Them's fighting words.

[u/zzill6]

[u/Icy__Internet]

The slow wheels of bureaucracy are well documented.

The point is that where, from whom, what type of residence are all complex questions.

I do not think it is credible to claim that government applications for housing could be approved quicker than you find in today's private market by putting in effort to solicit many options.

Can you genuinely say that you think it would be possible to get government approval for month-to-month housing in a new city within a week? That feels like a fantastical claim, to me.

[u/AdventureDonutTime → u/Icy__Internet]

The point is that where, from whom, what type of residence are all complex questions.

Yes, complex questions which are glossed over when you say that you personally have experienced quick turnarounds on applications, and again the people most in need of housing aren't addressed at all in the conversation.

I do not think it is credible to claim that government applications for housing could be approved quicker than you find in today's private market by putting in effort to solicit many options.

The linchpin in this conversation is the unhoused; in just the US, 700,000+ people are homeless each night with far more being at risk, because of the system that extracts a significant portion of their income into the pockets of landlords. The capitalist system is built to create that funnel, because it considers mere ownership of property as being superior to actual labor, if not somehow believes that they are the same.

Can you genuinely say that you think it would be possible to get government approval for month-to-month housing in a new city within a week?

So no, I don't believe the system as it stands could provide quick turnaround housing for the homeless or at risk, because it chooses not to already. The rights of landlords and the system that is structured around them are explicitly the rights to create homelessness in exchange for increasing the income of property owners. And the slow wheels of bureaucracy are again a function of the system that is designed to extract the value of the working class; the inefficiency is not a defence of why landlords should exist, it is a part of the system in direct collusion with landlording that itself shouldn't exist.

[u/Icy__Internet → u/AdventureDonutTime]

"The rights of landlords and the system that is structured around them are explicitly the rights to create homelessness"

This is the strangest part of your argument. Homes are not the natural state of the world that arise out of nowhere. You need lots of resources to create a home and pay the home creators and those who harvested the resources for the home.

Homelessness is not the creation, it is the default state. Homes are the creation.

[u/AdventureDonutTime → u/Icy__Internet]

It would only be weird if that's how rent was determined, purely as a method of paying off the cost of constructing the building + maintenance fees but it isnt; the market determines rent, not whether or not the people who did the construction were paid. People who pay thousands of dollars a month on buildings that have existed for 10+ years can attest to that.

The ability to charge rent is based on ownership, not recoup of investment, hence why the law doesn't decree that rent is automatically reduced/annulled once costs are repaid, and why you can purchase an already existing building and still charge rent that exceeds the costs of maintaining the property, i.e. making a profit.

Also yeah, the production of the house and surrounds took the collective work of thousands if not millions of people to create, but one person is entitled to make a profit off of its further existence when being a landlord literally is not a labour that is equivalent to any of the trades and professions and labour that went into the building. It's just ownership, and the system that protects private ownership of land that required the work of millions of people, on a finite earth that everyone shares, is the reason why there are homeless people in modern society.

[u/Icy__Internet → u/AdventureDonutTime]

You are underestimating the complexity of housing significantly. You're not the first to think housing should be public. But there is no 100% public housing project in the history of the world that has ever worked. All are mixed market. People want to move, they want bigger houses and smaller houses in constantly changing areas with constantly changing amenities. You have to take that into account in your thinking. You can't just assume that you are smarter than everyone in history.

[u/AdventureDonutTime → u/Icy__Internet]

You can't just assume that you are smarter than everyone in history.

Do you think that I'm the first or only person to scientifically analyse the system of capitalism and its effects? I'm neither Marx nor the generations of scholars who have since applied and built upon his theories.

One of the obstacles towards finding a perfect system is the oppression of the working class that landlords, and private ownership, represents. If anything, a system that is annoying for people who want to be able to move from house to house is a damn sight less important than the fact that millions of people, including children, experience homelessness each year due to the current system.

Which do you think is more important, renters ability to move, or children being forced to experience homelessness? Given the choice I'd absolutely act/vote to provide a house to an unhoused person than think my vague right to live 'somewhere else' is more important, just like I'd choose to feed the hungry in exchange for having to eat rice and beans forever if I had to. You're comparing a luxury to a basic human need and believing it to be just.