7 ms·

One possible housing crisis solution? Public housing for all income levels

31 points by thehoff 2y ago

wesselbindt 2y ago
They tried this in the communist countries when they were still around. Sure, people had affordable housing and didn't have to worry about homelessness, but at what cost? That's not a rhetorical question.
- VonGuard 2y ago
  Uhm, at the cost of some tax dollars. It's still like this in Cuba. people still beg, BUT they have a home to go to at the end of the day. I don't think this is a particularly bad thing. Would you rather our tax dollars are spent on missiles and tanks for other places.
  - kcplate 2y ago
    I work with and am friends with many Cuban immigrants and former Soviet bloc country immigrants. I think I’ll ask them if they would trade the freedom and security they have now for the guarantee against homelessness they had then (and all that other stuff). Pretty sure none will be willing to trade back and would view any attempts at establishing public housing for all as a scary step in the wrong direction.
    - theragra 2y ago
      This approach won't get you realistic data. Immigrants are immigrants for a reason. I'm living in the exUSSR. Plenty of older people are nostalgic about security they had back then. Food, housing, healthcare and even job were mostly handled for them. Most of the people prefer that to the extreme freedom and self-reliance. When we talk about balance of these things, though, Scandinavian countries seem to be pretty popular. I myself don't think socialist model will work without AGI, but maybe some hybrid model will do.
      - kcplate 2y ago
        It was more a figurative comment, I am not going to actually ask anyone anything. But it is my sense from past conversations that none of these friends and acquaintances would be willing to trade back. I also think it’s reasonable to conclude that the people who stayed vs the people who left might have different opinions over those governments too. The man who is willing to risk floating 90 miles across shark infested seas in a makeshift raft might have a different perspective of security and personal risk then someone who just kept their head down and suffered silently…or was content in their station.
    - harimau777 2y ago
      Luckily, no one is proposing that they trade the freedom and security that they have now.
      - kcplate 2y ago
        My comment was a response to the parent comment “It's still like this in Cuba. people still beg, BUT they have a home to go to at the end of the day. I don't think this is a particularly bad thing” My point was it is a bad thing because people would likely not be willing to trade back to that for housing security. They had housing security and still left.
- harimau777 2y ago
  It's also the way things work in Singapore; a decidedly not communist country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
  - glial 2y ago
    Same in Vienna: 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...
- VyseofArcadia 2y ago
  Are you attempting to imply that you can only build public housing in communist countries?
  - wesselbindt 2y ago
    That's what rhetorical questions are for. This one isn't one of those. I'm genuinely asking about a real life situation where this was tried, and asking about the costs. I genuinely don't know, I never lived in those countries, and my education was in a very anticommunist country, so that doesn't help me much.
- lucidguppy 2y ago
  I don't think free markets in land constrained areas is possible for real estate.
- hobs 2y ago
  https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi... Generally the research I have seen says that its cheaper to build houses/house folks than deal with the negative side effects of not doing that. That seems like a net win when you don't just consider the cost of doing it, but the cost of not doing it.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  Affordable housing and quality housing are not mutually exclusive though, even though from a capitalist point of view they have to be.
- master-lincoln 2y ago
  They also tried this in the US before it went full neoliberal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing#United_States But > Initially, public housing was intended to be built widespread, and as such be mixed-income, but lobbyists who did not want to see public housing decrease their housing values blocked such housing from going up >With the introduction of suburbs and expansion of choices for the white working class, the demographics of public housing changed from more class and racially integrated to predominantly impoverished, single-parent, welfare, and people of color[30]. This led to stigmatization of public housing, through pushing the narrative that people living in public housing were "Welfare Queens", or otherwise living in a state of abject poverty and terrible conditions[30]. These demographic changes also decreased support for housing, leading to the government cutting funding for the program
  - ElFitz 2y ago
    And also massively implemented in the UK, with "council homes". An initiative that was thoroughly gutted in the 80s, which might have contributed to the current housing shortage.
- beeboobaa3 2y ago
  > but at what cost? That's not a rhetorical question. Well? Go on? At what cost?
  - wesselbindt 2y ago
    I didn't ask the question to answer it myself. I don't know the answer. That's why I'm asking.
naming_the_user 2y ago
I can't speak for the US but in the UK you have the issue of deciding where to put the public housing. If you try to stuff it all into somewhere like London then you end up either with huge overcrowding (it's really hard to double the capacity of 150 year old infrastructure) or with people living so far out of the centre that commute costs really start to bite. If you build new towns then you have to be really careful to somehow distribute the wealth properly otherwise you just end up with slums. I actually think that for the most part what people aren't willing to accept is that the capitalist model actually does allocate housing fairly well according to need, it's just that if you're on the wrong side of that equation then it feels terribly unfair to be asked indirectly via the market to move to a cheaper area.
- ericmay 2y ago
  In the U.S. I don’t think this is a concern, thankfully. Most of our cities have infill opportunities. In Columbus, Ohio where I live there’s hundreds of acres of surface parking lots. Buy them up and build housing blocks like in NYC. This solves lots of problems. [1] > I actually think that for the most part what people aren't willing to accept is that the capitalist model actually does allocate housing fairly well according to need I generally agree as well, but it seems like we are no longer satisfying lower ends of the market and developers would prefer to not build rather than build homes that don’t hit their IRR numbers. The federal government in the US could build housing and auction it off to individuals or families or run a sort of lottery system. Could add a few rules to prevent bad actors from renting the places out or something along those lines. [1] As an aside everyone working for the housing agency or federal transportation admin should have to read The Death and Life of Great American Cities and be treated in that knowledge before taking a job there.
  - naming_the_user 2y ago
    Is there a reason that private developers aren't doing this already? Zoning?
    - CalRobert 2y ago
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
Occasionally as a thought exercise, I ask myself what I would do with the untold billions of Bezos, Musk, etc. There's only so much you can spend on yourself. I could go for a bigger house, but I like my car as is, and I don't want a yacht or a private jet[0]. So then the question is, what relatively expensive thing could I do that would solve a lot of problems? That would make a lot of lives better? The thing I keep coming back to again and again is public housing. I would just start buying up land and building public housing. Getting the homeless off the streets would improve not just their lives, but also the lives of the people who already have homes who happen to live in areas with a lot of homeless. I've also considered public pay-what-you-want restaurants. If anyone wants to give me untold billions, I will get right on it. [0] I would totally go for a private train car, though.
- Cthulhu_ 2y ago
  More / affordable housing alone does not fix the homeless problem alone though. I mean it'll help, but it's only one part of that problem.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    There are a lot of people, particularly in places like San Francisco who could and would maintain a house if they could just get one. If you get out to someplace like Moline IL most homeless have "issues" and wouldn't be able to maintain a house/apartment if given one - because rent is cheap enough that you can maintain a small room on fast food income levels (it won't be easy, but it is possible). Of course there are a lot of other differences in those cities - you can live homeless in San Francisco a lot better than Moline (where you will freeze to death in winter), and I have no idea what sort of help either city provides for the homeless.
  - bryanlarsen 2y ago
    Housing is pretty much a prerequisite for fixing the other problems. I would guess that's it's almost impossible to kick something like a drug problem while sleeping on the streets.
2099miles 2y ago
This is just a step away from UBI. I appreciate the universal approach but prefer universal solution instead of only to “housing” offering public housing to people who can afford and choose to live in higher quality is a fake universal solution. UBI sends money, even Jeff Bezos will benefit although negligibly from 1k per month. “Oh but Jeff Bezos doesn’t need it” you miss the point. Universal removes a TON of beauracrocy and issues that come with qualifications. And by giving direct money this solution helps literally all fiscally related problems (not mental health or education). Food deserts will still be a problem. Places without affordable housing will still exist. But people will have some real and immediate help in affording the solutions and also help in moving out of those locations to ones without those problems. There is no “solution” to “solve” any of these things 100% the idea of universal housing is not realistic considering current government housing and HUD is known for its unsafe, low quality, overpriced and corruptible attributes. UBI is a real implementable “solution” that will “improve” the problem.
- ElFitz 2y ago
  How do we prevent UBI from driving inflation and just becoming another way to funnel money to the rich?
  - ttyprintk 2y ago
    You consider deflation as a component of UBI. If the Fed routinely destroyed a convincing percentage of circulatable currency, it would eventually counteract the psychological component of inflation.
    - ElFitz 2y ago
      Still. Everyone will earn x more dollars, every landlord will know for a fact that, no matter what, all their tenants will at least earn x dollars, every house seller and every lending bank will know that every prospective buyer can afford to pay x * 12 months * 20 years more. What would we have achieved then? How does "destroying" money prevent it? Bear in mind I know nothing about the effects and side-effects of monetary destruction.
lr4444lr 2y ago
Public housing starts out nice when the masonry is new, its operations are freshly funded, and every initial tenant passes a basic credit check. Will it stand as a shining example after 10-20 years, when poorer tenants are in arrears or move in unauthorized people, United States union mentality workers or overpriced contractors do the bare minimum for upkeep, and people who can afford to move out do?
- r2_pilot 2y ago
  Sure, let's not make things better for people today because 20 years from now there's a possibility it might deteriorate. I hope you don't embody this mentality throughout your entire life and merely reserve it for such things as would benefit other humans.
  - lr4444lr 2y ago
    Of course I do. Sustainability matters to me.
    - bluGill 2y ago
      No housing is maintenance free. Sustainability means you repair things that break, apply paint every year years, when someone discovers the next lead is bad you replace whatever has that. This has always been the case and always will be. Some things need more maintenance. some things are purely cosmetic and can be skipped to save money. But there is always maintenance needed.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
The only solution for the housing crisis is to build more houses. If supply increases and overtakes demand, the cost should decrease (I am no economist). The government(s) should go a bit more heavy handed on breaking up zoning laws and NIMBYism, and on setting a higher standard of living / housing at lower cost. I'm of the opinion that big apartment blocks are a quick way to add more housing, even though a lot of people think back on communist-era mass produced low quality concrete apartment cells. But it doesn't have to be like that. Construction is scalable, and (to appease the capitalists), a good apartment building is at least 100 years of guaranteed recurring income (assuming rent instead of buy, but the post is about public housing), and the investment will be earned back relatively fast. That said, affordable housing should be available for everyone. When I was looking for a house, I didn't need anything fancy, two bedroom apartment would be more than fine for me. But by then I was earning too much for social housing, meaning there was a huge rent gap to the free market where I could get something equivalent but starting at twice as expensive per month. Not that it matters, the wait list for social housing was 15 years at that point. For a long time the general advice was to spend at most a quarter or a third of your income on housing, but for most people this isn't viable and they have to pay more.
yieldcrv 2y ago
> The market rate rents “come to us instead of flowing out to the private sector,” says Marks, allowing other tenants to pay less. But because of the controlling stake being a government, this seems like it could fail the 14th amendment’s equality clause. Since individuals are being presented with different rent. I guess it all depends on how it’s structured. 14th amendment regulates governments. Something that would be normal for a private sector participant can be discarded when public money or direct public ownership is involved. Then again, low income public housing has different rates based on how many dependents you have or earn. But I wouldn’t assume anything. Maybe the constitutional challenge never happened specifically because only poor people were the tenants. By mixing it with people who can pay market rents anywhere but might want the lower rate, there is a new attack surface to challenge it.
mikrl 2y ago
I don’t think this would work in the US. Not in much of the country anyway. Eastern European style commie blocks, though rudimentary (eg no elevators in many) solved a pressing housing problem post war in that part of the world, in societies that were quite collectivist even before collectivisation. Compare to the reality of housing projects in the UK and US, constructed around the same time but which were demolished, or became synonymous with urban blight.
- slothtrop 2y ago
  I don't think it would work were it to represent most of the market, but this is a drop in the bucket. Historically the US had more social housing. I would be concerned if this spiraled into a call for expansion without so much as addressing the need for zoning reform.
- bluGill 2y ago
  In in Eastern Europe those blocks were not considered acceptable housing, they just could be built fast and cheap. The intent was to replace them with something nice, but the economy could never afford to do that.
slothtrop 2y ago
"It created a $100 million revolving fund to dramatically ramp up construction." I don't see zoning reform mentioned anywhere in the article. Presumably the city's projects are still subject to the same zoning restrictions and regulations as a developer would on their own, but without the difficulty of trying to secure a loan. This seems nice as an additive but doesn't represent a large fraction of the market. It helps in the first place because they're building more. If cities adopt reforms to help small developers, these projects would be redundant. We have examples of some cities improving in real time.
- bluGill 2y ago
  The city can give itself special permission to do something that others cannot do. I consider this corruption, but it happens all the time.
foogazi 2y ago
What if you took land profit out of the equation ? - Eminent domain land - lease to builder for 99 year leases - tenants not owners - in 99 years local government has another shot
- CrispyKerosene 2y ago
  In most jurisdictions with the a land ownership model based on torrens title, this is inherent in the system, its called the Fee Simple Estate (with Crown or equiv being above this), with leasehold and life estates being below fee simple. But you will find in most places the 'Crowns' abilities to exercise its ownership rights is fairly neutered and reserved for reasons the layman would refer to as eminent domain.
talkingtab 2y ago
The term "housing crisis" is a misdirection. That term covers up the real problem and gets us to focus on the wrong problem. In the US fewer and people earn a living wage. If people cannot afford housing because they are not paid a living wage, that is not a "housing crisis". A similar misdirection is "inflation". Measuring how much prices are rising is meaningless. It is like evaluating your bank account by looking only at how much money comes in. That is why we have bank statements that tell us show starting balance, income, expenditures and ending balance. The only thing that matters is the difference between what comes in to your account and what goes out. Try getting a bank loan for a house by telling the bank only how much you earn each month. If inflation is low, but the difference between wages and cost is too high for people to afford housing, or food, or health care, or an unexpected $500 expense, then there is bad problem despite the low inflation. The measure we need isthe difference between common wages and common expenses. If the difference between wages and living expenses is growing dramatically, then that is problem. There is not a housing crisis, there is a WAGE crisis. How does one solve this rather obvious problem? One raises the minimum wage from $7.25 to something that allows people to afford housing. We have not done this, nor is there any discussion on doing this. So now one must ask why we, as a country have not done this? In legal proceedings a common technique is to ask who benefits. Cui Bono? Who benefits from very-low-wages? Certainly not the common people. Yet we are supposed to be a democracy and our government is supposed to be one that responds to the people. Is this true? Certainly we can note that common people are more and more distrustful of our system of government. Could this be caused by the people asking Cui Bono, and finding that the answer is not "We the People".
_heimdall 2y ago
I haven't found any really detailed numbers for the project. Does anyone know more about how heavily subsidized the housing is, meaning how much the public bill will be each year? The idea that such projects are so popular and aren't necessarily meant to help only those most in need is confusing in what is usually considered somewhat of a free market. Why aren't these types of projects being built privately if they are so successful? And how do you justify subsidizing housing for those making at or even above the average household income level?
readthenotes1 2y ago
There are more people wanting houses that we can build, especially with onerous regulations requiring running water, fire doors, external shrubbery, etc.
sershe 2y ago
Lol, this is what they did in the USSR. It doesn't really work unless you trap people in this housing because those with means won't be interested, or will move out once they lived there and experienced living with "mixed income" people. That will make an average resident slightly worse to be around, rinse, repeat. It's not like the old failed public housing experiments failed because they didn't allow richer people to move in... Walter Williams auto-biography describes "the projects" in the 1950ies, when they were still decent public housing. With increased opportunity, people start moving out and the spiral begins. That will be especially true in the US; given that the US is one of the most meritocratic countries, the non-immigrant US poor as a group are probably the least functional large socio-economic group anywhere in the world. I'd personally rather live next to some Haitians or refugees from Taliban than multi-generational American poor, urban or rural. But if you have a choice why live next to poor people at all?
amai 2y ago
We need HouseX instead of SpaceX!

31 points by thehoff 2y ago

They tried this in the communist countries when they were still around. Sure, people had affordable housing and didn't have to worry about homelessness, but at what cost? That's not a rhetorical question.

VonGuard 2y ago
Uhm, at the cost of some tax dollars. It's still like this in Cuba. people still beg, BUT they have a home to go to at the end of the day. I don't think this is a particularly bad thing. Would you rather our tax dollars are spent on missiles and tanks for other places.
- kcplate 2y ago
  I work with and am friends with many Cuban immigrants and former Soviet bloc country immigrants. I think I’ll ask them if they would trade the freedom and security they have now for the guarantee against homelessness they had then (and all that other stuff). Pretty sure none will be willing to trade back and would view any attempts at establishing public housing for all as a scary step in the wrong direction.
  - theragra 2y ago
    This approach won't get you realistic data. Immigrants are immigrants for a reason. I'm living in the exUSSR. Plenty of older people are nostalgic about security they had back then. Food, housing, healthcare and even job were mostly handled for them. Most of the people prefer that to the extreme freedom and self-reliance. When we talk about balance of these things, though, Scandinavian countries seem to be pretty popular. I myself don't think socialist model will work without AGI, but maybe some hybrid model will do.
    - kcplate 2y ago
      It was more a figurative comment, I am not going to actually ask anyone anything. But it is my sense from past conversations that none of these friends and acquaintances would be willing to trade back. I also think it’s reasonable to conclude that the people who stayed vs the people who left might have different opinions over those governments too. The man who is willing to risk floating 90 miles across shark infested seas in a makeshift raft might have a different perspective of security and personal risk then someone who just kept their head down and suffered silently…or was content in their station.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    Luckily, no one is proposing that they trade the freedom and security that they have now.
    - kcplate 2y ago
      My comment was a response to the parent comment “It's still like this in Cuba. people still beg, BUT they have a home to go to at the end of the day. I don't think this is a particularly bad thing” My point was it is a bad thing because people would likely not be willing to trade back to that for housing security. They had housing security and still left.
harimau777 2y ago
It's also the way things work in Singapore; a decidedly not communist country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing_in_Singapore
- glial 2y ago
  Same in Vienna: 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...
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
Are you attempting to imply that you can only build public housing in communist countries?
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  That's what rhetorical questions are for. This one isn't one of those. I'm genuinely asking about a real life situation where this was tried, and asking about the costs. I genuinely don't know, I never lived in those countries, and my education was in a very anticommunist country, so that doesn't help me much.
lucidguppy 2y ago
I don't think free markets in land constrained areas is possible for real estate.
hobs 2y ago
https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi... Generally the research I have seen says that its cheaper to build houses/house folks than deal with the negative side effects of not doing that. That seems like a net win when you don't just consider the cost of doing it, but the cost of not doing it.
Cthulhu_ 2y ago
Affordable housing and quality housing are not mutually exclusive though, even though from a capitalist point of view they have to be.
master-lincoln 2y ago
They also tried this in the US before it went full neoliberal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_housing#United_States But > Initially, public housing was intended to be built widespread, and as such be mixed-income, but lobbyists who did not want to see public housing decrease their housing values blocked such housing from going up >With the introduction of suburbs and expansion of choices for the white working class, the demographics of public housing changed from more class and racially integrated to predominantly impoverished, single-parent, welfare, and people of color[30]. This led to stigmatization of public housing, through pushing the narrative that people living in public housing were "Welfare Queens", or otherwise living in a state of abject poverty and terrible conditions[30]. These demographic changes also decreased support for housing, leading to the government cutting funding for the program
- ElFitz 2y ago
  And also massively implemented in the UK, with "council homes". An initiative that was thoroughly gutted in the 80s, which might have contributed to the current housing shortage.
beeboobaa3 2y ago
> but at what cost? That's not a rhetorical question. Well? Go on? At what cost?
- wesselbindt 2y ago
  I didn't ask the question to answer it myself. I don't know the answer. That's why I'm asking.

naming_the_user 2y ago

I can't speak for the US but in the UK you have the issue of deciding where to put the public housing. If you try to stuff it all into somewhere like London then you end up either with huge overcrowding (it's really hard to double the capacity of 150 year old infrastructure) or with people living so far out of the centre that commute costs really start to bite. If you build new towns then you have to be really careful to somehow distribute the wealth properly otherwise you just end up with slums. I actually think that for the most part what people aren't willing to accept is that the capitalist model actually does allocate housing fairly well according to need, it's just that if you're on the wrong side of that equation then it feels terribly unfair to be asked indirectly via the market to move to a cheaper area.

ericmay 2y ago
In the U.S. I don’t think this is a concern, thankfully. Most of our cities have infill opportunities. In Columbus, Ohio where I live there’s hundreds of acres of surface parking lots. Buy them up and build housing blocks like in NYC. This solves lots of problems. [1] > I actually think that for the most part what people aren't willing to accept is that the capitalist model actually does allocate housing fairly well according to need I generally agree as well, but it seems like we are no longer satisfying lower ends of the market and developers would prefer to not build rather than build homes that don’t hit their IRR numbers. The federal government in the US could build housing and auction it off to individuals or families or run a sort of lottery system. Could add a few rules to prevent bad actors from renting the places out or something along those lines. [1] As an aside everyone working for the housing agency or federal transportation admin should have to read The Death and Life of Great American Cities and be treated in that knowledge before taking a job there.
- naming_the_user 2y ago
  Is there a reason that private developers aren't doing this already? Zoning?
  - CalRobert 2y ago

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

Occasionally as a thought exercise, I ask myself what I would do with the untold billions of Bezos, Musk, etc. There's only so much you can spend on yourself. I could go for a bigger house, but I like my car as is, and I don't want a yacht or a private jet[0]. So then the question is, what relatively expensive thing could I do that would solve a lot of problems? That would make a lot of lives better? The thing I keep coming back to again and again is public housing. I would just start buying up land and building public housing. Getting the homeless off the streets would improve not just their lives, but also the lives of the people who already have homes who happen to live in areas with a lot of homeless. I've also considered public pay-what-you-want restaurants. If anyone wants to give me untold billions, I will get right on it. [0] I would totally go for a private train car, though.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago
More / affordable housing alone does not fix the homeless problem alone though. I mean it'll help, but it's only one part of that problem.
- bluGill 2y ago
  There are a lot of people, particularly in places like San Francisco who could and would maintain a house if they could just get one. If you get out to someplace like Moline IL most homeless have "issues" and wouldn't be able to maintain a house/apartment if given one - because rent is cheap enough that you can maintain a small room on fast food income levels (it won't be easy, but it is possible). Of course there are a lot of other differences in those cities - you can live homeless in San Francisco a lot better than Moline (where you will freeze to death in winter), and I have no idea what sort of help either city provides for the homeless.
- bryanlarsen 2y ago
  Housing is pretty much a prerequisite for fixing the other problems. I would guess that's it's almost impossible to kick something like a drug problem while sleeping on the streets.

2099miles 2y ago

This is just a step away from UBI. I appreciate the universal approach but prefer universal solution instead of only to “housing” offering public housing to people who can afford and choose to live in higher quality is a fake universal solution. UBI sends money, even Jeff Bezos will benefit although negligibly from 1k per month. “Oh but Jeff Bezos doesn’t need it” you miss the point. Universal removes a TON of beauracrocy and issues that come with qualifications. And by giving direct money this solution helps literally all fiscally related problems (not mental health or education). Food deserts will still be a problem. Places without affordable housing will still exist. But people will have some real and immediate help in affording the solutions and also help in moving out of those locations to ones without those problems. There is no “solution” to “solve” any of these things 100% the idea of universal housing is not realistic considering current government housing and HUD is known for its unsafe, low quality, overpriced and corruptible attributes. UBI is a real implementable “solution” that will “improve” the problem.

ElFitz 2y ago
How do we prevent UBI from driving inflation and just becoming another way to funnel money to the rich?
- ttyprintk 2y ago
  You consider deflation as a component of UBI. If the Fed routinely destroyed a convincing percentage of circulatable currency, it would eventually counteract the psychological component of inflation.
  - ElFitz 2y ago
    Still. Everyone will earn x more dollars, every landlord will know for a fact that, no matter what, all their tenants will at least earn x dollars, every house seller and every lending bank will know that every prospective buyer can afford to pay x * 12 months * 20 years more. What would we have achieved then? How does "destroying" money prevent it? Bear in mind I know nothing about the effects and side-effects of monetary destruction.

lr4444lr 2y ago

Public housing starts out nice when the masonry is new, its operations are freshly funded, and every initial tenant passes a basic credit check. Will it stand as a shining example after 10-20 years, when poorer tenants are in arrears or move in unauthorized people, United States union mentality workers or overpriced contractors do the bare minimum for upkeep, and people who can afford to move out do?

r2_pilot 2y ago
Sure, let's not make things better for people today because 20 years from now there's a possibility it might deteriorate. I hope you don't embody this mentality throughout your entire life and merely reserve it for such things as would benefit other humans.
- lr4444lr 2y ago
  Of course I do. Sustainability matters to me.
  - bluGill 2y ago
    No housing is maintenance free. Sustainability means you repair things that break, apply paint every year years, when someone discovers the next lead is bad you replace whatever has that. This has always been the case and always will be. Some things need more maintenance. some things are purely cosmetic and can be skipped to save money. But there is always maintenance needed.

Cthulhu_ 2y ago

The only solution for the housing crisis is to build more houses. If supply increases and overtakes demand, the cost should decrease (I am no economist). The government(s) should go a bit more heavy handed on breaking up zoning laws and NIMBYism, and on setting a higher standard of living / housing at lower cost. I'm of the opinion that big apartment blocks are a quick way to add more housing, even though a lot of people think back on communist-era mass produced low quality concrete apartment cells. But it doesn't have to be like that. Construction is scalable, and (to appease the capitalists), a good apartment building is at least 100 years of guaranteed recurring income (assuming rent instead of buy, but the post is about public housing), and the investment will be earned back relatively fast. That said, affordable housing should be available for everyone. When I was looking for a house, I didn't need anything fancy, two bedroom apartment would be more than fine for me. But by then I was earning too much for social housing, meaning there was a huge rent gap to the free market where I could get something equivalent but starting at twice as expensive per month. Not that it matters, the wait list for social housing was 15 years at that point. For a long time the general advice was to spend at most a quarter or a third of your income on housing, but for most people this isn't viable and they have to pay more.

yieldcrv 2y ago

> The market rate rents “come to us instead of flowing out to the private sector,” says Marks, allowing other tenants to pay less. But because of the controlling stake being a government, this seems like it could fail the 14th amendment’s equality clause. Since individuals are being presented with different rent. I guess it all depends on how it’s structured. 14th amendment regulates governments. Something that would be normal for a private sector participant can be discarded when public money or direct public ownership is involved. Then again, low income public housing has different rates based on how many dependents you have or earn. But I wouldn’t assume anything. Maybe the constitutional challenge never happened specifically because only poor people were the tenants. By mixing it with people who can pay market rents anywhere but might want the lower rate, there is a new attack surface to challenge it.

mikrl 2y ago

I don’t think this would work in the US. Not in much of the country anyway. Eastern European style commie blocks, though rudimentary (eg no elevators in many) solved a pressing housing problem post war in that part of the world, in societies that were quite collectivist even before collectivisation. Compare to the reality of housing projects in the UK and US, constructed around the same time but which were demolished, or became synonymous with urban blight.

slothtrop 2y ago
I don't think it would work were it to represent most of the market, but this is a drop in the bucket. Historically the US had more social housing. I would be concerned if this spiraled into a call for expansion without so much as addressing the need for zoning reform.
bluGill 2y ago
In in Eastern Europe those blocks were not considered acceptable housing, they just could be built fast and cheap. The intent was to replace them with something nice, but the economy could never afford to do that.

slothtrop 2y ago

"It created a $100 million revolving fund to dramatically ramp up construction." I don't see zoning reform mentioned anywhere in the article. Presumably the city's projects are still subject to the same zoning restrictions and regulations as a developer would on their own, but without the difficulty of trying to secure a loan. This seems nice as an additive but doesn't represent a large fraction of the market. It helps in the first place because they're building more. If cities adopt reforms to help small developers, these projects would be redundant. We have examples of some cities improving in real time.

bluGill 2y ago
The city can give itself special permission to do something that others cannot do. I consider this corruption, but it happens all the time.

foogazi 2y ago

What if you took land profit out of the equation ? - Eminent domain land - lease to builder for 99 year leases - tenants not owners - in 99 years local government has another shot

CrispyKerosene 2y ago
In most jurisdictions with the a land ownership model based on torrens title, this is inherent in the system, its called the Fee Simple Estate (with Crown or equiv being above this), with leasehold and life estates being below fee simple. But you will find in most places the 'Crowns' abilities to exercise its ownership rights is fairly neutered and reserved for reasons the layman would refer to as eminent domain.

talkingtab 2y ago

The term "housing crisis" is a misdirection. That term covers up the real problem and gets us to focus on the wrong problem. In the US fewer and people earn a living wage. If people cannot afford housing because they are not paid a living wage, that is not a "housing crisis". A similar misdirection is "inflation". Measuring how much prices are rising is meaningless. It is like evaluating your bank account by looking only at how much money comes in. That is why we have bank statements that tell us show starting balance, income, expenditures and ending balance. The only thing that matters is the difference between what comes in to your account and what goes out. Try getting a bank loan for a house by telling the bank only how much you earn each month. If inflation is low, but the difference between wages and cost is too high for people to afford housing, or food, or health care, or an unexpected $500 expense, then there is bad problem despite the low inflation. The measure we need isthe difference between common wages and common expenses. If the difference between wages and living expenses is growing dramatically, then that is problem. There is not a housing crisis, there is a WAGE crisis. How does one solve this rather obvious problem? One raises the minimum wage from $7.25 to something that allows people to afford housing. We have not done this, nor is there any discussion on doing this. So now one must ask why we, as a country have not done this? In legal proceedings a common technique is to ask who benefits. Cui Bono? Who benefits from very-low-wages? Certainly not the common people. Yet we are supposed to be a democracy and our government is supposed to be one that responds to the people. Is this true? Certainly we can note that common people are more and more distrustful of our system of government. Could this be caused by the people asking Cui Bono, and finding that the answer is not "We the People".

_heimdall 2y ago

I haven't found any really detailed numbers for the project. Does anyone know more about how heavily subsidized the housing is, meaning how much the public bill will be each year? The idea that such projects are so popular and aren't necessarily meant to help only those most in need is confusing in what is usually considered somewhat of a free market. Why aren't these types of projects being built privately if they are so successful? And how do you justify subsidizing housing for those making at or even above the average household income level?

readthenotes1 2y ago

There are more people wanting houses that we can build, especially with onerous regulations requiring running water, fire doors, external shrubbery, etc.

sershe 2y ago

Lol, this is what they did in the USSR. It doesn't really work unless you trap people in this housing because those with means won't be interested, or will move out once they lived there and experienced living with "mixed income" people. That will make an average resident slightly worse to be around, rinse, repeat. It's not like the old failed public housing experiments failed because they didn't allow richer people to move in... Walter Williams auto-biography describes "the projects" in the 1950ies, when they were still decent public housing. With increased opportunity, people start moving out and the spiral begins. That will be especially true in the US; given that the US is one of the most meritocratic countries, the non-immigrant US poor as a group are probably the least functional large socio-economic group anywhere in the world. I'd personally rather live next to some Haitians or refugees from Taliban than multi-generational American poor, urban or rural. But if you have a choice why live next to poor people at all?

amai 2y ago

We need HouseX instead of SpaceX!