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Comment by newyankee | Hacker News Reader

Literally countries with so much surplus land: Canada, Australia etc. have housing crisis where most of the top 10-20% of the population has become speculators in housing and openly NIMBY with no interest in supply side solutions unless forced down.

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The problem we've got is that 10-20% of the population are speculating while another 50% of the population have almost their entire net worth stuffed into their family home. We're finding it difficult to rein in the top without ruining the middle too.

there are plenty of examples of the top getting reined in, and if people have their wealth in their house then don't take their houses.

this isn't a complicated problem, and it's not difficult to build guillotines

If there’s surplus land, why build something unwanted in someone’s backyard? I’m a suburban NIMBY homeowner and I feel like you’re actually making my argument without realizing it. I’m all for building new houses on unused land. Can you please just do it without ruining my neighborhood? Build nice new neighborhoods and make them as dense as you’d like, but don’t try to force density on older, established neighborhoods that can’t support it.

The empty land is not very valuable. Suburban homeowners are sitting on relatively valuable land, and it's valuable because of access to jobs and services.

In my personal experience, adding density to established neighborhoods improves those neighborhoods' character. Sometimes it gets those afraid of change to move out, improving it even more.

I'm actually curious - have you spent time in cities like Bern or Bilbao? I think urbanism's been a hard sell in the US because we don't really have a lot of great examples of it - New York's maybe the closest we've got to a European style city, but that's only in certain places and it's still a bit much. I was in Europe last year and I was surprised how calm some of the cities were - green, walkable, a lot of nice cafes and parks, good public transit, and it never really felt overwhelming the way that, say, Chicago or LA does. I grew up in the suburbs, and I felt like some of the smaller European cities delivered the suburban sales pitch better than a lot of places I've been in the US.

(Don't take this as an attack or critique - genuine curiosity.)

most of the surplus land is marginally habitable, and costs increase dramatically when you get rural.

plus "land" doesn't mean anything if you're not near the people and things you want do to, places to work, etc.

do you want to do a 1.5 hour commute and hustle to live around Toronto, or do you want to live in Outer Nowhere, Manitoba, population 400, and where it regularly gets to -40C?

Rentseeking is the super-capitalism in the room.

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