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Comment by holoduke | Hacker News Reader

Same here in the Netherlands. I currently rent a 130m3 house for 2500 euros. 500 energy. 2500 euros daycare (4 kids). I think I spend around 6000, 7000 euros after taxes on fixed costs. I wont complain. My life is good, but for most peope here impossible to pay those amounts. Result is that lots of my friends with "normal" jobs end up living in small apartments far outside the cities or even move to a completely different part of the country. Its very hard now to start a life now. Unless you make a shitton of money. Everything became so expensive these days. Its unsustainable imho.

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I was just explaining this to my mom today. Our generation has a lot of luxuries cheaper but also a lot higher fixed costs (housing, education, childcare, healthcare, etc). Even adjusting for inflation my college and rent were a few times what she paid when she was in her 20s so my experience is that people now who are doing well are doing really well but people who are struggling are really struggling.

Why is this happening everywhere right now? On Reddit I see this in so many places (US, UK, Europe, not sure about Asia)

Too few houses, too many landlords (commercial and "investment properties")

Nah, there's more than enough housing for everybody; quite obvious by the observable fact that people have a roof over their heads, lol.

The value of currency went down significantly, i.e. actual inflation is massive. Salaries didn't go up as much, not even close, and here we are.

>inb4 ...

I recall a thread from someone from South America in the Slovenia subreddit, where they said they wanted to move to Europe because it's impossible to afford a home where they currently live. The response was basically "yeah, welcome to the club pal".

It's definitely a global issue, rising population mixed with late stage capitalism.

Is this late stage capitalism in the room with us now?

It owns the room.

Sorry but a private equity firm has just bought the room and they're asking all of us to leave so that they can turn it into a car wash.

It's always in the room with us. And outside the room as well.

In brief, too many USD printed since 2008 (especially the Covid money printer), that percolated into certain jobs/professions – and lead to highly inflated asset prices.

These things are worth what they always were, FIAT currencies have lost value.

Situation in Europe is often reported in misleading ways. Everybody calls it "housing crisis" - but we do not have millions of homeless roaming the street. It is actually a "moving crisis" - people want to move to nicer places but can't afford it. I.e. here in Germany, we have close to 1M perfectly habitable empty flats/houses - but they are in rural areas or the countryside. Indeed there is high demand for urban areas and cities, at the same time rural villages struggle to find and retain their population because everybody (especially younger people) move to the city. You might have heard of those italian villages offering houses for 1€, just to attract families and keep those villages alive.

So, there is an urban housing crisis, or housing crisis for people that need to live near jobs or other people then?

"Need to live near jobs" is a good point. People forget how mobile our society has become compared to our grand-parents generation. Nowadays you have the possibility to get your "dream job" and move for it wherever you want. Your grand-parents most likely took the first best job and career available in the area, not thinking about "self fulfilment" in their careers. In a lot of cases you do not need to move to have a job, but we rather want to be a software engineer in a Hotshot Company in a "culture rich city" rather than a farmer in your rural home town.

There are many cheap vacant dwellings in fly-over states and backwater towns in the US as well.

That's because a house 100km away from the nearest job is not cheap. Even rural area houses are very expensive compared to what jobs in those rural areas pay.

This makes them even more of a trap. The rents will go up. And yet, even more jobs will leave those places. And then you haven't saved up, because the amounts were tiny

You mean "job that you want or like". If you make it "any job that pays a roof and food on the table" you will hardly have to travel 100km.

Those jobs are a trap. If you take them you cannot save up to move up to something better. And then you're better off on social support in the city.

If you can't get a job in arschfick nowhere then it doesn't matter there are a million houses there, because you can't afford them because you need a job for that. Never mind people have family, friends, children (with friends, school, etc.) and things like that.

So no, it's not a matter of "nicer places".

Canada has had a "housing crisis" for 15 years now. The main campaigning ground of the opposition are issues with housing.

The strange thing is that while I definitely see it happening in many places around the world, not all the causes are the same. I think @moralestapia has it right: massive inflation is likely a root cause.

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