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Every local UK Facebook group is alternating posts of:
"WHY IS RENT SO HIGH ROUND HERE???"
And:
"Hey someone is trying to build a block of flats sign this petition to stop it."
@garius
It’s got to the stage where you have to rely on the Bank of Mum and Dad to get a rental deposit, let alone a mortgage.
It’s like a dowry, but for everyone.
#FBPE @garius A petition against a planning application is pointless.
An objection needs to find a way in which the application is contrary to planning law.
When a valid objection is found only one person needs to identify it, a petition is not needed, it will be rejected. Where no valid objections are found, it doesn't matter how many people sign a petition to oppose the application, it will be approved. (The officers might chicken out of approving it under delegated authority and bounce it up to the committee, and the committee can essentially chicken out and bounce it up to the appeal inspectors by rejecting it without adequate grounds, but approved it will be.)
In both cases the petition is pointless.
@garius Close. Ours perpetually has people not even able to find houses to rent or buy. Meanwhile we recently had months and months of pushy NIMBYs insisting that everyone protest against a new housing development. The houses are being built now, and they are mostly very expensive, because there still aren't nearly enough houses.
@garius also happening across North America :(
@garius @sereeena Not mentioned in the comments so far: Landlords using AI to collude and drive up rents artificially. https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/25/realpage_rent_lawsuit/
@blinkygal @garius rancid vibes
@garius There's a reason I specifically included YIMBY in my bio. I work in the solar industry, and nimbyism is a daily struggle and a huge barrier to hitting net zero
@garius a lot of new build is of the wrong type, usually for investors, second homes or buy to let. They aren't designed for people to actually live in them. The whole market is skewed in favour of the rich and against the general public. I know there is always an element of NIMBY but people do have a point about what's actually being built or proposed.
Where I live it's second homes and holiday flats, totally useless to people who live here.
@po8crg @garius holiday homes as built here often lack a dining room and the kitchen is small relative to the overall size of the flat. Storage is usually tiny or non-existant. Holiday usage is eating out and if at the flat, on the balcony not inside. Not appropriate for normal living.
As you say there is a financial distortion of the market but the new flat block being built here are designed and priced for outsiders.
Here being Saint-Malo, France, but you see the same elsewhere.
@garius I can't speak for the UK, but in Vienna there is a large newly built block of flats that is empty since it was finished 2 years ago because it was built as an investment and never for actual people to live there.
@lilianalytic @garius oh yeah, that happens here too. The worlds tyrants and grifters hold empty property in London as an investments for when their people overthrow them/they get arrested
@garius
I think we are doing this whole "living space" thing totally wrong.
A human basically needs three things: A place to sleep, a place to store all the useless stuff, and a place to sit and shitpost.
By building time-shared sleeping tubes, we can solve the sleeping problem easily. Same for shitpost-cubicles.
And the useless stuff could be stored in warehouses far away. Large parts of that stuff could be "virtual" because we don't even remeber owning it anyway.
Sorry, I wasn't really serious. 
Time-shared beds make sense e.g. on a space station or when you have different shifts and really tight space.
And I could certainly imagine renting a room (e.g. a small workshop, or an office) for a few hours. Even at night, because my sleep schedule is rather... flexible.
By clearly separating "storage" from "living" from "special interests", space could certainly be optimized... but affordable housing is likely cheaper overall than magic elevators full of junk... 
@garius This is literally Seattle. We got lots of those "In this house we believe" signs in the yards of million dollar homes where they don't believe those things apply when it comes to increasing housing stock in that same neighborhood.
@garius
Reminds me of something that happened where I used to live:
There was once a meeting to discuss the location for a new burial ground. One resident who lived near a proposed site objected by saying (without realising the irony) "over my dead body"
@garius almost like it's been laid out this way by some maleficent blue coloured, sewage loving and wildlife destroying entity.
Don't blame people for being programmed to be stupid, they've been set up from the start.
Those that wake from the slumber of capitalism will realise what a waste it all was (scorched Earth... Maybe that'll finally stop the British complaining about the rain?? )
@garius not sure if I should respond so seriously but there is a level of tenant blaming here that I don't agree with. Flats are expensive because of the feudal middlemen that are landlords. They take out loans in order to pay for the flat and then extort the people living in cities to pay for their investments.
They are to blame. Not people wanting to avoid overcrowding in their neighborhoods...
@matzipan didn't say they were the same people complaining.
I'm perfectly familiar with how the housing economy works.
@matzipan @garius They may be exploiting the shortage of housing, but the shortage itself is an issue that needs to be addressed. You won't fix rents without addressing supply.
Which means more housing does need to be built.
We can sprawl further out, but in many cities the outskirts already have unacceptably long commutes to the CBD.
Which means increasing density is the only answer left.
@StryderNotavi @garius depends on the local situation. I agree it's hard to separate. But building more doesn't necessarily fix the rent situation. High rent prices will incentivise building more high-rent properties which will aggravate the problem and will also make path to ownership even harder