The entire idea is preposterous. The solution to affordable housing is oversupply of housing. Gov should incentivize new construction to reduce prices and let the market fix it.
It will if it’s not illegal to build. SROs are illegal. Boarding houses are illegal. Houses below a certain minimum are are illegal.
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/01/16/what-is-...
> From 2013 to 2017, Tokyo built many houses as the whole of England.
> House prices in Tokyo are now 9% lower than they were in 2000, while in London they are 144% higher, adjusted for inflation.
Zoning in Japan is done at a national level, not local. Once an area is designated for housing, housing goes there. Because of this there is a constant flow of new housing, which drives the price of old houses down.
This is not possible anywhere zoning is done at a local level. Anytime one person has the ability to stop another from building you immediately create NIMBYdom and where the NIMBY exists, more housing does not because the NIMBY cares about nothing but their own property value. But that also feeds into the insane American idea of housing as an investment rather than a place to keep birds from crapping on you.
Until the NIMBY is eliminated, and housing is no longer sold as an investment, housing costs will not go down.
Why? Do you think a poor person's vote is worth more to the government than their wallet would be to a house builder?
Is it impossible to make an acceptable house at 30% the cost of a median earner's house?
Your reasoning is valid for people whose productivity approaches zero, in which case welfare can indeed be needed. But the current housing problem is systematic and touches a far bigger percent of the population, and thus shouldn't be solved with charity.
The non-landowners are either not abundant enough, or only plan to live here for a short enough period of time that they don't bother to get involved in local politics.