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I feel like North America could fix its housing issue by simply abolishing the single family housing zones
No. Every American should be able to have 40 acres and a mule.
What do you mean, that’s more than 5x the total acreage of the US? This is a minor problem, we’ll just make more land or steal some more from the Indians.
What are your thoughts on a platform city like the one in Final Fantasy 7?
they could fix the housing crisis by regulating the market.
They could also fix it by deregulating the market.
They could also fix it by doing basically random changes to the law, because the law currently is perpetuating the crisis.
Fuck it. Put a pen on the jaw of a goat eating grass, and write the result into law. I think we actually have a shot at improvement this way.
De-regulation in general has been an unmitigated disaster.
Yeah, I'm absolutely not saying deregulation is a good idea, just like goat-law. I can see how my comment read though, rewrote a bit to make the cynical undertone a bit more obvious.
I was only pointing out that the current, specific set of laws, is keeping this problem a reality. That it's not a particularly natural situation to be in.
My apologies, downvote revoked. I mis-read your post.
"deregulation" detected. ready the down votes. /s
Seriously though, zoning laws are a big reason why we have the current housing crisis. If given the opportunity, someone or some business will build high density housing. But you can't with he current implementation of zoning laws. Without that barrier, you would see a lot more high density building projects
Still we do need zoning laws. I don't think anyone wants a factory or a garbage dump in their back yard. Used correctly zoning also helps limit sprawl.
I think there's a blind spot on the left for this one. Opening up zoning for higher density is effectively a giveaway to local developers, who are invariably shitbags. It'd be preferable if solutions like banning corporations from owning housing could be enacted.
That's based on the theory that there are enough houses and flippers and hedge funds are just sitting on them in order to rake it in later as property values are driven up. If that were true, we'd expect to see large vacancy rates in cities. Problem is, we don't. My city has <4% vacancy for rentals and <1% for home ownership. This seems to be similar to the numbers in many other major cities in North America. If we got rid of every corporation that was sitting on a house unused, the available housing would go up by 4% or so, at most.
We need more housing stock. As it stands, the only way to do that is a giveaway to shitbag developers. They're the ones that hold the capitol for building more housing.
This could be mitigated by city councils also encouraging/mandating those developers to have unionized staff.
We have like 16 million unoccupied homes as of 2023.
How many are in cities people want to live?
Not gonna speculate on that.
If you can't answer that question, then you can't decide on the correct course of action.
Vacancy rates in cities suggest the answer is that the empty homes are someplace else. The correct course of action, therefore, is building more in cities.
But if you do build them in cities, the investors simply come and snap them up. Then you're back to square one.
If that were true, we also wouldn't see a low vacancy rate. It does happen, but not at a high enough level to substantially effect prices. I'd still totally support a law limiting how corporations can buy and flip homes. There's just not much evidence that it's widespread.
I know this is quite a bit later, but this comment confused me. I do not see how loosening zoning laws that limit density and banning corporations from owning houses are mutually exclusive.These policies can and should work together as part of a bigger urbanist policy. I also don't see how supporting local developers is that bad of a thing. I'd rather have the money stay in the community and go to a community member than some multinational corporation who owns thousands of homes across the country. Still it isn't the best. Cooperative housing or need based housing who is better, but realistically those can't fill up the excess of stock that we need. We will need input from private developers, as well as a big government housing initiative.
They aren't mutually exclusive. Many of the proposals out there treat it as if it is.
Zoning laws in the US are particularly fucked. This video breaks it down quite nicely, I find.
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Idk, its not like there's no housing shourtage/rant gauging in other countries with more sensible zoning.
It's a zoning problem all along. See: Canada, Netherlands, Ireland...
Zoning is irrelevant. Perfect zoning laws could mean 10x the houses - and the investors will buy them all up and supercharge property prices all over again.
How many houses are sitting unoccupied like that in your city?
Impossible to know, but there are 16 million unoccupied homes as of march 2023.
Here is the thing North Americans love single family homes.
How would you know, North America is literally missing the opportunity to have new development of things other than single family houses or apartment big buildings, bet you there would be a lot of demand for midrises, row houses, mixed neighborhoods in general
Row houses maybe, but there's an adversity to condo fees which usually come along with every other source of housing. A lot of people want to feel like they own their home outright, so that once their mortgage is done being paid off, all they need to worry about is the hydro, water, and property taxes. There's a lot of stories about condo groups doubling condo fees that put others off those types of places.
I feel like every single family home has HOA dues, these days, so that comparison is kinda moot. Whether it's condo fees, HOA dues, or the local cartel extorting you for protection, you're gonna get nickel and dimed.
I feel like every single family home has HOA dues, these days, so that comparison is kinda moot
Narp. I wouldn't buy a house in a hoa ever again, and haven't had issues finding the last two I lived in (in both large and small markets).
Both are true, she point is those with the single family homes now wont get out of them
Developers in my city are building apartments like mad and filling every single one of them. The common council finally opened up zoning for row housing in the past year.
In Charlotte, NC where I last lived. They were building apartments like crazy, but all "luxury apartments" and charging $3-4/sq ft.
$1850/month for a 600sqft apartment wasn't really sustainable for a lot of people.
I'd rather die in a fire.
Do it then
You first, rat warren enjoyer.
I don't see anyone stopping you
Same. I've lived in all the basic types of housing: apartment, duplex, house, etc... If I liked being woken up at 3am by some drunk asshole stomping around in the apartment above me or some kid storming in because they don't understand addresses yet, then I would be doing that already. Maybe other people enjoy that sort of thing? You can have your congested living conditions, but leave me and my single-family zone out of it