas, we should do that directly. Perhaps by subsidising their rent or have the government owned property companies save X% of apartments to people who are less well off.

Pretending that market forces don't exist and forcing Swedes in their 20's to borrow hundreds of thousands from their parents, or moving every 12 months is not a good solution either.

Norway, Denmark and Finland all have no rent control and at least in two of the three the bad places is close to the city center.

In Stockholm, it's completely the reverse. I think rent control and where poor people live has nothing in common. It's impossible to get an apartment in the Stockholm city centre if you want to rent it.

Especially when the cities lets immigrants cut the queue. Most wealthy people can afford the super expensive apartments and the medium wealthy can buy contracts illegally.

All you're doing with rent control is to give incentiment for people to hold on to their contracts no matter what, cheat the system or buy/sell contracts illegally. It is really widespread and landlords are making a lot of tax free money on it.

Even worse is the situation if you buy apartments, you cannot rent it out to whomever you want or for how long you want since you don't really own it. You only own a smaller piece in the economic foundation that owns all apartments and give you the right to live in it. They can require you to not rent it out or limit the timing to a couple of months increasing the instability of the second hand contracts. Also, if the economic foundation makes bad decisions and gets a bad economy they can be forced to sell the entire apartment complex and you'll loose the apartment to a presumably shitty price.

The only good way of owning your housing in Sweden is to actually own the entire property OR own one of the new types of "äganderätter" which are very few and far between.

Finland has social housing and also has much larger housing subsidies than Sweden. When Finland abolished its rent control, rents in some places almost doubled. Seniors and others couldn't afford to pay the higher rents so they had to increase housing subsidies to them so that they wouldn't become homeless. That Finnish tax money directly becomes profits to landlords doesn't seem like a great situation to me.

I don't understand what the difference is, at least you can get an apartment in Finland. Prices in Helsinki (even if its a much smaller city) is a lot more reasonable and you have a lot more rights than you'll have in Sweden.

If you think old people can get an apartment in Sweden, that is just laughable. Even in smaller cities the queues are like 10 years. You'll have to pay up

The difference is that landlords pocket the excess and whoever isn’t subsidized gets fucked over.

In Helsinki rents rose by 40% after rent control was abolished and in other parts of the country by 26%. The average rent per m^2 is 11.3 euro in Stockholm and 19.5 euro in Helsinki. Furthermore, Finland spends three times as much on subsidizing poor tenants that can't pay their rent than what Sweden does. There is subsidized housing in Finland called Ara-housing, but the queuing time for those apartments is six to seven years. References here: https://www.etc.se/ekonomi/sa-blev-konsekvenserna-av-marknad...

> The average rent per m^2 is 11.3 euro in Stockholm and 19.5 euro in Helsinki.

With the difference being that 19.5 EUR would give me a square meter in Helsinki tomorrow. 11.3 EUR doesn't give me anything in Stockholm for the next decade. ≈ 30 EUR give me a second hand semi-short term contract in Stockholm.

ETC is a leftist media organisation so that they would promote rent control is a given. I wouldn't trust what they have to say about the matter. Do you know why no one builds new renting apartments in Sweden? It is because you cannot make a profit on them. You can instead build BRFs and make a lot of money. So everyone is doing that. They maximize the loans of the new BRF so they have to spend as little as possible of their own money.

Six to seven years is nothing compared to Sweden where you can have queues about 20-30 years easily for the big cities. My GF have 12 years in the queue and she can get a decent apartment in the outskirts of Stockholm but that is about it.

There are special housing for elderly, which is a bit shorter in the queues but still very long.

That's a rubbish objection. Attack the message - not the messenger. I cited the paper so that you can verify that the figures I provided are correct. Furthermore, new rental apartments already are excluded from rent control so rent control can't be the reason so few apartments of any type is being built. 20-30 years is for the most desirable areas of Stockholm (Gamla stan) and is not the median queuing time.

> Norway, Denmark and Finland all have no rent control

Norway does not, not sure about Finland, but Denmark definitely has a form of rent control. There are ceilings on rent that will be determined by appeal to a local rental board. There are exceptions however, anything built from 1992 and onwards, as well as some different rules for units that have undergone major renovations.

> I think rent control and where poor people live has nothing in common.

So you really think there is no connection between housing politics and segregation?

> All you're doing with rent control is to give incentiment for people to hold on to their contracts no matter what, cheat the system or buy/sell contracts illegally

Holding on to a contract is not necessarily a bad thing, if you enjoy living in your apartment and it is priced according to its size (giving incitament to switch to a smaller one if you don't need a big one anymore). Of course people try to cheat the system, but it is illegal ... and tenants paying illegally high rents can take the contract owner to court and get all excess rent back.

> Even worse is the situation if you buy apartments, you cannot rent it out to whomever you want or for how long you want since you don't really own it.

This has nothing to do with rent control and depends on which BRF you live in. Considering the lack of interest for äganderätter I'm not sure if so many people are with you on this opinion.

> So you really think there is no connection between housing politics and segregation?

That is not what I said.

> Of course people try to cheat the system, but it is illegal ... and tenants paying illegally high rents can take the contract owner to court and get all excess rent back.

Yeah but that never happens. All parties involved have interest in making it stay in the shadows. They don't pay illegally high rents, they pay normal rents but buy the contract to live there in the first place. A LOT of people is doing that, because the queues are impossible.

> This has nothing to do with rent control and depends on which BRF you live in. Considering the lack of interest for äganderätter I'm not sure if so many people are with you on this opinion.

The biggest reason why there is a lack of interest is because of loans. Builders take out massive loans on every new BRF, as much as they can which makes the new BRF sensitive for economic shifts.

Yes but basically all large BRFs have rules that say that you can only rent out your apartment for 6-12 months at a maximum time. They also need to vet the one your renting out to and can say no. If you have a bad relationship with the BRF, they can mess with you easily.

I agree that having a mix is good. Many times this occurs without intervention by having a mix of old and new (or renovated) buildings. An old city like Stockholm I imagine could have a large spectrum of buildings in various states of decay and thus prices. But on the other hand cities that are experiencing a rapid inflow of migration can quickly have their aged housing stock bought up and flipped. Many of these issues are exacerbated by restrictive planning and zoning regulations in city suburbs which prevent the higher density city life people desire to be replicated in new places.

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