SeniorBen
Senior Member
Why We Need Social Housing
What Medicare for All is for health care, social housing is for shelter.
SOCIAL HOUSING ADDRESSES is simply public housing for all. For example, a municipality might have an apartment building in which a third of the units were deeply subsidized for low-income people, a third provided at cost for the middle class, and a third at the market rate open to anyone. Every segment of the housing market, from top to bottom, would get more supply simultaneously.
Such a building would not require a subsidy to operate, since maintenance could be funded by the second two classes of units (how much depends on the market). Rents could be kept as low as possible because the government doesn’t require a profit margin. Construction could also be financed by floating a bond against expected future revenues, so construction could be greatly scaled up without requiring any direct government financing.
Finally, a large social-housing sector would stabilize the construction industry. The best time to build would naturally be during an economic downturn, when labor, land, and materials are relatively cheap. So instead of homes being built in boom/bust cycles, causing labor shortages for construction companies followed by bankruptcies and mass layoffs, there would be a steady, constant rate of building and employment. This would also help stabilize the rest of the economy.
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/why-we-need-social-housing/
What Medicare for All is for health care, social housing is for shelter.
SOCIAL HOUSING ADDRESSES is simply public housing for all. For example, a municipality might have an apartment building in which a third of the units were deeply subsidized for low-income people, a third provided at cost for the middle class, and a third at the market rate open to anyone. Every segment of the housing market, from top to bottom, would get more supply simultaneously.
Such a building would not require a subsidy to operate, since maintenance could be funded by the second two classes of units (how much depends on the market). Rents could be kept as low as possible because the government doesn’t require a profit margin. Construction could also be financed by floating a bond against expected future revenues, so construction could be greatly scaled up without requiring any direct government financing.
Finally, a large social-housing sector would stabilize the construction industry. The best time to build would naturally be during an economic downturn, when labor, land, and materials are relatively cheap. So instead of homes being built in boom/bust cycles, causing labor shortages for construction companies followed by bankruptcies and mass layoffs, there would be a steady, constant rate of building and employment. This would also help stabilize the rest of the economy.
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/why-we-need-social-housing/