Asklemmy

@filister @asklemmy because politicians tend to own multiple properties

Anything that makes housing affordable would also remove a significant amount of wealth from the elderly, who outvote and (I think) out donate other demographic groups.

Pretty hard thing to do politically.

Because theyre greedy fucks enslaved to even greedier fucking corporations that control rents

Giving first time home buyer’s assistance just juices demand which would just lead to further increased housing prices.

The supply side is what needs to be addressed, that’s a lot harder though as builders would prefer to build luxury housing as opposed to starter homes.

Why first time. Why not single property owners to allow that person with the efficiency condo to get a 2 bedroom townhouse and the townhouse person with kids to get a free standing house. If the issue is with multiproperty owners why not assist all no and uni property owners?

What should politicians do for first time home buyers? If you’re going to say give them money, I think that will actually only make unaffordability worse and drive up prices as everyone floods the market to use their credit.

What actually would help is if the US government created incentives to drastically increase the housing supply.

I got a lot of help from HUD and FHA when I bought my house. I couldn't have afforded to buy and renovate my home when I did without that program, which is only for first-time buyers. The program also helps housing supply by renovating unfit older buildings into usable housing stock.

So, at least in the US in general and Chicago specifically, gov't is doing things to help first-time buyers.

Who do you think is writing the laws?

This has been happening for a while. Most starter homes in the US are townhomes, detached townhomes or small single family homes in a denser neighborhood. Through the years, the building code has changed bit by bit to make those homes unaffordable. It's similar to how you can pay half the price for a car in Mexico; there are much less mandated safety features. In houses, there are new energy codes (good for the environment) additional safety features like fire sprinklers and other similar things. Additionally, labor is more expensive, appliances and building materials are more expansive.

On the other side, you have people who have lived in their house for decades. The house (actually land) value has increased steadily and maybe they've kept it up, remodeling or putting in an addition. Now their kids are all moved out, they've retired and they're ready to downsize, but the house they bought so long ago has appreciated and selling it to downsize would trigger a huge tax event on the appreciated value. They're better off (financially) to keep it, pushing new buyers to look elsewhere.

It's a complex problem intermixed with policy and also all the corporations mentioned elsewhere who have learned to profit from the broken system.

Seems that people have been persuaded to vote against their own self interests for too long. Maybe they should try to be informed about this issue, and vote.

As other have said, housing, at least in the US, has always been seen as an investment, and investments are supposed to appreciate in value. It is difficult to sell to political bases that one of two things must then be true: 1) People who bought houses 20+ years ago will have to lose equity on the house which they potentially were relying on for some amount of retirement, or 2) The government will have to step in and fill the gap (a la systems similar to agricultural subsidies). Neither of those things would you be able to sell to a wide enough base that they could be acted on.

In the end, this was caused by two things. On a practical level, prices continued climbing while wages stagnated over the past 40 years. On a more philosophical level, I personally don’t think that necessities such as housing should be commodified.

This also brings up the fact that single family homes, the predominant home type in the US, are not good from an environmental standpoint or an urban planning standpoint. It would be better to convert into duplexes and such. In the end, I agree that buying a home is way too much, but in the long run it may be good that the market is pushing more people towards lower impact forms of housing

the communist party in my country wants to make housing cheaper, idk about other coubtries tho

Housing as an investment is the entire goal of capitalism. Billionaires buy your politicians, you will own nothing. You cannot vote for a politician which is not owned by Billionaires.

Politicians are doing nothing for any normal people. They cater for those who contribute to their campaigns in a way that makes them remeberable - usually not normal people.

Why aren't they doing anything?

I wished they won't do shit. But in reality, they actively harm young people in their attempt of buying a home. E.g. I don't know if it is something that exists in the us but in Europe there are plenty of countries with laws to protect old buildings but most of the time these laws are flawed as fuck and result in less affordable housing for people who want to live somewhere and cheaper real estate for big fraudulent dickheads who want to build new rental buildings

Why are politicians doing nothing for first time home buyers?

Why aren’t universally some laws against home flipping and people owning more than one residential property? I think the right of having a roof over your head is a basic human right and every person out there deserves to have a decent home and not be forced to live on the street.

Because that would be socialism, obviously!

Reducing home prices requires destroying an entire branch of economy - real estate investment. Mind you not construction but owning property as an investment. It would noticeably drop the GDP and any other economic statistic as well as leave a bunch of people without jobs.

I guess in the mind of most politicians it's not an acceptable course of action, even though avoiding it makes things worse in the long term.