As housing and land prices increase with each passing year, the idea of scarce resources and too many people who need them seem to be the obvious cause of this trend. There is only so much land and there are only so many houses that can be built in a given timeframe, yet the population is growing at a rate that outpaces the supply of housing. Or is it? Is there really a shortage of land or existing homes? Is the earth really at its limit?
An hour’s drive outside of any city center will reveal that there is a lot of unused land everywhere in the U.S. Miles and miles of land. It’s all fenced off and either owned by the government or national parks, or BLM, or even absentee private owners, but there is a lot of land. The largest obstacle to obtaining land outside of cost are permitting regulations. There are so many rules and permits that need to be gotten just to lay a simple foundation that most people give up in sheer frustration. The land exists, it’s the accessibility to the average person that is lacking.
Let’s look at ongoing building projects. There is plenty of construction going on. Usually when builders are contracted to build homes in today’s economy, they are building luxury homes because that will yield the greatest return on investment. There aren’t too many one or two bedroom starter homes being built, for the same reason the average person can not build a small home, because the cost outweighs the return. The real estate investor will not make their money back building a home for young Joe and his new wife just out from school and trying to make it in life. That is the sad reality.
In cities with many high rises, it would seem that space is a premium. A second glance surprisingly reveals just how many buildings have entire floors empty, waiting for a lease. As the workforce becomes more remote, the need for office space has decreased. Turning a commercial building into one designed for housing is whole other level of difficulty. Reconfiguring the plumbing alone is a massive expense, much less the challenges in rezoning and permitting laws that exist in many cities. So many buildings just sit with empty areas or vacant floors, wasting so called premium space in the the city.
Then there are foreign investors. In recent years, there has been an upsurge in foreign entities buying American farmland, and other land, by the hundreds of acres at a time. Why is the U.S. allowing non-Americans to own our land, while citizens are being squeezed into untenable situations for lack of land and home ownership. Something is wrong with this picture.
leo.
When we look at population numbers, there is a narrative circulating that there are too many humans for the earth to support. How can this be true, when we haven’t used half the land available for humans to live on? How can this be possible when metric tons of waste is thrown out per day of perfectly good items that simply weren’t sold in time to put new inventory out. Big box stores throw away huge amounts of unused, new items everyday. The problem is not the amount of stuff available, it’s the distribution of resources to the people who can use it.
Scarcity of clean water is another lie used to convince people of a shortage of resources. We live on planet that is 70% water. Humans can figure out how to extract thousands of barrels of oil from two miles underground, but can not seem to figure out how to take salt out of water on a mass scale. This is laughable.
Earth also has huge stores of ground water under the land that is untapped, and someone is trying to convince the public that there is a shortage of fresh water on Earth, a water planet. It has already been demonstrated that dry areas in Africa would have water if they were financially able to drill wells. The water is right under them, but they are forced to walk long distances for low quality water. The problem is not amount of resources per person, it’s accessibility.
We don’t have an overpopulation problem. In reality, the earth can support more than eight billion people easily, if resources were properly distributed and land was made accessible to those who were willing to work and improve the land. Housing could be obtained if people were allowed to build simply, small, and with alternative building methods. But there are rules, zoning regulations, and costs that make it very difficult for the average person to obtain new affordable housing for themselves.
So the idea that there are too many people and not enough land is a complete lie. It only takes some first hand observation to see how false this narrative is. It’s time to break out of this limiting belief and create new rules that allow people to obtain small bits of land to build sustainable houses on them without having to be rich to even think about it. There is lot of unused land, an abundance of water, and many sustainable agricultural practices to make efficient use of that land.
Earth has some time to go before she reaches her limit. There is room and abundant resources for everyone alive now and those born in the future. It’s up to humans to make all of what we already have in abundance accessible to those need it.
