dandi8

dandi8 , 4 days ago

Ah yes, let's make it even more of a hell to live in cities by paving over anything green and making people live like livestock in tiny cages. That will surely solve the problem!

Oh, and really it's the immigrants' fault! They're the ones buying up all of the houses with cash to later rent them as AirBnBs!

dandi8 , 4 days ago

Saying "Airbnb" is obviously an oversimplification - a ton properties seem to be bought by rental companies, not normal people. There's a ton of properties just sitting empty, as well.

The solution is to introduce more control for housing, not less. Less control means more cheaply made hell-scape skyscraper buildings housing hundreds of people each, with no green spaces anywhere in sight.

dandi8 , 4 days ago

About 10% of homes in the US are considered vacant, 5.5% in UK, 18% in Europe. 0.02% of the US population is homeless, I believe it's 0.006% in UK, 0.07-0.33% in European countries.

Yet your solution is still to make housing even less comfortable for poor people by getting rid of density laws and blame immigrants for the housing prices, to boot.

dandi8 , 4 days ago

No one ever claimed detached housing is the cheapest form of housing... Way to build a strawman.

dandi8 , 4 days 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.

dandi8 , 3 days 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.

dandi8 , 3 days 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.

dandi8 , 3 days 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.

dandi8 , 6 days ago

It's no less possible than for the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus to exist.

dandi8 , 13 days ago

This is a very naive observation which assumes that any atrocities commited in China or Africa are strictly the fault of the west...