by lanfeust6 | 2025-08-18 17:04:58+00:00
> Housing is less affordable when people have less money to pay for housing.

> I get that slightly lower prices are can cause fewer people to succumb to homelessness. But again, how is someone without money supposed to buy a house - even at a lower price?

Relativity to pricing matters.

Americans are among the richest citizens in the world. Wealth is not zero sum and inequality != "less money" as-in absolutely diminishing. Real wages are growing. Compare with countries with the lowest Gini Coefficient and you won't say they have "more money" than average Americans (that said, GDP-per-Capita is a good target to have).

There are policies and wealth transfer schemes to support those with nil income and less income. These can be expanded, but it's a thing.

What you're proposing through "public housing" is not gifting single family homes either, it's just subsidized rent footed by taxpayers. On the one hand you seem to decry the fact that people rent, but on the other you want to replace it with rent.

> Source?

Some I came across:

17% are chronically homeless, necessitating that 83% aren't - https://www.comicrelief.org/posts/what-are-the-four-types-of...

"Most unhoused individuals experience relatively short-term homelessness (64%)" - worse rates in california - https://calbudgetcenter.org/resources/who-is-experiencing-ho...

This source puts the chronic rate at 30% - https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/united-states-homeless-s...

> Many factors feed in to different housing rates between red and blue cities such as typically wealthier workforces in blue cities.

The key one being that it's easier to build.

> Look at YIMBYism’s adopters.

These areas have hardly embraced it, they're precisely poster-childs for NIMBYism. The war is ongoing and the reforms are a pittance. California and Oregon also start with the worst affordability in the country.

The data is clear that homelessness rates correlate with housing affordability, and the hardest places to build are worse-off: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

> Even Austin’s rent drop hasn’t halted its homelessness growth.

The rents didn't drop that significantly. The city is growing fairly fast it was 4% in 2024.

Increasing supply has to catch up to the demand, the popularity of these cities is high especially as professionals are fleeing NY and SF or LA. Small victories are not enough.

> Right, and they have superior public housing policies for the homeless, tax-financed, providing the kind of effective safety net we need and lack.

Japan's supply of public-operated housing has plummeted since the '60s - https://www.cbl.or.jp/slc/file/english.pdf . It's only like 5% of stock. In the U.S., something like less than 3% of the US population lives in section 8 housing - https://ipropertymanagement.com/research/public-housing-stat... . That is not a huge difference.

They don't spend much on this at all, even low-income earners can afford a place on their own dime. Plus the societal norms and pressures protect against some pitfalls that could lead to chronic homelessness (like addiction).

Social housing has it's place, but it's not the significant mover. What I'm proposing is that housing be made broadly more affordable through sensible policy reform and supplement with public housing as needed; focusing only on social housing is a race to the bottom. It