> The current policy is to drive up housing prices by creating completely artificial scarcity. All the land is owned and earmarked. Just not for housing.
That's not the problem either, the scarcity is (with the exception of foreign - i.e. Chinese and Russian - money laundering) natural and not artificial. The true problem is that following mechanization in agriculture many people emigrated from rural areas, resulting in a lack of infrastructure because it was unsustainably expensive for the low population density - particularly high speed internet and accessible (=walkable or within reach with a bicycle) basic infrastructure such as a grocery store, a GP and pharmacy and schools. That lack drives more people away, it's a vicious cycle that will need enormous amounts of money to break through.
If you want to work a modern service-oriented job or even a manufacturing/industry type job, you have to move to an urban or suburban area, and even if you have money and want to provide gainful employment you simply can't because there is no high-speed Internet for your business.
What needs to be done is that the government aggressively invests into "flyover" states to provide perspectives for the people living there and considering moving to a better place - but unfortunately I don't see that happening, not in the US and not in Europe where we have similar problems.
There's nothing natural about zoning restrictions. Those are designed to keep people out. Especially working class people. They get to live very far away from where their services are needed in some extreme cases.
Fix the policy and house prices will drop. That creates a new problem of course for those who then end up with a Mortage that is under water. That's the real reason the policy does not get fixed.
Zoning restrictions make sense - without them, rabid capitalism takes over, and the only thing that matters is extracting the maximum profit out of any given piece of land. That in turn means no green anymore, ugly AF buildings (especially high-rises), a severe issue with traffic because public transport usually isn't even in the picture and the existing roads can't take up the traffic resulting from the newer density, and as a result of that a whole ugly neighborhood with no quality of life for the inmates. If you want an example just how ugly a city can turn out, just visit Frankfurt.
Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather like if people can move towards rural areas where possible.
> while house prices went crazy roughly after 2000.
It began earlier, the problem (why the situation in urban areas exploded) was that after ~2000-2005 it simply became apparent that the future was the Internet and there was no way government or much less the private companies would ever put up the money to provide actual high speed Internet to rural areas - and so all the new "digital" companies set up shop in urban areas, and people flocked to where the new jobs were.
Had the US government taken care to make sure that the companies not pocket literal billions of funds without providing the service that the government funded [1] you would not be in the mess you are now.
more people need to move to cities, not more sprawl. there are lots of cities where NIMBY/ YIMBY stuff isnt an issue but people on HN dont want to live in those places.
That's not the problem either, the scarcity is (with the exception of foreign - i.e. Chinese and Russian - money laundering) natural and not artificial. The true problem is that following mechanization in agriculture many people emigrated from rural areas, resulting in a lack of infrastructure because it was unsustainably expensive for the low population density - particularly high speed internet and accessible (=walkable or within reach with a bicycle) basic infrastructure such as a grocery store, a GP and pharmacy and schools. That lack drives more people away, it's a vicious cycle that will need enormous amounts of money to break through.
If you want to work a modern service-oriented job or even a manufacturing/industry type job, you have to move to an urban or suburban area, and even if you have money and want to provide gainful employment you simply can't because there is no high-speed Internet for your business.
What needs to be done is that the government aggressively invests into "flyover" states to provide perspectives for the people living there and considering moving to a better place - but unfortunately I don't see that happening, not in the US and not in Europe where we have similar problems.