Quote from: K-Dog on Jul 21, 2023, 11:15 AMIt is a patch job.  Extra money offsets costs the homeless, (I am going to put the term 'unhoused' up my ass sideways.) can't afford because of the ever growing economic divide.

Here in fact is where the real problem lies, because all that would happen if you did hand out an extra $1000/mo to everyone, landlords would simply jack up the rents to reflect the additional cash in the renter's wallets.  As long as there is a shortage of affordable housing, property owners will charge as much as the market will bear.  The end result id price inflation, and the recipients of this money end up no better off than before they got it.  Landlord profits will of course increase though.

UBI programs can't work without price controls also, which is something the rentier class of capitalists will never accept.  Once you do go down this road, you are in a managed economy, like the old Soviet Union.  At least there though everybody did have an apartment, although they were all pretty shit and butt ugly project type housing.  We all know also how well project housing worked out here in the FSoA Inner Cities in the aftermath of LBJs "Great Society" programs, which turned out not so great.

Goobermint may allocate money to build these places, but they never allocate the continuing money necessary to maintain them.  They may look pretty good as architectural models and right before the 1st occupants move in, but after a year or two lights are out in hallways, elevators don't work and playgrounds and common areas are strewn with garbage and used needles.   Middle class critics shake their heads and bloviate about how "those people" don't take pride in their homes and don't maintain them properly.  You think those prideful Condo owners do their own maintenance?  Hell no, they pay a monthly fee to the HOA to do regular maintenance and a waste management company to pick up the trash every day.  A housing project is lucky if the sanitation dept shows up once a week to empty their dumpsters, which regularly begin to overflow.  New lightbulbs have to be requisitioned, and when they arrive promptly get stolen by the hard cases blowing crack pipes on the basketball court.  There's no doorman keeping track of who enters the buildings, andentrance doors locks are broken and not fixed.

Thus the whole affordable housing problem remains a major bear, and as long as these projects exist they are petri dishes for blooming drug addiction, gang activity and the regular domestic violence and drive by shootings we are all too familiar with from TV cop shows.

Do I have an answer for this problem?  Not really, but what wwe are currently doing or not doing DEFINITELY is not working, so almost anything eelse is worth trying.

RE