So there’s a ton of countries that I’ve heard have had truly unaffordable housing for decades, like:
- The UK
- Ireland
- The Netherlands
And I’ve heard of a ton of countries where the cost of houses was until recently quite affordable where it’s also started getting worse:
- Germany
- Poland
- Czechia
- Hungary
- The US
- Australia
- Canada
- And I’m sure plenty others
- It seems to be a pan-Western bloc thing. Is the cause in all these countries the same?
- We’ve heard of success stories in cities like Vienna where much of the housing stock is municipally owned – but those cities have had it that way for decades. Would their system alleviate the current crisis if established in the aforementioned countries?
- What specific policies should I be demanding of our politicians to make housing affordable again? Is there any silver bullet? Has any country demonstrably managed to reverse this crisis yet?
Massachusetts has a regional transit system, and just used that to mandate transit oriented development for all towns and cities served. It requires they zone higher density housing “as of right” within half a mile of transit. I have high hopes for that, but it will take decades and we’re starting at such a high cost of living.
However we also have the problem of a stagnant population and very little room for new development. It’s infill and replacement housing so will be even slower
Good to hear about any moves in the right direction anywhere.
I think money should be invested into investigating ways to retrofit the current urban sprawl neigborhoods to make them higher density.
The problem is everything with buildings is slow. Who can afford to replace functional buildings, and buildings remain useful for decades or more? There’s only so much you can do with infill. The only other option I can think of is to change zoning radically enough that it becomes profitable to bulldoze functional buildings. Of course that has additional environmental costs but over time should be fine
I’m personally not a fan of higher density buildings by themselves. That’s just a recipe for annoying people enough that you hope they demand better before they give up and move away. Higher density buildings needs to have some thought put into walkability, personal mobility, and transit