There is an incredibly large lobby group who is fully invested in
house prices rising or at least not falling, namely homeowners.
and since most politicians at a high level usually own one or more
houses, they are fully invested in it as well.
I'm a homeowner and rising house prices are terrible for me. Property taxes have doubled, and the prospect of switching neighborhoods (as one might consider doing for work, school, or other reasons) feels off the table given the high costs involved in the transaction, since agent fees are a percentage of the sale.
But some homeowners are to blame, at the civic level, where those who are happy with the way things are reinforce the roadblocks against affordable housing. Minimum lot sizes and anti-apartment legislation dissuade the pesky low-income riff-raff from moving in.
That's a factor, but the bigger deal is that eligible homeowners ar 50% more likely to vote than eligible renters, and that doesn't even count that many renters are not event eligible to vote!
https://nlihc.org/resource/new-census-data-reveal-voter-turn...
Even if the data seems to indicate that's true, I do see this statement thrown around a lot without much granularity into the groups counted.
In your link, it's broken down into a few different groups, but in terms of renters vs owners I'm kind of less interested in proportion of people eligible to vote who fit into each broad category, and more interested in normalized categories. How many more people who didn't vote and are renters share a rental unit with someone they're not tied to long-term, or rent alone, compared to people who own alone or own in a long-term committed relationship where both people would be owners and likely to physically vote together, for example.
As in, is there as significant of difference between households of the same structure, income level, age bracket, in terms of voter turnout (a couple sharing the status of renting or sharing the status of owning). I feel like you'd be much more likely to vote if your spouse that you split expenses and responsibilities with also votes, whereas your roommate might not give a damn and it has nothing much to do with you.
Likewise if you own a 1 bedroom condo alone, does that show up as different than someone who rents a 1 bedroom condo alone?
Are there any serious objections to that line of reasoning?
There are different kinds of homeowners. There are those who are flipping houses and directly betting that the values go up, which is the crowd that you're describing. But at least in my area of the world, the majority of the anti-housing crowd is just old and is more anti-change than anything else. Even if the value of their home skyrockets even more, they won't sell and move. Their complaints are more about noise, traffic, and "quality of life" than home values.
There are strong factors around character of a neighbourhood: I think people in valuable SFHs tend to resent people in units as one example. Housing prices have typically risen without the assistance of zoning changes.
Better to not get into that mess to begin with. Strongtowns is a great resource for cities looking to be prudent financially.
In most places they are not. What would even compel you to write something like this?
Property values are regularly re-assessed according to recent sales and a % of the property value is then levied as tax.
For example, in Vancouver the residential tax rate is around 0.15% and homes average around $2 million. Where I live which is a few hundred kilometres away the residential tax rate is around 0.5% and homes average around $600k. If you do the math, for both places the average place has $3000/year in taxes due — which is totally independent of house costs.
What does make the difference is if your house is more expensive than the average house. If you have a $2million dollar house in the place with 0.5% tax rate you are paying $10000/year in taxes despite your counterpart in Vancouver with a $2million dollar house is paying $3000/year.
I get this can be different across the world, but that is generally how it works in Canada.
I think a more realistic (but depressing) goal is modest loss to inflation (so prices go up by 1-2% less then inflation).
If you read between the lines that seems to be what Canada's approach to house affordability is going to be. Their leaders are promising housing will be more "affordable" but that the goal isn't to decrease home prices.
I have not seen anything that would create a supply of equally desirable properties (compared with detached dwellings).
Western societies are naturally below replacement rate, getting back to sfh as the norm seems like the inevitable outcome without the significant efforts at the national policy level.
Massive federal investment (paid for by the entire nation but often only able to be capitalized on by white Christian nuclear families) and municipal bonds that pushed the costs of building infrastructure out decades.
>why can't we go back?
The original loans are still due and/or replacement costs for the infrastructure require new funding, at 2025 inflated prices, and civil rights and demographic changes mean that the old resistributive model can't work (not the least of which because of the outsize costs that will be incurred to maintain quality of life for the oldest Americans in the next two decades). There's probably more.
Not to say that reimagining the sfh couldn't lead to it still being viable. But 2500 sqft on an acre probably isn't tenable.
And people don’t seem to understand inflation. They expected to see real prices go down (deflation) and were upset when that did not happen.
It means the landed gentry lose, and the working class win. Unlike the status quo of the past few decades where the landed gentry make fistfuls of cash by doing 0 actual work.
Obviously housing prices going down will make some people's assets mixes worth less. That's why they fight to stop building housing. But that's true for lots of commodities and businesses too. Just because many people are invested in diamonds doesn't mean we have to ban lab grown to save diamond prices
The best solution in my perspective is to have stagnant housing prices so eventually general inflation will make housing cheaper.
(In fact, my local government is actually closing roads near new housing because "f#ck cars" is apparently a hip idea these days.)
I'm saying that developers are eager to build housing and sometimes are able to cut corners via undue influence over public officials. That leads to more housing (good), but it also erodes the quality of life for residents (bad).
It's really not that hard to understand.
I think I've heard everything now.
Nobody else should decide the balance but the residents who have semi-permanently set up their lives there. People considering where to move have no skin in the game, they can pick somewhere else if they don't like what they see or can't afford it. Developers at least have something to lose once they've set up shop, but they're still not raising families there. And by "should" I mean, I wouldn't buy a home in a place where homeowners don't have the most say. Those places do exist, and I'd only rent there temporarily.
At the state level, planning can be done for the benefit of the whole city. Entrenched groups of property owners holding inner city areas hostage won't be able to push young people to the outskirts where there is no PT, schools or facilities. Medium and high density buildings would be able to be built where they make the most sense, not just where there is the least political resistance.
Young people want to live near jobs, transport, and entertainment. But those areas are currently locked up by property owners preventing construction of appropriate housing.
So if you enabled them to buy the more desirable homes instead of merely renting, where in this are they actually benefiting from doing so?