Quick reminder: The Nazi German government emptied out Eastern European towns and villages taken by the Wehrmacht during various campaigns, most notably Operation Barbarossa, for resettlement of “pure” Germans to those occupied lands (called Lebensraum)… this started almost literally once these occupied towns and villages were far enough from the front lines. Also, the whole point of the US Government’s genocidal forced march of native tribes, often referred to as the Tail of Tears, was to clear said native tribes out so the Southern aristocracy could seize the land for plantations worked by chattel slaves… whole swaths of what is today Florida, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi were settled by whites as a result.
Many a “populist” (read: Fascist or proto-Fascist) operate their politics in this manner. Promise either cheap land (or, at the very least, housing) to the workers and others by committing what is, on it’s face, a genocide. There’s more modern examples (two in particular, going on right this minute for all the world to see), but I don’t want to get the ban-hammer so I won’t name them directly (I forgot to check the instance in which I am commenting before doing so, but not taking my chances).
Additionally, “Mass deportation” is a fucking genocide, I don’t know how this can even be said loudly. Guess people never learn…
I have one “weird” and “radical” proposal: public housing to rent. Not to but. At affordable price. That would lower the price of every house, flat, …
Donald John Trump comes from a family of real estate speculators.
Akira Toriyama once said he based the character of Freeza on Japanese real estate speculators, who he called “the worst kind of people.” (Source)
Am I saying Trump is Freeza? No, Freeza is several orders of magnitude more competent on his worst day than Trump was when he peaked in 1951. But I think it’s important to underline, for the people in the back, what level of cartoonish evil we’re dealing with, because for some reason people will read stuff like this and it won’t sink in. Maybe DBZ will help.
I don’t know. I’m tired, y’all.
If they really wanted to change regulations they’d push changing zoning regulations in cities to allow building anything other than detached single family housing. That would be totally reasonable and help alongside tax incentives. But I have a feeling that’s not what’s meant by changing regulations…
They said “making federal land available”. I take that as they want to sell off land in places like national parks to be developed.
Which, needless to say, is an awful idea.
I thinks that’s one of those state’s rights things where federal government can’t just tell a town how to zone it’s own land unless they’re taking it away from the town like for a national Park or something.
It’s actually an instance of super small government. Those regulations are dictated by city’s and counties not by states
The american dream isnt raising a family in an apartment, and a lot of people were raised on that dream.
We need to change the perception of condensed housing I think before there is support for that.
My perception of dense housing is smelling cigarettes and weed and hearing fighting, dogs barking, loud exhaust, and loud bass for hours on end.
I think we change the perception by enforcing rules to keep people from disturbing others peace at home. Make it a reality that dense housing isn’t a worse experience. That isn’t currently the case.
I’d be much more apt to go back to dense housing if I was confident that my complaints would be heard and actioned up to and including evicting the offenders (after many complaints and no corrective actions taken). But I have never heard of such a place.
The best way to change perception of mixed use residential areas is having people live there.
The bigger issue is that these buildings don’t work by themselves. The biggest issue with suburbia is car dependency, which can only be countered by walkable cities and public transport (both of which require higher population densities)
I had another idea, if we reduced meat production we would get back land, could use that to make more houses. Sort of short term I guess. Or maybe its easier to plan a walkable city if you are starting with a blank slate.
What do you think of building new cities rather than retrofitting old ones?
Land isn’t the problem, even in suburbia large commercial complexes fail all the time or rich people get some grand ambition to build their perfect city outside of the existing one. For example Las Colinas outside of Dallas. Or Rosslyn outside of Washington DC. These were planned in one go to be the ideal future of urbanism at their respective times, and there are many other examples beyond these. The issue lately if the local opposition is small or poor is zoning requirements and parking minimums drastically increasing costs.
Unless those requirements and costs are entirely padded numbers, they are there to handle the amount of cars people will be using right?
How do we reduce car usage if we can’t make walkable cities because of cars?
Before you can start to change public perception it needs to be legal to build densely. Parking minimums and a variety of other commercial building code regulations make this much more expensive in the US, all while the people nearby in single family homes fight any new builds due to their poor perception of condos and apartments. Just removing the stigma is only one part of the equation.
Which part do you think has a larger effect, the regulations or the stigma?
They ban abortion and then don’t want those babies/future adults housed. Classic.
Because being poor, uneducated, and unloved with a chip on your shoulder makes you a likely Republican voter. I would bet the whole farm that unwanted children are far more likely to grow up to vote Republican, and I think that’s one of the primary reasons they fight against abortion, and any other policies that increase education and security for children.
Down payment assistance is just going to drive prices up.
It’s the perfect solution for the democrats because it sounds good but also won’t actually cause housing prices to go down, so homeowners won’t feel like they are ‘losing’ money.
Yep, the big fix is to tax the hell out of single family housing owned by corporations. But no politician would dare run on that platform.
Or just build more public housing. It can be nice. It doesn’t have to be dystopian blocks in the sky and it should target all price ranges so that poverty isn’t just entrenched into public housing blocks.
I’d settle for breaking apart the housing cartel personally. Its already illegal.
I hate any financial assistance that doesn’t address the root cause, because all it is at that point is more tax and wealth transfer to the rich.
Aaaaaand I know everyone hates when someone points out their hypocrisy so I’m sure I’ll get crucified for this…
This applies to student loan forgiveness too.
Absolutely. I’m for student loan forgiveness, but right now it’s just giving money to banks and then burdening the next generation with the cost.
That’s the feature of these issues, there is no incentive for people “fixing” them to end the grift.
$25k down payment assistance where one bed one bath houses are routinely nearly half a million is a joke tbh.
it’s down payment assistance, and down payment is typically around 20% of the value of the house. $25k would fully cover the down payment of a $125k [probably trashed] house, or 1/4th of the down payment of a half-million house
Honestly I really don’t think that’s effective either. Giving people more money to buy something generally just means the market will respond by charging more money for that thing. The assistance will effectively get “priced in” given time.
It’s honestly the weakest part of the Harris/Walz platform for me. Trump plan is utterly insane top-to-bottom though, and they’re just using immigration as a scapegoat here, which is… something.
Makes sense to me. 25k is an incentive to buy a home, not an incentive to build one or sell one.
Make owning multiple homes more expensive. Fine landlords for unfilled housing, and make the fine is proportional to maximum advertised rate for the unit. Now they have an incentive to keep their units filled, and keep from jacking up rent.
I do think it can help those that are prepared and on the border of approval. But those that aren’t it ain’t gonna do shit.
Yeah, I don’t think the idea is a total non-starter, but I’d definitely like some details. How will this be limited to ensure it’s not being used by investors and house flippers? How will this be ramped down once the housing market settles to avoid it being permanently “priced in”? How will this be paid for and how much will it cost?
Unfortunately American political debates right now are more of a pissing contest about rally turnout than they are about actual policy details, because that’s what sways the voters on the fence for some reason.
I started getting tons of calls because I was approved last year when she announced this. So if it can get me into something I want to know. But it just might be bullshit.
That’s not everywhere in America. That’s not even most of America.
And while it’s an interesting discussion, it’s not the point of the post.
The only thing proposed that’s reasonable is “changing regulation.” It’s too easy to block new housing, and often times it’s just flat out illegal to increase density or build mixed use.
But those regulations are largely controlled by local governments, not the federal government. Federal regulations can prevent building new housing in certain areas and conditions (like destroying habitat of an endangered species), but that is much rarer than a city council not approving projects or zoning changes because they want to keep property values high.
And that needs to change. Local communities are harming the nation with their NIMBY shit. Feds should step in.
I mean they kinda are, but those areas just miss out on tax dollars of larger scale developments. I’d rather see more support and for lower cost housing that doesn’t get flipped immediately into airbnbs. Stronger regulations that temper this current market of turning housing into a commodity where speculative reality businesses are out bidding home owners. That goes for single family and multifamily. U can build a huge priced right housing development but if all the units just turn into air bnb or rented out by shitty land lords, then we have solved nothing
In the macro picture, more supply always helps. Flood the market with airbnbs and airbnb owners can’t charge as much so they’ll stop buying so many. More rentals lowers prices so you don’t have to rent from a slumlord.
But I agree, direct legislation is more immediate and effective.
It depends on which regulations. The second part of that “making federal land available” makes me think they want to develop national parks.
thinking that homeless illegal immigrants are the root cause of home shortage where a single corporation or a billionaire buys thousands of flats to rent them to people for exorbitant prices.
in one way it works because if you kick out many homeless people out of the country, you can say that in one year you cut homelessness by half.
Thats currently already done with jail. The main problem is homeless people don’t pay their jail bills. In my state 15 years ago it was 30$ per day you had to pay to be incarcerated in jail, not prison.
Okay america is sounding more and more like a joke. You have to pay to be in a processing facility? When you have no choice. And you’ll be incarcerated there during trial so before you are proven guilty of anything.
Fun fact! The Constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery also legalized slavery!
Yeah! And until right now, this very minute, as you’re reading this, some Americans didn’t know that.
Right now some americans don’t know they have items in their house produced by slave labor.
Here’s a quick read about it.
I think in my case its only sentenced time that is charged, but I had to pay a bunch of fines and stuff after so it might have just been included in the court costs and fees.
It costs a lot to be in the judicial system. If you have money its far easier.
But both parties are the same? Right? RIGHT?!
Neither choice is great. One is evil.
That 25k quickly becomes “oh, everyone had 25k more so we can charge 25k more”.
Don’t give rich house builders tax breaks, they’re the ones causing the problem by deliberately not building enough. You’re the fucking government. Build houses yourselves. Rent them through social housing programs.
dont allow corporations and billionaires to buy thousands of flats
Yeah, that too.
The precious “free markets” have had their crack at it, and have shown that they’re not to be trusted to either own or build them. Prices have soared and that’s 100% intentional on their part.
It was never a free market because of antiquated zoning laws. At very least free market would have driven more dense residential construction because they would have made more return on their buck. We need to allow and even promote medium rise residential zoning in more home scarcity is an issue.
Land owners be damned, the needs of the many outweigh the greed of the few.
25k is for first time home buyers, not everyone. You can’t have separate prices for first time buyers and the rest of the public, and a seller won’t know how you are financed until after the house is listed anyways.
This absolutely will help, because if you’d just ask anyone trying to get a home, the down payment is the hardest part to satisfy.
The only way a house cartel can form like this is for those that own the homes. The builders don’t own the homes, corporations do. Those corporations collude and price fix to create a cartel. Focus on that.
The UK had a similar scheme for first time buyers and it’s often cited by economists as one of the biggest things fueling their housing crisis.
Its hard to take that at face value. The UK and the US have a lot of anti consumer perspectives.
Do you have anything that describes the mechanism?
Its sort of a similar arguement to food stamps raising food prices right?
In either case its on the groups abusing a rule that are the problem, not the rule. There can be well worded regulations that minimize abuse, and we can also audit things.
Sure, here’s a paper which explores the effects.
Essentially, housing prices have hugely inflated (in much of the developed world) because demand is much higher than supply. Prices in the real-estate market are generally really reactive to changes in supply or demand because each ‘product’ is unique and limited, as well as being worth a lot of money so there is more pressure to maximize the potential gains.
This sort of plan increases the resources available to the demand side without increasing the supply side. This drives up prices since there are more potential buyers.
Anyone who couldn’t buy a house without such a program is being added the the pool of people competing for a limited supply of houses. It won’t increase supply because supply is heavily limited by other factors, most notably zoning.
It’s unfortunate, because the thought behind such a policy is admirable. It’s trying to make buying a house more fair and more easily achievable for a broad segment of the population that currently is effectively shut out from owning a home.
The builders have made the 16 million empty homes in this country because they were just selling them to corporations. It’s not that they are not hiding enough, it’s that the rich have engulfed the entire pipe with their gluttonous mouths and there is nothing left for the rest of us.
When will we finally slay the beasts that are killing us?
It’s not that they aren’t building enough. It’s that they are building big luxury homes because there is a bigger profit margin than making affordable homes.
I’ve started to come around on the 25k down payment assistance. It definitely has it’s problems, and there will absolutely be those who gouge because of it. But because it’s specifically down-payment assistance it will still help first time buyers get mortgages on houses they can afford the regular payments on, but don’t have the extra to set aside for a 10% down payment because rent is taking everything they could be setting aside for a down payment. And it’s limited to first time home buyers, with 2 years of on-time rent payments, and says “up to” 25k. Wouldn’t surprise me if it ends up being limited to 10% of the purchase price (which gets you more favorable loan terms).
My wife and I only own our home because her wealthy dad was willing to front about half of the down payment with an interest-free repayment to him alongside the mortgage. With 25k from the government we’d not have needed that, and we got an acre in California. 25k is huge.
We’ve only ever had trouble with this mortgage once, and it was trouble we could have managed without help had we just tightened our belts for a while (just don’t go to the ER. Even if you have insurance. Even if you’re dying on the floor and an ex first responder demands you to for your safety: die instead. I am not joking, had it not been for familial help we’d be paying it off for the next 5 years and it would eat almost all of the little savings we’ve finally started managing to build up, so one more bump and we’d lose fucking everything), so it looks like all those “well sure you can afford rent that’s 1.5x the cost of the potential mortgage, but how do we know you can afford it on the job you’ve had for 8 years?” Pricks were wrooooooooooong
Most builders are already fully booked for work. The one’s that could work faster generally aren’t the ones you want building your house.
I don’t know how it is in the USA but here in France we kinda have the following issues:
- People leave the countryside and small cities en masse
- Houses rot empty anywhere that’s more than a commute away from a big city
- There’s a huge shortage of housing in the cities
We need people coming back to the countryside and small cities but all the employment is bundled away in big cities…
WFH, better communications, give benefits to anyone opening business in a small town, …
And financial support for non chain shops. We need a small locally owned economy too.
Also we used to have a very dense train network that we let rot because iT wAsN’t PrOfItAbLe (and then we spent hundred of millions on roads ajd highways of course)
I’m here in Georgia, USA. The small towns in my state, those well outside the major metro suburbs, are either emptying out OR the state is bringing in non-union factory and data center jobs to dominate the local economy with the promise of jobs and economic revitalization. These companies are given huge tax incentives to build (or relocate) and thus contribute nothing to local coffers directly (necessitating higher property and sales taxes on locals). Currently, there’s a car plant being built near where I live. The locals in the rural areas were shocked to find out after construction began that their water wells might stop working as the factory and it’s subsequent suppliers setting up in the area will be draining the county dry… the state said they could. They’re out of pocket to drill deeper wells and the state doesn’t care… at the state level, they’ve actually made it harder (legally through environmental review) for local municipalities to direct the development of water infrastructure but easier for private developers (who have fewer reviews to go through) to just build whatever water infrastructure they see fit. Meanwhile, back in town, a handful of out of state multibillion dollar corporations are buying up any and all real estate that isn’t nailed down and renting it back to us at exorbitant prices.
it’s sorta like that but with way more opioid deaths
edit: and instead of rotting empty, megacorporations buy the empty homes and turn them into airBnBs to keep the house prices high. maybe that happens in france too?
Airbnb seems to be more of an issue in cities than here.
Wouldn’t you want 5 more chairs, so the parents could sit too?
Be more accurate if Padme said “You have 10 chairs for $10,000 and 10 kids with $100”
sell the kids to purchase a tenth of a house
