[luckylion]

We have that kind of plan in large parts of Europe already. Germany guarantees housing, heat, food etc, but has at some point switched to distributing money instead of vouchers, so individuals have more freedom to decide where/how to spend it.

[ido]

Used to. There is dramatically less public housing today than in the past (a lot of the old stock was sold to private investors) & not nearly enough new stock is being built.

Having a WBS in Berlin is far from ensuring you actually get housing.

[luckylion]

It doesn't rely on public housing, the state will pay the rent for private apartments.

> Having a WBS in Berlin is far from ensuring you actually get housing.

That's true, but that's because of the limit of existing apartments, not because the government doesn't pay for it. Similarly, the government guarantees healthcare, but that doesn't mean that you will always be healthy.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see a change in the housing market (that is: more building projects in general, but primarily more properties + subsidies given to cooperatives), but it's another issue.

[ido]

Fair enough.

Regarding:

> the government guarantees healthcare, but that doesn't mean that you will always be healthy.

It guarantees you will always get treated if you seek such treatment (within reason, basically all actual medical problems will be treated for free here). I had spent 3 weeks in a hospital including numerous tests (MRI, CT, ultrasound) & concluded in brain surgery.

I paid next to nothing & despite nobody being able to guarantee the procedure would be a success I think this is as close as you can reasonably get.

I would be surprised if the same in the US will not have resulted in a hefty bill, even for most people covered under generous employer-backed health insurance.

[luckylion]

I don't know about the US version, it probably depends on the insurance company. My point is just that there's no guarantee of success, only of trying.

If we need 4 million apartments, but only 3.5m physically exist, we can't decree the remaining 500k into existance, they still need to be built. They are currently not built for unrelated reasons (city planning, permits, speculation etc), not because "we" (as a society) don't want them to be built. I don't see that changing anytime soon in the large cities, because the population is generally against higher population density, construction projects and longer commutes. Policies will not change that, unless massive changes in laws take away citizen's ability to protest and stop new development projects.