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The free housing I am referring to is housing built and owned by the government. Landlords are participating in the market because they have to rent apartments

The free housing I am referring to is housing built and owned by the government. Landlords are participating in the market because they have to rent apartments to make money. Look at Vienna's housing model if you want to see a successful example of this. I am aware that cheap Fed money keeps our markets propped up with speculative investing. My point is that food, housing, and medicine are not constrained by financial bottlenecks, it's a matter of political will. If we wanted to provide food, shelter, and medicine for all of our citizens for free we easily could. However that would reduce profit margins as labor costs would rise in an already relatively (compared to the developing world) labor market. Free housing could be provided but it would be detrimental to REITs and banks who provide mortgages, so we don't actually want to solve the problem.

lazide 4y ago
Ah, but have you lived in a government housing project before? I have friends who have, and it replaces a tense landlord relationship with a overbearing, bureaucratic dystopia where attempts to escape (say by saving money for a reserve fund or to afford to move to a better place) are actively criminalized. In any larger scale system, it inevitably results in severe restrictions on things normal people do regularly on pain of eviction (such as smoking weed, or having a boyfriend!), after already requiring they have minimal savings and income below some threshold (see above), which inevitably leads to abuse by whichever civil servant or subcontractor is actually running it. It’s basically replacing a landlord who you could at least plausibly ‘fire’ at the end of the lease with an appointed bureaucrat or lowest-bidder who you can’t. Lack of political will is just a way of saying ‘when the rubber hits the road, no one is willing to pay for it or interested enough to make it happen’. Which hey, maybe. But in my experience these are for reasons that require time and expertise to understand, and often boil down to ‘the people/society involved couldn’t make it work’. If you can lead a successful effort to make something better work, be my guest! But like kids caught in the middle of a nasty divorce, wishing they liked each other isn’t going to change it, and the folks most impacted by it are usually helpless to do anything but get the brunt of the terrible outcomes. Those markets in Vienna yiu mention - by any chance are the current landlords the ones who were also there when they passed these rules, so were stuck? Or got into it via inheritance? Or perhaps they have long standing ties to the community and are doing it because it may not make them money, but helps them in other ways? Does Vienna have a decent safety net and a coherent social identity so that folks (both giving and receiving) feel they’re helping out ‘one of theirs’, and people aren’t likely to abuse the system?
- softcactus 4y ago
  My mother lived in section 8 for a few years, although her housing was rural and fairly nice-- not so much in urban areas. Most of the things you listed I am against, I am against means testing and strict requirements for tenants. If someone wants to shoot up heroin in their section 8 I'd prefer them doing it there than out in the street. It has also been shown multiple times that housing the homeless actually saves taxpayers money: https://borgenproject.org/housing-homeless-saves-taxpayers-money/ https://borgenproject.org/housing-homeless-saves-taxpayers-m... To answer the specific questions about Vienna, I believe the public housing started in the 1910s and 1920s under the socialist government, and today over 60% of Viennese residents live in the public housing. Public housing does not have the same issues as rent control. Rent control does not work long-term as it disincentivizes construction and competition. Establishing a price floor through public housing still leaves landlords open to large profit margins in higher-class housing, or higher-density housing, and encourages development. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/03/in-vienna-public-housing-is-affordable-and-desirable/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/03/in-vienna-public-hous... Our bloated bureaucracy is a symptom of American social programs needing to be means-tested because we are culturally opposed to welfare programs. We have to have a purity test for everyone receiving a handout-- meanwhile there is no means testing for subsidies and bailouts for corporations who are at risk of default every time we turn the money faucet off. It's an incredible double-standard where we scrutinize the most vulnerable in society while creating a massive moral hazard for our largest companies.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Glad it’s working for them - Singapore uses a similar model (MDB). If the society is cohesive and coherent enough it sees it as a public good and not ‘hand outs to the others’, it can work. The larger the scale, and more geographically separated, the less likely though in my experience.

lazide 4y ago

Ah, but have you lived in a government housing project before? I have friends who have, and it replaces a tense landlord relationship with a overbearing, bureaucratic dystopia where attempts to escape (say by saving money for a reserve fund or to afford to move to a better place) are actively criminalized. In any larger scale system, it inevitably results in severe restrictions on things normal people do regularly on pain of eviction (such as smoking weed, or having a boyfriend!), after already requiring they have minimal savings and income below some threshold (see above), which inevitably leads to abuse by whichever civil servant or subcontractor is actually running it. It’s basically replacing a landlord who you could at least plausibly ‘fire’ at the end of the lease with an appointed bureaucrat or lowest-bidder who you can’t. Lack of political will is just a way of saying ‘when the rubber hits the road, no one is willing to pay for it or interested enough to make it happen’. Which hey, maybe. But in my experience these are for reasons that require time and expertise to understand, and often boil down to ‘the people/society involved couldn’t make it work’. If you can lead a successful effort to make something better work, be my guest! But like kids caught in the middle of a nasty divorce, wishing they liked each other isn’t going to change it, and the folks most impacted by it are usually helpless to do anything but get the brunt of the terrible outcomes. Those markets in Vienna yiu mention - by any chance are the current landlords the ones who were also there when they passed these rules, so were stuck? Or got into it via inheritance? Or perhaps they have long standing ties to the community and are doing it because it may not make them money, but helps them in other ways? Does Vienna have a decent safety net and a coherent social identity so that folks (both giving and receiving) feel they’re helping out ‘one of theirs’, and people aren’t likely to abuse the system?

softcactus 4y ago
My mother lived in section 8 for a few years, although her housing was rural and fairly nice-- not so much in urban areas. Most of the things you listed I am against, I am against means testing and strict requirements for tenants. If someone wants to shoot up heroin in their section 8 I'd prefer them doing it there than out in the street. It has also been shown multiple times that housing the homeless actually saves taxpayers money: https://borgenproject.org/housing-homeless-saves-taxpayers-money/ https://borgenproject.org/housing-homeless-saves-taxpayers-m... To answer the specific questions about Vienna, I believe the public housing started in the 1910s and 1920s under the socialist government, and today over 60% of Viennese residents live in the public housing. Public housing does not have the same issues as rent control. Rent control does not work long-term as it disincentivizes construction and competition. Establishing a price floor through public housing still leaves landlords open to large profit margins in higher-class housing, or higher-density housing, and encourages development. https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/03/in-vienna-public-housing-is-affordable-and-desirable/ https://www.marketplace.org/2021/05/03/in-vienna-public-hous... Our bloated bureaucracy is a symptom of American social programs needing to be means-tested because we are culturally opposed to welfare programs. We have to have a purity test for everyone receiving a handout-- meanwhile there is no means testing for subsidies and bailouts for corporations who are at risk of default every time we turn the money faucet off. It's an incredible double-standard where we scrutinize the most vulnerable in society while creating a massive moral hazard for our largest companies.
- lazide 4y ago
  Glad it’s working for them - Singapore uses a similar model (MDB). If the society is cohesive and coherent enough it sees it as a public good and not ‘hand outs to the others’, it can work. The larger the scale, and more geographically separated, the less likely though in my experience.