The hottest political issue European politicians aren’t talking about
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The Continent’s housing crisis has gone from being a slow burn to a four-alarm fire — but some countries are handling it better than others.

The Continent’s housing crisis has gone from being a slow burn to a four-alarm fire — but some countries are handling it better than others.

One of Europe’s long-simmering political frustrations is suddenly boiling over.

From Lisbon to Łódź, voters are angry about the lack of affordable housing. Anti-immigrant riots broke out in Dublin last fall, fueled in part by claims that the Irish capital’s limited public housing was being given to foreigners. Meanwhile, in cities like Lisbon, Amsterdam and Milan, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to denounce the lack of affordable homes.

In a poll ahead of last week’s far-right surge in the European Parliament election, the Continent’s mayors listed housing as one of the most important issues facing their constituencies.

  • Wanderer@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    5 months ago

    You’re talking about keeping density low as a means to keep house prices low. It’s stupid.

    • dandi8@fedia.io
      12·
      5 months ago

      No, you’re claiming that that’s what I’m talking about.

      What I’m saying is that making density even higher is not the solution to the housing problem. There are other, better ways of making houses more affordable than forcing people to live elbow-to-elbow with their neighbors.

      • Wanderer@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        What are you proposing then. Shoulder to shoulder includes everything that isn’t detached.

        How would less dense housing be cheaper when you need to buy more land and land is the thing that is expensive? Never mind things like utilities, public transport, police etc.

        • dandi8@fedia.io
          1·
          5 months ago

          Some ideas could include, but are not limited to:

          • ban companies from buying housing properties
          • introduce a fairly high tax on every second (or at least third, progressively higher with each) property to deter buying up properties to rent
          • perhaps introduce another tax on properties which have been vacant for X months/years
          • introduce rent control
          • perhaps even introduce some form house price control (per square meter, tied to median wage, perhaps)
          • make the government build some housing

          You can debate how well each of these would work, but there are many ways to bring prices down without making it less pleasant to live in those houses. I’m most partial to a progressive property tax, rent control and government housing, myself.

          • Wanderer@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            You really need to look into why those things are bad ideas because they seen like good ideas until you actually more than superficially look at them.

            Especially rent control it is an awful, awful idea and leads to bad outcomes for everyone. But people refuse to learn about it and think it’s a good idea. Go look up some YouTube videos on what’s wrong with rent control. That will have comparisons to a lot of other things.

            The problem is there isn’t enough housing. Stop housing from being rented doesn’t make more housing, it will actually make less.

            The only actual good idea on that list is government building. But the issue governments have is the exact same issues as what companies have. Laws and NIMBY stop people from redeveloping areas that people live in or near. There just isn’t any more land to build on that’s available and with governments forcing population to increase and how everyone wants to live in big cities the issues gets worse and worst.

            The solution lies in building more housing, nothing else. If there isn’t enough housing literally nothing makes more housing than building more housing or converting no other solution works.

            • dandi8@fedia.io
              1·
              5 months ago

              I’m sorry, but you won’t be able to convince me that allowing a single company to own hundreds of apartments is a good idea that won’t contribute negatively to housing prices.

              • Wanderer@lemm.eeEnglish
                1·
                5 months ago

                We are on about new ones.

                If you won’t accept the most basic, basic, basic ideas about economics. Then yes congratulations you can’t be taught something. I wouldn’t be proud of that.

                • dandi8@fedia.io
                  1·
                  5 months ago

                  Ah yes, advocating for basic human dignity is now “not understanding basic ideas about economics”, and none of the SIX different solutions I provided (which I didn’t invent myself, btw) could ever work in any capacity.

                  I won’t be continuing this conversation, as it is clearly not productive.

                  • Wanderer@lemm.eeEnglish
                    1·
                    5 months ago

                    Dignity is great and all but it doesn’t make houses when there aren’t enough. That’s two different problems.