• LostWon
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    1 year ago

    This is very important. There are multiple very good ways to handle this, but what the market would do if left to its own devices is to build a bunch of luxury houses and condos, and then do the classic classist blame-shift and say people who can’t afford it for “not working hard enough.” (Also, putting them in historically more affordable neighbourhoods will create further tensions.)

    • Dearche
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      1 year ago

      Honestly, this is dependent on the amount of land available to high density housing. Imagine if all low density housing zoning is immediately changed to high density zoning in each city?

      In the short term, of course you’ll get nothing but expensive condos for the wealthy. But as more and more of these lands are bought up and used for buildings that support at least ten times the population as before, the prices will eventually start to fall and the newer developments will start catering to less and less wealthy individuals and families.

      Of course, this does depend on development outpacing population increases, but that’s the point of making so much existing land be rezoned.

      • tempest
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        1 year ago

        It really depends on how you choose to define ‘wealthy’.

        Developers love to make 1BR 500 sqft condos as they are the most profitable. They make very few 3 bedroom / penthouse type condos which makes it very hard to raise a family in the cities where they favour these 1BR condos. Those 1BR condos still sell for 500k though, so like I said, it depends on how you define wealthy.