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Mixed-income housing is not the problem, the implementation is: earn a bit more, pay a lot more. There's a similar argument against unemployment benefits: in so
by andor 11y ago
Mixed-income housing is not the problem, the implementation is: earn a bit more, pay a lot more. There's a similar argument against unemployment benefits: in some cases, unemployed people can earn less by accepting a job.
I don't have a solution, but I think a basic income would set better incentives.
- nosuchthing 11y agoWhy not set a gradient percentage of income against the cost of social/public housing? The hard cut off for social housing benefits incentivizes keeping income below that threshold to maintain the benefit. Basic income does nothing to increase housing supply, so urban rents would increase as a result.
- TheSpiceIsLife 11y agoPresumably the people who set these hard-cuttoffs aren't totally oblivious to the results, Australia has a similar problem with social welfare payments. My suspicion is this is by design because a certain level of unemployment is required to keep labour costs down - or so the theory goes. I've met a lot of people who don't want to work, some because they're slackers and some because they'd have to get full time employment because anything casual they're likely to get wouldn't be worthwhile as it eats in to their welfare payments. So the system 'works' for some definition of the term 'works'. It probably also catches a lot of people unnecessarily too.
- johnrob 11y agoThe government should actively maintain an over supply of housing. This works for food; prices have been consistently low for a long time now. If you can reduce the amount people pay on housing, they'll spend it on items that actually grow the economy (instead of simply enriching land owners).