Friday Cartoon: The Irish Housing Crisis https://www.caricatures-ireland.com/irish-housing-crisis-cartoon/ #mastoart #mastodaoine #housing #ireland

The latest issue of Urbanism Now is out:
#8: Women in Urbanism, Nobel Prize of Architecture, and City Winters

Find it on our website and we'll be sharing some links from the post soon.
#urbanism #urbanism+ #housing
https://urbanismnow.substack.com/p/8-women-in-urbanism-nobel-prize-of

https://www.newsweek.com/us-housing-market-shortage-prediction-2042732 “The reason why new construction finally outpaced new household formation is sobering: at least 1.6 million expected Gen Z and millennial households did not form in 2024 because of factors which included a lack of affordable housing. In short, people are not settling down and becoming homeowners because they can't afford to.” #housing #shortage #poverty #inequality #economics #parenting

"Even for a household earning the citywide median income, just under $75,000 in 2023, affordability is also evaporating — and fast."

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2025/03/10/rising-rents-arent-just-a-problem-for-those-living-in-poverty

"Unlike industries...where efficiency gains lead to lower prices...housing behaves more like healthcare or higher education. The more money we pour in, the more bloated, inefficient & expensive it becomes. Instead of lowering costs, increased liquidity in housing generally fuels speculation, consolidates market power, and creates financial instability. The result isn’t affordability — it’s an ever-expanding cycle of booms, busts and bailouts."

Link: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2025/3/10/why-housing-efficiency-isnt-making-homes-affordable

Does homeownership still make sense?

It could take up to 16 years for some renters to save for a down payment. Is it worth it?

https://www.salon.com/2025/03/09/does-homeownership-still-make-sense/

Housing policy is transportation policy is climate policy:

Why housing is a pass/fail question for climate

https://www.volts.wtf/p/why-housing-is-a-passfail-question

As we know the 'clever' wheeze of shared ownership that was meant to make more affordable housing available is unravelling as the loophole of service fees is being exploited to raise the overall costs of homes (once the resident has been captured).

Its worth stressing (again) that only a massive increase in social housing (either built or re-purposed) can start to alleviate the problems of the UK dysfunctional housing market!

(and ending the Right to Buy!)

#housing

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/09/uk-housing-associations-accused-of-mis-selling-affordable-homes-as-service-charges-soar-by-up-to-400

Removing blighted properties in #Detroit increases nearby home values by just $162 on average. At that rate, it would take 50 years for property tax gains to cover demolition costs.
#housing #demolition
https://buff.ly/7n7RNQX

OPEC, Petrodollars, and the 1980s Homeless Crisis (2017)

...What assets do, if those holding them have any say in the matter, is appreciate. After all, why not? You've already got the thing, all you need is for it to increase in value. One classic mechanism for which is to constrain the supply. And there are lots of ways to do that with housing: big lots, big houses, construction and zoning laws, lousy infrastructure (crime, schools, transportation). So that the limited supply that is attractive keeps getting bid up. That's one of the big changes. And it was happening like gangbusters in the 1970s and 1980s especially, and since.

At the same time, a bunch of the upward-mobility-escalator stuff starts disappearing. Especially factory jobs, that let high-school (or less!) educated people, and especially males, earn a solid, high-income, and really fucking reliable income....

A thinking-out-loud piece I'd written back on G+ (hence the IA link), on how homelessness kicked off bigtimes in the US in the late 1970s / early 1980s, perhaps as housing became financialised due to A Combination Of Many Things.

Stumbled across this looking for other things (as one does) and thought it might be of interest to others.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190115035057/https://plus.google.com/104092656004159577193/posts/eDscpi6Kg7L

HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43294222

U.S. Housing Agency Considers Launching Crypto Experiment
—

The Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees billions in aid and insures more than a trillion dollars in mortgages, is pondering using the blockchain and a stablecoin. One HUD official derided it as “monopoly money.”

https://www.propublica.org/article/hud-considers-crypto-blockchain-stablecoin-housing-urban-development?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

Part of the problem with the UK housing market is too loose credit for house purchases.

So the Financial Conduct Authority's announcement its consulting on loosening constraints (around remortgaging & other post-2008 measures intended to contain risky mortgages) raises some alarm bells.

Unless, there is a massive increase in house building (and specifically social housing) all this is likely to do is drive prices up further compounding the housing crisis... its idiocy!

#housing
h/t FT

If problems in planning are the reason that houses are not being built, then the Govt's move to reform planning rules should contribute to ameliorating England's housing crisis...

But if the real problem is a market controlled by big developers, keen to keep prices high (by building new stock slowly), then it will have no major impact.

But in reality, these will be mostly the 'wrong' houses - the real issue continues to be the lack of social housing being built!

When housing options are limited, what happens when your landlord crosses professional and physical boundaries?

(This story describes sexual harassment.)

https://outliermedia.org/jeff-cowin-detroit-landlord-virginia-park-tenants/?utm_source=fediverse_mastodon&utm_medium=social

Anyone have any good tips or tricks or websites or apps for #subletting? Probably the last step in getting out of here in an efficient way. Can’t let go of my home yet.

Just to put one aspect of the UK's housing crisis into some international perspective, while the 'affordability' of housing has got worse in the last ten years (although this may reflect that the real decline was in the decade before - especially after 2008), there have been other countries in the OECD where the last ten years have been a lot worse for those trying to buy a home, most notably Portugal!

#housing #inflation

h/t Visual Capitalist

full details at:
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/home-affordability-trends-in-oecd-countries-since-2015/

Will Labour succeed in ending leasehold?

Its been tired before and not actually happened, much to the frustration of leaseholders - so will the Govt. be able to end a system that echoes feudalism?

It may not be sufficient to end the housing crisis bit it *is* a necessary element in the reform of a dysfunctional housing market.

#housing #leasehold

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/mar/03/centuries-old-leasehold-system-to-be-abolished-in-england-and-wales

As so often in the UK's housing crisis reforms intended to ameliorate some of the dysfunctional housing market's effects (here shared-ownership affordable housing) merely (re)introduce problems but focus them on more vulnerable households.

Without a major rethink of how we manage housing in this country, fiddling round the edges of a market built on the expectation of inflationary prices will never solve the social problem of unaffordable dwellings!

#housing #politics
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/mar/01/residents-trapped-with-service-charges-of-up-to-8000-a-year-to-take-legal-action-against-government