Golden Visa Programs, Once a Boon, Lose Their Luster

nytimes.com

3 pointsRestlessMind2 comments

Typically when housing shortages are discussed in the context of USA, people place blame on NIBMYs and decentralized power structures which give local jurisdictions a lot of power to stall new housing.

What prevents European countries (Spain, Portugal, Greece discussed in tfa), which are supposed to be centralized and are famous for dense housing, from building more housing units? Curious to know the bottlenecks in European contexts.

At least in Spain, there's a lot of local control by city hall on zoning. A lot of people assume that any large development that comes up only did so because of backroom deals, so they oppose it blindly. And that translates to who they elect. So there's less micro-control than in the US, but it still ends up with similar effects. Nowadays, the boogeyman seems to be AirBnB and similar.

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