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Comment by bugglebeetle | Hacker News Reader

You add more properties by forcing sale of those owned for investment purposes to the state and operating them on a cost-recovery basis. Simultaneously, abolish most forms of zoning and have the state engage in home building directly.

Landlordism, as Adam Smith himself identified, is a destructive, parasitic drag on economies that should be minimized at all costs. Otherwise, you end up with what we have now, Capital owners chasing after unproductive returns by limiting construction, bribing politicians, and generally making everyone else poorer and more miserable.

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A lot of the housing is owned by the pension funds. Effectively, young people paying rent is how the old people eat and pay their rent. If you take it away, old people will starve and won't be able to pay their rent.

Any other suggestions? Remember this is Switzerland, so you can't do anything the population doesn't actually want otherwise they'll vote it out.

I doubt that the state will be more efficient in building houses than private enterprises can if allowed to do so. If they are not being built and added on marked, the effective price will only crawl up.

In case if Zurich, I imagine that supply is limited due to its geography as well, and of course by wanting to preserve the quality of life.

If the Swiss can build train tunnels through mountains on schedule, I’m fairly certain they can build some more apartments in Zurich.

Private companies build the train tunnels.

Not really. Most have been built by subsidiaries of Swiss Federal Railways, which is a state-owned enterprise with extra steps.

> I doubt that the state will be more efficient in building houses than private enterprises can if allowed to do so

Depends. If the profit is in more expensive housing, than private enterprise will bias towards that and ergo be less efficient at building lower-margin "affordable" housing.

Ideally, in a perfect frictionless economy populated by spherical cows, yes, private enterprise will more efficiently allocate across the entire spectrum of market needs -- so in principle, I'm agreeing with you.

But spherical cows make lousy roommates.

> forcing sale of those owned for investment purposes

How?

Expropriation or nationalization is de facto impossible in a developed democracy in 2023.

Any proposal as such will be bogged down in courts for a decade, and the politicians who proposed it will have been voted out of office by the 60-70% of the population that owns some kind of property.

There are a number of ways to do this without nationalization, e.g. the imposition of onerous taxes on investment properties, rental income, or real estate speculation, coupled with creation of state-housing funds to purchase properties that are now not worth it to own. If you do this while simultaneously engaging in widespread state construction of public housing, increase supply will also make investment ownership unattractive and force sales.

> imposition of onerous taxes on investment properties, rental income, or real estate speculation

How? This is vague.

> creation of state-housing funds

How? Who holds the liability and underwrites this?

> widespread state construction of public housing

How? Is there even a trained construction workforce anymore? In the US at least this no longer exists after 2008 [0]

I'm not trying to be dismissive btw. I used to work in the policy space and there are organizational and liability issues that acted as a blocker against a number of the stuff you mentioned.

[0] - https://www.axios.com/2023/02/10/construction-help-wanted

They should give a Russian developer like PIK or LSR a blanket licence to build scores after scores of 25 floor buildings with 20-30 sq.m. units until they plead for mercy.

These will also fly the workforce in from Central Asia.

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