So there’s a ton of countries that I’ve heard have had truly unaffordable housing for decades, like:

  • The UK
  • Ireland
  • The Netherlands

And I’ve heard of a ton of countries where the cost of houses was until recently quite affordable where it’s also started getting worse:

  • Germany
  • Poland
  • Czechia
  • Hungary
  • The US
  • Australia
  • Canada
  • And I’m sure plenty others
  1. It seems to be a pan-Western bloc thing. Is the cause in all these countries the same?
  2. We’ve heard of success stories in cities like Vienna where much of the housing stock is municipally owned – but those cities have had it that way for decades. Would their system alleviate the current crisis if established in the aforementioned countries?
  3. What specific policies should I be demanding of our politicians to make housing affordable again? Is there any silver bullet? Has any country demonstrably managed to reverse this crisis yet?
    • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 days ago

      As a Finn, please stop talking about us as some kind of utopia. We haven’t solved shit and our government is infested with fascists. I’m preeetty sure there are a lot more than that out there, unless a quarter of those 1000 happen to be around my morning commute.

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.world
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        7 days ago

        True, but they could just decide to ignore homeless people like most of the US and other capitalist countries have, but they didn’t.

          • Bender@sopuli.xyz
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            6 days ago

            I was going to let him say something obtusely racist and then roast him, but this works too.

            EDIT: He did it anyway.

            • hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              6 days ago

              Shut uppppp. I live in a building that has a lot of immigrants (mostly students) and we get along just fine. That “oh I’m not racist, different cultures just can’t fit together” argument is bullshit, and even if people from different cultures don’t get along too well, it’s still better than them being outside when it’s -20 degrees.

            • Bender@sopuli.xyz
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              6 days ago

              Hot take: blatant racism and veiled racism are equally bad reasons for a country to have poor housing policy.

              • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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                6 days ago

                I’m pretty sure ALL reasons are bad reasons? It doesn’t stop humans from generally being racist when it comes to housing. Which is a shame; you grow a lot more as a person when you live next to people from other cultures.

              • Em Adespoton@lemmy.ca
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                5 days ago

                Funny how so many people took that. Pointing out that people are, as a whole, racist, and that it influences how they think about the homeless gets turned into a “here’s my bigotry coming out to tell you why it won’t work.”

                I guess I could have framed it more clearly, but once the mods removed it, I figured people would just move on.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          6 days ago

          It doesn’t, that’s just a bullshit, half baked “argument” people like to use when someone points out to them that Scandinavian nations have figured most of this shit out already.

    • SubArcticTundra@lemmy.mlOP
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      6 days ago

      That’s good to hear, although it’s kinda beyond the scope of my question. I’m asking more about how to stop prices rising when they’ve suddenly started quickly rising and people don’t know why.

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 days ago

      Yeah I was going to say Finland. Their public housing system should be an example for other nations to follow.

      They won’t, of course…