Ask HN: Why is housing not solved, yet?
Hi hackernews,
this will be a long one, so bear with me. My question is: why is housing not a solved problem?
Maybe to be more precise: why is affordable housing not a solved problem? Let me start my "essay" with a personal story:
I am 31, and i am employed in a big swiss company. My Salary is quiet decent and i have a lot of fun at work. Although i like my work, i wouldn't work for free or like to work during the weekends, in fact, i would love to work less than 42 hours. I thought Computers and AI would make us work less, but it is quiet the opposite. But that is a different topic. I make around 6000 USD and pay around 2000 USD for rent. This is one third of my salary. It annoys me. And there is no way out.
Here are some questions that pop up in my mind:
1. There is so much money involved in this, why is there no innovation, like building cheap housing on masse?
2. Ikea made a fortune by making furniture really cheap. Why is there no "ikea" for housing? What is so difficult about housing that makes it impossible to automate?
3. In this day and age: why are people still living in metropolitan areas? The obvious answer is of course: because the jobs are there. But software engineers can work from anywhere? Why not pick a cheap area and build a new city there?
The chinese people are building new "mega" cities. It seems : in western part of the world. Creating a new city is not an option. Instead the existing cities grow. Why is that? Simple answer, Switzerland has no highrises to provide enough square metres for everybody, and Swiss don't build them because the will "obstruct sights" Most of the hosung boom happened post WWII. Back when there were only 1billion people. They couldn't have expected 7billion. And because there are more prople, there is more competition to own homes and that is what is allowing homeowners to be able to treat it as a asset. It is an asset and it is worth what others are willing to pay. So they also have no reason to support more housing as it negatively affects their bottom line. So they buy more housing based on their good credit from home #1, and rent it out. The rent pays for the mortgage and some margin on top. So they keep buying places and renting them out.