this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2023
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The pessimist in me thinks that it won't be approved if "they" don't have a plan to buy them all up.
The only thing that works is they have to be owned by an organization and not a person.
And that organization can't be a for-profit.
And, since it's using public money, it's ours. So it's going to need management as a resource like any other resource.
It's government housing, kids. Maybe we'll have the voting fortitude to keep it from becoming like government housing.
I'm not sure how I'd feel about government housing; are there any decent examples of that throughout modern history at all?
It may work after all - honestly, I don't know. But the first thing that crosses my mind is that government owned property blocks (to control the rental/sales prices) is just patching up the symptom and not addressing the root cause.
Ironically, I'm not even sure what the root cause is besides unfair distribution of wealth and how to address it besides thinking taxing done right may make it less unfair.
The root cause is quite literally profiteering by the private sector, combined with rigged zoning that makes it cheaper to build inefficiently.
Government or other not-for-profit housing of some kind (such as renter co-ops, which would be even better to have more of) are the only thing that make solid sense when considering available options, because anything else is routinely being bought up so it can be flipped for profit or rented at high rates few can afford.