You know there's this phrase that has been playing
on sort of a loop in my head lately. The housing
crisis. It is everywhere. I mean it's in all
the headlines. It's dominating city council meetings.
And honestly for most people listening it's probably
the single biggest line item in their monthly
budget. It's the monster in the room. Yeah. And,
you know, the problem with a phrase like housing
crisis is that it gets used so much it starts
to lose its meaning. It just becomes background
noise. Right. But when you actually stop and
look at the machinery behind that phrase, I mean,
the level of dysfunction is, it's just staggering.
That's exactly what we're doing today. We want
to move past the simple rent is too high complaint,
which, I mean, it's valid. It is. But we want
to take apart the engine. Get under the hood.
Exactly. We're looking at a stack of research
that spans the globe from zoning wars in the
Anglosphere to the renter's paradox in Germany.
Because the question isn't just why is it expensive?
No. The question is why is the cost of shelter
rising faster than the ability of human beings
to earn money? Right. That's the fundamental
disconnect. And before we really get into the
weeds with zoning laws and financial spirals,
we have to pin down what crisis even means in
this context. OK. Because technically, we're
usually talking about two different things that
are kind of colliding. So one is the physical
shortage, right? Just literally not enough roofs
for heads. Specifically, not enough roofs where
the heads want to be. Ah, that's a crucial distinction.
It's everything. We have Plenty of cheap housing
in places with no jobs. The crisis is the mismatch
between economic opportunity and housing supply.
Okay, so that's one part. What's the other? The
second part of the definition is the financial
crisis within the housing market itself. We're
talking asset bubbles, mortgage fragility, that
kind of thing. And the metric that sort of ties
them both together. It is the decoupling of income
and housing costs. Simple as that. When you see
housing costs rising by, say, 7 % a year, But
household incomes are just grinding forward at
2%. You're mathematically guaranteed to hit a
breaking point. You are. And we are seeing that
breaking point manifest differently all around
the world. In the global south, it looks like
informal settlements, slums. Yeah. In London
or San Francisco, it looks like the eradication
of the middle class. People just being priced
out completely. So we have a pretty clear mission
for this deep dive then. We're going to map out
this web. of problems, as you put it. Yeah, that's
the goal. We're going to look at the fierce economic
debates on causes. You know, is it supply or
the broader economy? We're going to compare the
Anglosphere model of planning against the Japanese
model, which is that's a fascinating case study
and just doing things totally differently. It
really is. Then we'll take a tour of the specific
dysfunctions in Germany, the Netherlands, India
and the UK. And we won't just leave you in the
depression of the crisis. We are going to look
at New Zealand. which actually offers a data
-backed glimmer of hope. A glimmer of hope. I'll
take it. And then we'll wrap up with the mechanics
of financial bubbles, the doom loop scenario,
which sounds ominous. It is. All right, let's
jump in. Section one, the great debate, supply
versus the economy. Let's do it. I feel like
if you grab a random person on the street and
ask them why housing is so expensive, they'll
say greedy developers or maybe, you know, inflation.
Sure. Those are the easy answers. But when you
look at the academic literature, there is this
massive fight happening. Is it really just that
we aren't building enough? That is the million
dollar question or I guess the trillion dollar
question at this point. Yeah. And economists
have been wrestling with this for decades. So
it's not settled. Well. A consensus is starting
to emerge, specifically in a 2022 analysis by
Christian Hilber and Olivier Choney. We're seeing
agreement around what they call the primary strand
of the debate. The primary strand. And that strand
points the finger pretty squarely at supply constraints.
OK, supply constraints. That sounds very sterile,
very academic. What are we actually talking about
on the ground? We're talking about the physical
inability to put a building on a piece of land.
But. And this is the key point. It's not because
we ran out of land. And it's not because we forgot
how to build houses. It's because of land use
restrictions. The rules. The rules. The argument
here is that in the places where demand is highest,
major cities with good jobs, we have erected
this legal wall that prevents the market from
responding to that demand. This is the regulatory
tax concept I was reading about in the notes.
I want to double click on that because I think
people hear tax and they think of a check they
write to the government. This is different, isn't
it? It's an invisible tax. A shadow tax. Think
of it this way. Let's say you want to build a
house. You have the cost of the land, the cost
of the lumber, the concrete, the labor. Let's
say all of that adds up to, I don't know, $300
,000. Okay. The actual cost of construction.
Exactly. But that house sells in the market for
$500 ,000. Now, in a normal, efficient market,
like the market for, say, toaster ovens, other
companies would see that massive profit margin.
And they'd rush in. They'd rush in, build more
toasters, and drive the price down closer to
the actual cost of production. Right. That's
just capitalism 101. If there's profit to be
made, competition comes in and eats it away until
the price reflects the actual value of the thing.
Precisely. But in housing, that mechanism is
broken. Why? Zoning laws, height limits, density
restrictions, minimum lot sizes, they physically
prevent that competition from entering the market.
So that $200 ,000 difference between the cost
to build and the price to buy, it doesn't go
away. It just stays there. It becomes a permanent
premium. a scarcity premium. So you're saying
it's the price of scarcity. You are paying an
extra $200 ,000 just for the permission to exist
in that space. That's a perfect way to put it.
And the research Hilber and Shani cite suggests
that in heavily restricted markets, we're talking
places like New York, London, San Francisco,
this Regulatory tax can account for more than
50 percent of the home's value. Wait, say that
again. More than half. More than half. That is
wild to think about. Half the mortgage you're
paying isn't for the physical house, the bricks
and the wood. It's for the bureaucracy that prevented
someone else from building a house next to you.
That is a great way to put it. Yes. Now, to be
fair, there is the other strand of the debate.
OK. The other side argues that we can't ignore
the macro economy. They look at interest rates.
The availability of financing, speculation. The
big picture stuff. Right. They argue that even
if you deregulated everything, you'd still have
incredible volatility because developers are
just, they're terrible at forecasting prices.
Right. I can see that. If a developer thinks
prices are going to drop next year, they stop
building today. Which then creates a shortage
tomorrow. And prices shoot up again. So it's
a boom -bust cycle that's just inherent to the
industry. That's their argument. But the supply
-siders would counter that, yes, those cycles
exist. But if we didn't have the zoning straightjacket
on, the market could adapt to those macro shifts
much, much faster. It could respond. It could
respond. As it stands now, the market is basically
paralyzed. It can't build what's needed where
it's needed. We've mentioned zoning a lot, but
that's not the only rule in the book. What about
something like building codes? This is a much
trickier area, to be honest, because everyone
agrees we need building codes. We don't want
fires. We don't want buildings collapsing in
an earthquake. Safety is paramount. Of course.
But critics and even some of the sources we are
looking at argue that we have let safety morph
into exclusion. How so? What does that mean?
Well, as codes become more and more complex,
requiring specific, very expensive materials,
intricate energy efficiency systems, massive
elevators in small buildings, they raise the
baseline cost of any new housing. It becomes
literally illegal. to build a cheap house or
even a simple no -frills house. So we have effectively
legislated the starter home out of existence.
It's like you either have to build luxury or
you don't build at all because the code itself
requires luxury -grade inputs. In many ways,
yes. That's a huge part of the problem. But we
also have to be fair to the reality on the ground.
It is not just policy. Okay. A report by Moody's
Analytics a while back highlighted that even
if we fixed all the laws tomorrow, we're still
facing very real... Physical shortages. The stuff
shortage. The stuff and the people. We have chronic
shortage of skilled labor plumbers, electricians,
framers, you name it. And global supply chains
for materials like lumber and steel are still
reeling from the aftershocks of the pandemic.
So even if you get a permit, you might not be
able to find the people or the materials to actually
build. Plus, you have these external shocks.
We've seen migration crises, refugee movements,
these sudden spikes in population in specific
areas that the construction industry physically
cannot keep up with. Absolutely. And we cannot
ignore the other side of the equation. The income
side. The income side. We've been talking about
high prices, but the other part of that ratio
is stagnant wages. A major driver of this crisis
is simply that people are poorer. relative to
the assets they need to buy than they were a
generation ago. So it's a supply problem, a regulatory
problem, a labor problem and a wage problem all
tangled up together. A true web of dysfunction.
It's not one thing. It's everything all at once.
Let's let's zoom out a bit. I think there's a
tendency, especially in the US or the UK, to
assume this is just how it is. In rich countries,
you know, you get wealthy, you get bureaucracy,
housing gets expensive. End of story. Right.
A law of nature. But that's not entirely true,
is it? There's a divergent path. There is. And
this brings us to what's been called the planning
puzzle. If you look at the data, there's a really
stark divide between what we call the Anglosphere
and Japan. And the Anglosphere is the U .S.,
U .K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand. Correct.
The English -speaking common law world. And these
countries, for the most part, share a specific
philosophy of planning that empowers local control.
Local control. Which, in turn, creates the mechanism
for what we all know as NIMBYism, not in my backyard.
I feel like we use NIMBY as a slur sometimes,
but let's actually unpack the mechanism. Why
does the Anglosphere model lead to these incredibly
high prices? It comes down to something called
discretionary planning. In the Anglosphere, generally
speaking, if you own a piece of land and want
to build something new, Your neighbors get a
say, a big say. The public hearings. The public
hearings, the environmental reviews that can
be weaponized to delay projects for years, and
city councils that can ultimately just vote no
based on subjective criteria like neighborhood
character. So the system is designed from the
ground up to prioritize the preferences of the
people who already live there. Yes. over the
needs of the people who want to live there. The
outsider. Exactly. It creates an insider -outsider
dynamic. If I am an existing homeowner, restricting
new supply increases my property value. It's
simple economics. So it's actually in my rational
financial interest to show up at that city council
meeting and scream about shadows or traffic or
parking. The system empowers you, the insider,
to block competition. And it works. And the result
is a shortage. A chronic structural shortage.
Now, contrast that with Japan. Japan is a wealthy,
highly developed nation. Tokyo is the biggest
city on Earth by a huge margin. But their housing
costs have remained relatively flat and affordable
compared to incomes for decades. Which is the
opposite of what's happened everywhere else in
the developed world. Completely the opposite.
So what's the aha moment? Yeah. What's the secret?
They just don't ask the neighbors. Essentially,
yes. That's the simple version. Japan uses a
system of nationalized zoning control. Nationalized,
so not local. The central government in Tokyo
sets the rules for the whole country. They have
about 12 zones, like Category 1, low -rise residential.
And if a developer's plan meets the mathematical
criteria for that zone, height, setback, safety
codes. They get the permit. It's a checklist,
not a debate. It's buy -right development. It
almost completely removes the power of local
municipalities to block projects. A local mayor
in a Tokyo suburb can't just decide to stop an
apartment building because the neighbors are
grumpy. If it meets the code, it gets built.
Period. That is a massive, massive difference
in philosophy. It turns housing construction
into something more like a manufacturing process
rather than a political battle. And the result
is abundance. Yeah. Now, Japanese homes are smaller,
yes. And they don't really view housing as an
investment. The way we do houses there actually
depreciate in value, like cars. Wow. But everyone
has a place to live. And it's affordable. It
really challenges this core assumption of the
Anglosphere that local control is always and
inherently good. Here, it seems like local control
is the cause of the crisis. It's arguably the
primary cause. Oh, where does Europe fit in this?
Are they Team Anglo or Team Japan? They're sort
of the middle path. Most developed European countries,
France, Germany, the Nordics, they generally
favor higher density than the Anglosphere. They
don't have those sprawling suburbs of single
family homes to nearly the same extent. Right.
More mid -rise apartments. Exactly. But they
have significantly more regulation and tenant
protection laws than Japan. So it's a hybrid.
So they build more than us, but they regulate
it more than Tokyo does. Roughly, yes. As we're
about to see when we look in the case studies,
that middle path has its own very deep cracks.
Before we get to the specific countries, I want
to talk about the human cost of all this. We've
established the machinery of the crisis. But
what does this machinery actually do to a society?
It fractures it. I mean, to put it bluntly, specifically,
it creates a generational canyon. We are seeing
a situation where millennials and Gen Z are entering
the market at a distinct. And frankly, unfair
disadvantage compared to their parents or grandparents.
It's the classic pulling up the ladder effect.
It is. They are paying a much, much higher percentage
of their income just for basic shelter. But it's
not just about the money. I think this is a point
that gets missed. It's about time. The housing
crisis is altering the timeline of human life.
What do you mean by that? Well, think about the
traditional milestones of adulthood. Moving out
of your parents' house, moving in with a partner,
getting married, having children. All of these
things require space. They require stability.
They require money. When the space is prohibitively
expensive, the milestones get delayed. Or they
don't happen at all. I see. So people are living
with roommates deep into their 30s. They're delaying
having kids because they literally don't have
a spare room for a crib. Or they're staying in
unhealthy relationships because they can't afford
a separate apartment. It acts as a kind of social
freezer, putting the natural evolution of life
on hold. And that frustration that has to go
somewhere, right? It goes directly into politics.
Politico and other outlets have reported extensively
on this. The housing crisis is a major, major
driver of political instability and radicalization.
Wow. Well, when a democracy fails to provide
something as basic as shelter, young voters lose
faith in the system itself. If the social contract
is... Work hard, play by the rules and you'll
get a home and the home never comes. The one
uphold the contract. Exactly. And this creates
a huge opening for populism. We see politicians
stoking anti -immigrant sentiment, telling voters
you can't afford a home because those people
are taking them. It redirects the anger. It redirects
the anger away from the complex reality of zoning
laws and lack of construction. poured a vulnerable
scapegoat. So the housing crisis isn't just an
economic annoyance. You're saying it's a genuine
threat to democratic stability. I don't think
that's an exaggeration at all. We're seeing social
unrest in cities worldwide directly linked to
this. Okay, let's take a tour of the damage.
We've selected four countries that highlight
different aspects of this mess. And our first
stop is Germany, the land of the happy renter,
or so I've heard. Or, so the myth goes, yes.
Germany is often held up as the alternative model.
People say, be like the Germans, just rent forever.
And it's true, their home ownership rate is really
low, right? It's very low. Only about 46 .7 %
as of 2022. So why is that? Is it just a cultural
thing? It's partially cultural, but it's much
more structural. The German tax code doesn't
incentivize buying the way the U .S. or U .K.
codes do. For instance, in America, you can deduct
your mortgage interest from your taxes. That's
a huge subsidy for homeowners. Germany doesn't
have that for owner -occupiers. So the government
isn't actively paying you to buy a house. And
they had a lot of social housing historically.
A robust supply of high -quality, rent -regulated
social housing. So renting was stable. It was
affordable. It was high quality. You could raise
a family in a rental without that constant fear
of eviction or massive rent hikes. But the notes
say this is changing. The paradise is cracking.
It's unraveling. In the early 2000s, the government
reduced subsidies for both ownership and social
housing, assuming the market was stable and could
handle it. And then? And then came the era of
ultra -low interest rates after the financial
crisis. Investors, both domestic and international,
flooded into German real estate looking for a
safe return. Prices shot up, and now Germany
is seeing a steep, steep rise in overcrowding.
The renter's paradise is running out of rooms.
Exactly. They stopped building enough social
housing, and the private market pivoted entirely
to luxury units for investors, leaving the middle
completely squeezed. Okay, let's move next door
to the Netherlands. This seems like a case study
in what you call the policy trap. It is painful
to watch. The Netherlands is currently facing
a massive shortage, about 396 ,000 homes as of
mid -2025. That is nearly 5 % of their entire
housing stock just missing. And the government
decided to step in, right? They tried to fix
it. They did. They passed the Good Landlordship
Act in 2023 and the Affordable Rent Act in 2024.
These laws effectively capped rents for mid -priced
dwellings at around 1 ,100 euros. Okay, stop
right there. If I'm a renter in Amsterdam, I
am cheering. Rent cap. My rent won't go up. This
sounds great for tenants. In the very short term,
for existing tenants, yes, you're safe. But here
is the trap. In the Netherlands, a lot of new
construction is funded by housing associations
and large institutional investors, like pension
funds. Right. They rely on rental income from
their existing properties to generate the capital
to build new projects. So when you cap the rent,
you're also capping their revenue. And when you
cap their revenue, the return on investment for
building a new apartment building, it collapses.
It falls below the line of viability. So what
do they do? They stop building. Or even worse,
they sell off their rental units to owner occupiers
to get out of the rental market entirely, which
reduces the rental stock even further. Oh, wow.
So the intent was to make housing more affordable,
but the mechanism actually choked off the supply
of new housing, making the original problem worse.
Precisely. The government's goal was 100 ,000
new homes a year. In 2024, they only hit about
82 ,000. And the social housing targets are being
missed all over the country. It's a classic economic
tragedy where the price control exacerbates the
very shortage it was meant to solve. Let's jump
continents now to India. When we talk about shortage
here, the scale is just. It's mind -bending.
It's a completely different universe of numbers.
A 2012 report estimated the urban housing shortage
at 18 .78 million units. 18 .78 million. Almost
19 million homes just missing. That is the population
of a medium -sized European country, just without
homes. But in India, the story isn't just about
the raw numbers. It's about staggering inequality.
the shortage is not evenly distributed at all.
How so? The data shows that the vast majority
of that shortage, about 10 .5 million of the
19 million units, is for what's called the economically
weaker section and lower income groups. And what
does economically weaker section mean in this
context? We're talking about households earning
less than 300 ,000 rupees a year. So the working
poor. Okay. And for the wealthier groups? For
the middle income group and above. The shortage
was only about 0 .8 million units. That's a staggering
disparity. So if you have money in India, the
market basically works for you. If you're poor,
the market doesn't even see you. It doesn't exist
for you. Yeah. The formal housing market essentially
ignores the bottom of the pyramid because the
profit margins simply aren't there to build housing
they can afford. And this forces millions and
millions of people into informal settlements,
slums, where they have no legal title, poor sanitation,
and zero security. It's a crisis of poverty and
market failure all rolled into one. Let's bring
it back to the Anglosphere. The United Kingdom.
This one feels like it's almost a geography problem.
The UK is really a tale of two countries. You
have the southeast and London, which have massive
demand, huge job growth, and a severe, severe
undersupply of housing. And then... Then you
have parts of the north which have struggled
economically, have lower demand, and plenty of
empty or cheap housing. But you can't just tell
a London banker or even a London barista to move
to Newcastle if there isn't a job there for them.
Exactly. Labor mobility is completely tied to
the housing market. But the big controversy in
the UK right now is about the math the government
uses to decide where to build. They have a formula
for it. Of course they do. It's called the standard
formula for assessing housing needs. I love when
governments have a standard formula. It usually
means something important is being oversimplified.
Oh, it is. The formula looks at projected household
growth. So it asks, how many new families will
form next year that need a home? Okay, that seems
logical. It seems logical, but critics argue
it ignores the backlog. It doesn't account for
the millions of people living in overcrowded
homes or substandard flats right now. It's like
playing a dinner party for the guests who are
scheduled to arrive at 7 .00 p .m., but completely
ignoring the 10 people who have been standing
in your kitchen hungry since 5 .00 p .m. That
is a perfect analogy. A 2019 report estimated
that 4 .75 million households in Great Britain
are in need of adequate affordable housing today.
The backlog is huge, but the formula is entirely
focused on tomorrow's needs. And what's the target?
Parliament has a target of 300 ,000 new homes
a year. But given the planning restrictions and
the NIMBism we discussed earlier, hitting that
is a Herculean, if not impossible, task. This
is all very heavy. We have zoning failures, policy
traps, massive inequality, and just plain bad
math. Is there any good news out there? Is anyone
actually fixing this? Brace yourself. We actually
have a hero in this story. Let's talk about New
Zealand. New Zealand? Wait a minute. I thought
they were the poster child for the housing bubble.
Auckland was one of the most unaffordable cities
on the planet. They were, absolutely. But that
extreme crisis forced them to act. And what they
did is a fascinating natural experiment in supply
-side economics. It's one of the few places we
have real hard data on what works. Okay, I'm
listening. What was the move? In 2013, the city
of Auckland passed what they called the Unitary
Plan. It was a massive sweeping upzoning of the
city. They basically looked at the map and said,
OK, we're going to allow more density, more housing
across about three quarters of the residential
land. So they legalized apartments and townhouses
in neighborhoods where only single family homes
used to be allowed. Yes. And crucially, they
didn't just do it in a few token spots. They
did it broadly across the city. And because we
have all this data from before and after the
change, researchers can very clearly measure
the impact. Did prices crash? Did the world end?
Not a crash, but a significant measurable correction
in affordability. Rents in Auckland grew much,
much more slowly than they did in the rest of
New Zealand, which didn't reform. How much more
slowly? One researcher, Ryan Greenaway -McGreevy,
Estimated that as of July 2024, rents in Auckland
were 28 percent lower than they would have been
without the reforms. 28 percent lower. That is.
That is life -changing money for a renter. That's
the difference between saving for a deposit and
living paycheck to paycheck. It's massive. And
it proved the theory in the real world. If you
make it legal to build more housing, developers
will build it, supply will increase, and price
pressure will ease. So did the politicians take
a victory lap and stop there? They actually doubled
down. Yeah. In October 2021, the national government,
and this is the key part with bipartisan support,
passed the medium -density residential standards.
Bipartisan on housing. In 2021. That might be
the most shocking part of this whole story. It
really is. It shows you how severe the crisis
was. Both major parties agreed it was too big
to ignore and play politics with. And the new
law basically allows for three units and three
stories on almost all residential parcels in
large cities across the country. OK, explain
three and three for me. It means on a standard
suburban lot that used to hold one house, you
now have the right by right. no public hearings,
no special permission to build three townhouses
up to three stories tall. So you can triple the
density of the lot without needing to ask the
neighbors for permission. It effectively ends
the single family only zoning that dominates
the entire Anglosphere. It's a huge shift. It
moves New Zealand away from that discretionary
NIMBY model and nudges it much closer to that
predictable Japanese model. That's the idea.
It is one of the boldest housing reforms anywhere
in the developed world. That is genuinely hopeful.
It shows that these aren't laws of physics. They're
just laws of parliament. We made these rules,
and we can unmake them. We can, but there's one
last hurdle, and it's probably the biggest one.
Let me guess. Section 6, the financial feedback
loop. The money. The money. Because even if you
fix all the zoning, you still have to deal with
the fact that housing is not just shelter. It's
a financial asset. and assets are prone to bubbles
and crashes. We need to unpack this price default
spiral. This sounds like a roller coaster nobody
wants to ride. It is a concept detailed by researchers
Gurin and McQuaid in 2020, and it explains why
housing crashes are so uniquely destructive to
an economy. So imagine we're in a recession,
people lose their jobs. Okay, so step one, an
income shock hits the system. Right. Step two,
foreclosures begin. People can't pay the mortgage,
so the bank takes the house. This starts to put...
distressed inventory on the market. Step three,
prices start to drop because there is suddenly
more supply from these foreclosures and the sellers
are desperate. Exactly. But here is where the
spiral kicks in. When prices drop and the economy
is shaky, banks get terrified. They tighten credit
standards. They stop lending money. So even if
you are a potential buyer who wants to buy that
cheap foreclosed home, you can't get a loan.
So the buyers just vanish from the market. Which
pushes prices down even further. And this leads
to the underwater problem. If you bought your
house for $500 ,000 and its market value drops
to $300 ,000, you now owe the bank more than
the house is even worth. Which makes you much
more likely to just walk away and default on
the loan, leading to more foreclosures. And the
spiral spins down and down. It creates that devastating
boom -bust rebound pattern that we saw in 2008,
and it harms the wider economy. Because housing
is the primary collateral for so much of the
banking system. When housing tanks, it drags
the banks down, which drags business lending
down, which kills more jobs. It connects right
back to that core tension we mentioned at the
very start. Housing has this dual identity. It's
a human right. It's shelter. But it's also an
asset. It's an investment. And those two identities
are fundamentally at war with each other. Think
about it. We tell people, buy a home. It's the
best investment you'll ever make. Right. For
it to be a good investment, its value has to
go up, preferably faster than inflation. Of course.
I want my house to double in value so I can retire
comfortably. But if your house doubles in value,
that means the next generation has to pay double
what you paid to buy it. If housing is a great
investment for the owner, it is by definition
becoming unaffordable for the next buyer. You
can't have affordable housing that is also a
killer financial asset. You really can't. You
have to choose. And that is the political paradox
that no politician wants to admit to voters.
We have covered an incredible amount of ground
today. I mean, from the regulatory taxes hidden
in our zoning codes to the the bipartisan upzoning
revolution in New Zealand, to the terrifying
math of these financial spirals. It's a massive
topic, but you can see how all the threads are
connected. It's not just one thing. So let's
try to synthesize this. The housing crisis isn't
one problem. It's a supply issue, first and foremost,
largely caused by envyism and restrictive planning.
It's a cost issue driven by shortages of labor
and materials. It's a policy trap where well
-intentioned ideas like rent caps can backfire
and kill investors. And it's a financial stability
issue where the whole economy is held hostage
by the housing market. And it's a universal problem.
But the takeaway for me is that the solutions
do exist. This isn't an unsolvable mystery. We
know what works. We do. Japan shows us that centralized
buy -right zoning works. Auckland shows us that
aggressive up -zoning works. The problem isn't
a lack of knowledge. It's a lack of political
will. Because the solution requires giving something
up. Exactly. It requires the people who are already
inside the castle to give up some of their control.
And that brings us to the final thought I want
to leave everyone with today. We spent a lot
of time comparing the Anglosphere R model with
the Japanese model. Our model gives us local
control. It lets us say no to the developer,
no to the traffic, no to change. It feels democratic.
It feels like we have a voice. But the cost of
that control is exclusion. The cost is high prices.
The cost is an entire generation locked out of
the stability and wealth creation that our parents
took for granted. So the question is this. Are
we culturally prepared to give up that not in
my backyard power to solve the crisis? Or is
our desire to control the character of our own
neighborhood always going to outweigh the collective
need for everyone to have an affordable place
to sleep? That is the question. And I think the
answer will define the next 20 years of our cities
and maybe our societies. Thanks for diving deep
with us. My pleasure. See you next time.