this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Politics
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I don't see anything being done about the extreme cost of living. Food and rent prices are still stratospheric, wages have not caught up, and homeless tents are everywhere. Maybe Wall Street investors are doing better, but we the people sure aren't.
Those are a signifigant issues globally.
And each country blames it's own leaders, when the problem seems to be more systemic than the fault a single country's leader.
Well, rumor has it that Chinese billionaires have been buying up housing in western nations in order to park their money outside of China where the Chinese tax authorities can't get to it. If that's true, then that would drive up housing costs in multiple countries at the same time, and those countries' leaders aren't stopping it, so those leaders are to blame.
Canada actually passed a law prohibiting foreign buyers of real estate. It hasn't had much of an effect on housing costs, because when you're looking at millions and millions of people, a handful of billionaires really doesn't change the underlying problem very much.
It hasn't had much of an effect on housing costs because it's too late. Claw back all the housing they bought up, sell it off to citizens at reasonable prices, and then you'll see an effect on housing costs.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/1/6/why-is-canada-banning-foreign-homebuyers
I'm not personally convinced that freeing up maybe 3% of the housing stock (large amounts of which are probably rented) would have a significant effect on the housing market. Maybe, just maybe, there's been a chronic lack of new supply for decades?
Nah, I'm sure it's just those dastardly Chinese.
Then why is this only now, only abruptly, becoming a problem?
Rent prices are dependent almost exclusively on local market circumstances, and essentially all urban markets are plagued by a drastic lack of supply due to underbuilding of housing for decades combined with more and more people wanting to move to cities. The federal government doesn't actually have that much authority to regulate housing, which is something generally relegated to the states. However, Biden has provided some incentives for loosening zoning codes and some other programs to encourage more housing construction, though there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
Democrat state and local governments have absolutely done a horrendous job here as well, to be clear, though California at least is beginning to change course out of raw necessity.
That would explain a gradual increase in housing costs over decades, but it doesn't explain housing costs skyrocketing in only a few years.
What in the world for? I can't imagine wanting to live in conditions like that.
Well, they're failing catastrophically, and almost no one seems to be complaining. Do people like paying outrageous property taxes?
That isn't going to do anyone any good as long as billionaires are allowed to hoard real estate.
California is the worst of them. My family and I fled California in the early 2000s because of extreme housing costs. Last I heard, our modest suburban house sold for over a million dollars. Madness. The whole place must be a giant slum by now, with dozens of people per house.