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Comment by BariumBlue | Hacker News Reader

Seems like housing again:

> Rents have surged in recent years, driven by tourism, foreign investment and a shortage of affordable housing. The cost of housing now consumes one of the largest shares of disposable income in the European Union

My impression is that where housing is expensive, there will be complaints of unaffordability (obviously), but also vice versa, that where there is unaffordability, housing always seems to be a large component (at least in "the west").

in most places basic food (rice and beans or an equivalent) is cheap. Services can usually be skimped on. Transportation can usually be flexible (new car / cheap used car / transit / bike). Housing costs seem to be relatively non-flexible though.

I wouldn't be surprised if Greece has strong NIMBY factors.

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You are right that it's due to housing but in my opinion most of unaffordability comes from immense pressure due to tourism. Housing situation is better outside the touristy areas (and Athens). If anything Greece has seen massive housebuilding up until the economic crash in the early 10s. I remember block of flats appearing left and right in most major cities in a span of months. They still do but in a lot of cases they are almost exclusively short-term lets (again especially in tourist hubs). Why let a flat for €500 monthly when you can charge €150 per night? It's maddening.

> Why let a flat for €500 monthly when you can charge €150 per night?

Isn't a tax the obvious solution here?

It's wild how much housing is a big issue but local government with direct control, choose to do nothing. I know of a rural area where folks are upset about housing prices, there's no lack of space, they just do not zone more housing. They simply don't do it ... and the locals are happy to blame outsiders and seemingly wallow rather than really address it.

Granted it's not all zoning, new houses won't be super cheap, but it's a start.

>I wouldn't be surprised if Greece has strong NIMBY factors.

No doubt. You see it in tourism economies the world over.

Cheap services + cultural/historical novelty + nice climate make tourism highly viable -> tourism becomes outsized part of economy -> those enriched by peddling tourism write the rules to their benefit -> it becomes all but illegal to develop any other industry, build housing, etc, etc because all this activity winds up punitively regulated lest someone do something that scared away the tourists.

Why are prices up even though population is down over the past ten years? Did everybody decide to move to the city or something?

Somehow the economic indicators feel the same as looking at crypto.

> Between 2009 and the trough of the bailout years in 2016, average household wealth fell by roughly 35%

35% of the land didn't disappear and I'm guessing 35% of the buildings didn't disappear... So what changed was the measurements... GDP values seem even shadier.

    I wouldn't be surprised if Greece has strong NIMBY factors.

It's one of the oldest civilizations in existence. Combine the trend of NIMBYism building up over time, with most every city being an archeological site, and one of the least stable economies in Europe, and you aren't getting much housing investment.

> (at least in "the west").

It is the same in the east - it is either housing, or housing related tax.

The article gives a dozen reasons why people in Greece feel poor. Housing is just one of them. A big one, perhaps, but there are many others in the article.

It's interesting that housing is the one that all the HN commenters pick out to comment on. It's probably the most universal complaint, the one that's easiest to sympathize with from halfway around the world.

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