Correct urban leftism is letting private developers make as much market housing as they want, and the less you restrain private developers the more left you are
The propaganda against these DSA libs is so strong that even the libs on this site believe in it lol.
but the issue is not that there are not enough homes, the issue is that all the homes get bought up by the rich as investments to store their wealth.
This is only half-true. Official vacancy rates can don’t necessarily indicate that all those homes are being deliberately kept empty as investments- it’s also normal for homes to lie vacant for a while when people move out. It’s true that the root cause of the housing crisis is the commodification of housing into an investment vehicle, but that doesn’t mean that there are currently millions of empty homes lying around for everyone who wants one. We should absolutely decommodify housing and guarantee universal public housing, but making that a practical reality would still require building millions, if not tens of millions, of new homes, preferably through upzoning and infill development to reduce suburban sprawl.
I don’t agree with everything they say, but this video goes into why official vacancy rates are misleading, and why we still need to build lots of new homes to solve the housing crisis.
What’s an acceptable vacancy rate for you, considering people need to move occasionally? Anything under 5% is generally considered a “very hot” rental market and will likely see price increases.
No, but people move from out of town, and even for people moving within a city, they don’t move into currently-occupied apartments.
There need to be some number of apartments open at any given time so that people who need to move can do so. 100% occupancy would mean that every move would have to be a swap, or that no one new could move to town.
Denver DSA’s position is correct they just don’t have PR chops.
Empty promises from a private developer to provide a small percentage of affordable housing in a golf course area is all but guaranteed to mean luxury apartments get built there and the affordable housing is phased out within a couple years.
Public housing and rent control will do the actual thing desired. YIMBY talking points about simply increasing supply through development are bullshit, you need to produce enough units that actually rent at a particular rate, not leave it to real estate ghouls that will do things like create an entrance just for the poors and start “upgrading” the “affordable” units within the first year, ensuring that fewer poors can live there and that they can jack up the rent on “renovated” units.
Thank you for linking, I find their statement credible and yours yimby nonsense
