I’d rather pay five percent of my income in taxes and not have to walk by homeless people because they have somewhere to live and not have to worry about being homeless if I lose my job or eventually retire and have to worry about constantly increasing rent or property taxes on a fixed income than pay around a third of my income in rent so Brad and Karen can go on another vacation to the Bahamas this year.
How does that add up? If you pay 33% to Brad and Karen, where does the civil servants get the building sites, construction workers and materials for 5%, ignoring the extra space needed for the formerly homeless?
Do landlords have more than 500% profit margins?
I’m basing this off of real world data taken from socialist projects. Rent in the USSR was 5 percent of income for example.
They do not have 500 percent margins because capitalism is incredibly inefficient and they’re only one small actor making money from the situation in a broader ecosystem of developers, construction companies, etc.
If you go for standardized housing with an abundance of construction sites then you also get your 5% rent within capitalism.
The problem is not the landlords but the voters and buyers. The landlords will offer 5% housing if the demand is there, together with construction sites.
