The housing crisis has zero to do with available space, except that in the hubs of industry, like silicon valley, there are more people wanting to live there than there’s space. That’s not true across the country.
But no one is going to build a house in the middle of nowhere to help with housing because (a) hardly anyone wants to live in the middle of nowhere, away from all the jobs, and (b) the people building housing are motivated to get as much money as they can.
We as a society could 100% solve the housing crisis, but it involves socialism, not capitalism, which a lot of Americans still have a problem with. The solution isn’t constrained by space, which the US has tons of.
It wouldn’t even be that much socialism. Just a smidgen of housing regulations and zoning. Limit corporate ownership and rental profiteering, like any responsible capitalist democracy should with any industry.
The problem is that an entire generation of homeowners wanted to ride the wave of residential deregulation like a fly on a windshield. Wheeee look at our property values skyrocket! We can retire on the capital gains alone! Fuck the next generation, what did they ever do for us?
I’m all for the socialism, but could we also get the homestead act back? Free land and a grant to build a house if we’re willing to go rural as fuck and grow our own food. Maybe combine with eco friendly stuff. Have to build a cob house, must use ecologically safe farming techniques.
