6 ms·
In general, large public housing projects may seem very nice at first, but once the maintenance costs start going up (20-30 years later) it will become increasi
by fogihujy 6y ago
In general, large public housing projects may seem very nice at first, but once the maintenance costs start going up (20-30 years later) it will become increasingly difficult for a publicly owned business to avoid increasing rent. Old buildings are simply quite expensive to maintain, especially when regulations require that buildings are occasionally renovated and brought in line with recent changes in regulations.
If you want to get around that then you need to subsidize some of those expenses using tax money, or simply use tax money to fund the renovations, and in most cases where such measures would be applicable it's simply not possible to divert resources that way, or there simply is no way to get a political consensus around such measures.
I lived in such a neighbourhood when I worked in Sweden about a decade ago. Publicly owned, low rents, great public transport, within walking/biking distance to the city centre, decent mix of people from various cultures, and a crime rate that was somewhat tolerable despite the relatively low average income.
Problem was, while the apartments were nice, the buildings' basements (incl. 1950's cold war fallout shelters), foundations, exteriors and the outdoor areas were in a pretty rough shape after 60 years, and the publicly owned business that owned the entire neighbourhood was desperate to sell it off to private developers, as they simply couldn't afford to maintain it any more. It was razed a few years after I moved out, and it's been replaced with privately owned luxury apartments.
- lucian1900 6y agoYou have described very well the limits of social democracy, indeed. Ceding any ground to markets and capital ends up eroding any gains won by the working class. Similar happened after capitalism was restored in Eastern Europe. Even though housing was built and maintained just fine for many decades, very little was built or maintained after 89 since there was no profit in it.
- emteycz 6y agoThis is absolutely false. I have lived in many of these communist buildings, and the reality here is that these buildings are built so extremely badly and without any consideration of the surrounding that nothing can be done. The communists used toxic materials, didn't care about maintenance and simply built a wall where a maintenance shaft should've been, didn't care about safety, didn't care about families sharing master bedroom walls, etc etc. Thus these buildings are waiting for end-of-life to be torn down. That's typical of communist 'efficiency' - loud boasting of unbelievable achievement while shit's all fucked up. Every building that reasonably could be repaired is beautifully reworked today, because construction is expensive and working with what is already there is almost always cheaper, if at all possible. However profit is not really the main argument as these buildings are typically owned by the inhabitants nowadays, and they should have the choice of what to do with their own property, don't you think? The thing that shocks me most about my childhood photos is how the city looked absolutely horribly terrible - every building was mid-destruction, no paint anywhere, valuable historical buildings with falling walls and destroyed windows, etc; even the damn child nursery had paper boxes in few windows instead of glass! I'm very happy that I didn't notice it much back then and when I was teen most buildings got at least painted over. Growing up in the environment of my younger childhood must've been extremely depressing.
- fogihujy 6y agoMy original point was just that; public housing is not something you just do with a one-time investment, and it requires a serious long-term commitment to keep it viable. I agree that many of the previous projects failed to commit to keeping those buildings in shape and I also doubt that any modern democracy would ever commit to such endeavours in the future; nobody wants to make very expensive, very long-term promises like that.
- emteycz 6y agoYou said that "very little was built or maintained after 1989". The exact opposite is true - before 1989 there was a moderate amount of newly constructed incredibly dangerous and toxic buildings violating every urbanistic rule and past plans that were a major downgrade from pre-war comfort (keep in mind that these buildings were built in 1970's, 30 years after the war); and there was absolutely zero maintenance, any repairs that got done were carried out secretly by the inhabitants with stolen material because you couldn't even buy it, and if you could you wouldn't because you'd be accused of the terrible crime of conducting business. After 1989 the economy was in a bad shape - understandable after 40 years of destruction, but once it stabilized (within a decade, a truly incredible achievement of free markets!) there has been a huge explosion of real estate development, and it's still not finished - I can see from my window right now 5 buildings being repaired and 3 buildings being constructed. But there isn't any propaganda about it, so people further away from my street have no idea, whereas the communists ordinarily used faked/false photos to show off their incredible achievement.