this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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There's simple answers, but no one wants to hear them because they're politically complicated:
Housing, like healthcare, is a market failure, and our governments are still looking for market-based solutions which won't work as long as the market can make money off the problem's continued existence.
The "no simple answer" part gets worse every day, because the longer governments wait to intervene, the more of our economy gets tied to real estate. This could have been fixed in 2000 without too much pain, but now you'd be tanking the only retirement savings many Boomers and elder Xers have, so actions need to be gradual: a gradual clamp-down on investment, and a gradual ramp-up of direct building of housing.
Of course, what we're going to do is "more nothing" because even gradual moves will be fought tooth and nail by the rich. So they kick it down the curb another four years every time.
Those are answers that don't factor in immigration at all. And are still deceptively complicated.
Housing is an investment, just as much as the foundry that makes the front doorknob. Both are critical to our standard of living, but both also cost a lot of money to put in place. Somebody will have to pay to build more. That could be the government, like you're saying, or it could be developers who are looking to cache in on the high prices and therefor bring them down. Which one should do it is complicated.
Not intractable, though.