While I'm generally a supporter of public housing, the idea that you can blame the market when it's so heavily constrained by local zoning is just silly.
this is a policy area i know next to nothing about but i wonder if social housing removes friction for loosening zoning laws, seems plausible to me that voters would be interested in any measure that lowers taxpayer burden and you don't have as much of a contingency of pro-status quo property owners
That’s why an authoritarian government that can dictate people lives in available house, and not places they want to live is a much more efficient way to deal with housing.
There are plenty of vacant houses in rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Let’s move Torontonians there to achieve efficiency.
Speaking only for myself, the reason I support some housing stock/development being taken out of the market, call that what you want, is because fair housing enforcement wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand if an adequate level of subsidy were suddenly available to really address the issue.
Maybe that's your background as well, as certainly everyone in that field doesn't agree on solutions, but I've come to believe that we need a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach NOW that includes so-called social housing as one of many new things to try, incl zoning reform
I certainly have leftish tendencies, but I've never considered myself any kind of committed socialist. My views come from almost 20 years working in affordable housing and homelessness prevention
And yes, I'm politically aware enough to know that "a suite of massive interventions" is a thing highly unlikely to happen. So in the meantime, I support piecemeal approaches like expanding middle housing, zoning, re-legalizing ADUs, and yes, limited social housing. Sorry for being an ideologue.
Zoning reform on a massive scale, abolishing at will eviction, and maybe even some limited rent control. We won't have housing stock that is affordable, available, safe, and accessible to disabled folks and older adults without a suite of massive interventions.
I think this matters most when you're in a deep shortage. There's a short-term fixed amount of building capacity, and of course it's going to fill in from the highest-revenue building opportunities first.
Same reason the government insured homes in wildfire and hurricane zones, and provides health insurance to people with cancer: it can absorb more risk because it doesn’t need to make margin on something people need to survive.
I feel like public housing should be land grants and like subsidized mortgages in the form of govt paid interest (but subsidization is something of a function of inequality.
And since it’s federal land, there’s federal jurisdiction over zoning policy so you can have efficient land use and a diversity of housing density in planned walkable / transit-oriented communities.
Like in lieu of printing money, seed and grow your tax base
I guess definitions do matter here. Cause there's the version that's just slapping a new label on the same basic concept of public housing authorities. (which does end up being what a lot of people want)
And then there's the state developing market rate housing as a market participant.
It's State owned or State-subcontracted housing that's rented to poor people at a loss, funded by taxes.
Personally I think such living arrangements should exist, but the lack of this is not what's causing the current housing shortage. The shortage is caused by it being illegal to build apartments.
I think there’s a miscommunication of ideas here: anyone who claims “social housing will solve the housing crisis” is wrong. It’s not a silver bullet. But, it serves a role and can be helpful for sustaining/proliferating permanently affordable units in high-priced markets….
With social housing a housing authority, or public developer, can 1) ensure affordability for some residents in an expensive market, 2) create a more sustainable form of “public housing” with cross-subsidized units and 3) shape land use in an area
If it can get around restrictions on market housing there’s a decent argument that it’s welfsre improving. Suboptimal compared to the market outcome but the market outcome isn’t always in the cards
What's the argument? And why is direct government provision preferable to subsidies, or even cash transfers? Why is the market outcome not in the cards?
Cash transfers/subsidies need to go with fair housing enforcement and most likely in tandem with subsidized building if even market rate housing. Need to accommodate many more people suddenly able to afford greater varieties of housing.
I think anyone seriously pushing social housing can also admit it should happen with not market rate housing being legalized. Social housing allows for blended economic residents, which some believe is a better social fabric than concentrating poverty in public housing.
It also creates a more self-subsidizing mechanism for rents. Market rate units cross-subsidize below-market units. Allows for the more to be built. Also allows for localities/authorities to shape physical space and impact a market
Not implausible to me that a universal rent reduction with some waste is welfare improving over cash transfers. There are some goods for which I think access is important enough that this is true, and in kind provision is better if the cash doesn’t get you the good. Cardinal vs ordinal utility.
This is a flawed analogy but think about something like rhe food blockade in gaza. An additional person getting food is worth a lot more than other people getting wealthier in other goods. With shelter something similar applies.
This is just a supply side argument. The point is that if regulation burdens are eased such that builders can build, supply will take care of itself and any iniquities can be addressed with subsidies for housing specifically or cash transfers for more general (and flexible) poverty relief
People need homes. Poor folks especially need a place to start so they can actually build stability in their lives, and thus contribute to society to the best of their ability.
Whether or not it actually works to set people up for success or keep them in poverty though... it's a bigger question.
Reds built it, but plenty of non-Socialists love Vienna's massive social housing stock, and credit it with the city regularly topping metrics of quality of life for cities around the world. (there's other examples, like Singapore). Or mid-century NYC (the old Mitchell Lamas and stuff are great).
a market fix to our shortage will take decades, good building conditions need to be sustained throughout all of those decades to make the fix come ASAP, social housing allows a degree of affordability to be provided immediately and public builders can keep building thru downturns
social housing used to be a pretty big percent (10? of cdn housing starts. that seems like a reasonable target to aim for. in the mean time, both non-market housing developers and market housing developers face the same regulatory hurdles so the near-term policy prescription is basically identical
mike moffatt is one of canada's leading housing researchers. here, he estimates how long it would take to restore 2005 levels of affordability to major canadian metro areas should nominal prices be held roughly where they are while wages catch up.
This is a very strange calculation. Arbitrarily deciding to fix housing prices at current nominal levels, comparing that to the rate of wage growth, and seeing how long it would take for those lines to cross feels like it proves exactly nothing.
What do you mean by "ideological?" Not asking this to be a prick, don't have strong feelings on social housing, but it's not clear to me how support for it is ideological in a way support for any other half-reasonable policy isn't, do you just mean that social housing's unworkable? or something else
Like I can imagine a number of barriers to getting social housing through, and I can definitely imagine social housing really sucking if it's done poorly, but it doesn't seem obviously stupid to me or anything to want more housing markets in America to look more like Vienna's
"Ideological" in that there aren't really any good arguments on favor of it over "just let people build stuff", but (some) people strongly favor it anyway because it is in line with their ideological opposition to market solutions
Social housing is the government trying to solve a problem created by the government, so I think my qualifier is fine. There are better ways to subsidize housing than the government building what they believe people want and shoving them in there.
"The government building what they believe people want and shoving them in there" is a deeply flawed description. Good public housing is mixed income, with a market rate component that *competes* for residents with the private market.
Frankly, I'm happy if housing is being built, but my local government has a terrible track record when it comes to building public housing. I'd prefer they stay out of it.
And the government has plenty of tools to subsidize housing that don't involve building housing themselves.
The selfish business case is "cool, more demand." Half a dozen commercial revolutions in the past were driven by more efficient agriculture and lower food prices. In modern economies housing, not food, is the chronic disease, the sore that never heals in family budgets. So cure that and...
Countercyclicity is great! But a public developer is not the same as social housing. A local PubDev model can *assist* in creating more subsidized housing because the federal budget for it is maxed out. But these benefits are not interdependent
I don't think there's anything wrong with letting building subside when interest rates increase. In fact, you could make a compelling argument that it's a good thing.
In the very short term, if we were to upzone the whole country and find that it doesn't solve the crisis because interest rates are too high, you can subsidize construction borrowing. But long term letting construction ebb and flow is fine
too much ebbing and flowing and you start losing out on generations of workers. this is a vital industry and you don't want it going into full starvation mode where the whole supply chain shrinks down during the lean times.
Comments
A mixed real estate market is good
We have proven that.
A healthy normal market is mixed. The results are undeniable
The thinking is exactly the same.
So if you support expanded Medicaid, I think you should support the government building houses
Those conditions existed in those charts above.
Nothing has changed about that
https://letsgola.wordpress.com/2017/08/27/zoning-capacity-needs-to-be-much-much-higher/
There are plenty of vacant houses in rural Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Let’s move Torontonians there to achieve efficiency.
If only there were a lesson there...
Like in lieu of printing money, seed and grow your tax base
And then there's the state developing market rate housing as a market participant.
Personally I think such living arrangements should exist, but the lack of this is not what's causing the current housing shortage. The shortage is caused by it being illegal to build apartments.
Social doesn't necessarily mean subsidized (or last resort).
You're aware that that Montgomery County Housing Authority is currently running "social housing" it's working and they plan to expand?
Anyways, what’s the ideological case for social housing in Singapore?
Whether or not it actually works to set people up for success or keep them in poverty though... it's a bigger question.
I expect most building to occur during recoveries.
All this does is hold current housing prices steady and current housing construction speeds.
It says nothing about a public housing authority's ability to change this.
And I think you're still not addressing the subset that will need subsidy even in a pure libertarian regulatory regime.
And the government has plenty of tools to subsidize housing that don't involve building housing themselves.
Considering housing is a basic human need, that seems like a valuable capacity to maintain.