ConnorEl
Well-known member
This piece outlines the problem and contains some data and graphics, including a map os searchable metro areas ranked by the percentage of local/regional affordability.
The New Housing Crisis: Shut Out Of The Market
This Vox “Card Stack” (i hate this format) outlines some basic concepts.
Everything you need to know about the affordable housing debate
This piece discusses the problem and I’ll highlight from it the portion on “municipal housing”.
Opinion: Kamala Harris has a terrible idea to lower the high cost of renting
The New Housing Crisis: Shut Out Of The Market
This Vox “Card Stack” (i hate this format) outlines some basic concepts.
Everything you need to know about the affordable housing debate
This piece discusses the problem and I’ll highlight from it the portion on “municipal housing”.
Opinion: Kamala Harris has a terrible idea to lower the high cost of renting
Municipal housing
That’s where municipal housing comes in. Taking inspiration from the successes of city-owned and/or city-operated housing in Europe, the People’s Policy Project is calling for 10 million new municipal housing units to be built in the United States in the next 10 years.
Don’t misunderstand; this isn’t your typical U.S. public housing, which is open only to the poor. Such housing — “the projects” — concentrates poverty in some neighborhoods, creating all sorts of bad side effects.
The new approach would locate municipal housing throughout the city and be open to people of all incomes, all ages, all races. That would reduce the stigma of public housing and making it self-sustaining. It would be a true public option, equivalent to the private housing stock.
Yes, such housing would require a modest public subsidy, but remember that all that single-family housing in the suburbs is heavily subsidized as it is. Municipal housing in Vienna, Austria, rents for about 15% of what an apartment in Manhattan costs, the study says.
“Today, our housing policy bears a marked resemblance to our health-care policy: an expensive Band-Aid over a gaping hole, left by the absence of a public-sector alternative,” according to Peter Gown and Ryan Cooper, the authors of the People’s Policy Project report.
Our cities are dynamic engines for capitalism, but their growth is limited by the inability of lower-income people to live there. Who is going to pour the coffee, drive the Ubers, teach the children, and protect the public safety if working-class and middle-class workers can’t afford the rent?
The cost of housing is a social, political and economic problem, but it’s not insurmountable as long as we don’t settle for foolish half measures, like giving renters a tax break, or allowing our most dynamic cities to become strictly enclaves of the wealthy.