Housing can be affordable or an investment. It can't be both
It's not bad for society if it was used to make building to provide rentable space to industries and business or to provide homes, or quite often both, but it doesn't provide easy money to investors.
Now sitting on land and seeing it appreciate with no hard work from you? That's easy money.
But a basic level of housing is a human right, because it's a prerequisite for maintaining your humanity, ditto for healthcare.
For the gay stuff, like the west?
I get the sentiment but accuracy is important here. It's a real democracy vs counties where voting is a sham.
But yes, it is widely managed by a single party that was setup by a benevolent dictatorship and the current administration generally does a good job and is voted in with strong support.
So agreed, they can do really interesting things because of their time horizons of control combined with willingness to work for the better of the people.
You need socialism to do this efficiently. There isn't room for a profiteer. You need the government to invest (in the for people sense) in allocating land and building housing. Ideally dense housing.
Why? Housing should act as a means to live decently. If my house depreciated to 0 once I'd built it, I wouldn't mind at all.
> You need socialism to do this efficiently
No you don't, you need to heavily tax empty and secondary residences and the issue solves itself in capitalism just fine.
Many of us are taught that heavy taxation is socialism, or at least incompatible with capitalism.