This is corruption.
There is a lot wrong with this place (and every place I have lived by the way; nothing is perfect obviously), but getting rich folks in is not it. In my bar the American immigrants, who are currently the affluent gentrifiers here, spend vast amounts every day on food & drink, 365 days of the year, vs locals who have 1 coffee, if that, per week. I guess you know what's wrong when you lose it.
My wife and I have been thinking about trying to leave America for the last few years but it’s objectively difficult to find a place that’s conducive to moving. How do most people you interact with do it? Also, why are you on HackerNews of all places?
I'm not sure I would recommend it to single guys unless sex tourism is your thing. Although I suspect it is somewhat dependent on location.
I went on a working holiday there (tourist visa - programming for my NZ company) as an ignorant guy for a month. It was hard to evade the sex workers approaching you. And I made an innocent mistake and booked a Best Western hotel when I arrived and the hotel happened to be in a dodgy sexwork area. Fascinating given I'm a bit naive, but I wouldn't recommend it except for the midget boxers. Later I met an Australian guy at a bar and he couldn't stop raving about how good a time he had at one of the towns near the American base.
I really enjoyed the Philippines and the people, but the sex tourism wasn't appealing to me.
I'd be happy to give you some insights, but I'm not sure what you mean by "conducive to moving"; what sort of issues or difficulties are you having?
I live in Portugal and love it; been here 3 years in a small town up North. Everyone has been lovely and we made friends from day 1. The Portuguese people are incredibly kind and warm.
I don't regret leaving the USA and never have, it is a better fit for me in Europe, my stress level is way down, and I'm happier than I have been in years. Problems are not the same everywhere and they are not at the same intensity. Hell, I have lived enough places in the USA to know that not everywhere in the USA has the same degree of issues.
Just try it, you're not obligated to stay somewhere forever and honestly the adventure for some people is in of itself worthwhile.
I'm not american. I spent just over half my life outside the US. There are 10's of millions of us.
Even your point 2 restates it.
It's not based on any factual information. The united states has the most people on planet earth who have lived somewhere else but chose here, despite the enormous cost and effort involved to get here.
It's fine for someone to have the opinion that it's not a great place. But the idea that anyone who thinks the us is the best place to live thinks that based on ignorance is stupid.
Chill out
Listen, not everyone likes the same thing, this is ok! People should do like you did and try another place if they don't like where they grew up! This is not a crazy idea! There would be no immigration to the USA or anywhere if everyone listened to people saying "don't do it, everywhere has problems".
I wasn't saying anyone that likes the US is stupid, and fwiw I'm actually a fat, stupid white Texan (I still vote in the elections there).
Final nitpick, people REALLY do say all the time "the grass is always greener on the other side" when you try to move jobs or move states or cities, and it is something I just don't experience at all where I live today, and I really don't miss this particular very american perspective.
Anyway, have a good night buddy.
If I was living in the US, given my job, I’d likely be living in SF, Seattle or NYC (the suburbs are not for me at the best of times, and _American_ suburbs in particular are just very unattractive). These are very expensive cities (Seattle somewhat less so), and cost of living would soak up a lot of the salary difference. And while they’re interesting to visit, I’m not sure how pleasant they’d be to actually live in long-term.
I value more peace and quiet than money in the economy. We dont need that kind of trouble.
It's what makes Portugal a good place to live if you have money. It is like a poor Sweden. Not a poor NYC.
Having said that, I agree that tourism and the golden visa have completely screwed up the housing market and that needs some fixing. But the fix should come with salaries catching up with the housing bubble and Portugal finally being able to compete H2H with the rest of Europe in terms of attracting talent
What if the city had tried to permit 1 new housing start per new job?
In Portugal what if every tech immigrant builds a house? Every unit of increased demand comes with a unit of increased supply. Theoretically that should flood the housing market with exactly as many new units as there are new immigrants.
When we frame it as “driving up housing prices” we miss the simple idea of supply and demand. If supply always equals demand housing should stabilize.
Where you sit on the 'available income for housing' curve determines the location and quality of the house/apartment/tent you live in. If lots of people with higher incomes appear, then you get moved down accordingly. If lots of tourists with higher propensity to spend on temporary accommodation appear, you get moved down accordingly. If lots of 'funny money' turns up looking for a place to be parked, you get moved down accordingly.
Where people get distressed if is the location and quality that they can afford is not reasonable to them (either actually or by their perception).
Building high quality well-located homes may help (if that is even possible), as everyone can 'move up' to the next rung on the quality/location ladder. However you may get induced demand, as the slight drop in prices brings more high earners/tourists/funny-money, in which case normal earners will not see the benefit.
Alternatively, restricting high-earners/tourists/funny-money will move normal earners up the ladder, without having to lay a single brick. However there may be some economic downsides to that, depending on what exactly is proposed.
For example banning AirBnB would likely be a large net positive to most European cities.
Many well-off South Americans move or retire in Portugal too, because of climate and safety.
I guess it adds up. I can see a similar pattern in Brazil: nicer seaside towns are getting more expensive as the population ages and retirees search for nicer places to live.
For example, I did a quick google search, and between 2012 to 2023 12,497 golden visas were granted in Portugal.
It is highly unlikely that 12,000 families coming to Portugal is causing this? Right? Or what am I missing here?
It seems like a "blame the immigrant" type thing when in fact it is a failure to build enough housing like almost every country except Austria and Singapore.
Do you know what the D7 visa numbers are? Brazilian immigrants are also coming on other types of visas. One of my wife's doctors moved from Brazil and is one of the best rehab doctors we've ever had.
What makes you say Austria builds enough housing? Have you looked at buying property prices in Austria? Way too high for the average income.
Not much use if a policy only applies to a subset of the population of the capital city, and can't scale to the whole country so the whole populaiton can benefit from it, leaving >75% of the population out for themselves.
Mostly when we talk about housing, we are talking about cities, since that is where economic opportunity is. So studying Singapore and Vienna makes sense and are models to look at replicating in other cities.
No reason to ignore a possible solution because a city level solution doesn't work in rural Austria... or even "less dense urban austria".
I am not an expert, but it is clear Vienna and Singapore have some models that are working when the rest of the cities in the developed world are struggling.
You're intentionally omitting several other large economically strong cities within Austria that do not have the Vienna housing model adopted and are instead like the rest of the world, with a housing model based around private renting and private ownership instead of the large public housing model. Why is that?
And why aren't other cities in the world that are struggling trying to replciate Vienna's model if it's so good and so easy? /rethorical question
Think about how and when the Vienese housing model started, and let it sink in on why it most likely it's adoption wouldn't work in the world of today in a democratic country with a capitlistic economy based on private property ownership.
Will Austrians also be able to afford to pay the market rent adjusted for inflation on their measley pensions in the future?
>properties-for-sale market that is very hard to afford for regular people
Isn't that a huge problem? I feel like being able to afford your oiwn proerty reduces the chances of old age poverty verus always being a rentoid for life.
It's not a problem FOR THEM, right NOW, probaly because they have good paying jobs and/or also qualify for Vienna social housing, aka survivorhsip bias, but the rest of Austria doesn't have Vienna's social housing, and the private rental market is not that great as you imagine suffering from siliar issues as the rest of Europe.
Also, you won't be able to afford to rent your hole life in retirement, as private market rents are indexed yearly to inflation, meaning you're vulnerable to old age poverty, something less likely to happen if you own your own property outrighht by then, which is almost impossible in Austria.
Why are you choosing to ignore the for-sale property market, which IMHO is important for wealth and financial stability than being at the mercy of the rental market? The rental market is not on your side, it won't protect you.
I'm in the US. In the US, you really "have to" buy for the reasons that you enumerate. That doesn't seem to be the case in Vienna.
Becase the discussion was about Austria, not Vienna. Vienna != Austria just how Washington != the US. Austria is much bigger than Vienna. If Vienna's housing policy was such a stellar idea, why wasn't it applied nation wide so everyone can benefit from it?
>many residents in Vienna report being very satisfied with social housing
If you get social housing I'm sure you'll be satisfied, same how getting free stuff paid for by others, makes everyone satisfied. What about those that don't get social housing being stuck in the private rental market with no hopes of ownign anything, basically condemmed to old age poverty but still pay taxes just as those getting social housing? Tough shit for them?
If you are older than 30 and earn enough to be disqualified from social housing, you should have enough equity to satisfy any property loan already.
On a dev salary it's more than possible to buy your own home, especially if you take advantage of the govt. loans capped to sub 1% rates (Wohnbauförderung) or one-time support checks (Carinthian Häuslbauerbonus or Tyrolean equivalent). The options here differ a lot state by state.
Alternative would be a ~100k€ small apartment which can be sensibly rented out for the time being. Austria has a required equity ratio on real estate loans of 20% - this can easily be achieved.
Point being: The scenario you're describing is trivially avoidable these days.
Even if more housing were built, the job market was never really that good in Portugal, compared to central Europe.
I wouldn't blame immigrants, but I would blame the government for not doing enough for young Portuguese.
The average age in Portugal is quite high; just as with Italy maybe it is difficult to find dinamicity within an aging population. It could even be that this is the best option possible.