[HN Gopher] Dutch Students Delay Graduation Due to Housing Short...
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Dutch Students Delay Graduation Due to Housing Shortages
Author : belter
Score : 23 points
Date : 2024-05-02 13:21 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nltimes.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (nltimes.nl)
| casenmgreen wrote:
| The Dutch have rent control.
|
| Rent control means the end of new supply from the market. You get
| new supply from and only from Government funding/projects, and
| that works as well as any Government-run service. The supply in
| Holland is inelastic. It simply does not respond to the market,
| which is to say, to the level of demand.
|
| So you end up with stories like this.
|
| It's even worse in Sweden. In Sweden, last I knew, it's actually
| illegal for a private person to rent from a private landlord,
| unless the State gives permission. There's a queue to be given
| permission, you accumulate points over time, and it takes about
| two decades to be allowed to rent in central Stockholm.
|
| Hard to imagine a worse fuck-up, and of course being State, it's
| political, and it's impossible to get rid of.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| People think you can legislate things into existance. Rent to
| high? Just make high rent illegal and problem solved!
|
| Reading it here looks like a joke, but there are huge swaths of
| people continually prodding legislators to pass laws exactly as
| knee-jerkishly naive as this.
| legacynl wrote:
| On the other hand you seem to think that letting the market
| decide will solve all problems? That's hilariously naive.
| Tade0 wrote:
| The issue is way more complex than that and you can't just
| blame it on rent control:
|
| https://dutchreview.com/expat/housing/why-is-there-a-housing...
| goosedragons wrote:
| And that's why the housing situation is so different in other
| developed countries without rent control, right? Like look at
| the U.S, most states don't allow any sort of rent control and (
| _check notes_ ) they're uh, hmm, only short 7.2 million homes?
| Yup, no rent control sure is the fix. Definitely don't need
| governments stepping and mandating housing. Where has that
| worked? Singapore? Is that even a real place?
|
| We need more private landlords with the freedom to randomly
| raise rents by any percentage they want. Surely that's the only
| way to get enough housing at affordable levels.
| subtextminer wrote:
| The biggest problem with housing the USA is largely local
| zoning that artificially limits what can be built. Cities
| that have minimal zoning such as Houston, Texas have rents
| that have closely followed inflation only. In Houston there
| is literally no zoning. While this has some bad side effects
| in terms of ugliness it is highly affordable. Some
| progressive US cities, such as Minneapolis and Austin, are
| now liberalizing zoning to allow much more dense housing to
| be built in central areas long mass transit.
| wbl wrote:
| Houston does have extensive density controls
| sparky_z wrote:
| There are a lot of different well-meaning policies that can
| fuck up a housing market by restricting supply. Rent control
| is just one of them.
|
| This is like if you say that privatizing prisons is a bad
| thing and then somebody else comes along and says "But look
| at North Korea. They have state-run prisons and the prisoner
| conditions aren't any better. Clearly, therefore,
| privatization of prisons doesn't result in any bad outcomes
| for prisoners." Just a total non-sequitor.
| exe34 wrote:
| He gave you 5 liberal countries and you literally had to
| reach for North Korea for your false equivalence?
| sparky_z wrote:
| The particular country wasn't the point. I was just
| illustrating the concept that just because Y exists in a
| place without X isn't proof that X won't cause Y. But
| that's kind of abstract, so I came up with an example
| that I thought would resonate intuitively with the person
| I was responding to. A framing where, if someone had
| tried the argument on them, they would immediately see
| the gaping hole without having to walk them through it.
| Obviously, I don't know goosedragons personally, so it
| was just a guess at what sort of example might make a
| good illustration for them.
| imtringued wrote:
| Rent control is the antithesis of governments stepping up. It
| is the equivalent of sweeping the problem under the rug and
| declaring it solved. Go ahead and fix the problem.
| bequanna wrote:
| Check out Minneapolis vs St Paul building permits before and
| after St Paul imposed rent control. Same geographic area with
| roughly the same demographics.
|
| All else equal, rent control discourages investment in
| housing.
|
| If the government wants to create more housing supply
| themselves and charge some capped rental amount, I am cool
| with that. But please don't tell private property owners what
| they can charge.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| St Paul's rent control was incredibly stupid, it's not even
| indexed to inflation. The market was flooded with landlords
| selling duplexes annd anpartment buildings and developers
| canceled projects. I voted against it, and I'm currently
| renting.
|
| St Paul had a more affordable rental market than MPLS, too.
| switch007 wrote:
| Rent controls. NIMBYs. Zoning laws. Builder skills shortage. An
| excuse around every corner. When can we admit something bigger
| is at play here? The market is being manipulated on a grand
| scale. Every government seems to only pay lip service to the
| issue while creating policies to inflate the assets. Now why is
| that? Landlords have captured our policy makers. Many MPs in
| the UK are landlords.
|
| We're screwed
| Tade0 wrote:
| Hailing from a country where the population peaked in the
| late 90s, housing developers build what they want, where they
| want and where prices still increased in lockstep with the
| rest of the world, I can attest to that.
|
| There's no reason an apartment in a 80s commie block in
| eastern Europe should go for EUR4k per square metre. You're
| not getting your money's worth for that.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I feel this pain. Commieblocks were designed to last around
| 50-70 years, yes they can stand longer but what kind of
| architectural monument are they? Germans in the east simply
| demolish them. Meantime in Poland?! "EUR 4k per square
| meter muthafucka!". This would be absurdly ridiculous,
| except it's real and I need housing.
| stefanfisk wrote:
| I don't know what you're referring with regards to Sweden.
| While we have rent control there's plenty of private landlords.
| Each city will usually have an official queue for rentals. But
| private landlords are not obligated to use it. Larger private
| landlords often hade their own queue. Smaller ones do whatever
| they feel like.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Absolutely true. Rent control is the government trying to "fix"
| a problem they set up to be unfixable. To be honest I think it
| is by design, if nobody is willing to buy or build housing the
| government, by default, gets control over it, so they can do
| what it what they want.
|
| Of course everyone on this website will hate you for suggesting
| that price fixing has any effect on supply.
| legacynl wrote:
| It's not that rent controls dont have any effect, it's just
| that the effect is not very significant. Rent controls have
| existed long before the current housing crisis, it's not the
| cause.
| signatoremo wrote:
| Rent control limits supply. It may not be a problem in the
| past when there was less demand. It is a problem now.
| legacynl wrote:
| > Rent control means the end of new supply from the market.
|
| Can you explain why you think this? The way I see it, rent
| control just means that property developers will have to wait a
| little bit longer before their investments start paying off.
| They're still making massive amounts of profits, it's just a
| little bit less.
|
| The benefit of rent controls means that overall people will
| have more money to spend, which benefits the overall economy.
| In my opinion it makes perfect sense.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Just do what every generation who couldn't afford housing has
| done. Move in with your parents again, you'll even save money.
| vengefulduck wrote:
| Assuming that living with your parents is a safe option which
| for many, especially LGBT people it isn't.
| constantcrying wrote:
| Nothing makes life harder on yourself than making your
| parents hate you. It is also extremely hard to do, no your
| parents disagreeing with you isn't a good reason to never see
| them again.
| legacynl wrote:
| > making your parents hate you
|
| IDK if I'm misunderstanding, but it sounds like you think
| LGBT youth make their parents hate them by being LGBT? In
| my opinion it's the duty of the parents to foster a proper
| loving relation with their children.
|
| > no your parents disagreeing with you isn't a good reason
| to never see them again.
|
| I think that depends on what you disagree about.
| chaoskanzlerin wrote:
| There is nuance to this. Being queer and living with a
| homophobic family means suppressing your personality in
| everyday life in myriad ways, way beyond "being gay".
| Moving out removes this tension entirely, well without any
| need to abandon one's family altogether.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| > It is also extremely hard to do
|
| It is surprisingly easy to do. You clearly come from stable
| families, but parents can hate their children for a lot of
| things: being different (everything from sexual orientation
| to not being social), being not like them, being exactly
| like them, not getting the grades they hoped for, not
| babysitting your 5 siblings because you had to go to
| school, not bringing in money, costing them too much money
| by existing, not being a doctor in a family of doctors....
|
| More often, it's not the children who don't want to see
| their parents, its the other way around.
| a_wild_dandan wrote:
| That's a phenomenal idea! Time to find some parents.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Works if your parents live in areas where employment is
| abundant. Otherwise you'll waste years of your life lowering
| your lifetime earning potential. I have personal experience
| with this. In my first job, I had to move to a VVHCOL area and
| my salary couldn't cover my monthly expenses, even after I
| shared a room with a stranger. Eventually however, that
| opportunity opened up better paying jobs. My friends who stayed
| behind, unfortunately did not see such opportunities and the
| outcome 10 years down the road is very different. Obviously
| there's a lot more to long term success, but proximity to jobs
| is one of them.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| So who lives in all these sweet Dutch houses with doors painted
| in green, prostitues? Maybe paying a prostitute per hour will be
| chaper than regular monthly rent in Amsterdam.
| leg100 wrote:
| The degree to which the housing crisis is a global phenomenon is
| generally understated.
|
| Instead articles focus on individual countries and lay the blame
| on their particular circumstances and policies, not the bigger
| picture.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| The economists mistaken one plus with minus in their models,
| and so the wealth is being vaccumed up instead of trickling
| down. Either way it boils down to these students not waking up
| early enough, not working hard enough, and picking wrong
| parents.
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(page generated 2024-05-02 23:02 UTC)