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Comment by fortran77 | Hacker News Reader

We need more housing if there's a housing shortage. Build more.

I agree -- but we need public housing. The market does not build affordable housing.

Libertarians have this idea that the housing market is restricted by government regulation and just needs to be freed in order to flourish. In actuality, the only reason there is any affordable or low-income housing in the U.S. is because of government money (Section 8, LIHTC, public housing, etc). Homelessness is a totally solvable problem, and any place that has solved it knows the solution: build enough homes for people to live in, through state-funded programs!

I'm genuinely curious where the seemingly new faith in federal government has come from, while criticism of local government (police action, city and town policies, county actions) seem to be on the rise. I'm neither Democrat nor Republican. Both parties have become too corrupted to support in any legitimate way, and I tend to only look at what policies any candidate supports, which is getting more and more difficult, as everything is in 20 second sound bites. But broad federal government as opposed to local government always seemed far more disconnected and I'm curious as to why the boost in popularity of this centralization in federal power on "both" sides, seemingly.

I blame hot topic and the che guevara shirt trend. For some reason people have convinced themselves socialism is the solution to everything while at the same time complaining about surveillance states and corrupt/racist police.

It's bizarre to me.

If you don't have faith in your government, you need to fix your government. Nothing else in society can be healthy or long term stable if you are operating under a fundamental distrust of the exclusive wielder of violent force. Its fundamental.

Going into an election season its valuable to remember. Housing, healthcare, the military industrial complex, infrastructure, bribery, corruption, undemocratic elections, polarization, etc are all fundamentally a product of flawed government. Its not just a "get money out of politics" flawed, its a fix elections to be representative and equitable, make representatives accountable, make everyone matter and have equal influence. Because contemporary American government is hugely against all these points.

Its a super hard problem of course, but it is the problem to solve first - nothing else is going to get much better while things are very likely to get worse so long as the disconnect between having an educated rational electorate whom are fairly and justly represented by elected officials accountable to them isn't the general state of affairs.

I have no problem fixing government, but it has been shown time and time again that the biggest bag for your vote is to vote is local elections. Making your voice heard on the local government level can and will have more of an effect, with less influence (on average) by corporate monies than at any other point in the political process. The focus has continuously been swayed to a larger, more centralized power stricter with a greater disconnect that seems to be less interested in "getting to know" for lack of a better phrase, it's constituency. It's a matter of scale. Local governments, by their nature, are going to be more interested in their local constituency. They, then will come together to answer to a larger, managing power. At least, that's the theory. Ceding these self interested small government bodies to large monoliths seems like a step backwards. Even when thinking about it from a program architecture standpoint, it seems like going back to the 70's style of monolithic services instead of the modern approach.

Cheap, market-rate housing does exist in every city. It may not be where you want to live, but it exists. The issue is transportation, not subsidized housing that locks low-income people in an apartment they can't really afford.

Every city in the USA builds less housing than 20 ago, adjusted for population, etc. The primary reason is wealthy HIMBYs, lawsuits, laws, mandated affordable housing requirements, etc. In DC most new buildings require huge payments to the affordable housing fund, which in turn jack up middle class rents. Nonsense.

There are plenty of markets in which the median household can easily buy or rent the median house, because competition drives the price down towards the cost (labor and materials, which just aren’t that expensive). The crisis exists near big cities because zoning boards have created massive shortages of buildable land, and builders and landlords can’t possibly satisfy more than a small fraction of total demand. Naturally they prefer to accommodate the highest bidders. If more inventory existed they would have to take lower prices for it.

If SF only allowed one Burger King and no other restaurants or grocery stores, the price of food would be shockingly high, yet government subsidy wouldn’t be the most effective fix.

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