Housing shortage

“ France has a growing demand for rental housing, a widening gap between demand and supply, and an acute housing shortage for middle- and low-income families. These characteristics make it an attractive destination for private equity firms who, after the interest shown in the SNCF portfolio, have turned their eyes to the French housing market. ”

“ There is no doubt that all these factors check the supply of houses. But it is also checked by the poverty of the working-man. He cannot pay a rent which tempts the builder; in other words, the margin of profit that the builder can make out of him is so small that his demand for a house is not effective. He wants and needs it, but he cannot pay a price which will secure it.
These, then, are the permanent causes of shortage: that a house takes a century to consume; that land values are, comparatively speaking, inflexible, and that a working-man can only afford a cheap house. ”

“ The most serious aspect of the housing shortage was that as yet respectable New Yorkers knew but two modes of residence: one must either take a full single house, or consent to a dismal boarding house. ”

“ Since then the housing shortage in countless communities, affecting millions of families, has magnified this call to action.
Today we face both an immediate emergency and a major postwar problem.
Since VJ-day the wartime housing shortage has been growing steadily worse and pressure on real estate values has increased. Returning veterans often cannot find a satisfactory place for their families to live, and many who buy have to pay exorbitant prices. Rapid demobilization inevitably means further overcrowding. ”

“ Some people hardly seem to realise that such things as decent houses exist and look on bugs and leaking roofs as acts of God; others rail bitterly against their landlords; but all cling desperately to their houses lest worse should befall. So long as the housing shortage continues the local authorities cannot do much to make existing houses more liveable. ”

“ To aid the middle-income families, I recommend that the Congress enact new legislation authorizing a vigorous program to help cooperatives and other nonprofit groups build housing which these families can afford.
Rent control has done a great deal to prevent the housing shortage from having had worse effects during this postwar period of adjustment. Rent control is still necessary to prevent widespread hardship and sharp curtailment of the buying power of millions of consumers in metropolitan areas. ”

“ Up to 4,000 leva can be borrowed for this purpose in urban areas and up to 3,000 leva in rural areas. This, however, covers less than one-half of the cost of a two-room apartment.
Although the increasing reliance on tenant-financed housing is helping to reduce the overall housing shortage, it has meant that most new housing units are built for the higher income groups. Cooperative apartments and private houses require a substantial initial investment and the assumption of a mortgage, which are beyond the means of most blue-collar and low-income white-collar workers. ”

“ But now we are confronted with the fact that there is a great shortage even of such houses as I have described. Recent investigations in a great number of towns, show pretty clearly that in about half the towns of England there are many working men who cannot get accommodation suited to their needs. Either they must go into houses that are much too large, and take lodgers to help to pay the rent, or they must crowd into houses that are unsatisfactory or much too small, not because they are unable or unwilling to pay for better ones, but because there are none to be had. ”

“ We should also give special attention to the decentralization of industry and the development of areas that are now under-industrialized.
HOUSING
The third major policy is also of great importance to the national economy: an aggressive program to encourage housing construction. The first federal program to relieve the veterans' housing shortage was announced in February 1946. In 1946 one million family housing units have been put under construction and more than 665,000 units have already been completed. The rate of expansion in construction has broken all records. ”

“ The brunt of this shortage is, of course, borne by persons with low or moderate incomes. As of 1970, it was estimated that not only were half of all low income families in the State obliged to live in inadequate housing, but so were approximately 125,000 families with moderate incomes. Housing Crisis in New Jersey, supra at iv. The median cost of a new single family detached house was $30,000 in the northeastern region of the country in 1969. ”

“ During a period of housing scarcity, rent ceilings are essential in any planned program of inflationary control. Profiteering based on scarcity of housing must be ended. The administration of rent ceilings will necessarily be confined to the urban areas where the shortage is critical. ”

“ There is no housing shortage in the country at large.
Sufficiency of food supply as well as of clothing and shelter for the masses of our population is another accomplishment we can justly take pride in. ”

“ The ratio of the shortage of standard rental units both affordable and available to extremely low-income renter households in the State to the aggregate shortage of standard rental units both affordable and available to extremely low-income renter households in all the States. `` (ii) The ratio of the shortage of standard rental units both affordable and available to very low-income renter households in the State to the aggregate shortage of standard rental units both affordable and available to very low-income renter households in all the States. ”

“ This obligation is enforcible by the local authority, and that body is empowered, if necessary, to execute such repairs as may be required at the landlord's expense. [5] When we have to do with a town which has always been, or has somehow become, free from houses unfit for human habitation, the adoption of this policy for the future need not involve any great difficulty. For not many houses could become uninhabitable in such a way that renovation was impracticable in any one year, and there would, therefore, be no danger of closing orders leading to a shortage. ”

“ The branch of the land question to which the Government called the greatest attention in their election promises was Housing. On this subject the Government have placed many pages of legislation on the Statute Book. One can only wish that the houses occupied as much space. They began by informing us, probably accurately, that up to the time of the Armistice there was an accumulated shortage of 500,000 houses; in pre-war days new working-class houses were required, and to a certain extent provided, although the shortage had then already begun, to an average number of 90,000 a year. ”

“ President Biden’s plan will:
Build, preserve, and retrofit more than two million homes and commercial buildings to address the affordable housing crisis:
There is a severe shortage of affordable housing options in America. Millions of families pay more than half their income on rent, and home energy costs are a significant concern for American renters as well. And, across the country, people are struggling to purchase their first home. ”

“ The prompt carrying through of a comprehensive national measure of housing, the local authorities being everywhere required to make good the whole of the existing shortage in well-planned, well-built, commodious and healthy homes for the entire population, assisted by National Exchequer grants sufficient in amount to prevent any charge falling on the local rates.
Unemployment and the Right to Work.
I should use every endeavour to secure the right to work for all. Industry must be organized to provide for opportunities of service for all. ”

“ III It can hardly be denied that there are some suburban municipalities which have already developed in an exclusionary mold. These communities, which have benefited from regional development, have, by their land use controls, contributed to the regional housing shortages. ”

“ In theory, low and moderate income families should benefit even from construction of new housing which they themselves cannot afford because such housing creates vacancies which ‘filter down.’ In reality, however, most of these vacancies are absorbed by the enormous lag between population growth and new housing construction. Sagalyn & Sternlieb, supra at 42. The housing which does ‘filter down’ to persons with low or moderate incomes is often badly dilapidated and in deteriorating neighborhoods. ”

“ It is the poverty, the lack of planning, the lack of technical assistance, the lack of financing to buy construction materials, the lack of urban equipment. To change this housing policy for human settlements, they should stimulate self-construction, instead of financing these large housing complexes. ”

“ We need 470,000 dwellings a year: 100,000 in the cities and 370,000 in the rural areas. This means building 10 to 12 dwellings a year per 1,000 people, but unfortunately our dwelling construction averaged only two to three units a year per 1,000 people during the last 10 years.
This statistical statement hardly projects the human significance of our housing problem. In human terms the problem means sprawling squatter areas—vast pockets of poverty, ignorance and disease which debase, pervert and stultify their inhabitants. ”

“ Obviously, house-property in London will fall in rental value, and fall enormously. Slum property will sink to zero, and the whole working population will move into houses of a class quite above those which they can now afford to occupy. Families which are now compelled to huddle together in one room will be able to rent five or six, and thus will the housing problem temporarily solve itself by the simple process of a diminution in the numbers of the tenants. ”

“ As one drops down the economic scale the present failure to properly house the wage-earner becomes more striking. For the family of the semi-skilled worker, for the factory worker's family whose income is hardly larger than average factory wage, for the lower-paid ranks of the "white collar" worker and of the government employee, decent housing in new construction is scarcely to be had to-day anywhere. And as for the housing problem of the unskilled worker, married and with a normalsized family, it may be a long time indeed before he can be provided for. ”

“ In the end, expanding access to affordable housing isn’t just about caring for the least fortunate among us and strengthening our middle class -- it’s about ending our housing mess, climbing out of our financial crisis, and putting our economy on the path to long-term growth and prosperity. ”

“ It springs from the colossal economic waste in land, in municipal and private construction, the cost of which accumulates until it becomes a crushing burden on housing. This burden is further weighted with an excessive load of charges for speculative financing.
Deterioration in architecture
How can the wage-earner, even the fairly prosperous individual, be expected to carry this burden? Of course he cannot. He is helpless in the face of the relentless operation of factors which he, as an individual, cannot control. ”

“ Sizeable industrial and commercial ratables are eagerly sought and homes and the lots on which they are situate are required to be large enough, through minimum lot sizes and minimum floor areas, to have substantial value in order to produce greater tax revenues to meet school costs. Large families who cannot afford to buy large houses and must live in cheaper rental accommodations are definitely not wanted, so we find drastic bedroom restrictions for, or complete prohibition of, multi-family or other feasible housing for those of lesser income. ”

“ Home prices in cities across the country have fallen by more than 25 percent since 2006. And in Phoenix, they've fallen by 43 percent.
Even if your neighborhood hasn't been hit by foreclosures, you're likely feeling the effects of this crisis in other ways. Companies in your community that depend on the housing market -- construction companies and home furnishing stores and painters and landscapers -- they're all cutting back and laying people off. The number of residential construction jobs has fallen by more than a quarter million since mid-2006. ”

“ It was felt that capital, no less than labor, would deplore any reduction in the standard of living of the workers in industry, and the individuals interested in the Bayonne experiment were ready to lend a hand in placing the production of wage-earners' houses on a sounder business basis.
That the particular section of the real estate market which produces wage-earners' housing is careless of the social interest, and that it operates inefficiently, with heavy economic waste in many industrial centres of the country—this is a truth well known to housing experts. ”

“ The increased cost of living space is caused by a shortage of houses. Putting aside the accidental destruction of houses, the shortage generally results from the diversion of materials and labor from the construction of houses to the production of military material. New dwellings are not produced and old ones are allowed to decay. Under the conditions the action of the market place automatically pushes up the price of space to a level some dwellers are unable to meet and causes others to do without other things in order to keep a roof over their heads. ”