[tripletao]

(1) The usual argument against below-market housing here isn't "screw the poor". It's "this is an ineffective show at a fix for a problem that the market would resolve if we could build to the higher density that current zoning prohibits".

(2) Even if you have only market-rate housing, that doesn't mean the people who can't afford it end up homeless. You can just give them or their landlords money. In the USA, that's Section 8.

Economists generally like Section 8. It gets a bad reputation, because the apartments tend to be shabby; but that's a question of the amount of the subsidy, not the delivery mechanism. For a given total to spend, I'd rather put two people in a run-down $1.5k apartment each than flip a coin, put one of them in a $3k apartment, and leave the other on the street.

[kofejnik]

> I'd rather put two people in a run-down $1.5k apartment each than flip a coin, put one of them in a $3k apartment, and leave the other on the street.

Do you want to get USSR? Because one committee plays God and regulates who lives where. Then some other committee, no doubt well-intentioned, will apply the same logic to groceries. And cars. And salaries. And this is how you become USSR.

[tripletao]

We're discussing this in the context of people who can't afford market-rate apartments. If the government doesn't step in, then some fraction of these people will work harder and strive, and make it on their own. A different fraction will die on the street.

I don't want people dying on the street. I think more permissive zoning laws would solve a lot of our housing affordability crisis, but not all of it. For the rest, I think subsidies for market-rate housing (like Section 8) are the most efficient and transparent solution, and much less USSR-like than what the linked article describes. What do you think?

[lovich]

Ah, I thought you were just saying the market should sort it all out. Yea giving money to people whoever need housing so they can find the best fit for themselves does seem like a better choice than just having a few winners and the rest get nothing.

The real answer is that more housing needs to be built if demand is this high, but for various reasons that seems politically unfeasible for most US cities