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0 pointspiva002y ago0 comments

Because of neoliberal policies. Some governments around the world did incentivise and even footed the bill for building public housing before neoliberalism took hold; for example the Swedish Million Programme [0] built 1 million dwellings between 1965-1974 where the government took the risk on 66% of the building costs to be repaid by tenants over 30 years.

This system of building houses was completely scrapped by neoliberals, letting the "market" take control of supply with the government taking a background stance of mostly zoning out where they'd incentivise building new dwellings.

I can see in a not-so-distant future talks about this kind of program being reignited in politics, the neoliberal approach has absolutely failed us.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

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EduardoBautista2y ago· 4 in thread

> Some governments around the world did incentivise and even footed the bill for building public housing

I am not referring to building public housing. I am saying the government should build housing as if it were a for-profit company. Take those profits, and re-invest into building even _more_ housing. Don't try to sell to those in need, sell to those who are speculating on real estate and increase supply at the same time.

b3ing2y ago

In the US no one trusts the government anymore and instead they want the private sector to do everything. But the private sector only cares about profit.

It’s also a good way to ensure companies can milk the government of money and then the head of those companies can lobby the government to keep things how they are so they continue to get that government money.

EduardoBautista2y ago

I believe the main issue with many US government projects is that they _don't_ care about profit. If they did, maybe we could have public transportation as good as that of Hong Kong[0]. This idea that pursuing profits as a public entity is not productive when it could benefit society as a whole does more harm than good.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELy9fOX8vtc

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piva00OP2y ago

Telling voters that their tax money will be used to build housing to be sold to speculators will absolutely not work. Even if in the long-term that somehow could end up helping people, no one will vote for this absurdity.

You're asking for people to fund the infrastructure speculators thrive on with their money, on top of that you want to depress housing prices which another large cohort of society will vote against, politically your proposal doesn't make sense.

If you cared to read the Wikipedia entry I shared the approach the Swedish government took was to pay 2/3 of the new constructions and sell those houses to people who would pay them back in 30 years, it's not "public housing" as you assumed...

thfuran2y ago

Aside from scale, it's pretty much the same thing but with the assumption that whoever is going to be buying is a friendly neighbor and not an evil speculator.

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