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Modern housing is a direct development of the industrial revolution. In that sense it is an industry. You could provide housing like undeveloped nations do, wh

Modern housing is a direct development of the industrial revolution. In that sense it is an industry. You could provide housing like undeveloped nations do, where large families live in cramped hovels without electricity or running water. In the sense that someone should want an apartment with 2 bathrooms, a fireplace, and a pool - it's easier to treat housing overall as a consumer good.

Carrok 2y ago
This is quite the straw man you've constructed. You seem to be suggesting that either housing must be exploitatively expensive, or people must live in squalor.
- legitster 2y ago
  You are strawmanning me. Nothing in my statement suggests that treating housing as a product means it has to be exploitatively expensive or given away for free. If anything, most industrial products are supposed to get cheaper over time.
  - kelnos 2y ago
    > If anything, most industrial products are supposed to get cheaper over time. And yet the cost of housing more or less always increases. Isn't that enough to suggest that there's something about this "industry" that doesn't quite make sense the way it's handled?
sangnoir 2y ago
...vs "providing" housing like developed nations in cramped shelters, in cars and on the street? FYI: multigenerational households are a cultural artifact, not an economic one. As one might assume, hovels without water or electricity don't break the bank, they aren't "provided" by anyone either. Yours is a false dichotomy, and is easily disproved by examples in other developed countries where shelter is considered a right.
- legitster 2y ago
  I grew up in tenements in Romania. So I can tell you from experience that building the bare minimum shelter for the most amount of people is possible (if less enticing than you may think). But the idea that they were anything other than "industrial" housing as OP states is ridiculous. Regardless of who pays for it, housing modern peoples is an industry.
  - sangnoir 2y ago
    "Hovel" is the opposite of industrial housing, etymologically, and evokes the images of ad-hoc slums rather than soviet-style brutalist blocks. Industrial housing is a step up from what OP described (no running water or electricity). I will also note that the currently in-vogue 5-over-1s lean heavily towards "Industrial housing". Funny how diffent economic systems both with a captive market converged towards no-frills housing.
lawlessone 2y ago
> it's easier to treat housing overall as a consumer good. But it doesn't function like that. Building the house isn't even the part that is the problem. It's land/space and how some people maintain monopolies on those. A free market might make the materials and construction of a house cheaper. It address that space is limited and that most expensive space is often where there are more jobs.

Carrok 2y ago

This is quite the straw man you've constructed. You seem to be suggesting that either housing must be exploitatively expensive, or people must live in squalor.

legitster 2y ago
You are strawmanning me. Nothing in my statement suggests that treating housing as a product means it has to be exploitatively expensive or given away for free. If anything, most industrial products are supposed to get cheaper over time.
- kelnos 2y ago
  > If anything, most industrial products are supposed to get cheaper over time. And yet the cost of housing more or less always increases. Isn't that enough to suggest that there's something about this "industry" that doesn't quite make sense the way it's handled?

sangnoir 2y ago

...vs "providing" housing like developed nations in cramped shelters, in cars and on the street? FYI: multigenerational households are a cultural artifact, not an economic one. As one might assume, hovels without water or electricity don't break the bank, they aren't "provided" by anyone either. Yours is a false dichotomy, and is easily disproved by examples in other developed countries where shelter is considered a right.

legitster 2y ago
I grew up in tenements in Romania. So I can tell you from experience that building the bare minimum shelter for the most amount of people is possible (if less enticing than you may think). But the idea that they were anything other than "industrial" housing as OP states is ridiculous. Regardless of who pays for it, housing modern peoples is an industry.
- sangnoir 2y ago
  "Hovel" is the opposite of industrial housing, etymologically, and evokes the images of ad-hoc slums rather than soviet-style brutalist blocks. Industrial housing is a step up from what OP described (no running water or electricity). I will also note that the currently in-vogue 5-over-1s lean heavily towards "Industrial housing". Funny how diffent economic systems both with a captive market converged towards no-frills housing.

lawlessone 2y ago

> it's easier to treat housing overall as a consumer good. But it doesn't function like that. Building the house isn't even the part that is the problem. It's land/space and how some people maintain monopolies on those. A free market might make the materials and construction of a house cheaper. It address that space is limited and that most expensive space is often where there are more jobs.