3 ms·

But the majority of people don’t get any financial assistance for their rent, so I don’t think simplifying social programs would affect their spending behavior.

by Zanfa 5y ago

mlyle 5y ago
If your concern is what it will do for housing prices for the most poor-- those are the people receiving section 8 (about 8% of the population). If you're talking about the next slug up in income: they'd have some more money. Assuming 100% of this money is captured by necessities is pessimistic, IMO. And since we'd be getting rid of e.g. EITC, as you get to higher incomes UBI doesn't necessarily inject a ton more cash into the household. UBI is redistributive. It inherently moves money around; purchasing power for some (the poorest) will increase and for others (the richest) will decrease. Yes, shocks to pricing will erode a small part of this effect. One other thing to note: a UBI makes living in lower cost of living areas (with more housing supply) much more attractive, and makes relocation feasible for populations that never had the money to move. $1K/mo from the feds goes much further in Wyoming than San Francisco.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  There are only ~2 million section 8 housing vouchers available for ~330 million people. So no way 8% of the population are receiving them. (8% of 330 million is 26 million, so for 2 million vouchers, the average household size for recipients would have to be ~13.)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mlyle 5y ago
    I screwed up-- there's about 10.2 million people receiving housing assistance, so about 3% of pop. But your number is off in the other direction: (counts are all households) 2.2 million housing choice vouchers, but another 900k public housing and another 1.2 million households of section 8 project-based housing (and about 400k in other programs), totaling 4.8M households.

3 ms·

But the majority of people don’t get any financial assistance for their rent, so I don’t think simplifying social programs would affect their spending behavior.

by Zanfa 5y ago

But the majority of people don’t get any financial assistance for their rent, so I don’t think simplifying social programs would affect their spending behavior.

mlyle 5y ago
If your concern is what it will do for housing prices for the most poor-- those are the people receiving section 8 (about 8% of the population). If you're talking about the next slug up in income: they'd have some more money. Assuming 100% of this money is captured by necessities is pessimistic, IMO. And since we'd be getting rid of e.g. EITC, as you get to higher incomes UBI doesn't necessarily inject a ton more cash into the household. UBI is redistributive. It inherently moves money around; purchasing power for some (the poorest) will increase and for others (the richest) will decrease. Yes, shocks to pricing will erode a small part of this effect. One other thing to note: a UBI makes living in lower cost of living areas (with more housing supply) much more attractive, and makes relocation feasible for populations that never had the money to move. $1K/mo from the feds goes much further in Wyoming than San Francisco.
- DarylZero 5y ago
  There are only ~2 million section 8 housing vouchers available for ~330 million people. So no way 8% of the population are receiving them. (8% of 330 million is 26 million, so for 2 million vouchers, the average household size for recipients would have to be ~13.)
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - mlyle 5y ago
    I screwed up-- there's about 10.2 million people receiving housing assistance, so about 3% of pop. But your number is off in the other direction: (counts are all households) 2.2 million housing choice vouchers, but another 900k public housing and another 1.2 million households of section 8 project-based housing (and about 400k in other programs), totaling 4.8M households.