this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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Where are you going to live if you can't buy a house?
The apartment people should be able to own.
Ok I hear you. Like you would buy the bottom or top floor.
Same question though, what happens if you don't have enough money up front to buy a unit?
Seems like a simple solution here: tax and redistribute money to pay for social housing to be built by the government, subsidizing people's housing.
That's the issue - do we want people to be homeless? No. So we should proactively fix the situation and build social housing, implement rent control and limits on non occupied structures.
Even setting aside love and empathy, it's to the benefit of society for people to be productive, which is hard when you're scrambling just to meet basic needs. And the cost of homelessness on society (shelters, emergency medical care, crime) outweighs the cost of providing permanent shelter. There have been studies.
Yes, but land free for the taking is not part of that argument, and is naive at best
It's not about "give me free land" it's "resources were distributed before I existed."
Funny you say that, since the reason why houses are so expensive is because landlords are buying all of them to rent, and creating artificial scarcity which drives up the price. They create a problem where the only solution is to pay them.
Without landlords, worst case, housing would be far more inexpensive. Best case we could even make them free, and start treating housing like a human right and fundamental need.
Upvoting out of pure hope
One separate reason housing is expensive in the US, at least, is that most jurisdictions make it very hard to build new housing. Law of supply, if supply goes down, price goes up, if supply goes up, price goes down. Supply hasn't been allowed to increase much for the last few decades, therefore price goes up. If we could double the amount of housing over night, it wouldn't matter how much landlords wanted to buy everything up, they wouldn't be able to keep up.
We already have more than enough housing to give everyone a home, and have some left over. Landlords are causing an artificial scarcity.
Not even close.
It's also not enough to just have enough units in total (which we don't have), you also have to have them in places people are actually willing to live. People are on average wanting more and more to live in cities each year. Cities are exactly where it's hardest to build and where we're most short on housing relative to demand.
https://unitedwaynca.org/blog/vacant-homes-vs-homelessness-by-city/
https://www.self.inc/info/empty-homes/
Location is an obvious factor but so are vacation homes, homes on the market, and homes for rent. Rising rent prices and home prices are the number 1 cause for vacant homes