Post by @im_fine_sandy@nord.pub

2026-10-23 07:23 UTC

Maybe this isn’t very “lemmy” but I think the bottleneck isn’t really money, but the stuff you want. In Australia the main problem with the “housing crisis” is that all efforts to resolve it are on the demand side, and very few on the supply side. Giving first home buyers grants and discounts is great, but that increases demand and increases the price. Removing some of the ridiculous tax benefits to owning multiple properties is great, and has reduced demand somewhat, but it hasn’t solved the problem. To really solve the housing crisis you need a house for everyone that aspires to own one. In the last decade, having the people able to build the houses has been the real bottleneck. All of the able tradespeople are already building houses. We can’t build a million more in a year just because everyone has the money to buy them.

Replies (2)

@gwl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-10-23 07:38

I mean, we have some in the past, in the Victorian era, the UK invented the idea of Council Houses, houses given to those who earn less than a certain amount of money per year, which you live in until you reach a threshold of earnings that you have to move out They built over 20 million of them in 1880-1950

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@yakko@feddit.uk 2026-10-23 07:43

It’s frustrating how there’s no way to say “anything people need should be provided free or at-cost” without sounding like a loony radical, but it’s true. If businesses could figure out how to make you pay for the air you breathe, it would come in a variety of qualities and flavours, and I would have been banned from r/air long ago. The profit incentive can barely even be trusted with stuff we don’t need. Never let necessities turn a profit.

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