Western societies stand on the brink of a great reversion towards a demographically and economically stagnant society reminiscent of the Dark Ages.
For middle- and working-class people across the developed world, home ownership has served as a primary driver of upward mobility. But in a growing number of places, this aspiration is being systematically undermined with grave implications for liberal democracy, the economy, and even fertility.
This phenomenon is recorded in the newly released 20th edition of Demographia International Housing Affordability, and it is found in virtually every high-income country. The gap between housing prices and incomes is greatest in large—usually left-leaning—metropolitan areas, including Sydney, which has the highest gap between household income and home prices outside of Hong Kong. Sydney is followed closely by Los Angeles, San Francisco, Toronto, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Vancouver.
The determination of planners—often cheered on by academics, politicians, and the media—has been to stop movement to the periphery with the aim of forcing people into “living smaller, living closer” whether they like it or not. This has boosted prices by delimiting—and even prohibiting—development on the periphery, where costs tend to be lower. The consequent price rises, some advocates of urban containment say, are intentional. As anti-sprawl advocates Arthur C. Nelson and Casey J. Dawkins have argued, urban containment “should decrease the value of land outside the boundary and increase the value of land inside the boundary.”
Nearly three-in-five younger people may see homeownership as an essential part of the American dream. Some two-thirds say that the suburbs are their preferred area of residence, a trend that appears stronger today. Given these preferences, the mismatch between market preference and policy has produced a staggering decline in housing affordability across much of the Anglosphere.
Despite claims that densification would lower prices, an examination of US data suggests a positive correlation between greater density and housing costs. Among 53 major metros, those with more single-family housing and larger lot sizes (key indicators of lower density) have substantially better housing affordability. Nor have these policies encouraged new building, as demonstrated by the paltry California numbers compared to those in less regulated Texas, Florida, and Tennessee. Higher interest rates, the result of a tsunami of public debt, are now further squeezing supply.
Yet the path to homeownership is being made more difficult. Today, financial oligarchs increasingly seize upon high prices to purchase ever-larger shares of the housing market. Wall Street firms like Blackstone and Britain’s Lloyd’s Bank increasingly buy homes in hot markets, turning them into unaffordable rentals and further boost home prices.
This is the road to neo-feudalism. The United States never experienced feudalism, but the proportion of land owned by the nation’s 100 largest private landowners grew by nearly 50 percent between 2007 and 2017. In more historically feudal Great Britain, land prices have risen dramatically over the past decade, and less than one percent of the population owns half of all the land.
R&I~Smit
Patriotic Patriot
Article URL : https://quillette.com/2024/06/19/the-road-to-neo-feudalism/