The Continent’s housing crisis has gone from being a slow burn to a four-alarm fire — but some countries are handling it better than others.
One of Europe’s long-simmering political frustrations is suddenly boiling over.
From Lisbon to Łódź, voters are angry about the lack of affordable housing. Anti-immigrant riots broke out in Dublin last fall, fueled in part by claims that the Irish capital’s limited public housing was being given to foreigners. Meanwhile, in cities like Lisbon, Amsterdam and Milan, thousands of protesters have taken to the streets to denounce the lack of affordable homes.
In a poll ahead of last week’s far-right surge in the European Parliament election, the Continent’s mayors listed housing as one of the most important issues facing their constituencies.
You’re talking about keeping density low as a means to keep house prices low. It’s stupid.
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.
What are you proposing then. Shoulder to shoulder includes everything that isn’t detached.
How would less dense housing be cheaper when you need to buy more land and land is the thing that is expensive? Never mind things like utilities, public transport, police etc.
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.
