[refurb]

Why? The level of graft would be breathtaking. No doubt some major builders would get preference for cost plus budgets on inflated numbers. Politicians would steer money to their supporters.

They’d like be building at 1.5 to 2 times what private does.

[mothballed]

Because government bureaucrats need to be let in on the take to make it worth their time. Graft is how that gets done. Otherwise they usually just stonewall housing.

Paying $1 to government shills and corrupt capitalists for every $1 spent on actual housing is still a hell of a deal compared to not being able to build anything, which is the status quo in many locked up parcels. A moral standoff and resting on your principles of not funding graft sounds nice, but doesn't accomplish anything.

[wallst07]

>Paying $1 to government shills and corrupt capitalists for every $1

And then some forensic accounting happens and a paper is published citing that government built homes cost twice as much as privately built, and the program stops.

[mothballed]

It doesn't seem to stop all the other graft-ridden wasteful parts of government.

Personally I despise the idea of public housing, but once something is there, it becomes easier to develop. There has to be some way of enticing all the factions stopping housing with productive greed rather than anti-productive greed. If public built housing gets something where there was nothing until the first paper gets published or whatever, maybe it's worth doing a deal with the devil.