The government would pay to do it. Or there would be taxes or rents paid to developers in accordance to the number of people housed x the quality of the housing. Or people like me would rent units because housing is important, and rent their space at cost.
We can choose to pay for housing for everyone, we just have to adjust the formulas we use to decide who benefits.
We already have voters deciding how much housing gets built. The result is we have not enough of it.
We’ve also seen, during this pandemic, what happens to rental prices when landlords are powerless over tenants. They go up. And landlords discriminate harder against tenants who look like they’ll be bad tenants if they can’t easily evict.
And just as my ability to get sued is what allows me to enter contracts, my ability to get evicted is what lets me pay cheap rent.
Today, if I cannot pay, I get no housing. Taxes allow us, as a community, to decide that we should all chip in a little bit extra (commensurate to our means) to make sure everyone has a roof over their heads.
Also, government operated facilities do not have a profit motive, so there's less incentive to maximize the cost of housing.
>Also, government operated facilities do not have a profit motive,
Great, so the shit-show we have now, except without any incentive to efficiently spend. Sure that will go over swimmingly. Everyone knows that government construction projects are known for coming on-time and on-budget, and for the best value.
Its not like private sector is free from overspending and funds misallocation - most of money that flows in there is still controller by the jerks on top that are stroking their ego by investing in buzzwords. The invisible hand of market is myth as much as santa is.
The US market is far from the invisible hand. There is a massive hand with a club attached called the Federal Reserve, which has artificially held down interest rates resulting in a major manipulation of the housing market.
Additionally, there are numerous governmental restrictions on minimum square footage, sometimes onerous building codes, impact fees, and zoning restrictions to name a few.
Yes, there are many artificial constructs that prevent true free market, but I still do not believe that capital accumulation by capital overs is not an property of this idealistic system. Do You have any real example of invisible hand working (by which I mean not ending with the top dogs holding all the bones) ?
You acknowledge the imperfection of the private sector, including wasteful spending. Now imagine that except with the power to waste even more money by sending an IRS agent to take your money at gunpoint and without being constrained by (at least if 'turtledove' word to be take) a ' profit motive'.
Profit motive is so primitive and so one dimensional constrained and yet it somehow mesmerized so many thinkers that we build build "golden idols" in praise of it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charging_Bull).
I do not believe that this is it - there have to be other better constrains combinations. It just that there is so much vested interest in current system that no one will dare to contest it enough to really try something different.
The beautiful thing about art is you can interpret it however you want. You interpret it as a "golden idol" of the profit motive. I could interpret it as an angry bull sick of the ways of capitalism; a bull that wants to inspire free health care for all.
I marely tried to defend our ability (as humans) to create more complex systems that works. I do not believe that free makrets are the end game. The obvious inefficiency of public sector does not make capitalism the ultimate answer.
The invisible hand is just the profit motive. Most people are indeed incentivized by (not solely) by money and profit.
The advantage of a market in this context is two-fold 1) Private-losses, mispent investments should have the investors bear the cost of losses. Granted, we often bail out investors or banks, but that isn't a market phenomena, it is a political one. 2) Where there is more profit to be had (high prices) there is more incentive for more investment.
Now, one could argue that a market system is more likely to be corrupted such that the connected get bailed out or other advantages. But if you don't trust the political system to regulate the market, why would you expect it to better regulate a bureaucracy that more directly controls the relevant resources?
I think You are underselling it - that's just the mechanic through which it works.
But at the same time too mamy people treat it as idealogy and sell it as a silver bullet and not merly a tool which it should be.
My main point is that we should not see markets as an end game - this is just a primitive human made system that should be evolved.
Seattle just built a major light rail expansion ahead of schedule and under budget.
But I specifically believe in building more, smaller units. Places with eg 20 apartments. By building smaller scoped projects, costs are better understood up front, maintenance costs are lower, and you need less specialized construction expertise.
Building 50 20-unit complexes to house a thousand families is going to serve everyone better than building one mega project to house a thousand families.
"Sound Transit’s light-rail system, called Link, has also had its share of challenges. The 25 miles of light rail that voters were told would be completed by 2006 at a cost of $1.7 billion, have resulted in 23 miles of track which, when completed, will end up costing $5.2 billion."
"The $2.6 billion spent so far on the starter light-rail line takes the rider from Westlake Station downtown to an airport station 0.4 mile from the terminal in 37 minutes. "
Sort of? That's a very old article. The project was voted on as a $1.6B project, and was approved. It came in almost two hundred million under budget in 2016.
There are floor area ratios (FAR) now that prevent small units. I have a 6500 sqft lot. I can build 14 units. I have a FAR of 3, so 19500 sqft / 14 units is 1390 sqft per.
Zoning is your problem, not who is building.
Developers and landlords are working in the insanity that are municipal governments. Do you understand why we write people off when they say they want more of their involvement?
Loosen zoning and I'll take advantage of it. We don't need to pay some bureaucrat who has no incentive to do their job efficiently to sit in the middle of this. Zoning office budgets should be tied to number of permits approved or units built. Right now they get the same money for being impediments.
Oh, I almost forgot, I also need to have 14+ parking spaces if I build out fully. Again, zoning problem. Developers don't just love parking lots.
Ah, the classic "private enterprise is better than government" argument!
Private enterprise is good at projects where the project owner can (directly) capture the majority of the value created and is responsible for the majority of the costs involved in that creation. The mis-alignment is that this creates strong incentive to shift the costs outside the organization.
Government is better at projects where the majority of value created is diffused across a large share of the population and/or over a long time frame. They do have a strong incentive to keep costs down, because costs are paid by taxes and taxes are unpopular and lead to revolution.
This is simple economics.
There are numerous examples of government projects which may or may not have been under budget, but which created 10x or 100x or 1000x returns. Things like "public roads", "internet", "education" spring to mind.
>Government is better at projects where the majority of value created is diffused across a large share of the population and/or over a long time frame. They do have a strong incentive to keep costs down, because costs are paid by taxes and taxes are unpopular and lead to revolution.
>This is simple economics.
I'm sorry, but simple economics from where? By what authority is that some immutable 'simple economics?' I reject your thesis. Regarding 'costs' being 'taxes' and them going 'down', I invite you to study the change in federal taxes as a proportion of GDP in the past say 130 years.
>There are numerous examples of government projects which may or may not have been under budget, but which created 10x or 100x or 1000x returns. Things like "public roads", "internet", "education" spring to mind.
Yes now think about how much better return, and many other projects may have emerged, had the government not sucked that money out of the economy. "Muh roads" sounds nice but you can privately build a road without taking money at gunpoint from peoeple, and also get good returns. If I take $20 from you and buy you a $1 pen, I don't get to brag that because I bought you the pen you wrote a multimillion dollar book (even then it is true in some perverted sense the pen [road] had 1000x+ returns).
No doubt you'll need more "fixes" before you're done.
It's like rent control in SF or public housing in Singapore. Design a new system and you'll create loopholes to be exploited. Fix those and new loopholes are created. And on and on.
Easier to just remove government restrictions to supply and build until prices come down.
For who? How's that working out for the 1/3 of Singapore who is completely ineligible, yet pays taxes into the public coffers?
Singapore is unique in that they have a massive well (proportionally much bigger than US) of workers paying taxes who are ineligible for much of the fruits of those taxes. Only the 2/3 with Citizenship or PR can meaningfully get public housing.
I'm sure about any nation could have more affordable housing if they have endless wells of guest workers who can shoulder the cost without yielding that benefit for themselves.
If you're talking about providing housing in a country that had little quality housing 70 years ago, then yes, it's successful.
If it's providing affordable housing for young people, then I'd challenge that. You can't even apply for public housing unless you are married (otherwise wait until after you are 35). The government overbuilt before, so now it's a 4-5 year wait after you win a lottery to get a house. People are still pumping real estate like crazy and the average home in the resale market is >$1M now (which is a 3 bedroom, 100 sq m apartment with a 99 year lease).
Singapore is stuck in the exact same situation as every other developed country - housing is an asset that the middle class expects a healthy return on, yet increasing costs are a barrier to new owners.
I grew up in a "commie block" as everyone aaround me. There was nothing wrong with them (decently sized, balconies, etc.) besides the comparatively poor insulation. It was certainly much better than the quality of your average Parisian housing in a century old building.
There's a meme that shows "leftist housing", and it depicts concrete tenements. It shows "capitalist housing", and it depicts tents under a bridge.
Haha.
But memes aside, no, there are many, many examples of public and social housing that are not concrete slums. Look at Singapore, Paris, the Marxhof in Vienna. Quayside Village in Vancouver.
If you'd like, I can provide links to many examples from many countries around the world of successful public housing that isn't Soviet bloc housing.
Social housing here in the Netherlands isn't quite soviet block but it's poorly built and maintained to the lowest acceptable standard.
In streets where one side of the street has been sold to private owners you can see the difference. The privately owned houses are well maintained and have received upgrades where the social housing is merely 'acceptable'.
I'm also familiar with how the assignment process for social housing works. I'm not sure how acceptable you think it is to wait 10 years to be able to move to a different city.
Social housing must look nice from a distance but i wouldn't want all housing to be social housing.
As many people have told you repeatedly throughout this thread, your understanding of the great success of glorious public housing worldwide is seriously misguided at best.
But I suspect you most likely just glean all of your political opinions from memes, which could explain some things.
Profiting from housing, yes, is not something I personally consider moral. But also, I believe that we don't need to meet my fairly radical moral stance to make housing more affordable and attainable for all.
We can make incremental progress here by just tweaking incentives. We can go further by reducing profits. It's not some binary all or nothing affair.
Most types of profit are immoral. Providing housing is at least genuinely clearly useful.
Manipulating people to buy stuff they don't need (advertising, marketing, hollywood) is immoral in so many ways. Weapons are very questionable, massive markups on basic stuff (cosmetics) etc etc if you go on about 80% of our economy is actually immoral. Even foods which are a basic good, are generally bottom dollar hollowed out poisons compared to what they could be if health was the primary concern. Don't get me started on the corruptions of profit to the medical process.
I don't know what your problem is about housing but it seems out of perspective if you're not going to campaign against profit from just about everything.
Well then, feel free to buy a house and sell it at cost. Don't worry about all that money you put into the home over the years to improve or maintain it, either.
Oh, and to add to the utter inanity of what you're proposing, make sure that you sell it at your purchase cost and not the 200%ish extra that they tack on to a 30 year loan at 4% interest.
Go ahead. Chalk it up to a personal experiment and let us know how it turns out in 30 years.
And I've done what you describe. I was a landlord for a decade.
I paid back each of my tenants all the profit I made from them, thousands and thousands of dollars per tenant. Adjusted upwards by the amount the property had appreciated.
I now rent in a sliding scale, capped at the cost of the unit.
Granted, it's only been ten years, not the thirty you suggest, but it's worked out great. Nearly every tenant has used their time with me to build a nest egg or savings that enabled them to move into a house they owned.
You could also just donate to charity, the effect might be similar (or even stronger, since it would go to needier people). By the way, this is all very nice of you but it is off-putting how you seem to want to impose forced charity on every other landlord.
When most people are talking about home ownership, we're not talking about being someone else's landlord. We're talking about living in a place until we move, and then selling that property.
I don’t like landlords (such as those in SV) collecting so much of the value, but a more productive solution here is minimal zoning, a high land value tax (with other taxes lower), and letting people do what they want with their property, allowing some tragedy of the commons with respect to traffic and population.
This also means deadbeat tenants get kicked out, but I think that is intrinsically a good thing. Occupying somebody else’s home and not moving someplace you can afford is just immoral.
It's absolutely realistic, and the fact that you're writing it off so quickly shows your ignorance. Social housing is successful in many parts of the world. Look at Singapore, for instance.
Mandatory parking minimums are going away in cities across the US, and units are getting more housing as a result.
Washington State is considering removing single family zoning.
Cities like Paris have many smaller apartment complexes that are public housing.
Everything I've suggested either exists or is being discussed seriously in some capacity. But, by all means keep your head in the sand rather than try to engage with actual housing policy.
Oh my, clearly you’ve never lived in these places. I used to live in Singapore: it’s one of the most overheated housing markets in the world.
All of the things you mention exist in the US to much larger degrees (do you know how much the US spends on social housing??) You are slinging insults to other commenters but you are really out of your depth here and have picked a couple of things and hailed them as solutions. You know not what you speak of.
Source: American expat currently living in London, previously Singapore.
Washington State is considering removing single family zoning.
No, no they are not.
Washington state has more than Seattle in it. It has rural areas, and mountainous regions, and no, every house in a rural area is not on agriculturally zoned land.
Nor does it make sense to have multidwelling houses, miles apart from each other.
I think, as others in this thread have stated, you are mistaking musings, ponderings, and "feelz good" ideas for serious discourse.
I support public housing, but that has zero bearing on changing the housing market. Which, I may add, is in a tiny, temporary inflated bubble. A decade ago, it was still recovering from the largest crash in modern history.
In terms of public housing, as land value increases, so do property taxes.
Thus, municipalities then have more funds to... build and maintain public housing! Which means that housing costs do not change the percentage of a city's budgetary costs, to build and maintain public housing.
The singapore housing system is a great policy. I dont see it how it fits with your ideas. First landlord is protected over tenant (rents are through the roof in singapore as well).
The hdb scheme is worth look into: government build apartments sold to people with medium income and racial quotas.
About a third of Singapore is persons who don't have Citizenship nor PR. Their public housing is propped up by making like 1/3 of the often lower earning workers (who are ineligible for public housing) pay taxes so that the Citizens and PR holders can profit.
If 'Success' is your metric, the Singapore analogy to America would be to import way more Canadians and Mexicans, ban them from public housing and then make them pay for it.
It's funny. There are ignorant people everywhere. But smug ignorance, that I only find it in Americans, for some reason. Maybe it's that "best country in the world" mentality leaking. That mentality doesn't make humble people.
It's really incredible that you're saying "superficially similar policies are being enacted in multiple, disparate geographies around the world, in vastly differing cultural and economic contexts, so you can't deny that all of them should coincide in one totally separate place I've chosen."
I notice you didn't mention Berlin's rent control fiasco btw
