[bradleyjg]

Politicians would like to help corporate donors, all other things being equal. But that imperative for any particular donor is no where near as strong as the need to acquiesce to desires of a large majority of their most engaged constituents (i.e. homeowners). The times when politicians are most strongly in favor of a particular company/industry is when they have a lot of jobs in the district. Campaign donations are a means to an end. Pissing off large numbers of voters directly contradicts that end.

[kcplate]

> Pissing off large numbers of voters directly contradicts that end.

Pissing off large numbers of voters is a daily occurrence by virtually every politician in the US. Politicians don’t care about that. They only care about pissing off certain voters and certain political leaders.

[1letterunixname]

Perhaps. The issue is how much power they can organize into impact. If you piss off a million people with psychosis and intense depression, it might be survivable compared to angering thousands of rich Christian cattle ranchers who call their lobbyists to fine-tune the political hacks in office to their liking. It's not impossible to do it without means, it's more difficult to play the game as an outsider from below rather than work connections through channels from at or above.

[bradleyjg]

Homeowners are in the category of “certain voters” hence the uniform efforts of all level of government to try to make sure prices go up and up.

[kcplate]

Yes, which is a good thing. Why not create wealth that the citizenry can take advantage of?

Politicians in your world would never see any community voter permanence, because if everyone is a resident, everyone is effectively a transient voter to them. You would only need to kowtow and keep them happy for the 6 months prior to the election.

The communities have no anchors…except for the corporations that own all the property. They would have all the power and that sounds horrible to me.

[bradleyjg]

It’s a good thing if you are a homeowner. But homeownership is further and further away from the have-nots. It’s getting to the point where generational wealth is needed to come up with a down payment in a lot of regions. And there’s no way to square the circle—we can’t have affordable and a great investment that goes up all the time.

[kcplate]

I just don’t see it. Right now we are in a moment of perhaps “discouraged” buyers, because interest rates are rising and home values have increased in some areas. But I have watched builders and agents in my area sell homes within a day of homes becoming available over the last few years. People are buying homes, and it’s not just the wealthy, it’s the middle class.

In the US FHA loans are available with relatively low 3.5% down payments even with mid-level credit. The problem driving affordability for some people is excessive debt to income ratios much more than housing prices.

If you can save $10k, and are not saddled with excessive debt you can afford homes in most places in the US.