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Social housing (or other approaches to subsidized housing) are a necessary piece of the puzzle. However, they are also extremely expensive: around my area the c

by seoaeu 5y ago

Social housing (or other approaches to subsidized housing) are a necessary piece of the puzzle. However, they are also extremely expensive: around my area the commonly cited number is $500,000/unit. It would take a very major political shift to finance enough housing to even cover the 1-2 million people/year US population growth rate (~$750B/year), let alone resolve the backlog. A more feasible option is to let private developers (who collectively have access to trillions in capital) to finance housing creation for rich/middle class people, and rely on government subsidies for low-income housing.

michaelmrose 5y ago
It might be worth considering both whether under supply factors into that cost and size of unit. Developers may not reasonable choose to build small units that may be quite sufficient for people's needs while coming in cheaper than the stated figure.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  The $500k figure is the cost the local housing agency spends building units sized based on actual need and with optimizing cost part of the focus. Private developers around here regularly create housing costing anywhere from $700k to $2 million per unit
SilverRed 5y ago
A lot of people complain when a new luxury apartment tower goes up because it gets filled with rich people, but surely that would mean that all the existing average housing just got cleared out by all of these rich people leaving and is now freed for less wealthy people.
- seoaeu 5y ago
  The problem is if two towers worth of rich people move to the area but you only build one tower. Then half of them will move into the luxury tower and half will bid up the prices on the nearby average housing. Obviously the solution is that you should've built two luxury towers. However, people watching the situation sometimes get the counterfactual wrong and conclude that if the luxury tower hadn't been built, none of the rich people would have moved to the area. They then conclude the best idea would be to build no new housing at all and do everything they can to make sure that is the case

by seoaeu 5y ago

michaelmrose 5y ago

It might be worth considering both whether under supply factors into that cost and size of unit. Developers may not reasonable choose to build small units that may be quite sufficient for people's needs while coming in cheaper than the stated figure.

seoaeu 5y ago
The $500k figure is the cost the local housing agency spends building units sized based on actual need and with optimizing cost part of the focus. Private developers around here regularly create housing costing anywhere from $700k to $2 million per unit

SilverRed 5y ago

A lot of people complain when a new luxury apartment tower goes up because it gets filled with rich people, but surely that would mean that all the existing average housing just got cleared out by all of these rich people leaving and is now freed for less wealthy people.

seoaeu 5y ago
The problem is if two towers worth of rich people move to the area but you only build one tower. Then half of them will move into the luxury tower and half will bid up the prices on the nearby average housing. Obviously the solution is that you should've built two luxury towers. However, people watching the situation sometimes get the counterfactual wrong and conclude that if the luxury tower hadn't been built, none of the rich people would have moved to the area. They then conclude the best idea would be to build no new housing at all and do everything they can to make sure that is the case