• Coreidan@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    No.

    Do you think the reason there is a housing shortage is because there isn’t enough houses?

    Listen I know that SEEMS logical, but it isn’t in this case.

    The reason for the housing shortage in America isn’t because there isn’t enough houses to go around.

    To understand the housing crisis you have to understand how investments work. Investment and financial institutions are allowed to purchase homes for investment reasons. There is no limit to their greed. They buy out entire neighborhoods and artificially keep surrounding prices high. This props up the rest of the market. It keeps rental prices high and it keeps home purchases high.

    The reason building new homes doesn’t work is because these investment firms will gobble up these homes. They won’t go to the people you want them to go to. This will only make the problem worse.

    If you want affordable housing you need to go after the investment firms. Take away their ability to buy homes for the sake of “investing”. They are single handedly the reason for the insane home prices and nothing will change as long as they are allowed to sit on empty homes for eternity.

    Let me come at you in a slightly different angle. There is a massive amount of empty homes in the USA. These empty homes are owned by the investment firms, not to sell or rent out, but to keep prices artificially high. The point is the homes are there. We don’t need more. We just need to pry them out of the hands of the monopolies. More empty homes won’t solve this problem. Removing investments from this will solve the problem.

    • Szyler@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      You both agree on the problem, it’s just big and encompasses all both of you said. Using the term “unhoused people” just shifts the narrative to “we just need to put them in houses”, be that new government funded housing projects, or changing regulations to dissalow empty houses, or stopping short term rental from eating central houses in cities.