Here in Ireland the housing situation is an absolute nightmare, especially in Dublin. For the last few years an embarrassingly large chunk of my income has gone on rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
It wasn't always that way. My parents got married in 1980, in their twenties. My father was a low-ranking civil servant; my mother gave up her own job soon after marrying, and remained a housewife throughout my childhood. And yet they were able to buy a three-bedroom house in a fairly nice suburb of south Dublin. They had a back garden and a car. They had three children. We went on holiday every summer (albeit to rainy Irish seaside towns). It would be impossible to support a family like that on a single income in Dublin now (unless that income was very high indeed).
Oddly, it's now part of Ireland's national mythology that the 1970's and 80's were a time of darkness and disfunction (see the cringy film 'Sing Street'). But there are plenty of modern luxuries that I'd happily trade in exchange for the ability to live in the sort of place my parents bought 42 years ago.
UK fertility rate has been below replacement value since the 1970's, including during periods when housing was much more affordable - more/less at all points in time until 2004.
Building without effective control of immigration, likely facilitates the further displacement of the indigenous British population. Not least because first generation immigrants are more fertile.
Higher house prices in London should, in theory, push wealth outwards.
High houses prices should (in theory) drive commitment and coupling as a way to better survive/thrive. Perhaps more affordable housing would, counter intuitively, further reduce the already very low rates of commitment amongst the young.
Good article but I'm skeptical that house prices has more than a minor impact on fertility, as compared to the general culture of individualism and freedom which I think is largely behind it. Germany and Japan have relatively low housing costs for rich countries and yet lower fertility than Britain.
I sometimes ask my Japanese students why the fertility rate is so low in Japan and they always cite the high cost of raising children nowadays. I'm always a little skeptical because I can't believe that the students, once they start work, will have less disposable income for children than their grandparents had. Sure, raising children is much more expensive than it once was but then again salaries are also much higher than they once were. Either the salaries aren't high enough or there is some other factor in the mix.
Interesting that the rhetoric there is the same as here. People (somewhat understandably) aren't willing to admit that they don't want to compromise their freedom. Having children will always be a sacrifice of time and money whatever one's circumstances, but if doing this is a culture's highest priority for 'the good life' then people living in modern rich countries could always find a way.
Ditto many places in Scotland. One would expect to see a higher F rate in areas of uk where properties are more affordable but there seems to be very little evidence of that.
Although, I do agree disproportionately high house prices/rents have other negative social and economic impacts and are not ideal.
Excellent piece, Mr. West. I noticed the promotion of "street votes" again. Are there any examples of this procedure's actually being done and working out well?
Where I live, there's a great deal of ruckus about the building of more housing, including (OMG!) apartments. *shrug* I've been listening to people whining, "I'm here - now the county is full!" since we moved here almost 20 years ago.
thanks. it's fairly new as an idea, although something quite similar has been tried in Houston. It would obviously need to be tested somewhere, but I'm pretty confident the results would be positive.
"It would obviously need to be tested somewhere, but I'm pretty confident the results would be positive."
That seems to be a faith statement rather than a scientific - or even social-scientific - statement.
I hope the concept gets a real experiment, though. (I almost typed, "Anything would be better than what we have now," but that's obviously not true. Let me try again.) In order to improve the housing situation for millions of people around the world, a variety of new ideas - not old, proven-failure ideas - should be tried.
for sure, but I'd be pretty happy to see this tried near me. There re quite a few roads of two-story 20th century houses that could be replaced with four-story ones that would actually make them prettier, and make the homeowners rich. the genius of SV is that it incentives neighbours to want their neighbours to up zone. At the moment you'd be mad not to be a nimby, since it obviously makes you worse off.
I agree with the principle, but "No plan survives contact with the enemy," as it were. Experimental evidence would be good.
In general, a lot depends on where you are. People in my area who are upset about the apartments are thinking about traffic and school usage, but they're not thinking about the additional county and city taxes the additional residence will pay, or about the fact that the schools are going to be up the creek fairly soon without younger people with children moving in.
In addition, as was recently emphasized when we decided to sell my father-in-laws's home to a construction company for apartments, housing carries with it a significant emotional investment. That makes the dollar and cents (pound and ..?) decision much more complicated.
Like you noted, tradeoffs abound. And those tradeoffs have to be dealt with. I fear that most YIMBY *and* NIMBY plans ignore those tradeoffs. We assume what we want is unalloyed good.
Lack of complexity in the conversation (not THIS conversation) or even articulating tradeoffs make these projects, which I support in concept, more difficult.
Excellent points. One important point is that houses and their residents need utilities such as electricity and wastewater treatment. We just got back from a visit to the water treatment plant with our environmental science team. The county needs more treatment capacity, but nobody wants to be in the vicinity! They want their waste to disappear like magic, and clean drinking water to appear equally magically.
Is there any connection between the shortage of housing and the large numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal? I only ask because I rarely see the connection made. Yet if net immigration continues to run at over 300,000 a year, even if the government were to change housing regulations I can't believe that Britain has enough builders, carpenters, plasterers etc. to even begin to keep up with demand, let alone clear the backlog.
Of course very few of those immigrants will live alone. Let's say they live three to a house. That's still 100,000 new houses a year just to accommodate the incoming immigrants. Or have I forgotten some factor that completely changes the calculations? It wouldn't be the first time.
yes there is a clear link. I'm sure I've written about it recently. legal immigration since Blair came to power has increased housing costs in the UK by 21% (that was 2 years ago). it's not the biggest factor, but it's a certainly a significant one.
And you even put a number on it! 21%. I can see I'll be shoehorning that figure into my conversations, whether they are on Gareth Southgate or mending the roof, leading to plenty of exasperated sighs and rolled eyes.
My personal unifying theory of everything ( including declining marriage and fertility rate) is the removal of the taboo against pre marital sex. This has much reduced female bargaining power in the mating game and left men in a permanent state of aimlessness and adolescence. Severely hitting family formation. I generalise and also presuppose that the main purpose of life is to reproduce, with the family as the cornerstone of the optimal social order. Gratification replacing duty and repression. But then accept that unifying theories are likely more comforting than accurate.
I'm sure you are onto something. I remember hearing Milton Friedman saying that economists generally think of the individual as being the basic societal unit but he said it really isn't; it's the family. After all, why do some parents scrimp and save so that their children can live better and grandparents would rather pass on their money than spend it all at bingo. And I think the point of life is reproduction, even though humans have learned to thwart the wishes of their selfish genes. Yet they can't thwart what those genes want us to want.
When I found out that lovely girls would jump into bed with men at the drop of a hat (not necessarily with me you understand) I was really disappointed. I felt like I did when I noticed classics of English literature in the bargain buckets at W.H. Smiths for 99p. It gave out the signal that both were worth much less than I had assumed.
Now I'm older I realise that duty and repression have more substance and are a much healthier diet than gratification. The former is Scots Porridge Oats to the latter's Kendal Mint Cake.
In a previous online life I was the Transportation and Urban Plannng Policy Editor for Progressive Congress News. This piece would have gone out to Democratic congressional and legislative staffers in my digest today.
Here in Ireland the housing situation is an absolute nightmare, especially in Dublin. For the last few years an embarrassingly large chunk of my income has gone on rent for a one-bedroom apartment.
It wasn't always that way. My parents got married in 1980, in their twenties. My father was a low-ranking civil servant; my mother gave up her own job soon after marrying, and remained a housewife throughout my childhood. And yet they were able to buy a three-bedroom house in a fairly nice suburb of south Dublin. They had a back garden and a car. They had three children. We went on holiday every summer (albeit to rainy Irish seaside towns). It would be impossible to support a family like that on a single income in Dublin now (unless that income was very high indeed).
Oddly, it's now part of Ireland's national mythology that the 1970's and 80's were a time of darkness and disfunction (see the cringy film 'Sing Street'). But there are plenty of modern luxuries that I'd happily trade in exchange for the ability to live in the sort of place my parents bought 42 years ago.
Counterpoints:
UK fertility rate has been below replacement value since the 1970's, including during periods when housing was much more affordable - more/less at all points in time until 2004.
Building without effective control of immigration, likely facilitates the further displacement of the indigenous British population. Not least because first generation immigrants are more fertile.
Higher house prices in London should, in theory, push wealth outwards.
High houses prices should (in theory) drive commitment and coupling as a way to better survive/thrive. Perhaps more affordable housing would, counter intuitively, further reduce the already very low rates of commitment amongst the young.
Good article but I'm skeptical that house prices has more than a minor impact on fertility, as compared to the general culture of individualism and freedom which I think is largely behind it. Germany and Japan have relatively low housing costs for rich countries and yet lower fertility than Britain.
I sometimes ask my Japanese students why the fertility rate is so low in Japan and they always cite the high cost of raising children nowadays. I'm always a little skeptical because I can't believe that the students, once they start work, will have less disposable income for children than their grandparents had. Sure, raising children is much more expensive than it once was but then again salaries are also much higher than they once were. Either the salaries aren't high enough or there is some other factor in the mix.
Interesting that the rhetoric there is the same as here. People (somewhat understandably) aren't willing to admit that they don't want to compromise their freedom. Having children will always be a sacrifice of time and money whatever one's circumstances, but if doing this is a culture's highest priority for 'the good life' then people living in modern rich countries could always find a way.
Ditto many places in Scotland. One would expect to see a higher F rate in areas of uk where properties are more affordable but there seems to be very little evidence of that.
Although, I do agree disproportionately high house prices/rents have other negative social and economic impacts and are not ideal.
Excellent piece, Mr. West. I noticed the promotion of "street votes" again. Are there any examples of this procedure's actually being done and working out well?
Where I live, there's a great deal of ruckus about the building of more housing, including (OMG!) apartments. *shrug* I've been listening to people whining, "I'm here - now the county is full!" since we moved here almost 20 years ago.
thanks. it's fairly new as an idea, although something quite similar has been tried in Houston. It would obviously need to be tested somewhere, but I'm pretty confident the results would be positive.
"It would obviously need to be tested somewhere, but I'm pretty confident the results would be positive."
That seems to be a faith statement rather than a scientific - or even social-scientific - statement.
I hope the concept gets a real experiment, though. (I almost typed, "Anything would be better than what we have now," but that's obviously not true. Let me try again.) In order to improve the housing situation for millions of people around the world, a variety of new ideas - not old, proven-failure ideas - should be tried.
for sure, but I'd be pretty happy to see this tried near me. There re quite a few roads of two-story 20th century houses that could be replaced with four-story ones that would actually make them prettier, and make the homeowners rich. the genius of SV is that it incentives neighbours to want their neighbours to up zone. At the moment you'd be mad not to be a nimby, since it obviously makes you worse off.
I agree with the principle, but "No plan survives contact with the enemy," as it were. Experimental evidence would be good.
In general, a lot depends on where you are. People in my area who are upset about the apartments are thinking about traffic and school usage, but they're not thinking about the additional county and city taxes the additional residence will pay, or about the fact that the schools are going to be up the creek fairly soon without younger people with children moving in.
In summary, everything is tradeoffs.
In addition, as was recently emphasized when we decided to sell my father-in-laws's home to a construction company for apartments, housing carries with it a significant emotional investment. That makes the dollar and cents (pound and ..?) decision much more complicated.
Like you noted, tradeoffs abound. And those tradeoffs have to be dealt with. I fear that most YIMBY *and* NIMBY plans ignore those tradeoffs. We assume what we want is unalloyed good.
Lack of complexity in the conversation (not THIS conversation) or even articulating tradeoffs make these projects, which I support in concept, more difficult.
Excellent points. One important point is that houses and their residents need utilities such as electricity and wastewater treatment. We just got back from a visit to the water treatment plant with our environmental science team. The county needs more treatment capacity, but nobody wants to be in the vicinity! They want their waste to disappear like magic, and clean drinking water to appear equally magically.
Is there any connection between the shortage of housing and the large numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal? I only ask because I rarely see the connection made. Yet if net immigration continues to run at over 300,000 a year, even if the government were to change housing regulations I can't believe that Britain has enough builders, carpenters, plasterers etc. to even begin to keep up with demand, let alone clear the backlog.
Of course very few of those immigrants will live alone. Let's say they live three to a house. That's still 100,000 new houses a year just to accommodate the incoming immigrants. Or have I forgotten some factor that completely changes the calculations? It wouldn't be the first time.
yes there is a clear link. I'm sure I've written about it recently. legal immigration since Blair came to power has increased housing costs in the UK by 21% (that was 2 years ago). it's not the biggest factor, but it's a certainly a significant one.
And you even put a number on it! 21%. I can see I'll be shoehorning that figure into my conversations, whether they are on Gareth Southgate or mending the roof, leading to plenty of exasperated sighs and rolled eyes.
My personal unifying theory of everything ( including declining marriage and fertility rate) is the removal of the taboo against pre marital sex. This has much reduced female bargaining power in the mating game and left men in a permanent state of aimlessness and adolescence. Severely hitting family formation. I generalise and also presuppose that the main purpose of life is to reproduce, with the family as the cornerstone of the optimal social order. Gratification replacing duty and repression. But then accept that unifying theories are likely more comforting than accurate.
I'm sure you are onto something. I remember hearing Milton Friedman saying that economists generally think of the individual as being the basic societal unit but he said it really isn't; it's the family. After all, why do some parents scrimp and save so that their children can live better and grandparents would rather pass on their money than spend it all at bingo. And I think the point of life is reproduction, even though humans have learned to thwart the wishes of their selfish genes. Yet they can't thwart what those genes want us to want.
When I found out that lovely girls would jump into bed with men at the drop of a hat (not necessarily with me you understand) I was really disappointed. I felt like I did when I noticed classics of English literature in the bargain buckets at W.H. Smiths for 99p. It gave out the signal that both were worth much less than I had assumed.
Now I'm older I realise that duty and repression have more substance and are a much healthier diet than gratification. The former is Scots Porridge Oats to the latter's Kendal Mint Cake.
In a previous online life I was the Transportation and Urban Plannng Policy Editor for Progressive Congress News. This piece would have gone out to Democratic congressional and legislative staffers in my digest today.