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redwall_hp t1_j5b4l4v wrote

Reply to comment by dirtroad207 in MaineHousing ready to spend $21 million to provide overnight shelters this winter by Shake-Spear4666

And, like anything, rent prices are a function of the demand and the supply. Housing is artificially scarce and often employs protectionist policies to inflate the price so it can be used as an investment vehicle for rentiers.

That's why you have cities like San Francisco with moratoriums on apartment construction or questionable zoning laws that promote suburbanization: the goal is to drive up prices and prevent competition from pushing them down.

The demand for housing is inelastic, so the supply is the main driver of the cost, since the demand side can't drive it down by not buying.

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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.

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