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twinkcommunist t1_iua8w58 wrote

Reply to comment by Towers_Oh_My27 in Another building bites the dust... gentrification is real out here. by Towers_Oh_My27

Owning houses you don't own only makes sense if property taxes are relatively low and you expect the price to keep going up forever. Prices are rising because despite the surge of construction, there isn't actually enough housing near jobs and transit for everyone who wants it. The empty luxury housing thing is mostly a myth but the solution is higher taxes and more constructuon.

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ahtasva t1_iuatse2 wrote

The answer is actually increased domestic spending on things that really create value for the people who live in this country. Large scale public housing being top on that list. The myth that private developers will resolve our housing crisis is a myth that has been so utterly discredit that one has to be borderline brain dead to continue to buy into it.

The entire sub-urban housing stock built in the post war building boom was heavily subsidized by the federal govt. But for those subsidies, the so called boomers would be just as broke as the melenials. No one talks about it in those terms today because the beneficiaries of those subsidies were almost exclusively white and today form the core of the neo liberal establishment.

The so-called progressives that are supposed to be challenging the establishment are now squarely co-opted; voting for war, increased military spending while ignoring the domestic crisis that plague their constituents.

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twinkcommunist t1_iuavhdb wrote

I'd support public housing but we don't have the tax system that existed post-war to fund it, and raising taxes enough to do so would be nearly politically impossible.

I don't think the idea that private developers are capable of lowering housing prices is actually discredited. New construction tends to be very expensive, but places that allow lots of building are overall cheaper than comparable places that don't. Upzoning slows rent growth in adjacent areas, and in some cases where it's done on a huge scale (like Sydney and Minneapolis) it actually has decreased overall rents.

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