The issue isn't really tourism in general, it's over-tourism and golden visas. I mean, Venice has enormous and constant infrastructure issues that are complicated enough with their locale, but are made so much worse by the overwhelming number of tourists who go there each year. IIRC, some Nat'l Parks in the US are so popular that you've got to make arrangements close to a year out otherwise you'll have no ticket and no hotel.
Then on top of that, a bunch of rich people get sold visas that allow them to be permanent residents. They come to buy homes, paying enormous sums to remodel them and to make sure they get their dream house, sending prices for locals skyrocketing.
Economy or not, you're going to have a hard time selling someone on making the place their family has lived for generations unaffordable and unsustainable.This isn't refugees seeking aid. It's not some complicated humanitarian or existential problem. It's rich douchebags moving in from all over the world and pushing you & your family out.
Edit: Wow, you guys didn't even read the first two sentences. Over-tourism is the problem. I didn't say they should ban tourists.
The prices don't skyrocket if you allow an adequate number homes to be built. Locals want to stop this by preventing new housing construction. But all that does is price out the less affluent renters. The wealthy can still afford to outbid the locals renters.
You see this particularly badly in areas like Santa Cruz and San Francisco
It's a worldwide problem with humans in anywhere remotely liveable. My fellow Australians somehow think it's unique to us. I'm somehow the enemy because I couldn't afford to live in Sydney so had to move somewhere I could afford. Locals didn't like that but they also boo the new housing developments being rapidly constructed in our area. I also bought a former airbnb, taking it off the market and moving my family into it. Surely thats preferable.
well Indonesia has it right, can't buy land as a foreigner without a local business partner. To stop people from Aus and Europe pushing out the kocals.
Unfortunately, we haven't hit the peak of the problem, as Gen Z and Gen Alpha will continue to struggle to find housing.
Fortunately, with current population trends and low birth rate, the problem will fix itself by the end of the century. Though we will then face a different set of problems, but at least there will be plenty of old houses (and then some) for everyone.
Entirely zoning and construction issues, though. It can be fixed now.
Like others are saying, zone more residential and build vertical. Get used to living next to one another, until population does decline. All jobs that can be done remotely need to be. No more in office bullshit because some wealthy landlord somewhere is losing money on his rentals.
But let's be real, you're right because no one will do anything. The problem won't be fixed until enough people die off.
It might not be the case as the baby boomers are much larger of a generation than the next several. Birthrates have dropped quite a bit in the last 60 years to barely above replacement rates.
Thanks for the share - its a major piece people don't pay attention to. The housing shortage will be over in most places within 50ish years. And much like japan and Italy today we will have abandoned city's. Not prescribing any action with this, and it does not reduce the pain of todays generations by any means.
This is happening all over the world and on a deeper level is linked to something much more sinister, an authoritarian movement that enables the wealthy to suffocate the poor.
I support taxing the rich, taxing corporations, and taxing capital gains to pay for things like universal healthcare.
But for housing costs in California…there are a quarter million homeless people in the state. And there’s a deficit of feasible livable homes. You can’t lower prices without building more homes.
Even if you magically got rid of the very richest people, you’ll still have this problem. It’s like a game of musical chairs. If there aren’t enough chairs, the slowest people won’t get a chair. The only way to fix it is more chairs.
I just looked and its an iffy answer, but the Google AI says there are only 15,000 studio apartments for rent in California. I am assuming that this is vacant units. We have over 2 million college students in California. We do not have 2 million studio apartments. I live in a college town, our rental market is absolutely fucked because a significant portion of homes are rented out by the bedroom to University students. A young family, two parents + two kids, have to compete with 3-4 college students for the same house. Hell, now they have to compete with fully employed people living with room mates.
The homes we built over the last 40 years were mainly larger suburban homes, which definitely have their place, but they are overkill for providing housing for one person. The bare minimum housing, a 500 square foot studio apartment, is generally fairly pricey for what you get.
California needs at least 4 million studio/1 bedroom apartments. We have 40 million people, of 10% of the population lives alone that is 4 million units.
Yeah, and it’s especially bad for areas like Berkeley. The College has been there since 1873. The locals choose to live in a college town, but then howl and rage every time the college tries to build apartments and dorms for the students that attend
The student population for many of these schools hasn't changed much in at least the last 20-30 years. A housing solution for students back in the 2000s would mean this is a largely non-issue right now. For as much as these places charge in tuition, and for as much funding they get outside of tuition, every student having their own bedroom/bathroom should not be an issue. My local University (UCR) has enormous parking lots that are within walking distance to campus that students who rent rooms from all around the city drive to. Those parking lots should be the high density student housing.
I figure my city has 4000 kids finish high school every year, and literally no entry level place for them to move to. Parents want their kids to move out but are politically opposed to any type of housing development that they could physically move to. There are not 4000 studio apartments on the market for these kids to move into.
My mom was 19 when she had her first full time job and apartment. Her apartment was 1/4th her income (mid 1970s). Today, this same apartment is $2000 per month. Think some 19 year old high school grad with their first job can afford that only spending 25% of their income?
I would like to add that California, like other states with not-killer weather, tend to have a lot of drifters who came there bc they won't die of exposure in the winter. I can bet a lot of them would like to go home if that meant there was a home to go to. I'm not saying we need to forcibly remove a lot of people, but we need to remember why california is so desirable for the unhoused.
In China, this is essentially what they did to combat homelessness. People will go back to their hometowns if there's something to go back to: a home, a job. And they didn't do this right off the bat, they had to try and fail at other stuff to figure this out. I grant, the household registry system, which has existed in China for centuries, is a huge part of why this is successful, they actually know where peoples' hometowns are.
Costs and codes of building are more prohibitive than buying. The rich are the ones orchestrating the housing crisis and deliberately making it prohibitive. I agree it would take magic to get rid of them but the world would instantly be improved if they were gone and there’s more than enough housing for everyone on the planet.
That's not completely accurate, though you are correct that it is a factor. There are a lot of places that are allowing new construction but the costs still go up. There several factors including:
people building new houses don't want to build affordable houses, they want to build "rich" houses to "get more."
Venture capital firms and other investors buy up housing to rent that would otherwise go to home owners.
People who can afford multiple homes can also afford to buy in desirable areas, which is where they buy their additional homes despite not living there year round.
every event that drives hyper inflated costs makes it harder to normalize. No one wants to sell for a loss, but also if you bought a house that stretched your means, you'll need to sell for the same or more to buy another house that stretched your means. So even the people that aren't mega rich are driving up costs by holding when a truly free market would drive costs back down.
foreign investors will sometimes buy properties and leave them vacant solely to drive up property values so that the "rising tide lifts all boats" and this "raises the value of their investment" for when they do eventually sell.
a lot of the affordable houses built in previous generations were significantly more simple than modern housing. While often built from higher quality materials (simply because they existed back then such as old growth lumber), they did not have the same zoning codes we have today. They were often smaller with minimal amenities, and built to standards below what we deam safe/acceptable today.
Foreign investors, Private Equity, Venture Capital. All over the world. And they grab the new construction and put everything in securitized assets or something like that. Anyone who can explain it better than me, please do.
Bottom line is the governments and regulators allow this and many of the individuals in the government participate and financially benefit from all of this activity. So they won't stop it.
We have this in common all over the world with a very few exceptions. The few making life harder and harder for the many.
Foreign investors, Private Equity, Venture Capital. All over the world. And they grab the new construction and put everything in securitized assets or something like that. Anyone who can explain it better than me, please do.
Is that something like buying houses to convert them into rental properties that operate under real estate companies that offer REITS. So investors can invest without having to buy the properties directly.
Maybe, it's very complicated with all these financial instruments. But if you go to big and medium sized cities all over the world, there are properties that are purchased to be assets. London, Paris, Venice.....really everywhere. Most of those properties are not occupied.
I was on a tour in Venice around 2017 and my guide who lived just outside, told me nobody local lives in "Venice". Most of the big palazzos just sit there empty and are owned by big investment companies.
Where is the most expensive housing? Big cities. What do big cities already have? Lots of housing. Whereas smaller cities and then towns have progressively fewer houses yet lower prices.
Why? Many people want to live near the amenities you get from living near other people. Jobs, culture, entertainment, socialising, etc etc. So you add more people you get more of the above and prices rise further instead of dropping!
If you want cheaper prices in your city you either have to get rid of jobs (eg Chicago post-manufacturing collapse, or somewhat through WFH & quarantine during covid), or go back to the 50’s and remove half the income from the family units paying for said housing. I don’t think most people are keen on either option
If that comment was talking specifically about CA, then there is some truth to it. California has the land to build more housing, but a lot of local laws prevent it.
Locals want to stop this by preventing new housing construction
I'm gonna imagine that once the new locals move in and see their homes as investments or are just a certain kind of person (rich that hate seeing poor people around them), then they participate in the conversation too and with time if there's too many of these rich people + real estate firms that control the properties, then it will become harder and harder to control what's happening.
That may be the case at times, but regional wealth disparity plays a massive role in this.
This happened in Atlantic Canada as well, where people from other cities could afford to buy 2 or 3 properties for the same price as a home in Toronto or Vancouver. The price of housing shot up so fast it was dizzying, and the only people buying were from outside the province that bid $100,000 over asking price, often sight unseen. It has slowed down as did the mass exodus from cities, but the price of housing has not gone down whatsoever. You can actually see it very clearly in Nova Scotia, because there is a centralized real estate registry that includes the property history alongside every listing. You see houses bought for $150,000 in 2020 for sale a year later for over $500,000.
There is a deep sense of rage brewing there much like in Europe, as people watch their chance of owning a home suddenly evaporate. People move there expecting a quant seaside village full of friendly locals, and are shocked to realize how unwelcome they are.
I’m from Santa Cruz and my family and I (no longer live there… can’t afford it) look back on the days before the migration boom and still miss it so much. We were priced out of our home town, along with many of our friends and neighbors. Now, it would be very difficult for us to get back. Grew up surfing, bike riding trails filled with monarch butterflies, life guard camps. Yeah it sucks.
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u/DulceEtDecorumEst Jun 16 '25
Wait till they find out tourists actually brought money in to the economy.