That's not just the case for housing, but a whole range of regulations, many of which only still exist because removing them will lead to voters becoming upset about short-term changes, even though it may benefit the economy in the long run.
That's not just the case for housing, but a whole range of regulations, many of which only still exist because removing them will lead to voters becoming upset about short-term changes, even though it may benefit the economy in the long run.
I suspect two things. One is that NIMBYs are often more well-off and can inflict more pain on the politician who would oppose them than would be the gain from the pro-density crowd support. Another, sadder, is that enough of those who complain about housing not being affordable would like to become NIMBYs themselves, but can't yet afford that.
Because wealth predicts propensity to vote.
(Also, to the extent decisions are made locally, the people that would live in area but are excluded by housing affordability don’t get a vote. In fact, often a major reasons for the NIMBY policies isn't financial, but keeping the outsiders outside. For instance, when you've got a nice segregated community created by overtly racist policies that you are no longer allowed to employ, the main way to slow the erosion of what you worked so hard to achieve is to make it hard for new people to move in.)
And to elaborate on this, real estate owners already have "skin in the game." They fully understand the negative impact of a policy that is obviously meant to reduce the value of their investment and vote/lobby against it.
For the non-real-estate owners, it's way less obvious why they should mobilize or care. It's tough to get terribly excited about economic policy that is intended to gradually improve the housing problem by making it less attractive for the capital class to horde their assets forever. These effects are longer term and nebulous/uncertain for somebody who needs somewhere to live NOW.
Yes, we might move to smaller homes in much denser housing models to increase housing. With that perspective, we can just build glorified chicken coops for humans too, however no one would like to live that cramped.
Optimization for economic indicators tend to erode the things humans enjoy. High quality goods? Too expensive to produce and lasts too long to be economically viable. Low-density neighborhoods with nice, open spaces? Inefficient land use, long commutes, etc. In return, when a person wants to enjoy life, it becomes impossible, because enjoyment becomes economically not optimal (or viable).
The current system is a trade-off between comfort and economic indicators. There can be other ways, I think. Maybe increasing working from home to reduce commute where possible, moving work to neighborhoods instead of moving people to work, etc.
I do not know dynamics of USA very well in this regard, but it looks like this situation is the result of "money first" philosophy (i.e. strong capitalism), instead of being human first.
When people see people as "expendable workforce", they can normalize "putting" people into glorified chicken coops.
I think that's a false dichotomy. Free markets typically produce higher-quality goods and services than non-free markets because quality is part of the dimensions among which firms compete. Throughout history, quality of goods in all kinds of areas have gone up when government restrictions were loosened and competition was allowed.
Preventing a free market in housing benefits exactly one group: Those who are lucky/rich to already have such a nice big house.
What I'm telling is, when I buy the same thing with x% of my income, in two different time frames, the latter item is of inferior quality, even if it's the same brand and model. This is because everything is optimized for economic turnover now.
The previous dishwasher we had never seen a wrench in 20 years, it's only serviced to changed a brittle hose after two decades. Current one's water pump/heater/dryer unit is changed after ~10 years. Again, it's a long time, but its life span is shorter. Let's see how long this (original) replacement will last.
The paper quality of the notebooks I get (yes, I write a lot) is always getting lower, despite price is going up. A good quality notebook is now more expensive than a tome of high quality printer paper.
Higher end electronic devices (or goods in general) get more expensive in terms of relative income every year, and they almost keep the same quality of their previous selves. Optimization means less parts, less repairability, shorter life spans and more profits.
Free market optimizes for maximum money movement (pressure), maximum profits for minimum costs. The goods become inevitably better (because the baseline improves inevitably), but slower than it should be. This improvement is due to integrated parts which has to be above a certain quality threshold to even work.
I remember reading a comment about textile production:
> Older textiles were much more durable because older machines were not able to lower quality this much. Now we can, so we do.
I fear that when there's a lack of better options and the alternative is being homeless, people will indeed very much live like that.
For a sobering view of just how bad things are in certain parts of the world, here's a video about the apartments in Hong Kong: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Qj7KtWhGrAE
And that affects "just" a few hundred thousand people. I'd say it's very dystopian regardless.
I know. "glorified chicken coops" is an implicit reference to these apartments. It's a very dystopian direction, and we're heading towards it, yes.
If you let brute-force raw capitalism run roughshod I would build a japanese style capsule megavault and trick a bunch of college kids into thinking it's the cool thing, selling them each 100% ownership of their personal pod for $X. I could probably buy a shitty old warehouse and fill it with these capsules and you could own your own fucking capsule in a coop for maybe ten grand and aside from whatever services your coop votes to buy you wouldn't owe jack to a landlord.
Could HN pull this off and seed such a vault? Once there is one successful vault, people will copy it and the housing crisis could be a thing of the past.
Where would be a good place to start such a vault?
I've pretty much resigned myself my game plan is to suck all the capital I can out of the united states and then play the same game somewhere else where I can be the big bad foreign investor buying housing.
This is absolutely beautiful showcase of the core issue here, and HN is definitely not above it - if you own, you are happy to see your (potentially only ever) investment to gradually rise in price (or often more like matching inflation) and all is good within limits of reality. You don't care about some social justice or poor people yelling.
If you are on the other side, then all is bad, social injustice, we should rehaul whole system because owning my fucking big house is a basic human right given by some Geneva convention (writing this from same Geneva right now). There is no middle ground apparently.
Mankind is selfish, simple as that, and absolutely nobody is above that, its just a basic human trait in same way as having 2 hands.
I've done few (happy to say now) rather small investments in stuff like stocks, crypto etc. They all bombed in medium term although were stellar short term, crypto probably long term. No way I am ever pouring money into that casino again, and most people don't even have my level of knowledge of those topics. Housing is something most people reasonably grok, can understand + and -, cashflows and maintenance required, etc. Plus you can actually live there. You would have to make owning properties in general absolutely horrible for people to not invest in it, if they can. Ie here in Switzerland there are various punishments for owning, ie imputed tax on potential rent even for your primary residence, and people still buy whatever is available.
And with earth population growing higher and higher, while everybody wants to live in the rich cities or very close to them, the policies would have to be very draconical to reverse the trend. Now which politician, regardless of country, would ever do that to their voters.
Just like racism can be systematic, anti-competitism can also be systematic and illegal.