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?
I mean there are a ton of efficiencies to be gained with using communal resources.
Why can’t a bunch of people share a park rather than needing their own back yard?
Not saying it shouldn’t be an option, but the American obsession with detached housing at the cost of higher density housing is a major contributor to insane housing costs.
The main thing is that it greatly limits creative types and entrepreneurship at a grass roots level. I would have a lot more shop tools and mess around a whole lot more if I just had more space than this tiny house I live in, but the location here I’d awesome. Without a back yard and some safe space I can’t do metal casting. I don’t have room in a 1 car garage for a smallish mill and lathe. I would absolutely use old aluminum wheels and heads from the auto recyclers to cast and machine my own stuff if I had the space. There is a decent chance that that kind of crafting leads to starting a new business.
As someone that has started a business twice. Never start a business cold. You do something for awhile on the side and once you are turning down work regularly, only then do you look into quitting a day job to do your own thing. Eliminating space eliminates most of people’s opportunities to innovate. Community spaces make cleanup and large projects a management nightmare and take much longer because you must clean up everything not to mention transportation and logistics.
Not everyone is creative or capable, and that is fine except that, if space is made into a luxury, escaping poverty with intelligence and persistence becomes considerably more impossible than it already is.
Sure, but apartments at 1000 square feet shouldn’t be unaffordable in north American cities, but they are.