> In reality, most people had to wait decades for an apartment. There was an easy way to get an apartment though - get sent to bumfuck nowhere for infrastructure project (military base or factory, nuclear plant etc..). Or climb up the party ladder or get a job at well-connected company than get arrange you an apartment.
I don't see how that's meaningfully different from current day USA.
In America, you have to save for decades to afford a down payment on the chance to potentially land an apartment. But, if you enlist in the military or move to bumfuck nowhere, you can bypass that problem. And if you are willing to start climbing the ladder at a well-connected company, they will pay you enough to afford an apartment right away.
Sure, we swapped "government" for "corporation". But to a regular person, it's a pretty similar situation.
> If a city can't take in people - they're not sent in.. On top of that, many people were stuck in Kolchoz without any prospect of moving to a city. Thus were was no pressure to the system
As opposed to today in the US, where if a city can't take in people, they get people anyway, and they huddle under an overpass or setup a tent camp in a park somewhere. Pressure in the system is only useful if people react to it, and in America no one reacts to that pressure in any useful way. (to the extreme that it became national headline news when Utah decided to actually try to build housing for people who needed it - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/inspired-life/wp/2015/04...).
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I'm not arguing that the Soviet system was good. But American housing has become so bad that it's understandable that for some, Soviet housing is starting to look appealing in comparison.