[teeray]

Because we’ve allowed it to be an investment—there’s no take-backs now. Entire swaths of the population (including Joe Homeowner) have built their financial picture around this model at this point. To unwind it now would eliminate the greedy investors, but with vast collateral damage of the nest eggs of millions of people who have borrowed against home equity based on a valuation with rental potential priced in.

I’m not saying this is a good thing, but we can’t just wave a wand and make housing-as-investment go away without creating real hardship for people (whose lives we are trying to improve with these measures, running counter to the goal).

[s1artibartfast]

Housing is and always has been an investment. I think you are objecting to the rate of return on that investment and incentives.

Even homesteading a log cabin on free land or building a mud hut is an investment. Houses take significant labor and materials to construct and there is no way around this. Add and land which can either be created nor destroyed and this only becomes more obvious.

[wahnfrieden]

Graeber & Wengrow would like a word

[s1artibartfast]

I looked up the reference, but dont see the relevance.

[wahnfrieden]

dawn of everything or their academic papers expand on historical social freedoms when it came to living under abundance or scarcity, housing and mobility, resource sharing, lack of hierarchical structures even at scale and after discovering agriculture

[s1artibartfast]

I obviously havent read it, but I beleive my point is more general.

Housing is an investment because it represents significant input in material and labor which only returns ulity slowly over time. It doesnt matter if are living in a commune, capitalist society, or alone. That only changes who invests in it.