Comment on Rent is theft

• Emi@ani.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  Imo students and just people who don’t want to buy. One small flat I saw is like 6k czk a month. But ideally there should be free such flats that are just room and bathroom with showers free to anyone.

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  • Riverside@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    The USSR had such dorms for students and people in waiting lists for housing, idk if they were technically free but the fee was ridiculous if it existed. Rent, for example, was 3% of the monthly incomes. I do think we should have such social housing, both in flat-form and in dorm-form, for whoever wants to rent a very cheap housing unit.

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    • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      They also had an incredibly corrupt and repressive society full of black markets.

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      • Riverside@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        They also had an incredibly corrupt and repressive society

        I’ve yet to find any serious study talking of “widespread corruption” in the USSR compared to countries of equal level of development. This is entirely vibes-based.

        the poor struggled paid most of their income to basic necessities and the rich paid hardly anything

        Income inequality was the lowest in the USSR in the history of the region, by a long shot. Again, you’re making stuff up:

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        housing in desirable areas and cities are hardly abundant

        Yes, but housing was primarily accessed through the work union. Housing near a factory went to the workers of said factory, people mainly got to live near where they worked.

        You wanted off the waiting lists, you had to bribe someone

        Again, as if bribes don’t happen in capitalism. In capitalism, you don’t “bribe” someone to get a house, you’re just poor enough not to afford it and you rent for life instead. Waiting lists, while unpleasant, are the more egalitarian solution. How else do you propose distribution of limited housing in a rapidly industrializing country that’s moving tens of millions of people from the countryside to cities?

        But I mean, yeah if you wanted to be miner in Siberia and live in a shack housing was cheap. Not so much if you wanted to live Moscow or St Petersberg

        Care to share any of that wonderful data about housing prices in Soviet Leningrad or Moscow? Regardless: your analogy of “being a miner in Siberia” is dumb. Lifestyle in the countryside and in smaller cities was highly subsidized, but that’s a good thing. Now hospitals are closed, roads aren’t maintained, and schools are left underfunded everywhere outside Moscow and Saint Petersburg, making life especially in non-Slavic regions of Russia much worse than it used to be. It’s not that people want to move to Moscow, it’s that there are no jobs or infrastructure outside three big cities, and that’s really bad for many people. I don’t see what you have against living in relatively minor cities like Murmansk, Ulan-Ude or Tomsk, provided there are jobs and infrastructure (which there were).

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  • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    why is it crazy if someone is willing to pay it?

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• Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

  If the housing market gets so unprofitable that people aren’t building enough apartments, even though enough land is zoned for building, prices are too low.
  That just leads to homelessness.

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  • Riverside@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    So, build the housing socially by legal mandate. Only in capitalism “housing is too cheap” can be a bad thing

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    • Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I’d definitely like more of that. But for such a legal mandate, the government would also have to pay for it. That means rising taxes. I’m okay with that.

      But at the moment, we are quite far from that. I’d already be pretty happy if the government would stop selling their governmental buildings. Especially to foreign investors.

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      • Riverside@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        the government would also have to pay for it. That means rising taxes

        Not necessarily. The government literally prints the money with which workers can be paid, there’s no need to increase taxes to pay for such housing. Modern monetary theory is cool!

        But at the moment, we are quite far from that. I’d already be pretty happy if the government would stop selling their governmental buildings

        Yes, we’re far, but that doesn’t make reformist measures more likely, they’re impossible to carry out without huge worker organizing through unions and socialist parties.

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