I mean, Terminus House was essentially turned into a large project where people were dumped, an approach that has shown similarly disastrous results in the US for decades. That's quite different from turning office space into desirable apartments.
In what way? In Harlow, government took a hands off approach on zoning and oversight and let the free market figure out housing for the country's poorest.
It all seems very similar to me. I'm sure at the start they also thought they were turning defunct office space into desirable apartments too.
The article linked by the comment I replied to stated this:
> Smith is one of hundreds of residents placed at Terminus House in Harlow by councils in and around London, often many miles from everything and everybody they once knew.
I'm not familiar with the specifics of UK subsidized housing, but it sure sounds like the residents were placed in this building by government.
Yeah, you're not and totally misunderstanding how that works.
Councils used to be the biggest house builders in the UK.
Then the neoliberals decided that was silly and the free-market could sort it. So they banned councils from building houses in the 80s. House builds plummeted from 300k per year to 30k per year. Plus they forced the council to get rid of their affordable housing by letting people buy their council house from the council.
So now, when poor people who are guaranteed a house need one, the council have to buy a slot from the free market (and obviously need to go for cheap).
Now the UK has a housing crisis.
Yay, free market.
Basically, the opposite of what you think. The council didn't 'choose' to put people there, they were forced to by the market and disasterous neo-liberal policies.
I think you're arguing at cross-purposes. Terminus House is social housing (no-one's arguing that it's not, and that it's not bad), what they're describing in SF is different as it's commercial, and certainly at least medium-grade private housing.
Whether or not the free market has caused the use of private companies to provide project style social housing on the fringes of cities (short answer: of course it has) is somewhat irrelevant compared with converting city-centre commercial property into private accommodation.
>> sounds like the residents were placed in this building by government
> council didn't 'choose' to put people there
Again, your response isn't to the point being made really - no-ones really arguing against your point. Just because they didn't have any real alternative doesn't invalidate the point that they did it.
What hn_throwaway_99 means is: If the policy was "Homeless people rent a house of their choice and the state pays the rent" or "homeless people get cash to spend as they see fit" it wouldn't matter if there were low minimum standards and shitty houses on the market, as they would be rejected by everyone looking for housing - including homeless people.
In contrast if the policy is "Government pays the rent on the cheapest houses on the market, for homeless people" or "government has a fixed budget and must house as many homeless people as possible" then the legal minimum standard is crucial, because that's what you'll likely be giving to homeless people.
For councils to build houses and build them to a reasonable standard would, as you say, be another option.
Can anyone buy some land and build whatever they want on it, like massive apartment buildings? If the answer is no, how can you claim there is a free market? I think the problem is clearly on the heavy regulations, licensing and zoning that keep companies from building.
> Can anyone buy some land and build whatever they want on it, like massive apartment buildings?
They probably can, but The Market™ may give better ROI to (e.g.) condominiums so who'd want to do it?
With apartments you have to do things like put up with tenants and such, and who wants to do that? With condos you sell the units, create a condo corporation, and then walk away with your money once it's constructed and never think about it again.
Why build rental units for poor people when you can sell to oligarchs who want an asset to park their money in?
> Why build rental units for poor people when you can sell to oligarchs who want an asset to park their money in?
As with everything else in a capilistic economy: because there is profit to be made.
Same as we have very expensive top-of-the-line smartphones and very cheap but functional ones, a truly free market housing economy would provide cheap housing for the poor. The reason why we don't see that happening is because of all the regulations that increase the cost of building, making such companies inviable.
Poor people would benefit the most from truly free markets, if we care about them we should be asking for less government intervention, not more.
> As with everything else in a capilistic economy: because there is profit to be made.
As someone who lives in Toronto, Canada where there's a lot of condo construction, and little-to-no purpose-built rental construction, the "capitalist economy" has decided that rentals are generally not worth it.
At least when it comes to builders: plenty of people are buying condos and renting them out instead of living in them, but apartment blocks seem to be not worth the effort.
I think you are missing the point: if there is "little-to-no purpose-built rental construction" I guarantee it's because of laws and regulations preventing companies from fulfilling demand. Think whether people or companies can purchase any land and build whatever they want on it. No they can, local governments must zone it as residential, and then they usually have strict restrictions on how many units can be built on each area, licenses, permissions, building codes...
You are right to complain about this issue, but don't blame free markets, because they are not free: government intervention prevent the necessary competition for the market to work and fulfill demand.
Also consider financing. Buying a home for owner-occupancy is often subsidized while purchase for an investment property (rental) is not. I don't think this is wrong, but certainly the incentives shape the market.
> No they can, local governments must zone it as residential, and then they usually have strict restrictions on how many units can be built on each area, licenses, permissions, building codes...
Which are exactly the same for condo or apartment.
The reasons are economic AFAICT:
> For a long time, the economics of constructing a rental made little sense compared to a condo. Condo builders get a significant portion of their financing directly from future unit owners, who give hefty deposits to secure their spot and therefore assume some of the risk. Rental landlords, on the other hand, need to front the majority of the equity, assuming all the risk themselves. When a condo building is complete and all the units have been sold and paid for, the developers quickly reap the returns on their investment and move on. For a rental building, the returns take many, many years longer.
Toronto has had vacancy rates <2% for decades, so it's not like rental demand wasn't there. In fact prices peaked just before the pandemic and are now falling because the Airbnb folks are switching to long-term rentals. The price of condos is dropping as well since plenty of people are just selling their Airbnb units and flooding the market to certain extent.
A good number of rental buildings are actually being constructed in partnership with insurance and pension funds, as they need long term cash flows and baby boomers aren't getting any younger.
As others have noted, this is not the opposite of what I think, or what I argued. I'm saying at the end of the day (without making any comment on neoliberal policies) poor people were dumped into, and importantly, concentrated into this building. There is no 'free market' involved here when the residents had no choice. This is very different from converting office space to apartments and putting those out to rent for individuals.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-47720887
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