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| ▲ | holbrad 14 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well, we're stuck between a left-wing party and a left-wing party, both of whom, despite what they say, hate economic growth and try to restrict it at every opportunity. And that's largely because the average Brit has terrible beliefs that actively make them poorer. A shockingly high percentage of people believe that building more houses won't lower costs. | | |
| ▲ | Toynbeeidea 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I live in amerifatland. They're building new houses all the time, everywhere I look, entire complexes of them. "McMansions," we call them. I make average US wages, have my entire adult life. I cannot afford a house in my city unless I buy a literal ruin in the ghetto. The suburbs are far more expensive, and that's where the McMansion complexes are. I don't know who's buying them, but it isn't me and likely never will be. | | |
| ▲ | Schiendelman 13 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's because we regulate growth. Seriously. It's exactly the same root cause. Have you heard about why zoning drives up housing prices? | | |
| ▲ | irishcoffee 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you want a strip club or a dispensary to open up next door to where you live? Or maybe a glue factory down the street? There are reasons zoning laws exist, and it isn’t to regulate growth in the sense you’re implying. Very disingenuous counterpoint. | | |
| ▲ | Toynbeeidea 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | Actually, yes. I would unironically like the first two things, and what's the issue with the glue factory? | | |
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| ▲ | HPsquared 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | A shockingly high percentage of people don't want house prices to fall. | |
| ▲ | skew-aberration 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Left-wing in what sense? Who is opposing building houses? | | |
| ▲ | dgellow 14 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Home owners | |
| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | For left-wing governments in Britain, building houses is putting yourself out of a job. Scotland is a good example: every government since the mid-2010s has been elected on the explicit promise to build more houses, they cannot do so because of the electoral consequences so they attempt to build council houses, it is impossible for the government to build enough council houses to make up for multiple decades of underbuilding (this problem has accelerated significantly whilst they have been promising to build housing, had explicit targets, etc.), but at the next election they make the same promises (and people vote for them because there is no alternative). The really strange thing is that people also see the massive growth in student housing in Scotland. Again, very good for politicians: more conservative foreign students can't vote, domestic students will vote left-wing. The politics of this topic are very strange. The public is still at the stage where they think in vague terms that the problem is a lack of housing. I believe the problem is worse in Scotland because the growth in council housing in the 60/70s was organised in order to create this permanent bloc vote. The same has happened in London where you have whole constituencies where 70% of the effective vote is void. | | |
| ▲ | p_j_w 12 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > every government since the mid-2010s has been elected on the explicit promise to build more houses, they cannot do so because of the electoral consequences This doesn’t add up. Promising to get more housing built is getting these people elected, but they can’t make good on this promise because then they will lose their election? | | |
| ▲ | skippyboxedhero 12 hours ago | parent [-] | | It depends what you mean by add up. Logical? No. Reality? Yes. Politicians continue with the lie that they will build council houses. Voters continue with the lie that voting will change the outcome. |
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| ▲ | tolien 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The really strange thing is that people also see the massive growth in student housing in Scotland. Again, very good for politicians: more conservative foreign students can't vote, domestic students will vote left-wing. That's a conspiracy theory and a half! A lot of the new student accommodation being built is privately owned. They're chasing the (pre-Brexit/pandemic) overheating market for student accommodation that resulted from the universities targeting international students for the inflated tuition fees they can charge, and in some cases have features explicitly advertised to international students as positives (e.g. some of the ones in Nottingham have built in rice cookers as standard). However, some of the properties are at risk of becoming unviable (i.e., lying empty or having to be turned over to housing non students [0]) because of a combination of Brexit and tightened immigration rules reducing international student numbers. If they're being built as some kind of social engineering it would be a really convoluted way of going about it. 0: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ce3l09p664ro |
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