alt Hacker NewsSome would say that housing is a right (while acknowledging the need for housing construction and its workers and supplies to be paid for) and that it should be funded somehow, even if the free marker profit becomes negative during certain periods. Like any market manipulation, the question then would be how to intervene to keep housing construction going when construction isn't profitable, while not fomenting corruption in the industry.
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... but your own housing isn't any form of basic human right, its a luxury all around the world and always has been. Now I completely understand folks who come out of uni and see the salaries (sans faangs and generally devs and few other lucky positions), the prices and the emotions of missing out come easily.
But it isn't a right, just because you would like it. Same as I don't have a right to a car at price I would like, just because I live, by my choice, in rural environment close to nature. I desperately need one though for work commute, shopping, taking kids to school etc so thats as non-optional as accommodation to existence of my family. I can either suck up car's actual prices, move whole family so I don't need it or do similar choices in life to tackle that.
But car ain't a right. Same as your own accommodation, of course not a modest small apartment but a house, ideally close to work, amenities, schools, and costing peanuts. Literally what everyone else wants. Or am I incorrect in your expectations? Because if yes, its easy to accept cheap remote small old properties, those aren't expensive for above-average earners at all, anywhere.
Housing where? Is housing for me in Malibu a human right? There's plenty of places to live in Texas for basically nothing.
I'm honestly trying to take this seriously, but I really can't square the problem of location and utility. On of the reasons why West Virginia has such a low homeless rate is just that mobile homes and manufactured housing is pretty much legal in many areas around the state. One of the reasons why California is so expensive is that those types of inexpensive housing options are effectively illegal statewide.