Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

Comment by intopieces | Hacker News Reader

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> affordable food (or food stamps), and free public housing within 30 minutes to major city centers would seem like a sensible alternative to the basic income system of 'just give people money'.

We give people food stamps, they sell them for less than they're worth for cash. We have public housing. It's called "The Projects" and they're generally known as the rough area of town.

Both of these services cost taxpayers exorbitant amounts in administration. If we eliminated most of that and just gave people cash, we could let them spend on what they need. Because they know better than we do what they need, and their needs are much more varied and specific than one agency could ever cover.

There would be inflation, yes. But inflation in itself is not a bad thing so long as wages keep pace with inflation. They haven't. A minimum income would bring people with almost-no spending power into at least the bottom. And poor people don't save their money -- they spend it, often at local businesses.

Basic income is not going to be able to provide housing in the absence of other programs; it will just end up captured as increased rents against a static supply of deteriorating housing stock.

This model of BI (replacing existing programs) is nothing but a giveaway to landlords, which I assume accounts for the PR juice behind it.

It's possible to have social housing that's not terrible or stigmatized. Having moved from the US to the Netherlands, the contrast is remarkable. Social housing here is integrated in most neighborhoods, not a "hood" of its own. There are definitely exceptions of course, but even the Schilderswijk or Bijlmermeer are very pleasant places compared to most NYCHA projects.

It's mostly just rent-regulated housing, be it owned by non-profit housing corporations, coupled in case of direst need with a subsidy payment, and with agencies responsible for placement. Not, actually, much different the administrative structures present in most American cities. The main difference appears to be first an explicit goal of avoiding segregation, and second, scale. Most rental housing here is in the social sector, so the benefits extend beyond the very poor, which is critical for avoiding stigma and maintaining political support.

Replacing landlord oversight with cash payments to tenants is not going to do anything to improve the lot of the tenants. I'd rather see the US invest directly in expanding affordable housing integrated with neighborhoods.

Unfortunately, this is a political loser until a majority of voters stand to benefit directly from it. Things are going to have to get a lot worse before that happens.

"Basic income is not going to be able to provide housing in the absence of other programs; it will just end up captured as increased rents against a static supply of deteriorating housing stock."

Rents are a matter of supply versus demand. There is a tremendous supply of housing. What is limited is desirable housing - and a big part of that is housing somewhat near a stable income. A basic income - even a modest one - would seem to radically increase the supply of housing near a stable income.

Building low cost municipal housing within commuting distance to large cities would be significantly more productive as a long term economic and city/nation infrastructure investment than the BI alternative of low income citizens being forced out of city centers and into undesirable real estate areas.

Building low cost municipal housing has been done before, has often gone very poorly, and doesn't fundamentally change the dynamic - everyone still needs to move to the city, and the problem is still that we haven't built enough municipal housing.

We're presently seeing low income citizens forced out of city centers and into "undesirable real estate areas" within some stretch of what could be called "commuting distance".

The point is, "undesirable real estate areas" is not static. There are tons of wonderful places that are undesirable simply because they are unaffordable (not expensive - often cheap - but without sufficient income sufficiently available). A basic income will make more of these more desirable to more people. Some of these people will chose to move there rather than SF (or Hayward). This reduces demand for presently-desirable housing, which means fewer low income citizens being forced out of city centers.

Now it's true that centralization allows some efficiencies that decentralization does not. But it has some extra costs - and (especially) some extra risks, as well. I really don't think the ideal outcome is "everyone moves to San Francisco."

Mixed use development could really happen anywhere. It's a matter of infrastructure, people need to sleep near where they work/buy/participate in the local economy. I assume it makes sense to build large amounts of affordable housing within commutable distance to large cities.

It'll be interesting to see which countries are willing to address housing as infrastructure for their economy. I imagine real estate bubbles will continue to happen as long as NIMBYism and tax policy facilitate speculation. There's no sensible reason housing should cost every citizen of each generation 20 entire years of daily income.

"It's a matter of infrastructure, people need to sleep near where they work/buy/participate in the local economy."

I agree very strongly with this. The question is how we best make that happen (more). I think helping more local communities have more places to work/buy/participate is going to be a bigger win than building more housing in the places the jobs already are.

People commute to San Francisco from Tracy. From Sacramento. Moving those people from Tracy to San Francisco cuts their commute. It also means the demands of those people are now more expressed in San Francisco and less in Tracy. That means fewer jobs available in Tracy and more jobs available in San Francisco; that means more demand for housing in San Francisco.

Most Basic Income systems I've seen do not do away with existing social services. BI is a supplement to them.

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