Editorial: Don’t Hold Your Breath For The Housing Market

Everything is too damned expensive in this country. It’s a fact that is reportedly dissuading some would-be tourists from flying over to our little corner of the North Atlantic, according to recent reports from the all-knowing tourism overlords.

I’d like to let those tourists in on a little secret, though: the prices that have you wincing every time you’re prompted to tap your credit card in an Icelandic grocery store, cafe, bar or restaurant are the very same prices the locals are paying. We know everything’s too fucking expensive. We feel the sting of high inflation, high prices and the general greed of the free market on a daily basis.

While it’s not a level of sticker shock that tourists have to face, us locals are also grappling with the sky-high cost of housing in this, the world’s northernmost capital. The housing market is such that fully employed adults cannot afford to live without a flatmate (or two or three), families are squeezing themselves into too tight quarters simply because there’s nowhere else they can afford, and temporary workers are condemned to cramped and potentially unsafe housing arrangements in commercial buildings that don’t meet the safety standards of residential dwellings.

“The people in the position of making decisions about the housing market are too out of touch to understand that no adult really wants roommates.”

Of course, if you have the means to shell out over one million krónur per square metre on a new lúxus apartment, this is none of your concern. And maybe that’s the problem. The people in the position of making decisions about the housing market are too overpaid and too out of touch to understand that no adult really wants roommates, that working two full-time jobs in order to pay rent and bills each month isn’t sustainable, that incentivising developers to build affordable family units is more important than issuing permits for more buildings filled with imported marble and crystal chandeliers that will sit undersold and vacant.

Will Reykjavík’s housing master plan make a difference at this point? Jóhannes Bjarkason posits in this issue’s feature that it might be too little, too late. I, for one, won’t be holding my breath for anything to change for the better.

Scream it with me now: Free Palestine.