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
- It seems to be a pan-Western bloc thing. Is the cause in all these countries the same?
- 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?
- 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?
“before they did this” for Vienna is around WW1, which was a very different time :/
I am not very familiar with housing crises in other countries. I have lived in Vienna my whole life and now live in an apartment I own. This was possible to afford for me (a single man then in his mid-20s working as a software engineer) with a bank loan and some financial support from my family; I am not sure if it would still be possible nowadays.