- A guaranteed-basic-income program in Austin gave people $1,000 a month for a year.
- Most of the participants spent the no-strings-attached cash on housing, a study found.
- Participants who said they could afford a balanced meal also increased by 17%.
A guaranteed-basic-income plan in one of Texas’ largest cities reduced rates of housing insecurity. But some Texas lawmakers are not happy.
Austin was the first city in Texas to launch a tax-payer-funded guaranteed-income program when the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot kicked off in May 2022. The program served 135 low-income families, each receiving $1,000 monthly. Funding for 85 families came from the City of Austin, while philanthropic donations funded the other 50.
The program was billed as a means to boost people out of poverty and help them afford housing. “We know that if we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families, it leads to better outcomes,” the city says on its website. “It leads to better jobs, increased savings, food security, housing security.”
While the program ended in August 2023, a new study from the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank, found that the city’s program did, in fact, help its participants pay for housing and food. On average, program participants reported spending more than half of the cash they received on housing, the report said.
Wouldn’t this lead you to postulate that the housing crisis in America is real and out of control when the money you give them goes right into housing?
Is this how they intend to fleece America? Give people a guaranteed income paid for by their tax dollars, so it can go right into government subsidized housing, owned and run by a shadow company that the politicians and their buddies just happen to be on the board of?
Honestly if it means guaranteed housing(which it doesn’t) then I’d be down with that. It’s better than getting fleeced with no house.
Have you ever been inside of current government funded housing?
No, but I have to imagine it’s superior to a cardboard box or a bridge
It’s fine, but it depends on upkeep. Just like any other housing. It was a good idea, but needs funding (like roads, bridges, etc.).
Plenty of people live in unmaintained apartments owned by slumlords, but nobody’s saying “look at how bad private housing is!” Few people (dummies) say “look how bad public roads are!” and advocate private toll roads and bridges.
We have all the money we need to fund such projects, provided we stop running eight wars at once abroad and then paying for other countries’ wars too.
You are thinking too small and distracting from the main point here. From a strictly economic standpoint, we have enough money to do all these things.
Uh yeah actually. It’s not a luxury apartment but it’s not bad either.
You must not live in Chicago.
@BobGnarley @Maggoty
Have you ever been without housing? I’m assuming not or you wouldn’t have made that argument.Being bad in one place doesn’t mean it’s bad everywhere. I’m sorry you had a bad experience but elsewhere the government functions as a renter of last resort with properties all over the place. What’s bad is the high rise projects that were made to corral poor minorities and cut them off from the rest of society.
Congratulations, you managed to make people having a place to live sound not just bad, but sinister.
“Kapitalet höjer hyrorna, och Staten bostadsbidragen.”
The Swedes were calling out this game back in 1972.
Of course, our solution was to just stop subsidizing housing altogether and screw over poor people.
Who’s tax dollars, it has to be a wealth transfer or the scheme won’t work.
Texas doesn’t have an income tax but it has incredibly high property taxes. In a very real way, this program is literally funded by taxing the super wealthy, including foreign investors. If you are a foreign national that owns a condo in one of the downtown highrises, you still pay property taxes.
Source: Former Austinite.
Whoa there, we already know the future of subsidized housing is corporate towns. Why give it to the people when you can just give it to their rich boss instead?
I feel guaranteed income amount should be based on government contracted rates for places providing something akin to a single occupancy dorm room. so food and shelter in a basic way is covered.
I had no idea there were so many people who were against a UBI on Lemmy. I’m honestly surprised.
There’s a lot of effort to deny any previous UBI experiment as having even been done. Heck the top reply to your comment here denies this is even a UBI experiment. The line is usually the only way to do the experiment is to do it and that’s the Socialisms so we can’t ever know, sorry poors.
Well, since the “U” in UBI stands for “universal”, and since the group of people who received this money were selected because they were very poor, then this is not a UBI experiment. This is just a welfare program.
Still could be considered an experiment just with a control factor being “the poors”
I’ve been surprised and super disappointed by a lot of the views I’ve been seeing in Lemmy comments lately. Anti homeless, judging addiction, fairly socially conservative, buying into the whole retail theft narrative, and the worst has been the misogyny framed as “realism” or some shit.
I don’t know, it’s not for me.
I’ve always found people have the most shit opinions if it’s a post popular on Lemmy.world
I’m new to lemmy overall are there some places with better political discourse on here?
I’ve been lazy on Lemmy and just stopped searching for new lemmyverses after I hopped off reddit. But I really doubt you’re gonna find good political discourse on the Internet. I’m really disappointed everywhere I turn and I’d rather participate in real life action than argue during the few free hours I have.
What is the retail theft narrative ?
The “narrative” is that theft hurts stores and stealing from stores in low-income areas causes them to close which leads to food deserts
Just pay attention to the instances the comments come from. This account is federated with .world and I am always seeing the most awful takes on here and it seems like most of the time it comes from users there.
I have another account not federated with .world, but it is with pretty much everything else. There’s fewer comments (rarely over 100) but it’s usually actual discussion and not revolving around anti-humanitarian practices.
It’s not a guarantee, but it seems very very high.
It makes sense…I think the FOSS/anti-big tech world brings together a weird mix of far-left socialists and also libertarian types (hence the anti UBI sentiment)
IDK, I’m a leftist, and am skeptical about UBI because it’s more of a free-market approach to solving a problems, rather than just directly solving problems. I.e. the government could just build more and better homeless housing, and expand section 8 to cover more of the cost and more people. I’m a bit afraid UBI would be used as an excuse to cut social programs, in a similar way that school vouchers are used to cut spending on education and leave families paying for what the vouchers don’t cover.
Bingo. A UBI is attractive because the people that keep the economy rolling are nearly completely unable to access what the economy produces. Why are we trying to keep this broken mess limping along with a UBI? The economy is designed to produce poverty and a UBI will do very little to change that fact.
This isn’t UBI though. It’s welfare. It just proves that people will use welfare support responsibly. A real test of UBI would be to give everyone in a community, not just a small pool of low income families the same amount (among other things). That ain’t going to happen.
Fine, then people here are anti-welfare. Either way, it’s a surprisingly conservative attitude.
I agree but some of the arguments here have a hint of truth in them such as the whole landlord thing. I think a lot of folk are wary of anything that sounds UBI related because it boils everything down to ‘one simple fix’. Programs like this work, but they’re only one piece in the puzzle such as taking housing off the market, higher taxes on the wealthy etc. I know you know this stuff. The UBI crowd takes theses studies and uses them to say ‘UBI works’ or ‘UBI can work’ even though it’s not UBI.
The UBI crowd takes theses studies and uses them to say ‘UBI works’ or ‘UBI can work’ even though it’s not UBI.
That’s a bit disengenuous. Of course people acknowledge that economic policy is difficult to experiment with.
People serious about UBI talk about phasing it in over a long period of time, in lieu of “experiments”. For example in Australia we already have refundable tax rebates (I’m sure everyone has these I just don’t know what they’re called), all you’d have to do would be to introduce a $1,000 refundable tax rebate and increase that by $1,000 each year until you get to a reasonable UBI. If, along the way the data showed deleterious effects then you could correct or discontinue.
It’s been done at a town level before, with the same results
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map
I’d prefer decommodification of housing but UBI is probably a step in the right direction.
You’re surprised that people who are far enough to the right to support genocide would oppose UBI?
It not that people are against everyone having the basics, it is that it mathematically makes no sense. As soon as you give everyone this money, not just a small trial you’ll see that it is immediately eaten in inflation, rent etc.
Much better is to make the first $1000 dollars not necessary. Free staple foods, free healthcare, free low tier usage on utilities, free local public transport.
Giving people $1000 means they can spend it specifically on the things they need. They might need to pay off a healthcare debt with that $1000 far more than they need low tier usage on their utilities.
I think a better idea that universal basic income is universal basic services. Give everyone equal access to healthcare, food, housing, etc. Not jobs, though. Giving everyone a job leads to creating jobs that don’t need to exist just to make sure everyone has work. The USSR had guaranteed employment and that got to where you’d have to go through three different clerks at the supermarket to buy a pound of meat. Also, the State decided what was and wasn’t “work”. Oh, you’re a painter? You think the State will pay you to paint? That’s nice. Pick up that shovel and paint a ditch in the dirt. Oh, you are poet? I have a poem for you, comrade!
Roses are red, violets are blue, load those crates into that truck, or it’s the gulag for you!
I’ve been a proponent for UBI for a long time however after reading your comments I agree with you.
In reality, I’ve advocated for UBI because I feel the govt should provide these basic services. However in reality UBI does just seem like a means to an end.
We really should just redefine what “utilities” are (including internet, phone, public transit tickets, etc) and then provide basic access to utilities for free.
That would require an entire reworking of our economic system, whereas giving everyone $1000 a month would not.
But there’s no difference between giving someone $1000 for food and providing that food for free.
Either way the food is paid for by someone, whether the government hands over the check and then passes out the food, adding a layer of inefficiency, or the government hands out the check and the people buy the food, offering freedom of choice.
I feel somewhat against it simply because I don’t think it’s necessary once you make a certain point of money. Do people making six figures really need an extra 10% or less on top of that?
Means testing has been shown to cost significantly more. That’s why I’m a fan of universal programs and not welfare programs (like the one in this study).
I would argue someone making six figures getting 10% more will have a big impact still. Give everyone the benefit, even billionaires. Using your argument, the billionaire won’t care about getting an extra $1,000 - that’s nothing to them. But no one feels “cheated” because you arbitrarily put the limit, and you know no one else is cheating the system because there is no system to cheat!
Paying for universal programs would require changing our tax structure, which I’m also supportive of.
That’s a good point. I hadn’t considered about testing costs and people feeling cheated and people actually cheating.
I didn’t feel strongly against it and I’m willing to change my mind, and you brought up some good points.
It does sound like a good idea tbh.
For an anecdotal example, when I was in my 20s I worked with an old lady at a fish market who had to strictly regulate the number of hours she worked in a year because she couldn’t afford to make above a certain amount of money. If she went into the next higher tax bracket, she would’ve been kicked off her social security, and regardless of how many hours she worked, wouldn’t be able to make up for the lost money.
Another interesting benefit I’ve heard of from a similar study that gave everybody above a certain age in a town $1,000 a month, but was focused on the impact to the labor pool, was that almost everybody continued to work except for in two categories: pregnant women and high-school students. This coincided with an increase in the average grades of high-school students, the number of kids who graduated, and the number of kids who continued on to college. The theory was that the kids who would normally have to work to help put food on the table were instead able to focus on their studies.
No, they don’t, but I think the idea is that the process of factually verifying someone’s actual income isn’t worth the waste of just giving it to them anyway.
And if everyone got this, rents would mysteriously increase by $1000 …
Fuck these landlords.
For profit housing and for profit healthcare are abominations.
Don’t forget for-profit prisons.
This trope is dumb and you should feel bad for repeating it. It shows a truly shocking lack of insight into even the most basic middle-school-level economic principles.
In germany we had a 10k€ bonus for all buyers of an electric car. After the bonus ended, all the cars suddenly cost 7k-10k less in about 2 months.
I would argue that this is an example of how the reduction of consumer demand caused companies to lower their prices, unless there was an increase of 7k-10k when the program started as well.
So a subsidy on a specific product category affected prices on that category? That doesn’t prove anything about UBI. UBI isn’t a subsidy on rent—or a subsidy at all—so your example is irrelevant.
Rents are being driven up by illegal collaboration anyways. This just like the inflation argument against minimum wage increases. Prices going up is not an argument against giving people more money. Prices will go up anyways.
Or you could just have prices not go up, and also give people value through strong nationalized programs i.e. public healthcare, public transport, nationalized housing…
Price controls have uhh not gone well historically. Usually they lead to an explosion in the black market and a supply shortage in the normal market. Things stop falling off of trucks because the entire truck is gone. So until we figure out a better way of transferring goods, we’re stuck with money and prices that can be manipulated.
But I agree with the rest of that. Strong government social supports are a great way to rein in the private markets. Having trouble with housing availability? What if Housing and Urban Development (HUD) buys land, builds something, and rents the units at cost? Why is that not an option? Why isn’t there an Online USA University run by Department of Education? Is an opt in government health plan really that scary?
Can we not have one nice thing?
I was not talking about price controls. I don’t know of the USA but government buybacks of housing stock have helped relieve some of the pressure in Europe as well as purpose built high quality housing like in Vienna.
Ah yes that would be a good thing to do. In the US though people think the government can’t be allowed to compete with private business. So we’ll never have anything like that
Unfortunately :/
EXACTLY! Which is why my Rent has NOT gone in up YEARS!
We all know that if this was a permanent part of the program, every revolving bill (mortgage, utilties, etc.) would all of a sudden rise to get a piece of that extra income. But because this was a temporary program, it probably only increased by the normal rate. So people mostly got a chance to use it without businesses getting greedier.
To all the people saying “hur dur it’s just giving money to landlords”:
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No it’s not. People who would not have had housing were able to have it. If you think that’s a bad thing because some landlords got paid in the process, you seriously need to have your moral compass checked.
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To those explicitly linking this to the idea (which is often cited but never backed up with evidence) that landlords (and mysteriously no other segment of the economy) will medically capture 110% of the value of any possible UBI program: This is not the evidence you’ve been lacking. The money wasn’t given to everyone as it would be in a universal basic income program. It was given to people who were struggling. Of fucking course people who were homeless or near homeless spent the money on rent. The fact that people who become able to afford housing mostly choose to spend their money on housing just tells you how much people value having a place to live. It says nothing about how money would flow in a full scale system.
If it proofs anything its that when the poor are given free money people prioritize having a stable, healthy lifestyle.
Should be pretty standard if they want a society worth of peoples contributions.
Has your rent gone up, ever? Thats what’s gonna happen with a UBI. Your landleech thinks you can pay more, so he can charge more.
Meanwhile government (nationalized) housing programs actually work and are cost efficient.
Has your rent gone up, ever? Thats what’s gonna happen with a UBI.
You haven’t said anything to establish a connection between your question and your statement. You’re using the structure of a rational argument but your only evidence is “trust me bro”. Fuck that and fuck you for trying to use sophistry.
My evidence is supply and demand, if it works, then that is what will happen with UBI. Market based solutions do not work for problems inherent to capitalism itself.
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The sad thing is that high cost of housing is entirely unnecessary exploitation anyway. Just pass a law that transfers all house and land ownership into collective hands and erases all dept based on houses. I bet the vast majority of people would vote for it lol.
Yeah, surely nothing could go wrong with that plan.
Ever been to public housing? There’s a reason it’s usually shitty, and that’s because the people who live there don’t own it, so they have no reason to care for it because they could be moved somewhere else at any time.
The same is true of a lot of average apartment buildings, especially college housing, but they are rigourously maintained by staff.
Public housing in the US is rarely funded enough or maintained properly. It’s almost a cliche in the US, municipalities purposely underfund public programs so they fail, to encourage privatization.
This might sound surprising, but that’s because people are paying for it, and there are consequences for trashing the place (forfeiting deposit etc.)
I’m talking about state owned public housing, which is almost always a catastrophe. And that’s not just because of lack of funding, but because the people who live there have no sense of ownership, and suffer little to no consequences if they don’t keep it in shape.
State owned public housing has worked all around the world. Council houses in the UK for example looked good and helped lots of people get houses, and didn’t really get associated with poor people until Thatcher and her shitty policies. In Finland, like a third of their housing is public housing and they’ve managed to essentially eliminate homelessness this way.
I mean… it’s probably better than homeless, especially in cold climates, I’ll give you that. But it’s not great, neither here nor in Europe.
Having a sense of ownership is an important factor in motivating people to take care of their place of residence. Plenty of renters trash their apartments too.
And plenty of home owning people trash their homes, too. I think it’s just how some people are with their shelter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Check out the show Hoarders, for example.
Meanwhile, plenty of renters take care of their place because it’s where they live. I take care of my rented apartment more than my fucking landlord does, and he supposedly owns it. It’s supposed to be his only job to call people to fix things when I bring it up or point out an issue while it’s still small, yet it still is a coin toss whether someone will show up or not. I don’t think the categories are so easily placed.
Yes, and I’m sure not all people who live in public housing trash their apartments, but it seems to be more common there than with renters, and more common with renters than with homeowners. And it seems to me that perhaps it’s a matter of appreciation — the less you have to work for something, the less you tend to appreciate having it.
For instance, a lot of people only start appreciating being in good health once they’ve gone and ruined it, they don’t start exercising until they’re already overweight, they don’t appreciate having a job until they’re unemployed, etc.
Please note that this is NOT an argument against housing homeless people — it’s only an argument against the idea that some sort of collective action would somehow be able to do the most justice to the most people. That is rarely, if ever, the case. If history shows anything, it’s that the larger the collective action, the more injustice it tends to cause, regardless of intention.
Like others said, specific examples of failures are “anecdotal” and you’d need to look at this scientifically and account for variables. Propaganda and neoliberal ideology makes this very difficult for the US.
Well, in that case, assuming that collectivizing housing will solve the issue is just as erroneous as assuming it won’t, isn’t it.
Not exactly. Saying something cannot work can be disproven by showing a single example of it working. There are plenty.
What I am trying to say is that housing should not be run for the sole pursuit of profit. People should own their own house, should own and manage an apartment block collectively, or have institutions that “own” and manage housing not for profit but for social and global benefit. But Individuals or corporations shouldn’t be allowed to own other peoples houses for profit. Or land for that matter. At least not as “capital”.
So you can “own” your own house and keep it for your children but you’re more like a steward, you can’t rent it out or own the housing of lots of people. It would cease to become a commodity and be much cheaper then.
That’s very radical and faces many potential problems but you can’t say it’s erroneous proposition. What you’d need are scientific studies that compare different models in different countries and account for all the variables including political corruption to sabotage public housing. And what benefits can be shown.
I don’t propose state socialism because that kind of total concentration of all economic power was shown to be very corrupt. But we need better models because right now wealth inequality is so vast than most housing is being bought off and concentrated for the 0.1% - which is very similar to state socialism too!
Saying something cannot work can be disproven by showing a single example of it working.
But something working in a single instance does not automatically prove it will work in all instances (see: Prisoner’s Dilemma, Efficient Market Paradox)
Yes, collectivized housing CAN work. Private housing cooperatives, for instance (which is what you seem to be describing) DO exist and are a decent alternative for sustainable homeownership. They probably won’t solve the homeless crisis, however.
My point was/is not to argue and collectivized approaches to housing in principle, but only against the idea that there exists some sort of “one size fits all” approach that will do everyone justice. That is simply not the case, regardless of how much some people want it to be true.
Well any discussion about this is good because right now the acceptable ideology and mainstream discussion about this is overwhelmingly one sided. There is no resistance to insane wealth concentration.
I have the feeling that UBI is doomed to fail if the basic necessities of live will continue to be owned and run for profit. Give people $1000 bucks more and the prices will increase because “they” own and control everything.
So maybe there should be two economies: One socialist for the necessities to live a prosperous life (not luxurious or consumerist) and one for all the rest. The first one should be sustainable and some kind of circular economy where everything is build to last and be repaired and recycled, the other is free market made for competition to innovate and create new products and services.
Oh yeah, nothing wrong with a good discussion. Gotta look at the problem from all angles before deciding what is to be done about it, otherwise you often end up making things worse.
As far as that second economy goes… you kinda just have to build that yourself by making IRL friendships with people you can trust to reciprocate.
Who’s collective hands?
So the money went straight to the pocket of landlords. Cool.
You can’t give ordinary people money and not increase taxes on the rich. Otherwise it just becomes a wealth transfer from the state to rich people.
Well, at least some people who needed it got housing along the way.
I’d rather transfer it to them indirectly like this than directly like we’ve been doing…
I prefer to do things right. I’m not against giving people money directly. But after historic tax cuts, it does seem like the government is just rubbing in our faces that our future is to become serfs in a techno-feudal nightmare.
There isn’t really a “correct” way to distribute wealth though. Just different trade offs. At least in a UBI system the poor get to touch it first. It allows for nice things like heating in the winter.
Ugh, we’re not heading for serfdom, that would suppose they still need workers tied to the land or factory in the future. Once a few more breakthroughs happen (It’ll be 10 years away until suddenly it happens 50 years from now) Automation will make even their normal support staff extraneous. At that point they might keep some security around, and maybe some slaves as a statement. Everyone else just gets cut off. Oh it will sound reasonable and it’ll take a couple decades once it really gets going but that’s where Automation is heading if we let the wealthy elite “own” it. They’ll make excuses about lazy poor people and how they can’t keep people on as charity and they can’t keep making food that people can’t afford to buy… There’s absolutely nothing in history that makes me think they wouldn’t just remove the majority of humans from the planet if they could get away with it. They’ve proven time and again they don’t value people as humans. Just as little labor widgets they can fiddle with.
I’d disagree that there isn’t a “correct” way to do it. Basically if the money stays with working class people, it’s good. If it just is absorbed by the richest people, it’s bad.
I didn’t say we were moving towards serfdom per se, probably only for a small amount of time. But we are surely moving towards techno-feudalism. Where rent-seeking is the primary form of wealth extraction, moving from profits being the primary one.
In a good economy money should circulate though. What you’re thinking of is the wealth and standard of living it leaves behind. Giving money to rich people means it does nothing but sit in their bank accounts or the stock market. Poor people have things they need to buy so the money will circulate making the real economy work better.
So the money went straight to the pocket of landlords. Cool
Ya screw them for not wanting to be out on the street! /s
Nice one bro
What… how do you think I’m blaming the individuals who got the cash? I would do the same if I were them, I don’t have a choice other than spending all my money on necessities. But isn’t that fucked? There will be less and less jobs, and the state will just keep giving measly amounts of money to us until we all become serfs. Working a month a year for the privilege of earning enough from the state for subsistence. While the rich become richer and richer until we are separate species and AI and robots advance far enough they REALLY don’t need us. Then what?
Yep let’s give it straight to the rich, just like the Dead Kennedys said.
Efficiency and progress is ours once more Now that we have the neutron bomb It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done Away with excess enemy But no less value to property No sense in war but perfect sense at home
Edit someone doesn’t like the Dead Kennedys. Which is what they are here for.
That’s the whole economy. They used to call them “Haves” and “Have-Nots” because it’s much more passive and absolving than the more accurate “Takers” and “Take-nots”.
It’s a GOOD thing this ended! If they enacted this NATIONWIDE my Rent might Increase! Because it OBVIOUSLY hasn’t increased at ALL since I moved in thanks to not having a UBI!
The study didn’t give us the answer we wanted so we burned the results and cut social programs some more.
Didn’t this basically happen like 10-15 years ago in Canada? I remember hearing about a similar study being shut down and the records sealed when the new conservative administration at the time came into power.
It’s always “this small test just wouldn’t work on a larger scale, so let’s never try at all.”
You might be thinking of this one
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontario_Basic_Income_Pilot_Project
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Denver seems to be leading America with a lot of these good things. Upfront labor wage policies, marijuana, this. Looking at those mountains is also a plus.
Lots of progress towards helping folks. That Progressive politics in action - we will take your hungry, your tired, your sick.
State Sen. Paul Bettencourt sent a letter to the state’s attorney general asking him to declare a new program in Houston as unconstitutional.
Of course they call it unconstitutional. It actually helps people and the constitution says nothing about helping people. /s
When people can afford houses, they stop being homeless… Amazing
When will humans learn to attack the problem and not the victim of the problem?
Let’s find out if they can continue it without other states funding their existence.
*gestures to Rafael theodore Cruz at the airport
Texas didn’t fund shit, Austin did. The government of Texas is actively hostile to the city of Austin.
Popular opinion is that if you give people free money they will use it on what enriches their lives.
Economists would probably just point out the fact that whenever you subsidize something the thing you’re trying to make easier is suddenly even more expensive to the point where there’s hardly a discount if one even exists.
Look at the cash for clunkers program. At the end of that car dealerships were raking in huge profits.
In this case if you give someone a thousand bucks a month, odds are landlords will pocket the majority of that, because housing is the biggest cost for everybody who is not already an owner. If everyone has 1000/mo more, they can suddenly afford 1000/more on housing. This may make minimal impact in areas with extremely high COL, but all the associated suburbs, rough parts of town, college areas… yeah those rents are gonna go way up.
example: 4BR apartment? Oh… I guess that’s another +$3500/mo… after all all four of you are getting that money for free. New price: $7000/mo. It’s only 1750/mo, or 750 per person per month because the government (our tax dollars) is paying that poor, poor landlord. How ever would they survive elsewise?
Look at the cash for clunkers program. At the end of that car dealerships were raking in huge profits.
That was an intended effect, as they were all facing enormous deficits in the wake of the '08 housing/car-note crash. Cash-for-Clunkers was supposed to be a back door bailout of dealerships in exchange for moving high emissions vehicles off the market.
In this case if you give someone a thousand bucks a month, odds are landlords will pocket the majority of that, because housing is the biggest cost for everybody who is not already an owner.
In theory, we live in a large and competitive housing market, such that people with excess cash can change landlords in pursuit of lower prices.
In practice, what we end up with is a handful of cartelized renters all setting a clearing price for the last vacant unit at slightly above what the median renter can pay. This traps people in existing leases, because they can’t find a better deal anywhere else in the city.
This has nothing to do with the cash distribution program and everything to do with the functional monopoly on housing owned by a handful of mega-landlords.
That was an intended effect, as they were all facing enormous deficits in the wake of the '08 housing/car-note crash. Cash-for-Clunkers was supposed to be a back door bailout of dealerships in exchange for moving high emissions vehicles off the market.
Hot take: the dealership system is just a useless middleman system that should have been dismantled long ago as the “only way” to buy a car.
In theory, we live in a large and competitive housing market, such that people with excess cash can change landlords in pursuit of lower prices.
Boston will never have enough supply to meet demand. This is the one example I know very well, there are countless others. A thousand bucks a month in podunk land is enough to rent something entirely and that will 100% be exploited by landlords, after all it’s free money for doing nothing.
Hot take: the dealership system is just a useless middleman system
Nonsense. Dealers make up a critical localized component of the US automotive feudal system. They are the local barons who form the political foundation of the automotive industry. They vet (and occasionally are) candidate for local and state office, based on support for the industry. They gobble up enormous amounts of real prime real estate all along the interstate system, raising property values for everyone else. They spend a fortune on advertising, which is central to the function of professional sports and news media. They bankroll mega-churches and private schools and strip clubs. They employee a host of middle-managers and salespeople who comprise the substrata of the moneyed class.
And, of course, they provide the singular status symbol for the American consumer outside of one’s home. That affords them enormous clout, simply as the folks who will always have the nicest vehicles in town. It also makes them power brokers of a sort, as they get to decide who takes home the nicest ride and at what price.
They are an irreplaceable symbol of prestige and influence. If car dealership owners did not exist, we would have to invent them.
Boston will never have enough supply to meet demand.
If China can meet the demand for housing, I’m confident Boston can find a way through.
But that would require… idk, civil engineering and city planning and a political class with a vested long term stake in the city. Yes, we could have dense multi-family homes connected by mass transit corridors to city centers and schools and shopping districts and industrial sites.
But why do that when we could just let it be someone else’s problem?
China can meet the demand for housing
China is… huge… There will still be places with housing shortages alongside places where tons of buildings will sit empty. Still a very different scope and problem there vs here.
Either way though in the US there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an oversupply problem coming in my lifetime (another 40 years if i’m lucky.)
There will still be places with housing shortages alongside places where tons of buildings will sit empty
The Chinese solution to housing shortages is to restrict (legal/official) migration between districts when housing isn’t available. This has its own basket of problems. But in the end, China has (on paper, at least) solved homelessness through guaranteed residency and even home ownership. Folks who are homeless in China are most commonly rural vagrants who technically have homes back in their native districts and simply do not want to live there anymore. They are not people who have nowhere to live, because the Chinese economy has been enormously efficient at constructing dense housing stock nationwide.
By contrast, the US housing system has a surplus of housing that is entirely bound up in the speculative asset market. We have over half a million people with no legal home to reside and millions more who are living in RVs or shelters or other functionally temporary housing. Tens of millions more are renters, entirely exposed to the whims of the short-term tenant’s markets, and potentially homeless in the next big wave of rental increases.
Either way though in the US there doesn’t seem to be any sign of an oversupply problem coming in my lifetime
The US oversupply is largely bound up in areas of the country where industry has collapsed or social services have failed. You can find plenty of cheap housing in Flint, MI for instance. You just won’t have public schools or drive-able roads or tap water you feel safe drinking.
Greetings from the average American family 20 minutes in your future:
Rents have gotten so expensive now that national bidding companies have arisen to address the crisis. Now renters can decide their own prices by bid-scoring on property and rental housing. Average monetary bid on housing in Austin is $5000 for a bachelor’s pad but the money is only part of the bid-score. It also includes the usual credit rating and income reporting, but also your social media connections, the stability of your job (calculated by opaque market analysis firms), letters of recommendation from your employer, friends and family, and your overall “social credit” score (how many people give you 5-stars on every day interactions?).
This actually turned out to be an incredible democratization of housing! Landlords no longer control rents! We now have 1.2 million homeless in America but hey that’s their faults for being poor, working jobs vulnerable to automation and offshoring, and especially the shut-ins, glad to see we’re flushing them out and forcing them to socialize and be popular, or get thrown into the streets!
I love this country!
Chapter 1 from “Not Your Parents’ Dystopia”, coming to your reality soon!
It also includes the usual credit rating and income reporting, but also your social media connections, the stability of your job (calculated by opaque market analysis firms), letters of recommendation from your employer, friends and family, and your overall “social credit” score (how many people give you 5-stars on every day interactions?).
If you could put up $5k for a permanent address in an apartment complex and all you had to do was stay the fuck off social media so as not to embarrass yourself, do you really think that would be… dystopian? All the rest of that stuff already factors into getting an apartment spot. I needed a referral for my first apartment and proof of a steady job and a good “credit score” accrued through regular credit card payments. I consider an enormous monetary incentive to steer clear of flame wars on Facebook more of a fringe benefit than a nightmare.
The dystopian horror I see coming is is if you have no social media, you have no online reputation to boost your standing / social credit score. The landlord sees you as anti-social and will dock your rental bid score bigly for that. After all you might be anti-social and that Karen/Daren landlord doesn’t want that! (Yes, asshole dirtbag logic in general is endemic to Capitalism.)
The 2nd dial-to-11 factor of my prediction is not that you need a steady job - it’s that if (for instance) you work as a screenwriter with 10 years of rock solid employment, you just took a huge hit to your “rental bid score” because in this dystopian scenario the landlord’s arbitrary algorithm has decided that automation/AI is threatening to make your job redundant in the near future (whether or not this is true). Plus said algorithm is opaque and unknowable so you will have no idea why it rejected you… kinda like job applicants of today.
Also today you need one or two referrals from your landlords and maybe also a family member. In the dystopian future I see coming, the more friends and bosses and such that you have to vouch for you, the higher your rental bid score will be. References from two landlords and a family member are trumped by refs from 3 landlords, your coworkers, your boss, and your family.
Overall? What I see coming is landlords will use unaccountable algorithms which want to know every tiny thing about you and they will tweak that algorithm in unknowable ways to judge your fitness as a renter using 29 (or more) additional dimensions than they do now. Most of the time they’ll use it to sell your personal information and have no intent of renting the place out at all. We’re sliding in that general direction now with rental scams driven by the actual landlords. Plus on top of that there absolutely will be a brutally insidious “set your own rental price” encouraging rental applicants to bid to the moon.
I expect most who read this to say this is out of this world sci-fi overexaggeration. Our grandkids will call it reality. Rental bidding is already here on a small scale. The thin end of the wedge is already in the door.
The dystopian horror I see coming is is if you have no social media, you have no online reputation to boost your standing / social credit score.
Given the state of modern social media and the slap dash approach that most landlords take in accrediting future tenants, I don’t see how this is meaningfully different from a back office that runs your regular old credit score and rejects your application because you don’t have enough debt to your name.
Like, that’s the real modern-day standing. Do you use your credit card? Do you have student loans? Do you have a car note? Can you pay them on time? Everything outside of that (possibly with the exception of “Does your race/religion/sexuality/appearance upset my high rollers?”) is unimportant.
the landlord’s arbitrary algorithm has decided that automation/AI is threatening to make your job redundant in the near future
I think this is presuming a heavily overengineered model that fixates on things other than “How high can I raise your rent right now?” So long as eviction laws are loose enough, there are plenty of landlords who will find ways to make money by simply withholding your deposits and evicting you on short notice. What’s more, there’s been a growing trend of predator application processes, wherein landlords charge a vig to even consider you for their residence and make money keeping spots open indefinitely as bait.
In that sense, it doesn’t matter who you are or what your future prospects are. All the landlord cares about is how much you can be milked for right now.
I expect most who read this to say this is out of this world sci-fi overexaggeration
I think it overstates how these businesses plan ahead and underweights how much they’ll try to stick a prospective tenant right up front.
If we want to get really sci-fi horror, I more see a future in which landlords find a way of sticking tenants with fees and collections long after that person has left the unit. Also, the increased slum-ification of existing housing, as big corporate landlords cut further and further back on maintenance.
“Living in the pods” is the real sci-fi nightmare. Paying thousands a month to effectively lease a bunk in a contract that affords a landlord direct access to all your incomes and assets indefinitely. That’s the horror story I’m more worried about than anything.
I think this is presuming a heavily overengineered model that fixates on things other than “How high can I raise your rent right now?” So long as eviction laws are loose enough, there are plenty of landlords who will find ways to make money by simply withholding your deposits and evicting you on short notice. What’s more, there’s been a growing trend of predator application processes, wherein landlords charge a vig to even consider you for their residence and make money keeping spots open indefinitely as bait.
Oh yeah there is definitely that, too.
If we want to get really sci-fi horror, I more see a future in which landlords find a way of sticking tenants with fees and collections long after that person has left the unit. Also, the increased slum-ification of existing housing, as big corporate landlords cut further and further back on maintenance.
Not sure I see a path to fees and collections after a person has left their rental, but I 150% believe that they can and will do their best to find a way.
“Living in the pods” is the real sci-fi nightmare. Paying thousands a month to effectively lease a bunk in a contract that affords a landlord direct access to all your incomes and assets indefinitely. That’s the horror story I’m more worried about than anything.
I do absolutely agree with the right-now horror stories that you’re bringing up. Those are already in our face. Particularly the 200 sq ft apartment. In Hong Kong they have workers living/renting in literal rabbit hutches.
Still, I believe the Dark Mirror-style social credit score will come into existence. They’ve already tried it in America, it was called “Peeple” and it failed. For now. Meanwhile, across the Pacific:
If an individual has a lower social credit score, they might find their ability to purchase what they want such as high-quality goods or a new home to be restricted. They might also be prohibited from buying airline and train tickets or renting an apartment. Some people with low social credit scores can expect to be blocked from dating sites and not be able to enroll their children in a school of their choice.
A social credit score affecting your ability to rent an apartment. This is the nightmare I described. It’s happening right now at this moment in China.
We can’t ever say “that can’t happen here” when it’s already happening elsewhere. We have to be vigilant. What’s going on in China is a Beta rollout. When it gets here it’ll be smoothed out and optimized for maximum suffering.
Not sure I see a path to fees and collections after a person has left their rental
The same way you’d assign fees and collections from a credit card or an auto loan or a mortgage you’d defaulted on.
Still, I believe the Dark Mirror-style social credit score will come into existence.
Do you mean “Black Mirror” per the episode “Nosedive”? You can read that as the horrors of a social credit system, but I primarily see it as a critique of the class system with social credit as a layer of abstraction that allows it to persist. Keeping the “wrong kind of people” out of your neighborhood isn’t something we invented in the last ten years. We’ve had redlining and sundown towns for centuries.
Re: Forbes
They’ve been running this same article for 20 years. Even setting aside that it largely neglects how these systems work in practice abroad, the real horror of the story is in enforced artificial scarcity for the purpose of inflating profits. And that’s something tied up far tighter in the Western economic system than in East Asia, because Western economics is driven by financialization and artificial scarcity.
A social credit score affecting your ability to rent an apartment. This is the nightmare I described.
Its merely an alternative to the existing US model of financial credit. The “nightmare” is only real for people who enjoy high levels of disposable income/high credit but low levels of social status. And, given how social status is already a critical component of one’s economic standing, this just isn’t a large number of people.
For lay citizens, its the same gray miasma of western economic credit. A host of opaque figures and metrics that are intended to force you into a queue behind your superiors.
Past that, the far bigger issue you have is in whether your economy prioritizes housing as a place to live or housing as a place to speculatively invest. In the case of China - and the recent collapse of Evergrande is a great data point on this - the answer from the state government is that Houses Are For Living In. For all the paranoia of social credit, the real root of the problem in the Chinese economy was a multi-billion dollar real estate speculator consuming valuable property for the purpose of generating profit rather than generating new housing units.
When you transplant this into the American Economy, the real fear manifests as a speculative market bubble around housing, wherein people are justified as homeless despite ample amounts of excess housing entirely due to their social credit score rather than by their economic status. Given an already expanding US homeless population, I get how this is terrifying. But the solution in the US is to organize with your fellow tenants and resist commodification of empty homes, not to crying into the void about how people are downgrading your credit based on your Facebook profile.
Economists would probably just point out the fact that whenever you subsidize something the thing you’re trying to make easier is suddenly even more expensive to the point where there’s hardly a discount if one even exists.
That’s a very convenient “fact” to point out if you want to eliminate all assistance for people who are struggling.
Now explain how corn subsidies had no effect on corn prices and definitely didn’t result in everything being full of corn syrup.
Next explain how basic income is a subsidy.
It’s not and he’s wrong. UBI will definitely cause some inflation when people spend the money, but the money will come from somewhere (probably wealthier people or corporations). So that taxation will reduce inflation at the same time.
If the money came from a tax on rental income, it would not hurt renters. It would probably just be a circle: where owners are taxed and the money goes to renters, who then spend it on rent. It may help people buy houses because they now have free money regardless of whether they spend it on rent.
That’s a very convenient “fact” to point out if you want to eliminate all assistance for people who are struggling.
I NEVER mentioned this. I in NO WAY advocate for removing assistance for people. I 100% believe we need to look at the effects of something and tweak it to avoid people taking advantage of the system. The poors aren’t taking advantage of it, the ownership class IS. They ALWAYS do. and we cannot stand for that any longer.
I would rather fully rework the landlord slave-ownership system we have today and make it so all payments into housing give you a share of ownership. Same deal with work - you work for a company and you get a share of ownership. 30 years of rent and you own your apartment. Live there for 5 years? You now own 1/6th of the apartment. One year? 1/30th. Let’s really FUCK the “investment property” wealth.
Make it so whoever works at a business shares ownership equally based on hours worked there. Make it so no human can get more than 80 hours of ownership shares a week, or something like that. There is obviously a lot more thought involved in having a system like this where people are no longer just “workers” but partial owners **
Economists would not say that. There’s a lot of cases of subsidized products not inflating. Generally for that kind of inflation to happen you would need a monopoly or similarly non competitive market to allow such rent seeking. (In the economic sense, not the housing sense)
There are two types of UBI supporters- Those that want UBI on top of the targeted welfare program, and those that want UBI to replace targeted welfare programs. If UBI was ever implemented, which kind of UBI supporter do you think the republicans and moderate dems would be?
The ones that would use it as an excuse to get rid of targeted welfare before not having enough votes to continue UBI.
Depends on the lobbyists and whoever is paying the media organizations. If companies realize they have more people to sell to they might lobby to have the former, and the majority of all beliefs are coming from medias spin on things. In theory, you could get Republicans who support UBI by simply getting a few lobbyists, and an anti UBI democratic candidate and poof, Republicans would swear by it. If you have the Republicans and the non moderate Dems, it could pass. Then once in place I imagine both companies and citizens would realize they don’t want to vote it away.
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“In completely unrelated news, average rent prices in the Austin area have soared by $1,100 dollars over the past year.”
The good part about UBI is that this doesn’t happen. There was a study from an African UBI program that showed no inflation at all in the village they provided funds to.
Maybe in a national version of UBI where you can’t easily move somewhere cheaper this would be more of a risk, but that just makes it more profitable to build more houses, and increasing the supply brings the price down again.
I don’t think the African village had Chinese megacorps snatching up available real estate for rent squatting. Although I might be wrong. I do feel that its an extremely different scenario than in the US however.
Austin housing prices decreased
