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Comment by ameminator | Hacker News Reader

There are many likely reasons for the explosion in housing prices - but we can't pretend that immigration isn't one of them. A solution will likely need to be multi-factored, but reducing demand by reducing immigration will probably have to be part of that solution. To ignore that is to limit how effective your measures in reducing the cost of housing can be.

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Or we could have seen this coming a mile away and built more houses and reduced the idiocy of city zoning.

But yeah it’s the immigrants fault. Lets reduce immigration while we are facing a labor shortage.

Well, it's not the immigrants' fault - it's the government's fault. At the end of the day, this confluence of circumstances is its responsibility. The combination of low interest rates, no expansive public transport projects, no action on money-laundering, hurdles in supply (as you mentioned) - and yes, expansive immigration policies (Canada had the highest population growth in the G7, mostly due to immigration [0]).

The truth is, this problem has been growing for many years and public servants have allowed the issue to grow beyond any control (and actually profiting off it in some cases). Now, the rest of the population will suffer and it's become a hard problem to solve.

Finally, yes we have a labor shortage - but it may actually be a labor correction. Wages have been stagnant for years and inflation is running wild. Wages need to rise to catch up - artificially depressing wages with immigration is a recipe for disaster.

[0] https://www.cicnews.com/2022/02/canada-fastest-growing-count...

Here where I live, the people who show up at hearings to stop homes from being built are all wealthy-ish local people. Not immigrants, not some faceless government, not BlackRock, but our neighbors.

The point is that this is only one part of the problem. "Wealthy-ish local people" protesting a condo development is not enough to explain this absolute explosion in home prices.

The government may be faceless, but there are lots of things that could have been done - including more "development-friendly" practices. However, there's always a cost - do you sacrifice environmental protections? Democratic government principles?

You can't just blame whatever out-group you dislike at the moment. If those neighbors you described vanished as of 5 years ago, the prices of houses would have risen just the same.

The reason that I blame government is because they explicitly had a responsibility to protect society from this. Officials have either neglected or outright contravened this responsibility.

In the United States, by and large, zoning regulations are local, so they're set at the city level. Which makes it quite difficult to get rid of bad land use regulations that cause all kinds of problems. At a certain point, in a place like, say, Boulder, Colorado, it turns into a vicious circle: the only people who can afford to live there are wealthy boomer NIMBY types who will vote down anything to help housing affordability. For instance in that city it's illegal for more than 3 unrelated people to live in the same home. Local activists tried to get it overturned via an initiative, and it was voted down.

The US is a bit of a different animal (although it's comparable to Canada, which is what the original article discusses). To my understanding, there are no equivalent "town halls" that can block development - although it does seem to vary by province and municipality.

Also, immigrants to Canada usually move to one of its three main metro areas - Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, which, coincidentally, have also seen the highest amount of housing increases.

Other places, like Calgary or Winnipeg, have not had housing explode in the same way (although prices have risen in smaller amounts there as well).

Keep in mind, the original article is focusing on Canadian housing, which, while complex, may be even simpler than the American model.

I have a close family member who works in municipal planning, and it's exactly what you describe.

Wealthy-ish, semiretired older local people, or non-locals with vacation property who do everything they can to shut down any kind of housing project. Their methods include suing the town at great expense to the taxpayers and floating their own and sympathetic friends into town council.

It's extremely frustrating when a really well designed development that takes a year and millions to craft can get shut down in a single meeting by a very loud, adamant and group of busybodies.

> Their methods include suing the town at great expense to the taxpayers and floating their own and sympathetic friends into town council.

Those very same people are the taxpayers. They have and should have the right to represent their interests in a court of law. If the town ends up being a victim of it, so be it.

Actually funny you should mention that because one of them actually is not a taxpayer in the municipality that she sued (and lost). So no, they are not all taxpayers, but some are, it is true.

Yes, of course they have this right, I don't dispute that. But when a single case like this eats up literally 10% of a small town's yearly budget, and the same small group of people repeatedly behave in this way, I also have the right to call them assholes.

The level of immigration is over 1%. Pretending people are just blaming foreigners misses the reality.

What do you mean by the level of immigration is over 1%? (Genuine question) and why does that matter?

Adding 500,000 new people a year where the majority settle in one or two cities and not building housing matters. Blaming the lack of housing on foreign buyers is misleading.

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