Housing shouldn't be an investment vehicle. It seems pretty obvious but no-one wants to give up their imaginary number. (Imaginary because most people have 1 or fewer houses and will always need to live somewhere, so they can't spend the paper value of their home).
The cost of rent feeds into everything, its such a clear drain on everyone's resources (apart from landlords). If you have time to give, please think about how to change things. Though I'm an internet rando so ymmv
The number is not imaginary if you have kids, the idea of leaving your children some of your wealth is dear to many people, and most often they will have acquired their own place by the time you die.
It is arguable that inheritance taxes should prevent accumulation of wealth, but point is, real estate survives you.
In California the real estate value survives you. Your children inherit your Prop 13 tax assessment which means your children inherit a tax bill that's a fraction of what it would otherwise be. That's a pretty strong incentive to drive values up and not sell.
The point is they would need less wealth if they also weren't spending the second half of your life saving up for a house...
And you can still give them the money
Perhaps housing was always an investment vehicle. St. Petersburg is full of 4-5 storey buildings, initially with apartments for rent, most of whose were built to provide {Surname} with a stable income in the old age.
Short of going all the way to banning private ownership of housing, there will always be an investment aspect to a significant financial asset like a house.
So if you are going to have private ownership of housing, the question is more about how policies should be structured. Should policy favor home ownership, should policy focus on housing affordability, etc.
People complaining about treating housing as an investment vehicle are often referring to policy choices in the US that treat home ownership as a good result in itself, regardless of the impact on affordability. So we have things like long term mortgages backed by quasi-government entities or local policy choices that focus on maintaining real estate prices (vs things like quality, availability and affordability).
Wealth concentration has only increased and everyone else just have less and less, at some point the situation will be dire enough that the only resource left for the majority will be violence, nothing makes a house affordable like burning it down and located in a neighborhood known for its need of firemen; landlords will say the attacks are a work of savages, but when you make it hard for people to barely survive in your civilization (aka City) it's is you and only you who are making your civilization less civilized.
Because doing that has worked great so far right? You keep ignoring the problem and pretending that billionaires will allow any change to happen and people just need to go and get into politics.
It's worked before. Some places in the world have a healthier housing situation and it didn't happen by accident. Politics doesn't go away no matter how many buildings you burn down.
Yeah, ask AOC or Bernie how good is working out to get the country to get some affordable housing/healthcare/etc. It's broken beyond repair, but you keep believing whatever helps you sleep at night.
there are enough lots (or owners who are happy to sell their apartment, so the building that would get demolished could), but then the dear neighbors make every effort to prevent building a nice dense housing tower, so they don't get built. it's that simple. burning down a building doesn't change the drivers of zoning
The cost of rent feeds into everything, its such a clear drain on everyone's resources (apart from landlords). If you have time to give, please think about how to change things. Though I'm an internet rando so ymmv