Are there any moonshot ideas that could dramatically (say 50%+) decrease the cost of rent?
Including ideas that are probably-illegal but could see mass consumer adoption before they could be stopped (like Uber)?
Including ideas that are probably-illegal but could see mass consumer adoption before they could be stopped (like Uber)?
Sure. The government could build and subsidize housing.
When you talk about a "moonshot" idea, the Moon landing itself was subsidized with a massive amount of government funding. But it appears that we'd rather put a man on the Moon than take a man off the streets. It's just a matter of priorities.
What is this supposed to mean? Are the buildings empty? Or is it just a comment about the company you keep?
> Lawns were paved over to save on maintenance, failed lights were left for months, and apartments damaged by fire were simply boarded up instead of rehabilitated and reoccupied. Later phases of public housing development (such as the Green Homes, the newest of the Cabrini–Green buildings) were built on extremely tight budgets and suffered from maintenance problems due to the low quality of construction.
Housing the homeless is a much tougher problem than putting some people on the moon for a few days
Good thing I wasn't suggesting that.
There's a kind of self-defeating argument I see in some of the comments: since the minimal amount we've invested in public housing has resulted in some crappy housing, it's not worth investing more money in public housing.
That's an all too convenient way to avoid attempting any improvements. Can anyone sincerely and convincingly argue, "We've already tried our best, already made the maximum investment"?
Many locales don't require building permits for mobile structures (like cars and trailers).
I've wondered if someone could buy some parking lots and just park nice mobile homes on them and rent them out. It'd be sneaky way of creating housing.
Houses really do depreciate with age, even if it is less noticeable in the USA than it is in say Japan.
New homes definitely have problems, but they are not going to have the same problems as older homes (e.g. burst pipes because they were never insulated properly).
I've never linked to Google Street View, but I'll try... https://goo.gl/maps/d6DvdC9gmhumQRB17
Of if you look up "860 Betty Meltzer Memorial Hwy, Palo Alto, CA" you'll see what I mean.
You mean near where people want to live or want to work? We have plenty of housing, just not in the boom towns that are growing rapidly.
I walked through Asuncion, Paraguay. People just build shacks and steal power from the lines. It's not the safest or most sanitary but it does the trick.
Right now, people overconsume because they own the underlying property. If they had to pay cash rent for the same property, they would move. And if they didn't then various taxes would be due on that income. Instead they freeride and externalise the cost of the consumption.
Another alternative is a mass, semi local infrastructure program. One of the reason prices and rents are so high in some places is because there are a very limited number of places you can live and access the city centre within 1h. So we should build a tonne of light rail lines around these cities linking empty areas to them. This is how cities are meant to grow, but it requires government involvement beyond the US political model (investments that take more than 1 election cycle to pay off, reductions in property prices, municipal and rural (and state and federal) governments working together. The same is true here in the UK with London.
If you want to block a nearby condo from being built, you have to go to the equivalent of Washington DC and beg your congressman for help. As you might imagine, they don't give a shit, so nothing gets blocked. End result is that you can work downtown as a janitor part time and afford to live in a nice apartment in the suburb 20 minutes away by train.