• Kairos@lemmy.today
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    12 days ago

    Housing is more complex than a simple supply and demand chart especially one with straight lines. Every product is like this actually.

    Low housing supply actually increases rents.

    • Skyrmir@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      It’s a supply demand chart, they do makes sense, but usually require a bit of explaining to really understand.

      The short answer though is that population growth has outstripped housing growth since Reagan, limiting supply. While interest rates since Reagan have increased demand. Lots of reasons why, on both sides, end result is a deep hole of expensive housing, and a lot of bad ways to fix it.

  • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 days ago

    It’s like that economist logic that giving money to everyone would make everyone poor, if everyone had a house everyone would be homeless, and if everyone had shoes we would all have to walk barefoot.
    You don’t need to control rent, though, just control hoarding.

    • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      You do that by building housing whether it’s going to make a bunch of money or not. Which means the government has to do it.

        • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          Yeah, that’s not what China did. They tried to manufacture demand. If you wanted to make housing affordable for all you build where there’s demand.

          • freagle@lemmy.ml
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            12 days ago

            The large majority of Chinese ghost cities became populated, because that’s how long term planning works

            • roofuskit@lemmy.world
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              12 days ago

              While that may be true, though I don’t know, I do know that they didn’t fix the cost of housing in their country.

              • freagle@lemmy.ml
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                12 days ago

                They have a nationwide homeownership rate between 90% and 95%. I think they’re doing just fine.

        • PiraHxCx@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          12 days ago

          Even Singapore, which neoliberals place at the top of economic freedom but will call public housing policies communism anyway

    • hirihit640@sh.itjust.works
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      12 days ago

      Why doesn’t the chart support the argument? You can see the black dots showing the (illegal) increased rent, or the supply shortage