Semi-Basement Tragedy: The Result of Policies That Treated Real Estate Only as Speculation

Citizens living in semi-basement housing died after flooding caused by torrential rain. In the face of this tragedy, the policy authorities have shown no remorse. The failure to eliminate semi-basement housing is clearly a policy failure by the government. Only by clarifying what went wrong and which policies were not carried out can we prevent such disasters in the future.

In the film *Parasite*, semi-basement housing drew attention as substandard living space. Foreigners found it baffling, to the point of wondering how people could possibly live in such places. That question has now been answered in reality, and the result was tragic.

There have been multiple accidents involving semi-basement housing in the past as well. During floods in 2001 and 2010, heartbreaking incidents also occurred in semi-basement homes. But the government and politicians lacked any sense of urgency about their basic duty to protect the safety and lives of the people. They turned away from solving the problem and instead reduced real estate to a mere issue of speculation, using it as political fodder.

Semi-basement homes are unfit for human habitation. They began to be used as living spaces in the 1970s because of housing shortages. At the time, they were only a second-best measure born of difficult economic circumstances, little more than a stopgap. The policy authorities were negligent in their efforts to increase housing supply and resolve and normalize this situation, and even now they do not recognize the seriousness of the issue.

Had housing supply policy functioned normally, semi-basement housing would naturally have declined substantially. Yet as of 2020, 327,000 households were still living in underground spaces, including semi-basements. That is less than half the number in the past, but the pace of decline has been slow, and considering the level of our economy, it is still clearly far too many.

It is irresponsible to say that if semi-basement housing is eliminated, the people living there will have nowhere to go. How much longer are we going to make our citizens live in semi-basements? The fact that the housing shortage has not been resolved for decades is not simply a matter of incompetence. It is also evidence of a lack of will. Every administration has repeatedly talked about housing welfare and introduced anti-speculation measures in real estate, but it has become clear that most of this was political rhetoric that neglected the people’s actual livelihoods.

Some argue that to eliminate the substandard housing long inhabited by low-income groups, public rental housing must be expanded. But public rental housing is not the central alternative. If housing becomes newer and more abundant, people will have no reason to live in semi-basement homes. They are living there only because supply is insufficient. The claim that building public rental housing alone will solve the problem is nothing more than political demagoguery. It may produce visible, showcase projects funded by taxpayers, but it does little to improve reality.

A supply-led solution is the most desirable approach. When one new home is built, people move in a chain. They gradually relocate to better homes. Through that process, semi-basement housing can be reduced. It is also a way to improve everyone’s housing while effectively and swiftly eliminating semi-basement housing.

Flooding in low-lying areas can occur in any society. That is why advanced countries use low-lying land vulnerable to flooding for parks, parking lots, and similar purposes. If land for housing is in short supply, then infrastructure investment should be expanded so that people can live there safely. It is time to fundamentally shift real estate policy toward improving the quality of the nation’s housing.

We must now completely reexamine real estate policies that have neglected supply while clinging to demand suppression. The priority is to correct the direction of real estate policy so that our citizens can live in safe, high-quality housing. Real estate-related institutions and regulations should be normalized so that adequate living spaces where the people can live in comfort can be supplied.

Sung-no Choi, President, Center for Free Enterprise (CFE)

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Original title: 반지하 참사, 부동산을 투기로만 본 정책 탓

Author: Sung-no Choi

Date: 2022-09-13

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=press&idx=24953