Comment by throw_m239339
3 months ago
Making people live in slums/shacks isn't a solution to the western "homeless crisis".
This website has been often prone to "social justice" recently, I'm amazed somebody can get away with such an idiotic comment without being flagged to hell.
Houses are "carefully planed" because you don't want poor people to die in them due to poor construction, carbon monoxide when they need heat during winter, or a fire that would spread to other houses due to cheap materials, that's why,you know, the stuff that happens regularly in third world slums, but you can't fathom that fact.
Housing regulations have nothing to with protecting the people inside them.
They are there to outsource inspection costs to tax payers for the banks to protect their loans on the houses themselves.
And help nimbys protect property values.
And create more bureaucracy for former contractors as most inspectors are.
And reduce competition for existing contractors.
And increase revenues for housing materials retailers.
Housing regulations have zero benefit to the people who live in the house or don't live in the house because there aren't enough houses so people die in the cold.
I'd be happy with just allowing more low/middle-market housing development which is what eventually seeds low income housing. I don't think anyone's calling for more slums but rapidly building houses and less aggressive urban planning is the only way to solve what is easily the #1 social problem here in Canada and many parts of the US/Europe and Australia.
"Slums" in the west are mostly just old apartments that used to be middle class or cheap buildings in less 'desirable' locations. They aren't people living in shacks.
In a housing shortage those old buildings which would normally decline in rent still cost $2000/m in many cities like Toronto due to lack of supply. And no developer can afford all the headaches just to build a new affordable low-rent buildings either.
I have a better idea to solve the western "homeless crisis", tax your salary and capital gains much more to finance affordable public housing construction. That way, nobody dies in some hazardous shack you think should be allowed to be built by slum lords. Done.
Your "solutions" are so cynical you really want homeless people to die.
> tax your salary and capital gains much more to finance affordable public housing construction
I would have taken that position when I was younger so I won't be too critical. But IRL trusting centrists politicians to spend that money properly and actually build mass housing is mostly a pipe dream. They can't even build a single railroad in the country let alone hundreds of thousands of houses in the city proper.
Radicals rarely take government for long... and as long a capitalism is the only true wealth generator for the public I wouldn't gamble on the far-left being the party that achieves that rare feat (absent a dictatorship).
It's easier to just campaign for government to do less instead of more. Just let people build things they need. There's already massive pent up demand and private capital ready to build housing the second government lets them. It doesn't need risky advertising for more taxation.