71–80 of 93 posts
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Sweden built a million public housing homes (Miljonprogrammet) in a decade back in the 60s-70s, it has a freer market than the USA. Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War.
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Sweden built a million public housing homes (Miljonprogrammet) in a decade back in the 60s-70s, it has a freer market than the USA. Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War.
> Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War. While the post's reference to communism may have been a bit hyperbolic, it's not too much off the mark. It would have likely been better to state that America is supposed to have a free market and not implement socialist policies to fix a problem created by the gove…
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> If North American cities zoned a quarter of their area as 5-story midrises with large parks and mixed use and made permitting quick and easy we could really bankrupt the rent-seekers. I don’t believe that because it doesn’t happen in other countries that allow for 5 story midrises with large parks and mixed use and … the housing prices are often even more than North America in places that allow that in Europe and A…
Well yes, obviously there will be a price floor on housing in a wealthy country. My point is that in recent decades the entire developed world has absolutely strangled their housing markets. Anywhere people want to move to, the wages:home prices ratio has gotten to unprecedented levels. In Europe the reasons are slightly different. A big one is marking entire buildings, their facades or even their ornamentation as hi…
American housing is on easy mode in comparison to Europe.
public housing doesn't address the root of the problem. Housing prices are insane because it's expensive and difficult to acquire and develop land. There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market. This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have…
There are more people in the United States than there used to be. When I was in grade school, I learned as a child that our population was just a bit over 250 million. Google's claiming that it is 335 million right now. Wikipedia says in the early 2000s we were at about 1 million illegal immigrants, and about another 1 million legal. I am unable to find reliable numbers for more recent years, but can it actually have…
Meanwhile, human habitation continues to be a very small portion of land usage. We like living in metropolitan areas for a reason.
Anyway, we get a lot of benefit from immigration. I don't suggest we stop, but rather that we should adjust to demand. Nimbyism and zoning is still a problem especially with urban sprawl.
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> Imagine there was multiple high speed rails lines going out from Silicon Valley: how far from SF can you get in 25 minutes using 300 km/h train versus how far can you get using a car in rush hour? I think people who haven’t lived with such infrastructure don’t understand that it’s not as easy as it sounds. Sure, the train may get you from point A to B very quickly, but you still have to get between your office and…
I have a fairly reasonable, if not especially fast (in part because lots of stops) commuter rail on the rare occasions I go into a city office. But, yeah, I have to drive to the station--only a 7 minute drive but not reasonably walkable--and then it's either about a 35 minute walk or a subway+shorter walk. It ends up being about 2 hours door to door--similar to driving. It's more pleasant to take the train in but if…
I prefer trains when possible, but waiting for trains can be especially long, and I am sometime bothered by people, who might be mentally ill. Also, it's very noticeable when someone smoked weed, but that's about it. There's a distinct lack of transit employees for the most part.
Increasing train frequency and service would reduce the amount of time waiting, as well increased operation budget for human interaction issues. Upzoning around transit station will make trains more sustainable. Increased social service and effectiveness will take care of peripheral issues that's not the transit agency's job to fix.
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Much like single payer healthcare (which even a majority of Republicans are in favor of), the program is perfectly palatable to voters. The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. Extra supply reduces the price of existing supply. In order to win elections, you almost need those investors…
>The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing So pretty much anyone who owns property? It's not like homeowners are fighting to have new apartments built in their neighborhood. It's very well known that even the most bleeding heart liberal areas still have insane NIMBY problems. The blunt truth is that everyone who invested in a home in popular marke…
For another, it ignores potential positive effects. If new building improves local economic conditions, then your home's price (still speculatively, mind you) could equally as well be increased. (With relaxed zoning you might hit the lottery, and find that your lot is worth building an apartment on, and never have to work again!) Focusing entirely on potential negatives is unfair argumentation.
Even apart from price, this approach places emphasis on (potentially) negative second-order ("traffic"), while ignoring (potential) positive second-order effects. In my case I'd straight up trade a 20% decrease in my homes sale price in twenty years (I'd still come out $$ ahead) for twenty years of living near a re-vitalised (instead of currently derelict) commercial strip.
I don't think it'd work out that way: I think living walking distance from, say, a nice coffee shop, pub, grocery store, and cinema (those buildings already exist, by the way, they just need to re-open, which can only happen if more people are nearby) would increase my home's eventual value. That's speculation, too, but equally worthy of consideration as the negative cases.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sweden built a million public housing homes (Miljonprogrammet) in a decade back in the 60s-70s, it has a freer market than the USA. Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War.
> Communism red scare was also from the 60s-70s, please change your worldview for the reality of the 2020s, not a boogeyman invented during the Cold War. While the post's reference to communism may have been a bit hyperbolic, it's not too much off the mark. It would have likely been better to state that America is supposed to have a free market and not implement socialist policies to fix a problem created by the gove…
Blame that on neoliberal policies enacted since the 80s which eroded the social contract between employment and the fruits of labour. America's economical policies have steadily eroded the middle class, when the system isn't working people will look into alternatives to fix its failures, the system never fixes itself, the longer these issues fester the harsher the whiplash will be.
I'm also curious: what kind of marxist ideology is taking over America's politics? I don't see anyone in the USA's political landscape advocating for land redistribution, communal ownership of the means of production, etc. There's no Marxism in the USA's power structure, at least not in any meaningful form, there might be some Reddit/TikTok vitriol but that is just that: vitriol.
From what I see in the US people are shouting about wanting a fairer system, not for the proletariat to take over the means of production...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are more people in the United States than there used to be. When I was in grade school, I learned as a child that our population was just a bit over 250 million. Google's claiming that it is 335 million right now. Wikipedia says in the early 2000s we were at about 1 million illegal immigrants, and about another 1 million legal. I am unable to find reliable numbers for more recent years, but can it actually have…
We get urban sprawl and people building towns and homes in wildly inappropriate areas, such as forests. Which is why you see people's house going up in flames due to wildfire. Meanwhile, human habitation continues to be a very small portion of land usage. We like living in metropolitan areas for a reason. Anyway, we get a lot of benefit from immigration. I don't suggest we stop, but rather that we should adjust to de…
Sure. But that doesn't mean that there's no tradeoff. Be aware of it.
public housing doesn't address the root of the problem. Housing prices are insane because it's expensive and difficult to acquire and develop land. There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market. This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have…
There is a 3rd reason: not (fast) enough transportation infrastructure. If you don't provide good transport infrastructure, then people must live close to work which will increase housing demand close to work, which then increase prices. You need to plan for high speed trains, subways and metros to provide enough transportation capacity, so people can live "far away, but short travel time". Cars are really bad at thi…
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> the program is perfectly palatable to voters. [...] The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. I'm not sure that's largely true. I suspect that many property-owning voters are okay with the concept of public housing, but are less ken on the actuality that building public housing increas…
> There's also the weird conservative thinking that public housing provision somehow amounts to people getting "something for nothing". Isn't this true though? You tax away peoples' purchasing power to give away free goods/services to a subset of the population excluding those that paid for it. Why not instead make a private company that provides free housing conditional on those living there working X hours in a fac…