Prices have risen by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and nearly 15% in the European Union between 2015 and 2024. Though policies have been implemented to increase supply and regulate rentals, their impact has been limited and the problem is getting worse
Housing access has become a critical issue worldwide, with cities that were once accessible reaching unsustainable price points. Solutions that have been proposed, like building more houses, capping rents, investing in subsidized housing and limiting the purchase of properties by foreigners have not stemmed the issue’s spread. Between 2015 and 2024, prices rose by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and by nearly 15% in the European Union (including by 26% in Spain), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
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Salaries have not grown apace with real estate prices. In the EU, the median rent rose by 20% between 2010 and 2022, with rental and purchase prices growing by up to 48%, according to Eurostat. Underregulated markets are wreaking havoc, and in the United States and Spain, 20% of renters spend more than 40% of their income on housing, while in France, Italy, Portugal and Greece, that percentage varies between 10% and 15%, according to the OECD. Many countries have created programs aimed at increasing the future supply of public housing, but their effectiveness has yet to be determined and analysts say that results will be limited if smarter regional planning decisions are not made.
A lot of this was already talked about by the traditional Left, way back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The discussion back then was all about Power, and by that I mean the capacity of forcing or blocking others from doing what they want, not just the version of “Power” talked about the useful idiots nowadays which only sees the Power of the State, never the Power that comes from Money and Ownership.
This is why some of the suggested solutions they came up with back then explicitly involved things like Confiscating the Means Of Production and Land Reform, which, whether one agrees or not with it, at least recognized and tried to address the Power inherent in the Ownership of that which is needed to produce things for the rest.
The problem is that the supposedly Leftwing (but really mostly Liberal and not even honestly so) thinking since at least the 80s pointedly avoids talking about the Power Of Money as if people’s life’s aren’t shaped by access to a place to live, access to food, access to healthcare and the time they have to spend working being defined by how little of the product of their work ends up in their hands, none of which is trully their choice nowadays.
Maybe we should start again looking back at some of the best things from back then, such as Social Democracy.