It's of course expensive to live in the city center in most large European (or American) cities, this is not particular to Sweden.
> I'm willing (and honestly lucky enough to be able) to pay the premium for living downtown, if market rates were imposed.
I think this basically points out the trade-off. Right now, difficulty living in the city center of Stockholm or a large city is somewhat more evenly distributed compared to typical European countries, it unusually effects even the rich. Under a more strictly market approach the difficulty would be eliminated for the rich and increased for others.
Whether that's a net win depends who you are, of course.
> It's very unlikely that the housing stock in the central parts of town will ever increase substantially.
So one way or another there are more people who want to live there than there is housing. How is it allocated? It can be allocated by a waiting list, in which you might have to wait 9 years. It can be allocated based on the market, in which those with more ability to pay get to live there. It can be allocated based on some combination of "personal network/nepotism" and "graft", in which leaseholders of rent-controlled apartments rent them out at profit to them, or at no profit to their family and those they know.
Based on the article, the current system of course is a combination of all of those. Adjusting the portion of each of them would benefit some people and disadvantage others, depending on how adjusted.
There are some dynamic effects that might be dangerous to ignore. Like lobbying efforts for new construction might increase if there's money to made in construction of rental apartments, or more efficient use of square meters (smaller apartments/more used apartments).
But overall, yes, I totally agree. It's an allocation problem of a finite resource, with different tradeoffs.
My favourite idea, if we are going to keep the rent-controls, is to use a lottery.
What do you like better about a lottery vs the current "waiting list" system? (If we ignore the grey-area-legal sublets and market-rate-rentals that exist now and could exist or not in either system).
They're both kind of "everyone is equal, you don't get a leg up becuase of how much money you have or other status, everyone gets a chance for this limited in-demand resource" approaches, at least on their faces... the same portion of everyone interested actually gets a house either way... I'm confusing myself trying to think through the practical experienced implications of a lottery (which you can keep entering every year) vs multi-year-long waiting list. I mean, I guess obviously the lottery stops privilging those who expressed their desire longest ago/first! I'm not sure if this is good or what. I guess it would give younger people, or people who don't plan out their whole life in advance, a better chance?
(We've reached the default threading limit, so unsure if this will be visible...)
1: I don't believe there's a moral value attached to being in the waiting list. Everything else equal (completley ignoring personal situations, current housing, income etc), everyone waiting "deserves" an apartment the same amount.
2: My view is that there's actually an inverse relationship between "deservedness" (taking personal situation in to account) and amount of time waiting, especially on decade timescales. People who have been waiting for 20 years are older, have had more time to potentially save money, are arguably more likely to have a resonable housing situation. Basically they are "point wealthy", they weren't forced to spend their queuing points on a bad apartment after 8 years, they are still collecting more points waiting for the nicer ones. And the fact that they can do that, to some extent, indicate that they are in a better situation.
(2b: It would eliminate the absurd situation when people live 30 years of their life in an expensive house, collecting queue points, and then sell the house and move into a rent controlled apartment.)
3: It would incentivise/allow a centralisation of the allocation system and increase mobility between cities.
Right now each city have one or a few different queues. People are generally not signed up to all queues across the country, because of hassle and cost (each queue is like 0-20 USD / year). So if I wanted to move to say Gothenburg, I would start from zero and be years away from an apartment.
Because of this, there is no interest from anyone to create a centralised queue. If everyone joined the central queue at birth, it would be meaningless!
But with a lottery based system, a central queue would be no problem. I could just select the cities I'm interested in at the moment, and have the same chance as everyone else. I could take a "bad" apartment, because I'm still in the lottery and might win a better one to upgrade,
> I'm willing (and honestly lucky enough to be able) to pay the premium for living downtown, if market rates were imposed.
I think this basically points out the trade-off. Right now, difficulty living in the city center of Stockholm or a large city is somewhat more evenly distributed compared to typical European countries, it unusually effects even the rich. Under a more strictly market approach the difficulty would be eliminated for the rich and increased for others.
Whether that's a net win depends who you are, of course.
> It's very unlikely that the housing stock in the central parts of town will ever increase substantially.
So one way or another there are more people who want to live there than there is housing. How is it allocated? It can be allocated by a waiting list, in which you might have to wait 9 years. It can be allocated based on the market, in which those with more ability to pay get to live there. It can be allocated based on some combination of "personal network/nepotism" and "graft", in which leaseholders of rent-controlled apartments rent them out at profit to them, or at no profit to their family and those they know.
Based on the article, the current system of course is a combination of all of those. Adjusting the portion of each of them would benefit some people and disadvantage others, depending on how adjusted.