Imagine a Renters' Utopia. It Might Look Like Vienna.
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Shelter is one of the basic requirements in the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs sense.
Food, water, shelter.
And that's shelter in more than just a "tarp keeping water off my head" sense; how can you accumulate anything if you can't store it safely? If you have to push a cart around will all of your possessions how do you have time to do things like training? If you can't keep a pair of work pants out of the elements how are you going to keep a job?
Plus there is the privacy, comfort, sleep without disturbance thing. Hard to be a productive worker or kind human if you're terrified of getting robbed in your sleep (or worse).
Bloomberg Originals: Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All
About Here: The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis
(indy urban planning-types out of Vancouver, BC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruitt%E2%80%93Igoe#Decline
Decline
By 1958, just four years after the opening of the project, deteriorating conditions were already evident.[32] Elevator breakdowns and vandalism were cited as major problems[33]—Yamasaki later lamented that he "never thought people were that destructive".[34] Ventilation was poor, and the buildings lacked centralized air conditioning despite St. Louis's hot and humid summers.[27] Meanwhile, the St. Louis Housing Authority was in the midst of a decades-long problem with inefficient and costly maintenance of its buildings, partly attributed to the power of labor unions.[35] The stairwells and corridors attracted muggers, a situation exacerbated by the skip-stop elevators.[33] Its location in "a sea of decaying and abandoned buildings" and limited access to shopping and recreation (ground-floor businesses had been eliminated from the design to save money[21]) contributed to its problems.[36] Despite its size, the complex had no public mailbox.[37] The huge, 11-story buildings of the development were reportedly a magnet for criminals and vagrants from the surrounding low-rise slums;[36] a 1959 audit reported that most of the vandalism was done by transients rather than residents,[38] and a 1967 report similarly found that a "relatively large proportion" of crimes were committed by outsiders.[39] Large criminal gangs were not common in the project.[40]
i imagine it is a snowball effect in either direction.
that is, malignant design probably with official neglect from everyone in power quickly starts a downwards spiral, whereas the opposite leads to a well-maintained community that just ends up bumping up against a racist/classist glass ceiling where at least residents still have a chance at a dignified life, including and especially the children. and plenty of in-between.
but, don't know.
...someone made a movie:
Are there any notable success stories?
i think of all the 'slums' that Robert Moses and other folks demolished throughout history. they could have used a little investment instead of disinvestment/neglect, but even as is, they were successes in most folks' views -- including and especially the people that lived in those neighborhoods and buildings -- but Moses and others had the power.
does public housing provide housing to people? yes. does that make it a success? i would say 'yes' -- maybe a qualified yes.
is it still a success if there is crime and no heat and etc.? still maybe a 'yes', since the other option is probably homelessness and jail and near-total loss of dignity, but again, goes back to one's definition of success.
shoot, this lefty-ish video (11 min) says it's currently illegal for the US to build more (federal?) public housing -- tf?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw0KqSNHXqg
but i kind of see 'successful public housing' as 'successful [insert federal program here]' -- if a program was grandfathered in a long time ago, it might be able to stick around for a while, but even then it will continue to be under relentless attack until it is gone -- think Social Security or public education or, as the video points out, public housing.
and creating new 'successful' public programs of any kind today is probably completely off the table -- unless it's really just a facade for grift -- a way to filter a few billion/trillion to private enterprise -- think Department of Homeland Security.
even where there is massive public support for a federal program -- think Medicare for All (free/taxpayer/public-funded health care) -- maybe 70% of the population wants it, depending on which polling firms/questions are asked -- and there is little to no chance of it becoming reality because the US is a low-democracy country.
but change is always possible if the population decides to fight back. i heard an anecdote, i think from 'Poverty, By America' (Matthew Desmond), about a convergence of protests in DC where a group of Maga protesters and a group of Civil Rights protesters happened to see each other and ended up shaking hands in solidarity with each other over either the expensive cost of housing or cost of living or something. that makes sense to me. we're not there yet, but it always seems like a possibility that is lurking around the corner.
https://bookshop.org/p/books/poverty-by-america-matthew-desm...
Fair enough. I haven't researched deeply, but it seems that outside of old seasons of "The Wire" one doesn't hear about or run into massive housing projects.
States (red, blue or purple) have gone the section 8 route, perhaps due to federal money being an attractive force. You also don't hear about cities (whether run by Republicans, Democrats or Independent mayors) constructing large-scale public housing, it's mainly requirements to real estate developers to incorporate "low-income" housing into their high-rise projects.
I'm not suggesting that subsidized housing is the answer, but it is a reality which seems to be working for Vienna (if the article is to be believed).
Almost 70 percent of Americans own their own home[0].
[0]https://www.thezebra.com/resources/research/homeownership-st...
But at what cost? To own a home, but to be grindingly poor in all other respects? To barely be able to make ends meet, to see retirement as a pipe dream, or only achievable in the final few years of life?
The Vienna model looks like paradise. And this, coming from someone who _does_ own a home, and from that, can see opportunities that have been taken from me by stratospheric home valuations and insane levels of rent.
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwake/2023/03/31/us-has-3rd-...
The Baltic states have a high percentage on this list and as a citizen of one of them (and also US citizen) I can contrast them to the US picture as an example.
First, what is a household? If I am 40 and I live in my parents basement of the house they own, that's "100% ownership" vs if I move out on my own and rent, that's only 50% ownership. The US culture for better or worse encourages young people to move out as soon as possible (recently, we talk about people living with their parents longer as a negative economic indicator - but in other countries that's been the case and to a greater degree forever.)
Second, what is your population trend? Latvia as an example has gone through a pretty deep depopulation in recent decades, so obviously pressure on the housing stock (and therefore, the price) is much lower compared to places with population growth like the US.
Third, related, immigration - newcomers to your country are less likely to be established or have access to ancestral homes. US has high immigration and especially of poor folks from South America so of course that's going to drag the rate down. Japan on the other hand has little inward migration + rapid aging that makes it easier to "fit" the population into family owned homes.
Fourth, quality and size of housing. US home-owners invest in relatively better housing stock and build better equity via long term mortgages. A family choses between a home they can buy outright vs a home they wish to have and are happy to finance. It's obviously easier to buy a dilapidated shack outright in rural Latvia than, say, a nice one family in a nice town in the US but that is a choice that people make.
TLDR - I am responding to a comment about the American Dream. It's very possible for both natives and immigrants in the US to have a better life (including access to / ownership of better housing) than would be available to them elsewhere.
I think your assertion are interesting. The first thing that comes to mind was reading about a study on eating disorders and American television — Fijians women with access to American TV very abruptly developed dysmorphia and complementary eating disorders [1]. I think this is interesting in this context because it's programmed self-harm, and it is programmed by the influences of a foreign culture. I would say that it follows, that potential migrants, when exposed to the American dream, are liable to the same inclination towards self-harm programming.
Things like eschewing their cultural heritage, migration, assumption of American cultural motifs. And upon migration, because of the differences in wealth, they - depending on where they came from and what they're made of - are easily exploited. They may also be relatively hardy in the context of American adversity. And that's all besides the erosion of communities.
And that's an interesting point, as the endemic American population and many other "developed" nations are reeling their populations back - I expect due to decline in the expected quality of life. Succinctly: we shuttle people in to scam them.
I can't say what is right or wrong. It's a matter of priorities. As an American, I feel like I'm looking at a socioeconomic hellscape.
Yeah, you can get a nice house if you work your life away as a laborer. Our banks will dole out auto loans, housing loans, and they'll trap you in hundreds of thousands of debt because the money [was] free. And maybe I'm all wrong, but I feel like, were I able, I'd prefer a humble life as a goatherd in Romania as opposed to an American economic unit.
[1]: https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/03/fijian-girls-...
This interpretation appears to significantly misconstrue the article's source data.
> Q: How is homeownership rate calculated?
> A: According to the U.S Census Survey, the homeownership rate is computed by dividing the number of owner-occupied housing units by the number of occupied housing units or households.
That's the rate of homes that are owned, NOT the rate of people who own homes. If I live in a house I own, and you live in a rented apartment shared with 98 other people, this metric would call that a 50% ownership rate (1/2 housing units) instead of the much more sane interpretation of 1% (1/100 people). If my adult children live with me because they can't afford their own homes, this site lumps them in with homeowners because they're part of a "household". People who cannot afford to buy homes very famously often live with roommates, partners, or their parents.
I'm sorry, but that's just not a salient interpretation.
A lien is just that, a lien. It's something that encumbers the sale of the property; nothing more; nothing less.
Yes (nearly) everyone would prefer to own their own home, but it's becoming more and more unaffordable and it's largely to do with rent seeking.