[kingkawn]

They will build affordable housing if the government requires it as part of doing business. In NYC there are affordable housing tax incentives for developers that have resulted in small but meaningful additions to affordable housing. These programs are not at scale to impact the broad populace, but a stronger regulatory and incentive structure is possible.

[lovich]

That's still just a lottery based on who gets their application in first if it's not based on market pricing. If you command "affordable housing" be built and that's all that's available, then the people who would have paid for luxury housing will move into the "affordable housing" and drive up the price because that's all that's available. Additionally this will lower the efficiency of the market and makes less housing available as developers who would have built housing at X price drop out of the market when the price is mandated to be X-Y.

I am all for getting people help to get housing, but everything societies have tried to do to fix housing shortages for lower income people has failed other than building more housing. It's all just trying to paper around the fact that at the end of the day there are more people who want to live in the cities than there are apartments/condos/houses.

If you built like crazy and added 50% more housing in a year to a city, you'll find that suddenly a lot more housing is available

[kingkawn]

The lottery system has income limits to ensure it is for people who need it. The rich can find their own way quite painlessly.

Also market efficiency is not the God that government need worship

[lovich]

A lottery still drops people, it's just based on luck in the lottery and not how much you can pay. If that's what you want, then that's a position to hold. It does not, however, change the fact that there will still be the same number of people unable to get housing

[kingkawn]

No, the number of people unable to get housing will be reduced by the number of people who win the lottery and get housing. Leverage the market or direct government sponsorship or by whatever means people create, if enough housing is built then the lottery starts to make a more noticeable dent in the out of housing population.

[lovich]

>No, the number of people unable to get housing will be reduced by the number of people who win the lottery and get housing

That is the same number of people who currently can get housing by buying it. Until you change either the number of people attempting to move into the area or the number of housing units, any change will just change who loses and wins, not how many people lose or win