My understanding is that one of the feature's of Singapore's public housing is that there is a range of qualities from basic to luxury. It seems to me that could help make such a program more palatable.
The problem is that the investors who fund political campaigns and media oligarchs hate HATE HATE public housing, because it reduces the value of their property investments. Extra supply reduces the price of existing supply.
In order to win elections, you almost need those investors on your side more. The public will be swayed one way or another by their media and if you don't have the campaign financing they probably won't even hear about your exciting campaign platform to build lots of housing in the first place - you'll get cut out in an early race.
…because those few elite investors outnumber the voting public at the voting booth?
This claim doesn’t make any sense. It’s weird conspiratorial thinking.
EDIT: Yes, people. I’m familiar with Fox News and the concept of campaign donations. However, Fox News’ prime time viewership is around 0.5% of the US population and the average size of presidential campaign contributions is well under $100.
Claiming that elections are decided by a shadowy cabal of elite investors who trick unwitting voters into voting against their self interests is the election equivalent of claiming anyone who disagrees with you online is a bot or a shill.
This is why other countries legally cap election campaign spending.
as an Iowan I hate it as so many caucus only for the strawpoll.
Those elite investors can run large scale propaganda campaigns via the media that they own to sway voters from candidate A to candidate B.
Their preference is to cut candidate C (the kind that likes stuff like public housing, single payer healthcare, reducing military spending) out of the political system at a low level and let voters fight over A and B at the highest levels (e.g. president) safe in the knowledge that A and B both have billionaire best interests at heart and that voters really feel like they're getting a choice.
Which, of course, they are not: https://www.princeton.edu/~davidlee/wp/voterspolicies.pdf
I guess it is much easier to just blame 'someone else', rather than solve the problem?
"Basically, average citizens only get what they want if economic elites or interests groups also want it."
https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...
I'm not sure that's largely true. I suspect that many property-owning voters are okay with the concept of public housing, but are less ken on the actuality that building public housing increases the supply of housing which reduces the value of their property.
There's also the weird conservative thinking that public housing provision somehow amounts to people getting "something for nothing".
With renting, you never get anything. You just are allowed to live there while you pay.
Isn't this true though? You tax away peoples' purchasing power to give away free goods/services to a subset of the population excluding those that paid for it.
Why not instead make a private company that provides free housing conditional on those living there working X hours in a factory producing widgets? So long as both parties agree, that would be a better solution as it is pareto optimal.
It is by definition rivalous and excludable. Why does Joe get the free house on the beach but my free house is in the desert? Not at all fair!
But what is fair? Voluntary transactions with private property.
While this is obviously correct, you completely ignored that all owners of housing have the same incentives. "All homeowners" is a much more consequential demographic, especially in local elections.
More than that, these people aren't just against public housing, they are against any housing being built. It's so tiresome when people selectively ignore basic facts in order to pin the blame on their favourite scapegoats.
So pretty much anyone who owns property?
It's not like homeowners are fighting to have new apartments built in their neighborhood. It's very well known that even the most bleeding heart liberal areas still have insane NIMBY problems.
The blunt truth is that everyone who invested in a home in popular markets (read: a regular everyday metro homeowner) is going to have to take a big hit on the largest investment most of them will ever make in their life. This intrinsically makes it very unpopular on the whole. It's not some shadowy organization pulling strings behind the scenes. It's just about everyone who pays a mortgage and votes.
Just read a housing expansion approval measure through a homeowners eyes:
"Do you approve a measure to lower your home's sale price by 10-20% in order to allow people who earn less than you to move into the area? To grow classroom sizes and increase traffic?"
It's like asking people to volunteer to have needles stuck in their eyes. What is the upside for them?
For another, it ignores potential positive effects. If new building improves local economic conditions, then your home's price (still speculatively, mind you) could equally as well be increased. (With relaxed zoning you might hit the lottery, and find that your lot is worth building an apartment on, and never have to work again!) Focusing entirely on potential negatives is unfair argumentation.
Even apart from price, this approach places emphasis on (potentially) negative second-order ("traffic"), while ignoring (potential) positive second-order effects. In my case I'd straight up trade a 20% decrease in my homes sale price in twenty years (I'd still come out $$ ahead) for twenty years of living near a re-vitalised (instead of currently derelict) commercial strip.
I don't think it'd work out that way: I think living walking distance from, say, a nice coffee shop, pub, grocery store, and cinema (those buildings already exist, by the way, they just need to re-open, which can only happen if more people are nearby) would increase my home's eventual value. That's speculation, too, but equally worthy of consideration as the negative cases.