[firstplacelast]

There are tons of things America could do for the rental and home-ownership market, but we won’t because people will scream that it’s unfair and it will hurt the upper class and existing home owners.

The government could force and pay for construction of massive numbers of condos/townhouses in/around large cities (say 20-40million). Sell them to first time home-owners for extremely cheap (say 200k) with all types of restrictions on it being owner occupied and only allowing the owner to recoup a certain % of appreciation after X numbers of years if sold (say 3% each year lived in).

I’m sure that’s problematic and a team of people smarter than me could come up with a much better system, but there are very tenable solutions with the ability to change laws/policies and a massive pocket-book.

The US used to give away large parcels of land to people just to move out west. So it’s not like there’s not precedence for helping citizens with real estate.

Nothing significant will be done in our lifetimes though, oh well.

[rootusrootus]

> I’m sure that’s problematic and a team of people smarter than me could come up with a much better system

Agree, and disagree. Distortions of the market rarely go as planned, so trying a massive intervention is likely to have a whole bunch of negative side effects. And I don't believe smarter people are more likely to be successful with their own attempts.

Keep it simple. Build more. Drop the zoning restrictions, reimagine the purpose of urban growth boundaries. Supply and demand actually does work.

[unethical_ban]

Build more relatively dense housing.

And to those who may balk: Dense housing doesn't need to be cheap. If you think to yourself "Gosh these walls are thin", that should not be a given in a long-term investment like a multistory complex. High quality, somewhat private housing is possible!

While "any housing" is better than an extreme like homelessness, I align with those who think ever expanding suburbs is a big waste of concrete, infrastructure buildout and promotes the use of needless daily private transport.

I lament (rental) apartments being built all over my city's downtown, but I support increasing the density of living in urban areas.

[HDThoreaun]

Japan style zoning and LVT completely solves the problem. Maybe throw in a vacancy tax in some areas to keep the progressives happy and environmental standards deregulation for conservatives.