this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2025
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So those who want to buy a house but can't afford it are still fucked. Cool.
When more homeless people are in public housing, there's less demand for rentals.
When there's less demand for rentals, competition falls and rents fall too.
When rents are low, landlording becomes less profitable.
When landlording isn't profitable, investors move their stock to higher growth assets.
When investors sell their houses, the price to buy a house falls.
To put this in simple terms: a rising tide lifts all ships. Housing the homeless improves the lives of everyone except landlords and billionaires.
This. Thank you.
Qui-Gon explained it best:
Is the government going to give them a car too? What good is a house to a person that has no transportation. How are they going to get to/from anywhere with how most neighborhoods are set up? There's nothing in walking distance for them. A better solution would be for the government to tax the shit out of residential property that the owner isn't living in so they're incentivized to sell. Then the people that are currently renting can buy, move out of their apartments in more walkable areas and free them up for whatever the government needs to do for the homeless.
Lots of homeless people have cars. Often, they live in them. That said, it would be better for them to get to work by walking, cycling, or using public transportation.
That's great in the short term, but now no one is ever gonna build housing again, so in a generation we're back to a housing shortage.
If you exclusively try to bring down housing costs by attempting to limit demand, you end up making the problem worse. You need to offer more supply.
i think you mean investor will ever build housing again. Regular people still want nice houses, so we will be back to craft houses built by individuals wishing to express themselves into the abode they live in. To fill the gaps grants can be issues to aid construction for those less well off
So nothing but a sea of suburban sprawl to every horizon? That sounds like hell.
You're comparing apples and oranges. The apples being the capitalist housing market, and the oranges being the entire housing economy. Across the entire housing economy, demand is the same. It's just that more of the demand is being met by socialised supply. So no, in terms of the entire housing supply, this proposal doesn't limit demand.
Not over time. Population goes up, and also becomes more concentrated.
The demand for housing isn't being limited though. The demand for investment property has decreased to be replaced with demand for owned housing. You can still sell a new house. People are still buying houses. I agree with others that worse case, we can bolster development at the federal level, but that doesn't seem like it will be necessary. Additionally, with declining birth rates and an increase in WFH jobs, less housing will be needed, and people are moving to areas where new construction is not as needed as they are moving into previously abandoned/vacant rural areas. So you won't be seeing new housing developments there so much as rebuilding.
Your paradigm is in no way connected to the reality of how people are moving. New home construction is going up like crazy in the small cities and towns people move into. To expect a small area to absorb a 50% population increase with little new construction is just not realistic.
And to expect renting to just...end? That sounds like a crazy level of privileged bubble. A huge fraction of the population is not and never will be able to afford homeownership, and expecting the government to fund their home purchases would bankrupt any nation.
In my comment I explicitly stated that there is no need to stop new construction. I do not expect any area to absorb anything. I suggested construction will continue and "additionally" that some areas are being revitalized and will have different needs (rebuilding vs new homes). That's just true.
I'm not expecting renting to just end. I know people who do not want to own any kind of property and prefer short term rentals. It's not a sensible goal to force people into owning if they don't want to.
What does it mean to not be able to afford home ownership? Do you mean they not have enough money for housing in the first place, or do you mean they can just rent? If option one, they are considered homeless and the state should provide housing, if option two, then yes, rent to own should be a real thing. First time home buyers loans exist and the project should be expanded. These are not novel proposals that I just made up. People have been suggesting them for quite a while.
Yeah but expanding those programs on the order you're talking about is absurd levels of money. Not to mention the credit risks...unless you're suggesting the government act as guarantee, in which case we'll have a student loan scenario. Home prices will just rise to whatever they were before, plus the government grant.
Most governments do not, including the USA. Yes, they take in lots of taxes, but they spend even more. Governments frequently run at a deficit more often than not.
How
Irrelevant
A loan to people with shaky credit with no penalties for defaulting is effectively a grant. See: PPP loans.
None of this addresses the inflationary aspect of government money being pledged to support a purchase. If the government is promising to loan up to $500,000 then I know for sure I can sell it for $500,000. Why would I ever sell for $400,000? It creates a price floor.
You clearly just don't like the policy, but all of your points have responses.
If you don't think the government should be involved in housing, you can just say that.
If your solution to such a complicated economic issue is "just tax more bro", then I'll just wait until you finish high school before trying to discuss grown-up things with you.
If you think the solution to budgetary issues isn't to tax more when we're at a lower tax rate on corps and the rich than we have been in a long time then it's you that needs to do basic econ/government classes
I'm saying that it's way, WAY more complicated than "just tax more".
It literally isn't just "tax more". I explained that in the long term this would be a boon to the economy and taxes and that the program would have a gradual introduction which would allow for the program to begin paying for itself by the time it's fully implemented. I'm not sure if you're incapable or just unwilling to read, but there are solutions to the housing problem, and "people can't afford housing so let them be homeless" is not one of them.
I never fucking said that so please stop implying I did.
You mean like it bankrupted the Soviet Union when they built all that public housing?
Yes, actually.
Nationalized housing and construction.
That could work, but government run housing tends to become a ghetto, historically.
Thats a symptom not a cause. Gov. Housing usual is used by ppl in poverty. Not the other way around.
Ok, but it doesn't change the fact that it tends to happen almost every time.
That doesn't change the fact that it seems to happen almost every time.
I think it's valid to address issues with proposed solutions, especially prior to their implementation. For what it's worth, their argument is not entirely sound, since most these proposals have built in subsidies for home buyers, but it's good that they are providing their perspective.
Their "issue" is that they think it doesn't benefit them personally, and they think everything ought to be about them.
I mean, it's not just them in that situation, and it seems uncharitable to claim their only concern is self interest. I stand by my original point that it's important people speak up about how situations affect them, and I'm not sure I'd call that self interested. Since I don't know them personally, I'll give the benefit of the doubt. Housing as a right is a cornerstone of leftist ideology, so I want to make sure people feel comfortable talking about it openly and debating implementation and bringing up when people might be left behind.