The Netherlands short 390.000 homes in 2023

Oakyafterbirth@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 126 points –
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Nah, the big problem is that houses are too pricey for people to afford. The combination of a load of (international) students, the war in Ukraine, the last 13 years of government focusing on rich corporations made it so many young adults can not afford to buy or even rent their own place. If money was not an issue, I guarantee this would've not been as big a problem.

High demand meabs prices go up. Literally economics 101.

Except low demand doesn't usually make house prices go down either, it just means they won't get sold or they only get bought by investors - that then also would rather keep them empty than to reduce the price and take a loss, as an empty 1 million house is still worth that 1 million on paper.

I mean, over here in Europe there's plenty of solutions used by countries (even NL itself) to keep prices for housing down. Things like subsidies, quota for cheap housing, rent allowance, etc. Fact is the last government didn't give a shit about 50% of incomes, so they didn't put more in place to encourage and enforce that.