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It sure would be nice if folks on the left stopped using the term “neoliberal” as shorthand for “something I don’t like”. Words have meanings. A neoliberal housing policy would be a bunch of 5-over-1 in mixed zoning. The housing crisis is caused by many factors:
- sky-high construction costs
- restrictive zoning
- lack of co-op condos due to insufficient startup finding
- protectionist policies designed to shield homeowners from any drop in property value
- too-low interest rates for the past few dacades
- lack of other good investment options
- increased prominence of REITs and real estate holdings in pension funds etc
Their premise is that the free market drove up the price of houses. Deregulation that is to say end of social housing programs led to this. Is that not neo-liberal? High construction costs come mainly from high cost of labor. The market driving up costs isn’t free market? What protectionist policies are there? When have property values been under threat of dropping. They’ve been ever increasing due to market demand. You say “lack of good investment”. Others say investors determined housing was a prime investment. Ditto for your last point.
a bunch of 5-over-1 in mixed zoning
What does this even mean?
5-over-1 refers to a building/zoning design where you have one floor of commercial business space on the ground (typically small businesses, cafés, etc.) and then around 5 floors of residential apartments above it. Your classic “mixed use” neighbourhood: great for land values, walkability, sustainability, transit, cycling, etc.
I’m dubious about the claim that neoliberal policies naturally lead to this design though, as those with the money routinely seem more interested in paving a few hectares of green belt and filling it up with single family homes.
What would be helpful is for zoning bylaws to start redrawing cities with more 5-over-1 areas, replacing wide/noisy/dirty/dangerous through roads with narrow winding ones and broad sidewalks littered with trees and cafés.
I think zoning laws, parking requirement and crazy urbanism rules are a form of protectionism that drive home prices up.
It’s crazy that the land you buy is so restricted that the only thing you can do is… nothing asides from trying to win the lawn contest with your neighbors.
In my opinion, those are the factors that led to this catastrophe. Houses are literally frozen. You cannot start a business, you cannot build another house on your land, nothing.
The government can build more affordable housing, sure, but ultimately, we need to let the city build itself without overly restrictive zoning and urbanism by-laws.
I don’t like your reply so you must be WOKE!
/s
I’m not into politics at all, but wouldn’t the word “neoliberal” be most likely misused by those on the right?
Whether you like it or not, politics is into you and directly affects your life. It’s good to learn more about it.
“Neoliberal” refers to an economic push (typically championed by right-wing parties). The short explanation is that neoliberal proponents want to strip regulation wherever they can, believing that “the market” will provide what the regulations were guaranteeing (safety, competition, etc.) organically.
An extreme example would be removing any controls on food safety. The idea is that if a company gets a reputation for producing toxic/dangerous food, the market (ie, the people buying food) will naturally avoid that company because they don’t want to get sick and that company will go out of business. That risk is what keeps them in line.
A more common example is vehicle emissions. We regulate a lot of terrible stuff out of car exhaust — lead for example — because the market refused to do it themselves.
Opponents to neoliberalism point out that:
- The massive amount of money in the hands of corporations means that their ability to manipulate the market (through advertising, media manipulation, or intimidating/buying their competitors) means that the market is insufficiently free for such policies and…
- That (perhaps most importantly) the individual often will not make purchasing decisions based on what’s good for the broader public.
Also, a few thousand dead kids due to some executive deciding to add arsenic to corn flakes to reduce costs is too high a price to pay for “liberalising” the economy.
Oh okay gotcha. Thanks a lot for spelling it out for me (not sarcasm). I honestly just was confused about the jargon. I watched that one documentary on Thatcher, it seems like that’s exactly what her policies did and it earned lots of her high-class friends a lot of money at the expense of the citizens. It seems like I sat through the whole thing without absorbing that one word.
I feel like I have to defend myself a bit and say that it’s not that I’m not into politics, it’s just that I’m not into the flame-war, pick-a-side, bash the other party sort of politics. I vote in every election and I have a very nuanced view of most issues.
I agree with your analysis on why the free market would not be able to self-regulate in this case. It’s funny because I myself have launched a food complaint with the BC admin before, and yeah let’s just say the company never would have fixed it themselves in the free market.
I just want to say that as a non-native speaker, the word “liberal” has taken on and been used in so many forms that you can’t quite infer the meaning in a lot of cases.
Agreed. Especially in Canada where we have a Liberal party it’s quite annoying!
