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Rent control may help a bit but landlords will find every way to get around it and many cities that have rent control have simply loosened them over time. DC theoretically still has rent control but doesn't apply to housing after 1975. Ironically, the solution would be multiple ranges of public housing together with mass transit but that is what the Soviets did (although the housing often was substandard). However, that sort of development is going to have to necessitate a real change in how housing is done in the US and requires enough rent/maintenance fees from renters to keep the property up to avoid the "vertical ghetto" trap.
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Oct 16, 2014 20:49
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Enigma89 posted:New York has the mass transit but the not the right amount of housing quantity to really supply everyone. Prices are still rapidly going up and even people with decent jobs are being priced out to the outer areas like Bushwick. I remember when I first moved to New York, I couldn't afford to live in Manhattan as an intern so I lived in Brooklyn. In the case of New York, obviously the issue is going to be space, but ultimately New York did have integrated public housing that once worked and theoretically could again. There really isn't anywhere to build on Manhattan without very high cost but I think it could be done. Ultimately, microunits are a rather emergency solution that works for single people in their 20s but New York needs more serious housing for everyone else and if anything it requires some radical intervention. That said, at least New York has a mass transit system which gives some flexibility to he issue.
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Oct 16, 2014 21:06
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Zeitgueist posted:New York can build more units vertical in Manhattan and is doing that, the problem is it's all luxury apartment nobody can afford and those who can won't live there. I think those apartments eventually are bought, but the land their own is super costly. So either the government absorbs that cost or it is just going to be expensive by default.
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Oct 16, 2014 21:29
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Zeitgueist posted:Well they're already giving the luxury developers tax breaks to build there. Which shouldn't happen, but the issue is larger than tax breaks, it is more about how the US economy works and the type of results it gives.
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Oct 16, 2014 21:48
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icantfindaname posted:By definition those people aren't as poor as the poorest, so what is the problem exactly with them paying property tax? Like I said, if they're forced out by gentrification they're not necessarily being forced into lovely housing. The issue being that jobs/infrastructure/opportunity in the city center itself and as the poor are pushed to the margins, their access to them is decreased especially since most American cities have miserable public transportation especially away from the central city. Prince George Maryland is a good example of what happens and it isn't pretty. Also, plenty of poor people are being priced out quickly, hell the demographics of Washington DC are rapidly changing year by year. That said, you use "leftist" as a empty insult, so who knows. Basically America is Europeanizing, people with wealth and power live in the center with services and the surbubs are ghettos. The riots that happened in Paris happened at the margins of the city not in the center. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 22:50
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icantfindaname posted:So build public transportation then? Once again you didn't explain why gentrification is bad, but a lack of public transportation. The issue is we are talking about the United States where investment infrastructure is minimal while gentrification is happening in real time. Also even if the US had amazing public transit, there is still going to be a disparity of other services and jobs. If you want to equalize transit and services across the board...fine but that really isn't a easy quick fix either. Also, that is a profoundly lame strawman, I mean embarrassingly so. It also doesn't make much sense, especially since leftists are happy to have much better public transportation and services. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Oct 16, 2014 |
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Oct 16, 2014 23:11
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icantfindaname posted:Yeah but there's a difference between ideas like just giving third world countries trillions of dollars, or rent control, and ideas like universal public healthcare, education, and housing, being that the first group of ideas are bad and the second are good. Like I said earlier, I don't get why leftists insist that there's actually no difference, because none of them will get implemented so it doesn't matter anyways. That kind of vocal, petulant defeatism gets incredibly obnoxious at a certain point. If you really don't care then shut up and go home, you don't have to make sure everyone knows you feel that way and shut down all discussion otherwise. You know most leftists are fine with universal public healthcare, education and housing and don't say we need to give the third world trillions to do it. You are confusing third world maoists with every other leftism known to man.
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Oct 17, 2014 23:58
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If you believe it is a supply issue then the solution is going to have to also be government intervention in supplying housing stock. The UK actually has a wide variety of public housing, the housing with the most crime predictably enough is the worst housing stock with the poorest population. There are actually middle class/lower middle class people in council housing in the UK. This is not to mention other European countries have wide varieties of public housing that aren't "vertical ghettos." Then there is also the issue of, if you don't want rent control, public housing or any government intervention, what is your solution? Right now government intervention is rather minimal and is clearly creating wide disparities among the population. Kick people off into poor suburbs with minimal services and no public transportation is pretty much classism and if not racism at its finest.
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Oct 19, 2014 10:46
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LemonDrizzle posted:Who ITT has argued against "public housing or any government intervention"? Lots of people have said that rent control specifically tends to be dumb and bad but I don't think anybody has said that governments should have no role in the housing market. Responding to Typo's post about UK public housing turning into ghettos, some obviously did but it was predictably cramped high rise housing in poorer neighborhoods. There are ways to provide housing that are far more sustainable and at one time, even in the US, public housing was for people of mix ranges of income and could easily be so again.
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Oct 19, 2014 11:21
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OwlBot 2000 posted:Once again I think Sweden's program in the 60s and 70s is useful. If the problem is too few apartment units, build more units. It doesn't need to be for low wage people, just construct large apartment complexes as good or better than privately developed ones and rent them for slightly below market rates. It doesn't have to be profitable, any more than police departments, healthcare or the military needs to turn a profit. You can set rates in such a way that they will apply some downward pressure to private sector rents but not drive them out of business immediately. Ultimately, that would probably have to be the solution, the government regulates the market by providing a steady of housing that is needed. The government can also work in economies of scale that are much larger than private developers, and could at least regulate certain styles of housing using common materials (you could have various different exteriors and interior styles but use standard materials for everything else). Middle class people don't need free rent, they just need affordable rent and the government has the ability to regulate that cost. It doesn't mean you get rid of other public housing either or section 8, but if you get the middle class playing along then it is much easier to expand other public housing (look at Social Security or Medicare). That said it may not be quite affordable to build this housing in the most expensive parts of town, but if the city can do proper urban planning new communities could be built alongside mass transportation. The problem with allowing purchase of apartments, it is harder for the regulate properties it doesn't own. It the case of Britain they allowed purchases and drastically cut new construction which lead to a predictable crisis. mugrim posted:This is the worst possible thinking. Undeveloped land and real estate is cheap. Building roads, hospitals that don't serve enough people to sustain their equipment, public trans that serves an extremely small amount of people, and entitlements are expensive. Believe it or not, places with expensive rent are often relatively cheap per capita in terms of total dollars spent compared to counties with like 8000 people. A lot of places are 'cheap' because they're not properly serviced and then people bitch about healthcare and roads and communication tech, etc. It sounds like he basically wants to ship people off to wilderness where "they won't be a problem any more." Ardennes fucked around with this message at 17:36 on Oct 19, 2014 |
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Oct 19, 2014 17:32
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lurker1981 posted:Humans have survived for a least 600 years (or however long the bible says we've existed as a species), and it wasn't until the discovery of penicillin that we started having many of our modern conveniences. Okay you are just trolling.
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Oct 19, 2014 17:46
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lurker1981 posted:Seriously? The world were created in the late Middle Ages? Also electricity, automobiles, airplanes and radio (and even early TV) existed before Penicillin. It is possible to live without the internet, but you shouldn't force people from modernity because of class especially since less access to infrastructure is going to keep them impoverished. You can bring up the third world if you want, but if anything the best thing the US could do to help is heavily regulate its financial industry, re-instated Glass-Steagall and punish abusive overseas corporate practices. Btw, we should want to give everyone internet access and we do have the ability to afford it
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Oct 19, 2014 18:00
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lurker1981 posted:But there are a lot of existing towns (with an infrastructure) that lie outside of metro areas that could probably be updated and made cost-efficient for less than the cost of creating an entirely new town or city. There is still likely to be less job opportunity there and ultimately there won't be much for many people beyond cheap rent. There is a reason rural America is shrinking in population.
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Oct 19, 2014 18:11
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Typo posted:It was a genuine question about public housing, not an argument against it. Just because I'm against one form of government intervention doesn't mean I'm against it in all its forms. Sorry, it sounded like an argument I have heard many times already. Obviously, there are issues with public housing in many countries, but it is very often with the cheapest and least desirous types available. It doesn't have to go down that route.
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Oct 20, 2014 12:03
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Fangz posted:So your proposal is to use mass eminent domain to seize properties, apparently arbitrarily, in city centres. I'm sure this would work out well...... It is more or less how our highway systems were built.
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Oct 21, 2014 10:08
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LemonDrizzle posted:It's not at all uncommon for cities to have old buildings that could be redeveloped or even whole areas that have become run down and could do with a bit of renewal (c.f. London's Docklands in the '70s). You wouldn't have to do mass property seizure unless you went about things in an incredibly hamfisted way. Yeah you would buy the property at market value and either convert it or tear it down and build housing. We aren't talking about government "confiscation."
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Oct 21, 2014 12:24
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computer parts posted:And that was extremely controversial at the time (but it primarily went through poor neighborhoods and segregated whites from blacks so who cares). In this case, I don't think increased public housing would have the same effect, especially since giant multiple block spanning projects are severely out of style. Yeah, I don't know why you would need to flatten commercial areas, if anything it would make sense to build in the more "mid-city" area outside of a downtown that are still close enough for easy public transportation. Ultimately, something will have to go but the city can pick and choose where to put developments. One thing is we aren't talking about necessarily a situation where we need to increase housing for even more than 5% of the population, if anything even if you provide a few percentage points of housing stock it may help. There is a supply problem but it can still be controllable without mega-projects, since the goal is to manage prices not to be more than a secondary source of housing.
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Oct 21, 2014 14:40
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H.P. Hovercraft posted:Another really common thing that happens is that they'll only buy what they need, which means that you can be left with a weird little slice of land that you can't do much with. Granted, isn't that in part due to building a highway through different sized lots? If the city buys land in an urban area they will probably use most of the lot just like private contractors do.
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Oct 22, 2014 22:44
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punk rebel ecks posted:Wait what!? I was under the impression that Singapore was a neoliberal paradise... I always thought it was more state capitalist on domestic policy, but very pro-free trade because they are basically a port/trade city-state with a big financial sector.
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Oct 27, 2014 11:38
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