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Why we need social housing in the US
[Guardian] The debate about how to resolve our nation’s housing crisis is stuck in a frustrating rut. One side of the divide, calling themselves yimbys (Yes in my back yard), say we should allow private developers to build more housing units. On the other side of the divide are anti-gentrification campaigners who maintain that unleashed private developers will construct luxury housing that pushes up neighborhood rents and displaces local residents.What makes this debate so intractable is that both sides have a point. The only way to fit more people into an area is to build more housing units. This is just how physical reality works. At the same time, we have seen neighborhoods across the country change rapidly after an initial stage of new developments or amenities made living in the surrounding housing units more attractive to affluent renters. Adding luxury housing units can bring down the rents of an overall region while simultaneously raising them in a specific neighborhood, causing displacement. There is a solution to this impasse though. In a paper released by People’s Policy Project (3P) on Thursday, my colleagues Peter Gowan and Ryan Cooper propose that municipal governments across the country build millions of units of social housing. An influx of publicly owned, efficiently built apartments would add to the housing supply while minimizing the displacement risks caused by luxury developments. Under the 3P proposal, municipalities would finance the construction of new housing through municipal bond markets, loans from the federal government, and federal grants that mirror those already provided under the low-income housing tax credit program. The buildings themselves would be erected by construction companies through the same process that cities use to build libraries and other public facilities. Once constructed, the management of the new housing units could be done either through a public authority or by contracting with a property management company. Expanding the housing supply through this social housing approach has many benefits over private, market-led development. About the author - Matt Bruenig is currently the president of People's Policy Project (3P). Bruenig previously worked as a lawyer at the National Labor Relations Board and as a policy analyst at the Demos Think Tank. His prior work primarily focused on inequality, poverty, and welfare systems. Yes, the author is probably a communist. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-04-06 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=511840 |