Simple rules can fix this and technology can help. Only residents can buy real estate. Only one property per household. They have to live in it at least 6 months a year. The rest of the 6 month they could rent, but only at a long term price. If a rental developer wishes to buy they should be steered in a area where rental development is allowed and encouraged. And then enforce the squatting laws. Because that is hurting the local population as well.
And, I'm saying this in the nicest way possible, gives you the right to make up rules on what I can do with my property?
Measures as drastic as this need correspondingly dire reasons. You can call it "housing crisis", but the truth is there are many ways to fix this that don't come even close to this level of communism.
Simply building more, and encouraging people to build (instead of encouraging them to do absolutely anything else)
Or, of last resort, what this article is describing - use public funds to buy buildings and rent them cheaply. It's insane, if you do the math, but it's a lot less insane than rent control or what you're suggesting.
Well, what if we flip it around: What gives you the right to own a bunch of extra AirBnB properties in the first place? It's just a set of assumptions that we've been living under for a while and that we can change if the society overall wants to. Some feudal lord 500 years ago might have said "What gives you peasants the right to own any land at all, or question my judgment on any matter?" There's nothing magical about the particular conception of property rights we're currently immersed in.
Why, it is very magical indeed. Property rights are one of the top variables that differentiate rich countries from poor. But don't let that stay in the way of what you feel is right.
What gives you the right to remove squatters from locations you believe are your property?
Laws are just rules that people happen to like. I know we consider the right to property to be fundamental, but the right to have somewhere to sleep is also pretty fundamental.
'Your' property exists as a line item on a ledger legitimized by violence of the state. In exchange for receiving electricity and water and transport and police support for securing it, you have to follow a few rules.
My property exists because I paid for it, with money I worked to earn. You saying that it's a fictional set of rules a very thinly veiled attempt to take my property instead of working for one.
> I'm saying this in the nicest way possible, gives you the right to make up rules on what I can do with my property?
Democratic majority authority of the people. Unless you are living on a hilltop with a shovel to shovel your excrement and a bucket to haul it to dump it somewhere, you are a part of society and your freedom cant be unlimited.
> Simply building more
Where? This sounds like American ignorance that makes Americans think that every country has gigantic plains and non-utilized farming lands to keep building away.
Europe is small. Texas is half the size of Western Europe. Most of European cities and urban centers are located in river basins in between mountains and they are already built. The Mediterranean is much worse - all the habitable space is river basins and small plains made by rivers. It doesn't even have the large flatlands of Northern Europe. And all that land in the Mediterranean, like in Barcelona, has already been built.
Europeans cant pull more land out of their asses to satisfy the investment needs of American investors.
Do you... Those 'free market' Americans are escaping to rent-controlled countries to be able to make ends meet right now. The 'digital nomad movement' became a movement for economic refugees.
