I’m listening to a presentation on a gigantic housing grant my city is applying for. (PRO Grant from HUD, if you’re familiar). They’re proposing spending millions on regulatory reform to promote missing middle housing, which, ok fine, that’s a big task in a major city, but that should already have been done in 2023. Other money would go towards vague stuff like an accelerator program for bipoc affordable developers. After all of that, they’re proposing only 120 “deeply affordable” (under 30% ami) units with the grant.
We have a shortfall of tens of thousands of those units in our city, and this multimillion dollar federal grant would fund just 120.
JUST FUCKING BUILD PUBLIC HOUSING CO-OPS
I swear the neoliberal public-private partnership brainworms these people have is beyond terminal. “We have to strategically leverage this potential pot of funding” no you fucking don’t
Usually, the canned response in my experience is just “controlling prices is evil communism and no one will rent a house!!!”
it takes like 2 seconds to find price controls of some variety in the jurisdiction tho, so its easy to needle in on why they think housing specifically shouldnt be.
my favorite helpful fact with price controls is the french revolution (which overturned feudalism and instituted a capitalist system in france) has had price controls on bread ever since
I totally remember reading articles about how rent control will make things worse a few years back. I can’t remember the arguments but even as a lib they seemed pretty hollow and very “just trust me bro please bro no rent control trust me man”
Lmao: “The economists are right, and the populists are wrong.” Jesus fucking Christ can we just house people for fucks sake god fucking dammit.