[jadedhacker]

Imagine if no one paid rent to people that do almost nothing. You'd have hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars in your pocket every month minus some extra taxes. If repairs needed to happen, the state could fix the property because no one, not even people that are bad with money, should live somewhere unsafe. It'd end up saving money in higher educational attainment (lead paint) and health outcomes (pneumonia, cracked stairs, broken elevators, screwed up water etc) as the slumlords are banished.

[pkaye]

But then you will have to pay higher taxes to pay for all this housing and maintenance.

[jadedhacker]

Yes, but how much of the housing price is physical maintenance and how much is "location location location"? With the latter eliminated, I'm guessing the concordant increase in taxes will far from compensate for the fall in the price of a positional good. Also, even if the taxes were equal to the current price, but things got fixed faster than most landlords, that's still a win. Don't forget about how much harder it will be to evict someone and ruin their life when there isn't a profit motive involved. So many benefits.

[burfog]

So, if not by price, how exactly would you allocate the most desirable housing?

The obvious choices look awful: lottery, first-come-first-served (sucks for newcomers), bribes (realistic)...?

[jadedhacker]

How are those choices different from money? The money version is only more liberating if you're rich. First-come-first-serve does suck for newcomers, but do they have a right to displace someone that has lived there forever on a whim? It's not obvious at all. It would make sense to attempt to build enough to keep people moving though.