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> Public housing has the same problem. You end up putting a bunch of poor people in one building, who statistically end up being associated with crime and drug use.

This is not necessarily the case. Social housing in Vienna has both low-income residents who are subsidized and higher-income residents who are not. We haven’t done it as well as they do historically here in the US, but we could!

I think this comment pretty much sums up my issue with these movements.

> I'm a part-time Real Estate investor, and I would never invest in a city that had a rental cap, since the point of investments is to make money, not start a charity.

This mindset is where these issues come from in the first place. Housing as become more and more an investment, and groups of people (immigrants, disabled folks, poor people) are not as good of investments, so they're avoided by private investors.

At the same time, private investors and builders are pushing back on tools that make the lives of these less profitably people easier (rent control, public housing).

From what you're saying, if I want to promote more affordable housing, I keep you away from it. Where's a profit in cheap housing/low rents?

If you want to promote affordable housing, you shouldn't demonize the people who are going to increase the housing supply. You'll leave behind blustering politicians, and no capital - public or private - to develop anything.

The problem is the ones wanting to increase the housing supply are for-profit investors, and affordable housing shouldn’t be about profit. That’s my takeaway of this deadlock. Perhaps the government should directly build housing, or subsidize the cost and have it be owned and operated by the city.

Why do you think the government is more efficient at building housing than private companies?

Every city I've seen try this ran into substantial cost over runs and ended up with 12 1 br condos to rent to poor people at the cost of 6 million dollars.

Why shouldn't it be about profit, we use a profit motive for the manufacturing of everything else in our economy, why is housing the exception?

The government is far more efficient when it's competent because it has access to eminent domain and is recession proof. It doesn't need to deal with margin calls during recessions, has much less risk doing development, and doesnt need profit to fund new investments, so it can move faster and cheaper with greater scale.

You've never seen it work because you're presumably American, and as the title points out, America can't build anything anymore. If you care about you're country's wellbeing, that needs to be fixed, and building affordable housing efficiently and more hands on without piles of unaccountable subcontractors is a great way to get started.

In which countries can the government build housing more cheaply and efficiently than the private sector?

Sure. Singapore and Vienna (not a country, but done at a city scale) are good examples.

I'm pretty sure Singapore usings contractors to build the HDBs and doesn't employee labourers themselves.

But also Singapore's construction per sq ft isn't insanely cheaper than the US. You're looking at $120 per sq ft and you would expect Singapore to be much cheaper because they have $2-3/hr labourers, less labor laws, and far less environmental restrictions.

And the HDBs don't really house the poor but the middle class. The poor live in cramped dormitories for foreign immigrants.

I don't think that there is anything wrong with public housing being extended to the middle class or even the upper class. As long as it pushes housing prices down.

Labourers in Singapore do not make 2-3$/h anymore. Nowadays it's closer to 10$/h for the bare minimum. Yet prices are still at 120$/sqft or thereabouts.

The HDB in Singapore owns a controlling stake in many contractors, but yes the general construction is often handled by contractors. That's still different from the US methodology that subcontracts everything from design to maintenance, and it maintains the structural advantages of the government building housing I put forth above.

Housing should be an exception because it’s a place for someone to stay and necessary for survival. Food can be prepared at home, people can take public transit to get around to earn money, and entertainment isn’t necessarily required for survival. But a house is a cornerstone for building your life out, and as such I don’t think it should be about maximizing profit.

If it costs the government more money to build shittier housing should we still use it government to build housing?

I genuinely believe that it’s a fallacy to try and build affordable housing. Build housing, and some housing will become more affordable.

I think the problem is that a lot of investing in real estate isn't creating more housing, it's extracting wealth from people who have a need to be housed. like if you buy a second home to rent out, you didn't create housing. You just made it less affordable for people to build wealth.

> This mindset is where these issues come from in the first place. Housing as become more and more an investment, and groups of people (immigrants, disabled folks, poor people) are not as good of investments, so they're avoided by private investors.

This only happens when supply is artificially constrained. The private markets want to serve as many people as they can - that's how you maximize profit. But when you can only sell 100 units and there is demand for 1000, obviously you want to sell to the richest 100 buyers.

The solution to the problem is to increase supply. Rent control, zoning, et al reduce supply.

Real estate investors are not typically developers. They also generally are opposed to things YIMBYs support since as mentioned it would cut into their profits. YIMBYs, though not a monolith, largely support rent control and public housing. They also support private development. The goal is to reduce housing costs, and a variety of means are necessary.

> Where's a profit in cheap housing/low rents?

1. The size of the housing problem grossly outsizes the budget of the public sector. Its not even close - this problem can only be addressed through private capital. 2. Private capital will only build things that are profitable with a comfortable margin considering unexpected costs and other, possibly more efficient allocations of the same capital. 3. Every regulation/requirement you throw at housing developers increases the minimum cost of new housing. As it currently stands, its mostly a physical impossibility to build middle class housing in SF profitably given existing requirements (which effectively add a couple hundred thousand to each unit). This means that no middle class housing will be built.

If you want more affordable housing, you fundamentally need to change the incentive to build affordable housing. You can't do this and chase off developers at the same time.

Government housing can work, but it needs large, sustained amounts of funding, which is not really a reality with cash-strapped local and state governments and extremely low federal appetite for such a program.

There isn‘t a realistic path to a solid, pro-public housing bloc of 60 senators.

> I'm a part-time Real Estate investor, and I would never invest in a city that had a rental cap

Good. It is real estate "investors" like you that have contributed to the Bay Area, and California in general, pricing people out and becoming a rent-only housing economy where only the rich of the rich can even dream of buying a fairly modest house. Housing should not make you investment-style returns like the stock market. You're profiting by rent-seeking, arbitrary zoning requirements, and NIMBYism driving up the price of housing constantly just so you can make a nice "investment." Housing and shelter are for people to live, not to extract money for real estate investors.

> You end up putting a bunch of poor people in one building

Have you considered that poor people also need a place to live and maybe that doesn't involve you leaching every percent of profit you can?

> Want to promote more affordable housing? Keep the government far away

Section 8 housing in LA - as house prices have surged to multi-million two-bedroom homes since COVID - can lower prices at least as low as $400/mo after the voucher. You are simply and transparently lying for your own benefit and it is shameful.

It's a lack of development of new housing for decades that caused the high prices we see in places like the Bay Area.

And the ones that do get built are promoting “luxury living” when people just want “basic living”. None of the new construction is no-frills apartments, they’re all glitz and glam with stupid high rents - 2br is about 5K in some of these places. That’s ridiculously high. There’s even an apartment complex that advertises a redwood grove in the center - that’s just extra cost that could have been saved and passed on to the renters.

You need to fill out the highest tier, as that opens up mid-tier housing for lower paying renters. Otherwise it pushes the highest-paying renters into the mid-tier housing stock, raising the prices for all below.

I really don't understand this logic. Just income-cap the rentals, so high paying renters aren't eligible for the low-tier housing. Only filling out highest tier means that only high tier housing gets built.

So if you catch a raise you are evicted?

Not necessarily - maybe your rent can just go up to market rate + 10% (or some nominal fee because you’re taking up spots in the low income section). Maybe an extra clause that you have to move out within X months after going above the limit.

The laws just needs to disincentivize staying there when you’re not eligible. You obey traffic laws because it’s costly to ignore them. There can also be some buffer to income so you don’t have drastic changes just because you earn an extra 5 to 10K or something per year (depending on family size).

Nope. Primarily, people moving into the new housing lower cost pressure on lower tier housing. And pretty quickly, the highest tier is saturated and lower tier housing is built.

Or higher tier housing is overbuilt and drives down costs of all tiers.

> And pretty quickly, the highest tier is saturated and lower tier housing is built.

That’s definitely not what happens. Highest tier is saturated, developers say that “the market only wants highest tier housing”, and so more of the same gets built.

> Or higher tier housing is overbuilt and drives down costs of all tiers.

The opposite is what’s happening - the highest tier gets more and more expensive, and the lowest tier goes up too.

> That’s definitely not what happens. Highest tier is saturated, developers say that “the market only wants highest tier housing”, and so more of the same gets built.

If it's actually saturated, them prices will begin to drop.

> The opposite is what’s happening - the highest tier gets more and more expensive, and the lowest tier goes up too.

Because it's not actually overbuilt - they're still just trying to catch up. Most metro areas are still in a state of housing shortage.

It could just be where I've chosen to live, but I have never seen a new "lower tier" apartment building go up. It's been "luxury" apartments (though actually built fairly cheaply, just expensive to rent…) 100% of the time.

It's not that surprising. The housing market is in a state of shortage in pretty much every major metro area.