If there is a shortage of housing, potential buyers use all their available capital and credit to bid against one another for it, fuelling spiralling house prices and rent increases. Wage increases are largely ineffective in this scenario, as people struggle to get the house they deem necessary. The ratio of supply to demand of nice housing must be increased. Better government planning is needed to achieve this, by decentralisation, zoning, and greening.
Small towns confer the advantage of reduced commuting times to and from work, and more land available for houses leading to lower prices. I think that inflexibilities in wages and working hours, has led to the greater transportation costs incurred by industry between cities outweighing, in the minds of planners, the economies accrued by inpiduals, even though these economies accrued are greater than the costs incurred. This is because the costs are to industry while the gains are to inpiduals.
If the costs and gains of decentralisation were shared equally by employer and employee, both would often gain. Then many would prefer to work in a country town even if their pay was a little lower and their working hours a little longer, if after housing costs and commuting times considered, this resulted in them still having more time and money than if they lived in a big city. Decentralisation would flourish, conferring advantages, not only to those who decentralise, but to those who remain.
Governments need more than to apply formulae to land zoning. They need to apply detailed knowledge of what makes an area nice to live in.
An example of what I would call lazy thinking is to classify an area dual occupancy and allow two houses on a block with different owners, but not to allow two owners to live in the same two story house, because, say they, this is classified as flats and is therefore not allowed. But one two storey dwelling, with one family upstairs and another downstairs, allows far more garden than two one storey houses on the same block of land.
I think the first step in increasing density without destroying the ambience, could be to allow such two storey houses with garden roofs. One family could own the garden roof, and the other the garden, both having nice usable outdoor garden space instead of neither, as is the case with mindless dual occupancy. Cars could be parked on the nature strips at forty-five degrees under trees, with narrower streets. The cost of a garden roof is small compared with the cost of moving to a nicer area.
When reducing the land available per house, the front yard should be reduced before the back yard, as the back yard is more usable as it is larger and more private. Surely this is more important than street view. And street view is mainly determined by the density of trees and gardens rather than the setting back of houses a large distance. Houses close to the street allow old people, who sit on the verandah, to talk to passers by.
I believe that squalor is more the result of poor government planning than poverty. Setting aside adequate land for parks and gardens, and the planting of trees does not cost much money. Beautifying poorer suburbs decreases the need to move to a wealthier area to find somewhere nice to live and thus decreases land prices of wealthier areas.
While I am in favour of people becoming rich by being smart and working hard, there seems to be something fundamentally wrong with people becoming millionaires through land speculation, without work. The money they make must make life more difficult for others. Profits made because of rezoning should be taxed 100%.
To prevent wealthy people from renting out houses if borrowings were restricted, rents should be limited to 40% of net income for those families with children, and 50% for those without children. Otherwise it will be difficult to persuade people to lend money for house purchases.