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What if public housing were for everyone?

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Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#81

Post by earthwalker99 »

hellojesus wrote: post #63
piva00 wrote: post #55

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…

>communism is a valid threat to current-state America, as there seems to be a large push towards marxist ideologies

I would give my life for this to be true, but clearly the only truth here is that you don't have the first clue what you are talking about.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#82

Post by nradov »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #58
jonfw wrote: post #14

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…

As of 2018 there were about 11M people residing illegally in the USA. That number has probably risen significantly in the past few years. Regardless of one's opinion on immigration policy it's clear that this increases demand for housing.

https://www.dhs.gov/ohss/topics/immigration/population-estim...

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#83

Post by harimau777 »

hellojesus wrote: post #61
andyjohnson0 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Wouldn't that more or less be a company town?

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#84

Post by jonfw »

nradov wrote: post #82
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #58

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…

As of 2018 there were about 11M people residing illegally in the USA. That number has probably risen significantly in the past few years. Regardless of one's opinion on immigration policy it's clear that this increases demand for housing. https://www.dhs.gov/ohss/topics/immigration/population-estim...

In my area, illegals tend to occupy low rent housing in rural areas, and there really aren't any shortages in that market. Mobile homes and places to put them are are readily available and reasonably affordable.

Illegals make such massive contributions to the construction industry that their impact on the supply curve should more than offset their impact on demand

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#85

Post by kiba »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #78
kiba wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Anyway, we get a lot of benefit from immigration. Sure. But that doesn't mean that there's no tradeoff. Be aware of it.

We can't really talk about tradeoff of immigration if we have grossly inefficient land usage patterns and the ability to construct enough home if we so choose.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#86

Post by alistairSH »

harimau777 wrote: post #83
hellojesus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Wouldn't that more or less be a company town?

Yes, and they have a very… mixed… history.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#87

Post by alistairSH »

ejb999 wrote: post #56
pydry wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you heard of Fox News? It's a TV channel that runs completely fair and balanced news. Anybody who says otherwise is a weird conspiracy theorist. /s Those elite investors can run large scale propaganda campaigns via the media that they own to sway voters from candidate A to candidate B. Their preference is to cut candidate C (the kind that likes stuff like public housing, single payer healthcare, reducing militar…

what is california's excuse for not solving the problem? non-republicans control everything and have for decades - and yet the problem remains. I guess it is much easier to just blame 'someone else', rather than solve the problem?

Except that’s not actually true. While overall California leans Democratic, there are substantial pockets of Republicans in the north and in the central valley.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#88

Post by Jensson »

ghaff wrote: post #57
kiba wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities are economically advantageous for a reason. I don't think people are suggesting we make cities less appealing. Rather, people are advocating for measures that make cities more livable, such as investing in mass transit and reducing the amount of space inefficient car infrastructure and usage.

And yet a lot of major US cities were losing population into the late 90s. And some (like Detroit) never really recovered. Even if there are various reasons to live in an economically prosperous region, lots of people have no interest in actually living directly in a city.

Because US cities became slums, and rich people lived in the suburbs. In the rest of the world the rich people live in the cities and the poor people live in the suburbs with long commutes, there is no reason USA can't work like that as well.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#89

Post by ghaff »

Jensson wrote: post #88
ghaff wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet a lot of major US cities were losing population into the late 90s. And some (like Detroit) never really recovered. Even if there are various reasons to live in an economically prosperous region, lots of people have no interest in actually living directly in a city.

Because US cities became slums, and rich people lived in the suburbs. In the rest of the world the rich people live in the cities and the poor people live in the suburbs with long commutes, there is no reason USA can't work like that as well.

Except that the US has the space and many/most people don't choose to do so--at least full-time.

Even in places where the wealthy had to live in the city, they often had summer places (in particular) elsewhere.

If you don't need to live in a city, for a lot of people (including myself), it makes a lot of sense to live elsewhere and go in for things.

I could live in a city but I have no particular reason I have to. So I choose not to at this point in time. Which is true of most of my friends as well.

Re: What if public housing were for everyone?

#90

Post by hellojesus »

aperrien wrote: post #80
hellojesus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What happens when the company lays people off, or shuts down?

Then people move out or go elsewhere based on their negotiated grace period after emoloymejt termination.
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