Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All

Which of these "affordable" options are you too good for: [LINK] Also recommend checking out this video about Vienna [VIDEO]

i watched a couple youtubes over the past few months on this -- if you supply at least some public housing, it can have an outsized ability to keep rents down: Bloomberg Originals: Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All [VIDEO] About Here: The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis (indy urban planning-types out of Vancouver, BC) [LINK]

Vienna is a great example. [VIDEO] (Youtube: Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All) [LINK] (Youtube: Does Vienna Have the World's Best Council Housing?)

Government can build if private industry will not. If you argue "we can only fix this with the private sector and private investment", welp, we tried that and we're plain ol' fucked at the moment. Vienna is a great example. [VIDEO] (Youtube: Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All) [LINK] (Youtube: Does Vienna Have the World's Best Council Housing?)

Vienna is doing a nice job, building new "old town" areas with 75% affordable units. [Bloomberg] Vienna's Radical Idea? Affordable Housing For All [VIDEO]

> To lower house prices would require heavy deregulation of the housing market There's no actual requirement for deregulation. Austrians made prices affordable and improved housing quality with public intervention, and it worked well[0]. I yet have to see an housing deregulation experiment that worked. .0: [VIDEO]

Yes there are restrictions on supply but you need to look at why for the things you mention. Zoning doesn't happen in a vacuum. It's implemented by politicians. Why? What forces are pushing for that? Is it the NIMBYs? Maybe. But money talks in politics. So what political interests are pushing for restrictive zoning? Why? The real problem here is that housing became financialized (like every aspect of our lives). People see their $300k house go up in value to $600k and think they've made money. But have they? You still need a place to live. If every house that cost $300k now costs $600k, you still only have one house unit of wealth. So what have you really gained? One extension of this is you decide you need to own multiple properties. You need to become a landlord. For many, this is their retirement. But what is being a landlord? It's withholding a basic human need (ie shelter) for profit. it's choosing to let people die on the streets if it makes you money. So this system only really benefits the truly wealthy to accumulate wealth by extracting wealth through rent at the threat of violence. Eviction is violence. Witholding shelter is violence. Now this might be fine if the government provided a baseline for shelter through what is most commonly referred to as "social housing". Americans, in particular, who hear this think "projects" or "ghettoes" (ie Section 8 Housing) but look at a city like Vienna where ~60% (IIRC) of the housing is owned by the government [1]. But we don'

There is always going to be an adversarial relationship between landlords and renters. Make no mistake: that we allow this to happen is state violence. Why? Because we are allowing individuals and corporations to deny housing to people by raising prices to make it unaffordable. We even allow them to collude [1]. The only solution to this that demonstrably works is for the state to provide a significant amount of housing to keep the private secotr honest [2]. Everything else is just propping a system that steals from the poor to give to the already rich. [1]: [LINK] [2]: [VIDEO]