[nradov]

Public housing failed not because of insufficient funding or support but because a small fraction of residents were sociopaths and criminals. The authorities refused to take decisive action to quickly evict the troublemakers and so they wrecked the projects for everyone. Section 8 vouchers have been far more effective by enabling low-income people to rent housing from private landlords at market rates. There are some abuses but overall it's a better model than public housing.

Starlink satellite cellular service is available pretty much everywhere now.

https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/satellite-phone-service

[asdff]

That is probably an issue with low income housing overall. I don't think slumlord landlords are somehow immune to renting to gang members.

When I talk about spotty coverage I mean, verizon says I have an LTE connection, and yet I get served with dialup tier experience. Not always, but often. This has been the case for the probably 15 years I've had a mobile data plan. I experience this nowhere near anywhere remote, in the heart of large cities even.

[michaelmrose]

Neither public nor private parties are immune to renting from problematic people. There are a few important factors in determining trajectory from normalcy to abnormal

- Friction to evict for cause.

People are less willing to engage in action against tenants when it is difficult or expensive to evict. This is often less about well meaning protections for tenants and surprisingly more about reasonable process in county. If it takes 6 months to get on the docket to get the process started this is going to be more important than what you have to do when you get there.

- Financial cost and immediacy of impact.

Most places lose tenants at end of term and can find at least some new suckers. Turning your place into a shithole may take years to fully show its impact and in a tight housing market it may still be muffled by the sheer number of poor bastards who need somewhere to sleep.

- Incentive structure and distance from decision makers.

If throwing out the bums requires work pain and risk only from the peons who manage the place for the owners and failure to do so only hurts residents and owners then one may find that these enforcement actions never happen. A bureaucracy further increases distance between actors and decision makers.

If you consider these factors you might rightly conclude that a government project is maximally situated to fail at removing bad actors. Friction to evict those in need is going to be higher than almost anywhere else, front line workers are there for long term career trajectory, have little real power nor incentive and nobody but the residents really feels the pain. If you are running a house of last resort your vacancy rate is going to be low even if its a bad place to live.

None of this makes it impossible to run projects correctly it represents increased risk not destiny.

[michaelmrose]

Section 8 in my state is a lottery to get on the list for housing which may or may not happen in a multi year time frame. It's mostly unavailable for the people that need it while some folks who have the ability to work live off it after they went through the expected multi year wait.

[fragmede]

> overall it's a better model than public housing.

I don't know about better, but it's what we've got. The problem is a shortage of housing, and the government building housing solves for that because the public market has been shown to be incompetent at that.

[s1artibartfast]

mostly because the state has made it illegal or costly to build housing. The only reason the state would do better is if they can ignore either costs or their own regulation. e

[AngryData]

Part of the problem is also the margins to support the top heavy capital class (and the restrictions and permits also favor the capital class). The same reason auto manufacturers put more effort into making expensive luxury cars instead of cheap commuter cars.

Why would someone build cheap houses that would net them the same profit in 10 years as building luxury houses that would in 5 years? Especially if the people on top investing the capital only deal with the accounting books and not actual customers and their desires.

[s1artibartfast]

If people could build houses, lots of people would build luxury units until there was no profit in it. Then cheap units would be the most profitable option TO build.

If you only get allowed to build 1 house, of course you will target the best demographic.

You cant lower prices without flooding the market with competing goods.