Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

dirtroad207 t1_j5bmrx3 wrote

Yes. I prefer a government solution that creates nice public housing. But there are two important factors when doing government housing:

  1. No means testing. You need mixed income households so that it doesn’t create permanently impoverished neighborhoods. You also need buy in from the the middle class so that people want to keep the programs running.

  2. It can’t be self funded. In the past housing programs in the US were set up to be self funded and had very little margin for vacancy. Basically as soon as they weren’t at max capacity they had no budget for essentials like trash removal and basic maintenance. This means that sometimes the government eats a loss. That loss is always going to be cheaper than the long term cost of caring for unhoused people.

Creating this kind of housing will flood the market with housing thereby driving down demand. It will also function as a price anchor.

This is something that requires federal funding. It won’t ever happen in the US.

3