Is it the case in the US that an enormous amount of petit-bourgeois boomers are small landlords? Because this is the case in the UK and Aus. And so the centre-left/soc-dem parties will not do anything about housing (and all you really need to do is build public housing en masse) because that will crash house prices. Since Boomers own their own homes and often extra homes they rent out, and their wealth is tied up in this, any policies that could significantly lower house prices is a no-go, even though it’s obviously a bubble that has been getting more and more insane for like two decades now, and no-one can even afford to live in cities anymore.
Other major problem is foreign investment - it totally distorts the market relative to the income of actual citizens - in China for example, rich Westerners can’t just come in and buy up housing, but Western countries will let Rich Chinese do that to them. Of course this gets distorted by the media into anti-immigrant sentiment even through it has absolutely nothing to do with immigration.
Then there is the kind of perception a lot of people have of public housing being ghetto’s, which is sort of still true in some cases (massive inner city housing blocks full of drug use and violence and so on) but is obviously not a difficult problem to fix if the bare minimum of serious effort is put into it. But it does make people suspicious of any suggestions to build more public housing.
Personally I think the housing bubble will be allowed to crash once the Boomers shuffle off this mortal coil - thus preventing a transfer of wealth to their children/grandchildren - instead the housing will be bought up by private companies in accordance with the ideals of rentier finance capitalism.
Now that neoliberal economics is starting to cannabilise the middle class there is actually a lot of media attention on housing costs, although of course the narrative is relentlessly focused on immigration rather than economics. Apparently there just isn’t enough room to build houses anymore, or something.
But anyway I’m not sure about how different or similar the US situation is? Interested to know.
A Clinton era law has prevented the expansion of public housing beyond the number of units in 1999. The US population has grown significantly since then.
The act effectively capped the number of public housing units by creating the Faircloth Limit. This limited funding for the construction or operation of all units to the total number of units as of October 1, 1999. This requires public housing agencies to remove or consolidate existing units in order to receive funding for construction of any new units.
The Faircloth Amendment states that the Department cannot fund the construction or operation of new public housing units with Capital or Operating Funds if the construction of those units would result in a net increase in the number of units the PHA owned, assisted or operated as of October 1, 1999.
Is it the case in the US that an enormous amount of petit-bourgeois boomers are small landlords? Because this is the case in the UK and Aus. And so the centre-left/soc-dem parties will not do anything about housing (and all you really need to do is build public housing en masse) because that will crash house prices. Since Boomers own their own homes and often extra homes they rent out, and their wealth is tied up in this, any policies that could significantly lower house prices is a no-go, even though it’s obviously a bubble that has been getting more and more insane for like two decades now, and no-one can even afford to live in cities anymore.
Other major problem is foreign investment - it totally distorts the market relative to the income of actual citizens - in China for example, rich Westerners can’t just come in and buy up housing, but Western countries will let Rich Chinese do that to them. Of course this gets distorted by the media into anti-immigrant sentiment even through it has absolutely nothing to do with immigration.
Then there is the kind of perception a lot of people have of public housing being ghetto’s, which is sort of still true in some cases (massive inner city housing blocks full of drug use and violence and so on) but is obviously not a difficult problem to fix if the bare minimum of serious effort is put into it. But it does make people suspicious of any suggestions to build more public housing.
Personally I think the housing bubble will be allowed to crash once the Boomers shuffle off this mortal coil - thus preventing a transfer of wealth to their children/grandchildren - instead the housing will be bought up by private companies in accordance with the ideals of rentier finance capitalism.
Now that neoliberal economics is starting to cannabilise the middle class there is actually a lot of media attention on housing costs, although of course the narrative is relentlessly focused on immigration rather than economics. Apparently there just isn’t enough room to build houses anymore, or something.
But anyway I’m not sure about how different or similar the US situation is? Interested to know.
A Clinton era law has prevented the expansion of public housing beyond the number of units in 1999. The US population has grown significantly since then.