‘Luxury takes time. We don’t have time’: The former top military officer on a mission to fix the Dutch housing crisis (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 1 day ago by sbv@sh.itjust.works to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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It's interesting to perspectives from elsewhere. The Netherlands is also facing a housing crisis, and they're also talking about significant increases in construction. Part of that will be to limit local control.

Interestingly, they're also talking about changing the type of construction: fewer rooms.

There isn't quite enough context to explain why that would help, but it's something I haven't really heard politicians saying here in Canada.

What changes would you make to speed up housing growth here?

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[-] VibeSurgeon@piefed.social 8 points 1 day ago

The playbook for building massive amounts of housing at affordable prices exists already, you can copy basically everything Sweden did in their project Miljonprogrammet.

The government funds construction of the housing. Large buyer = big leverage to get costs down in contract negotiations
Build apartment buildings. Sharing walls with neighbours = lower cost per unit of housing
Standardize the building designs. Less customization = lower costs
Pre-build modules and assemble on-site. Factory construction = lower costs

With the density afforded by this construction pattern it also makes lots of sense to build great transit in connection with the area, and some retail nearby/in the same building. This further improves the overall efficiency of the area

[-] ZC3rr0r@piefed.ca 6 points 1 day ago

Sadly, it appears the lessons from the Miljonprogrammet have been lost in Sweden too. Last I checked housing in Göteborg and Stockholm (and to a lesser extent Malmö and Uppsala) has also become unaffordable to purchase for folks, with privat sector rents going through the roof and social housing programs struggling to keep up with the increasing demand.