4 ms·

The state provides Public Transport (trams, buses, etc.), it should also provide Public Housing - after all, it’s a Human Right. Furthermore, if Human Rights d

The state provides Public Transport (trams, buses, etc.), it should also provide Public Housing - after all, it’s a Human Right. Furthermore, if Human Rights do not appeal to your Political Economic leanings, nevertheless I’m sure you can agree the state should provide a firefighting and police service. Police officers and firefighters need to live close to where they work. And, should be able to afford public transport, therefore: Public Housing.

DrNosferatu 3y ago
The market fails to move people efficiently around a big urban clustering. Hence: Public Transport. As it is apparent worldwide - at least in the West - the market is also failing to house people efficiently and effectively. Hence: Public Housing. Should not cost more than one third of the resident’s liquid income. Start with university residences - build (or convert to) new in mass.
- cscurmudgeon 3y ago
  This is rich. The market is not failing, the govt is failing by adding onerous regulation and giving into NIMBYism. And the solution is more govt intervention?
Kamq 3y ago
> Police officers and firefighters need to live close to where they work. And, should be able to afford public transport, therefore: Public Housing. This does not follow. You could make it an argument that essential services should be paid enough to live close to work, which would satisfy the criteria that you've laid out. The most you can conclude from what you've laid out is that something is wrong with the current system. Which, I think very few people would disagree with.
- katbyte 3y ago
  Ok, be prepared to pay a ton more taxes to afford that, all to the benefit of landlords - now what about all the people needed to maintenance, groceries, schools, etc? Expensive housing is a problem for everyone even the people who own their home
  - Kamq 3y ago
    > now what about all the people needed to maintenance, groceries, schools, etc? I feel like I misunderstood something here. I presume the police/firefighters were needed to live near the community because they might need to respond in an emergency. Or possibly for community relations for the police (I know some jurisdictions require you to live in the community you police, at least in the states). If I'm wrong in this assumption, please correct me and supply some more context. It's not automatically clear why the situation you've laid out includes the additional groups you've listed.
    - katbyte 3y ago
      Because expensive housing means they all need to charge more meaning your fighter fighters and we’ll every Goverment employee needs a higher wage to account for it, meaning landlords can charge more meaning wages need to go up.. you see the problem here?
      - Kamq 3y ago
        > Because expensive housing means they all need to charge more meaning your fighter fighters and we’ll every Goverment employee needs a higher wage to account for it, meaning landlords can charge more meaning wages need to go up.. you see the problem here? Not really. Other than that you seem to be implying that the categories of people covered need to be able to live in the city, without stating that, and we've only only established this as a requirement for groups that need to respond in an emergency. Necessity only seems to dictate that said groups are present for the parts of their jobs that require them to be present. Commuting seems like a viable option, which should have a depressive effect on housing prices. Fundamentally, cities with strict zoning laws tend to require commuters (most cities in the west post ~WWII or so). Some petty-tyrant always ends up on the city council and building grinds to a halt. Unless you also want to severely curtail zoning and building regulations, I don't think the proposed public housing is even actually a long-term solution. And if you do want to curtail those, I'd expect it to not be needed very much.
        3y ago
Detrytus 3y ago
It's silly how some people believe in infinite power of "The State". Government can't just will new housing into existence just by passing a bill. Housing costs money. And when I say "money" I really mean "raw materials" and "human labor" and "time". If a city is desirable place to live, with a lot of people coming in then the housing will be expensive. You cannot really work around supply/demand here. Protesting against high rents is like protesting against bad weather - what do you expect your government to do?
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  It’s silly what some people describe as the “infinite power of the ‘State’” when they’re actually just talking about something that has already happened in many wealthy countries (e.g. Austria and Japan).
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >And when I say "money" I really mean "raw materials" and "human labor" and "time". Biggest pain point in housing is the limited amounts of land and living space, not the building cost. > what do you expect your government to do? There are tonnes of things governments can do: 1. build more dense public housing 2. ban Airbnbs 3. ban private equity from turning the housing market in their private casino table 4. tax the hell out of empty apartments and poorly utilized land that's not for living or relevant economic productivity 5. incentivize remote work for white collar jobs so they don't all have to live in X city just to do things that could be done from anywhere else
- paddim8 3y ago
  The social democrats built 1 million units of housing in Sweden in the 60s or something like that, because of a housing crisis. They solved the housing crisis just like that.
  - oceanofsolaris 3y ago
    If a lack of capital investment (or skilled companies) is the problem, that’s a great solution. But that’s not the reason for expensive rents in big cities. It’s because many (rich) people want to live there … and due to physical and regulatory limits you can’t build more housing, even for piles of money it would be worth.
medion 3y ago
Like the army. It’s funny how military institutions with virtually unlimited funds are basically socialist institutions. They provide health, housing, stable employment and early retirement. What many dream of - minus the being in the army bit.
sshine 3y ago
You don’t want the state as your landlord. The government is an elephant graveyard for talent. In Denmark, the co-operative movement led unions to construct housing for their members. With the fall of unions, the housing organisations that remain now provide thousands of low-cost homes: they weren’t built for profit. Co-operative housing still gets built at scale in Denmark, but rarely in the big cities; the private companies will outbid them because there is always a willing renter for luxury apartments. I protested the capital city rent increase by moving out. I understand why students can’t.
- bugglebeetle 3y ago
  Yeah, that’s the reason why Vienna has some of the most affordable housing in the EU. Oh wait, no it’s actually because the government is a lot of people’s landlord.
  - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
    Vienna is quite of an outlier in the EU and even in Austria itself. Here's why: Firstly, social housing there is a very old concept, and because of that, a significant portion of the population (>50%) already lives in social housing, meaning most the population has skin in the social housing game so they make sure to vote themselves a great situation because they're the majority and that's how democracy works. But if the amount of population in a city living in social housing is way below 50% (most of Europe) then they don't have the democratic political leverage to vote themselves a better public housing situation, so social housing turns into a low quality charity for the poor and ends up turned into ghettos leading to a bad image of social housing leading to people to further voting even less in favor of social housing not wanting more ghettos. Vienna, having the majority of it's citizens in social housing for a long time now has reached "escape velocity", that's why it already works there but won't/doesn't work in other EU cities who want to try it now, including in the rest of Austria where social housing is not the norm but more of a safety net for poor people. Other Austrian cities have even sold off a lot of their public housing stock to private investors in the 2008 crisis (cough-corruption-cough), meaning replicating Vienna's success today would be impossible as no city could afford to buy 50% of all private housing at market prices today even assuming private owners would want to sell in the first place. And secondly, unlike Zurich, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Luxembourg, etc., Vienna is not a tech-hub or corpo-hub for big international companies to set up large offices of well paid workers from abroad there, and neither is it a low-tax/beach-front destination for wealthy digital nomads, so there's not such a big pressure on the rental market from overseas workers with huge salaries pushing up rents and gentrifying everything. That's the situation for rents. But the situation for buying a property flips on its head and makes Vienna one of the most expensive cities in Europe for buying your own property, far disconnected form average wages that almost nobody could afford to buy something.
oceanofsolaris 3y ago
I don’t totally get this point. The main problem in big cities is the quantity of housing as well as the distribution of it. For a train system, a non-state actor will have a hard time getting one of the ground (huge upfront costs, will often make a loss, cooperation of politics super important) and if they do … they will have a monopoly (which also sucks). So having transit publicly owned in some way makes a lot of sense. But for housing, none of that is true. It’s being built (the amount built mostly depends on government approval, there is no shortage of capital investment), there is no monopoly… what is the problem that more public housing would solve? The (admittedly outrageous) rent prices in Zürich come from a mismatch of demand and supply. And since Zürich has a lot of rich inhabitants, enough of them are willing to bid up the market rent prices to the current level. Having a non-market solution for this might lead to cheaper rents, but introduces a lot of other losses and crucially also strangles the supply even more (look at what happened in Berlin when they introduced their moronic rent control law).

DrNosferatu 3y ago

The market fails to move people efficiently around a big urban clustering. Hence: Public Transport. As it is apparent worldwide - at least in the West - the market is also failing to house people efficiently and effectively. Hence: Public Housing. Should not cost more than one third of the resident’s liquid income. Start with university residences - build (or convert to) new in mass.

cscurmudgeon 3y ago
This is rich. The market is not failing, the govt is failing by adding onerous regulation and giving into NIMBYism. And the solution is more govt intervention?

Kamq 3y ago

> Police officers and firefighters need to live close to where they work. And, should be able to afford public transport, therefore: Public Housing. This does not follow. You could make it an argument that essential services should be paid enough to live close to work, which would satisfy the criteria that you've laid out. The most you can conclude from what you've laid out is that something is wrong with the current system. Which, I think very few people would disagree with.

katbyte 3y ago
Ok, be prepared to pay a ton more taxes to afford that, all to the benefit of landlords - now what about all the people needed to maintenance, groceries, schools, etc? Expensive housing is a problem for everyone even the people who own their home
- Kamq 3y ago
  > now what about all the people needed to maintenance, groceries, schools, etc? I feel like I misunderstood something here. I presume the police/firefighters were needed to live near the community because they might need to respond in an emergency. Or possibly for community relations for the police (I know some jurisdictions require you to live in the community you police, at least in the states). If I'm wrong in this assumption, please correct me and supply some more context. It's not automatically clear why the situation you've laid out includes the additional groups you've listed.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    Because expensive housing means they all need to charge more meaning your fighter fighters and we’ll every Goverment employee needs a higher wage to account for it, meaning landlords can charge more meaning wages need to go up.. you see the problem here?
    - Kamq 3y ago
      > Because expensive housing means they all need to charge more meaning your fighter fighters and we’ll every Goverment employee needs a higher wage to account for it, meaning landlords can charge more meaning wages need to go up.. you see the problem here? Not really. Other than that you seem to be implying that the categories of people covered need to be able to live in the city, without stating that, and we've only only established this as a requirement for groups that need to respond in an emergency. Necessity only seems to dictate that said groups are present for the parts of their jobs that require them to be present. Commuting seems like a viable option, which should have a depressive effect on housing prices. Fundamentally, cities with strict zoning laws tend to require commuters (most cities in the west post ~WWII or so). Some petty-tyrant always ends up on the city council and building grinds to a halt. Unless you also want to severely curtail zoning and building regulations, I don't think the proposed public housing is even actually a long-term solution. And if you do want to curtail those, I'd expect it to not be needed very much.
      - 3y ago

Detrytus 3y ago

It's silly how some people believe in infinite power of "The State". Government can't just will new housing into existence just by passing a bill. Housing costs money. And when I say "money" I really mean "raw materials" and "human labor" and "time". If a city is desirable place to live, with a lot of people coming in then the housing will be expensive. You cannot really work around supply/demand here. Protesting against high rents is like protesting against bad weather - what do you expect your government to do?

bugglebeetle 3y ago
It’s silly what some people describe as the “infinite power of the ‘State’” when they’re actually just talking about something that has already happened in many wealthy countries (e.g. Austria and Japan).
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>And when I say "money" I really mean "raw materials" and "human labor" and "time". Biggest pain point in housing is the limited amounts of land and living space, not the building cost. > what do you expect your government to do? There are tonnes of things governments can do: 1. build more dense public housing 2. ban Airbnbs 3. ban private equity from turning the housing market in their private casino table 4. tax the hell out of empty apartments and poorly utilized land that's not for living or relevant economic productivity 5. incentivize remote work for white collar jobs so they don't all have to live in X city just to do things that could be done from anywhere else
paddim8 3y ago
The social democrats built 1 million units of housing in Sweden in the 60s or something like that, because of a housing crisis. They solved the housing crisis just like that.
- oceanofsolaris 3y ago
  If a lack of capital investment (or skilled companies) is the problem, that’s a great solution. But that’s not the reason for expensive rents in big cities. It’s because many (rich) people want to live there … and due to physical and regulatory limits you can’t build more housing, even for piles of money it would be worth.

medion 3y ago

Like the army. It’s funny how military institutions with virtually unlimited funds are basically socialist institutions. They provide health, housing, stable employment and early retirement. What many dream of - minus the being in the army bit.

sshine 3y ago

You don’t want the state as your landlord. The government is an elephant graveyard for talent. In Denmark, the co-operative movement led unions to construct housing for their members. With the fall of unions, the housing organisations that remain now provide thousands of low-cost homes: they weren’t built for profit. Co-operative housing still gets built at scale in Denmark, but rarely in the big cities; the private companies will outbid them because there is always a willing renter for luxury apartments. I protested the capital city rent increase by moving out. I understand why students can’t.

bugglebeetle 3y ago
Yeah, that’s the reason why Vienna has some of the most affordable housing in the EU. Oh wait, no it’s actually because the government is a lot of people’s landlord.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  Vienna is quite of an outlier in the EU and even in Austria itself. Here's why: Firstly, social housing there is a very old concept, and because of that, a significant portion of the population (>50%) already lives in social housing, meaning most the population has skin in the social housing game so they make sure to vote themselves a great situation because they're the majority and that's how democracy works. But if the amount of population in a city living in social housing is way below 50% (most of Europe) then they don't have the democratic political leverage to vote themselves a better public housing situation, so social housing turns into a low quality charity for the poor and ends up turned into ghettos leading to a bad image of social housing leading to people to further voting even less in favor of social housing not wanting more ghettos. Vienna, having the majority of it's citizens in social housing for a long time now has reached "escape velocity", that's why it already works there but won't/doesn't work in other EU cities who want to try it now, including in the rest of Austria where social housing is not the norm but more of a safety net for poor people. Other Austrian cities have even sold off a lot of their public housing stock to private investors in the 2008 crisis (cough-corruption-cough), meaning replicating Vienna's success today would be impossible as no city could afford to buy 50% of all private housing at market prices today even assuming private owners would want to sell in the first place. And secondly, unlike Zurich, London, Amsterdam, Berlin, Luxembourg, etc., Vienna is not a tech-hub or corpo-hub for big international companies to set up large offices of well paid workers from abroad there, and neither is it a low-tax/beach-front destination for wealthy digital nomads, so there's not such a big pressure on the rental market from overseas workers with huge salaries pushing up rents and gentrifying everything. That's the situation for rents. But the situation for buying a property flips on its head and makes Vienna one of the most expensive cities in Europe for buying your own property, far disconnected form average wages that almost nobody could afford to buy something.

oceanofsolaris 3y ago

I don’t totally get this point. The main problem in big cities is the quantity of housing as well as the distribution of it. For a train system, a non-state actor will have a hard time getting one of the ground (huge upfront costs, will often make a loss, cooperation of politics super important) and if they do … they will have a monopoly (which also sucks). So having transit publicly owned in some way makes a lot of sense. But for housing, none of that is true. It’s being built (the amount built mostly depends on government approval, there is no shortage of capital investment), there is no monopoly… what is the problem that more public housing would solve? The (admittedly outrageous) rent prices in Zürich come from a mismatch of demand and supply. And since Zürich has a lot of rich inhabitants, enough of them are willing to bid up the market rent prices to the current level. Having a non-market solution for this might lead to cheaper rents, but introduces a lot of other losses and crucially also strangles the supply even more (look at what happened in Berlin when they introduced their moronic rent control law).