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Comment by atlantic | Hacker News Reader

That's true. The buyers of real estate on a large scale are often transnational investment funds. And they sometimes sit on empty properties for decades, waiting for them to accrue value. Some kind of regulation is certainly required. Or higher taxation of second homes. But squatting contributes nothing to solving this problem. It just promotes anarchy.

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For every buyer there is a seller. Are we to understand that the sellers are being forced to sell, and aren’t being paid? Because otherwise it sounds awfully like foreign capital is flowing into the economy, which is hard to describe as a disaster.

You know, sometimes things look good on a macro scale, but not at the personal level. Both perspectives need to be considered.

I live in southern Europe. If I look out of my window, the tall buildings in front are about 80% shuttered all year round. At the same time, there is an acute shortage of housing in this area. Many families who have been here for generations are moving out, because real estate prices are too high, for both renting and buying.

I can't help feeling something is very wrong, despite the abundance of foreign capital. What do you think?

I also live in Southern Europe - around us, there are literally hundreds of perfectly habitable houses for less than €50,000. I’m about two hours away from Porto and Madrid, there’s gigabit fibre in the village, and the quality of life is fantastic. We have a real community, still.

The problem, as ever, is uneven distribution - both of capital and population.

I see this as a problem which will solve itself in fairly short order - as remote work becomes more common, and then as AI devours entire categories of jobs and UBI becomes an inevitability, people will start to want to move out of the ridiculously overpriced magnet cities, and into the villages and towns our parents deserted.

> But squatting contributes nothing to solving this problem.

Hang on, it actually does solve the housing problem by one important metric: an empty house has someone living in it now. I understand there are other metrics (cost to the owner) but it does do something to solve part of the problem, and I'd argue that the more a property is used as an invesment vehicle (sitting there collecting dust) the more it solves the problem. If someone is buying a house to fix it up and live in it as a primary residence, then squatters can fuck right off. But if I bought my sixth home and make my yearly visit to it and notice it has occupants, they aren't the assholes here. I am.

Your metrics are wrong. The measure is not so much how many houses are occupied, as how many houses are occupied by local working people (as opposed to tourists / hippies / anarchists).

My metrics aren't wrong. You just don't agree with them. That's fine.

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