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hackerNoose | 4 years ago

I live in Sweden and I can attest that rent control is a disaster. Lofty political aspirations aside the simple truth is that the middle class does not want to live in the crime-ridden suburbs and will do anything to stay out of there. As that is the only place where you can rent they're forced into taking huge loans and buying something in the city, or they can try their luck on the unsurprisingly flourishing black market. The effect of this is that Sweden now has one of the highest private debt burdens in the world. As long as the prices keep going up the system keeps limping along, but if that would ever change there could be some interesting consequences.

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toxik|4 years ago

Rent control is not the cause. These suburbs you correctly identify as undesirable would not become more palatable just because landlords were allowed to extract extortionate rents from an inherently limited supply resource.

What you suggest would in fact probably lead to MORE segregation and MORE of the same issues.

Wages don’t magically rise because you abolish rent control, either. You would simply price out the less wealthy to live… in the shitty suburbs.

dont__panic|4 years ago

Do you have any links or additional information about the "crime-ridden suburbs"? As an American, I was really surprised to hear that another country has the opposite issue we seem to have: crime-ridden cities (particularly since Covid-19 started wiping out businesses and foot traffic in many city centers). I'm really curious why Sweden has more crime in the suburbs, and would love to learn more!

dagw|4 years ago

It's not really 'Suburbs' in the way the word seems to be used in the US. In Swedish the word suburb (förort) tends to more refer to the areas just outside city limits with large cheap housing projects. Saying you are from 'förorten' implies you grew up in an impoverished area. Much like saying you are from "the projects" in the US.

All these crime-ridden suburbs are within 20-30ish minutes easy public transport to the city center.

Basically think these sorts of buildings: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Hammarku...

rather than these sorts of buildings: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/37/Su...

asd4232|4 years ago

Sweden quite simply took way more poor migrants (many of them for humanitarian reasons) from developing world than it could effectively integrate, and that failed integration resulted in hopelessness, high crime and unemployment in these communities. Most of them ended up living in cheap apartment blocks located in suburbs while more well-off people started avoiding these areas, and that's why those suburbs are the bad areas.

Obviously you also have also suburbs with villas where richer people live and little crime. Sweden at this point is a highly segregated society.