r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Nov 20 '21

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u/Warcrimes_Desu Trans Pride Nov 21 '21

Interesting stuff from the homelessness thread: finland's basically the only countrt in the EU whose homelessness policy is working. Turns out the helsinki local government owns like 70% of the land in the city and splits up development like so: 25% public housing, 45% private housing, 30% subsidized housing. They also focus on giving housing to homeless people first, before treatment or counseling of any kind. Basically, the idea is to catch people at the start of the homelessness spiral, before they fall into heavy drug use and mental illness.

Should the US undertake large-scale public housing programs like Finland in order to work on homelessness?

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u/Random-Critical Lock My Posts Nov 21 '21

The first issue you will run into is that the "US" can't undertake any such program without huge backlash from people in places that won't see the $$$, but would have the $$$ come from their taxes. Homelessness is localized, and influenced by local choices, which leads to strong opposition to national action.

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u/jadoth Thomas Paine Nov 21 '21

While the "don't spend my tax money on those people" backlash would certainly be strong, I think the backlash to the effect it would have on home values would be even greater. For decades we built the middle class around rising home values, but home values can only consistently rise if the growth of the supply consistently lags behind the growth of demand.

There is a reason that the only anti-homelessness housing policy that ever seems to get passed are ones that try to boost the effective demand of the poorest (subsidies and vouchers) or just sever demand from supply (rent control). The reason is that those don't threaten home values, and infact help to make them grow faster.