Comment on Why are so many leaders in tech evil?
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks agoThey withold houses from the market, thereby driving cost up. In turn that drives mortgage down payments up. The credit system and bank hurdles to securing a mortgage are also a big part of that issue but another conversation.
Wouldn’t that stimulate more construction?
Now owning a home i can easily say, you don’t really have much to do for maintenance. I guess i mow the lawn every few weeks and otherwise do basic cleaning?
OK, where I live people usually don’t own houses, they own apartments, and maintenance minimally involves ensuring that your apartment is not a cockroach breeding ground and your piping doesn’t make your neighbors below feel too wet.
In a separate house yeah, you can more or less just shrug because liquids go into the ground anyway, and there are no central heating pipes that may rupture, and so on.
Limits on unused properties.
That’d be fine. Maybe if you own 5+ apartments, or by living space, because otherwise you’d, say, hurt people who have one apartment they are slowly restoring to livable condition to maybe rent out later and one they themselves live in.
untorquer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
New construction isn’t always an option in dense urban areas. It’s also possible that new development is simply purchased by investors and put on the rental market (with or without tenants) and you’re back at square 1.
As much as I loathe HOA’s, and I’ve heard of bad condo association drama, multi-unit housing can be run under alternative, collective schemas. If you are renting there’s a lot of value in considering a renter’s union in such scenario. Tenants have banded together to buy out their own building collectively before. But also I’m talking outside my experience here and shouldn’t prescribe a solution for ultra-dense housing when I’ve only lived in a 30 unit building in a medium sized city and not new york or whatever.
Look, no one is saying do this overnight. There is shitloads of nuance to it which needs to be addressed but it is east to get voiced down in. But people shouldn’t be on the street when they can’t afford rent. That’s the quickest way to losing your job, your belongings, a permanent address, and even your personal documentation. Without those you can’t get a job, or housing, or any public benefits. We have to stop putting people out for the mere act of attempting to survive and making one mistake or missing one bus.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’m actually fine with pretty communist futuristic solutions here, until they are very clearly defined to prevent slippery slopes.
As in - state-provided place to bunk for those who have problems.
Sort of a capsule, behind one sliding door there’s a toilet, behind another there’s a shower and a water tap and a mirror, behind the third one there’s a space to sleep horizontally, and a space to store your stuff under it. A retractable table and a seat. Obviously electricity. Something like that, taking minimal space, allowing modular maintenance and repair. One of the walls has a window, that can be opened. The space shouldn’t be too small either - if people get too claustrophobic, they might prefer grass or subway stations.
Of course, if we think about this seriously, multiple such capsules’ inhabitants can all queue for shower and even to use toilets and even to cook. A washing machine for laundry in every capsule seems inefficient, so common laundromats it is. A place to sleep and keep possessions is the most important thing.
Such apartment buildings should have sufficiently passable corridors and sufficiently spacious common areas.
With those requirements in mind - it takes a standard design and a program of construction of such housing. Apartments won’t be property of their inhabitants, just something provided by the state as long as it’s needed.
But a program of construction of such things, only with selling to end inhabitants by subsidized price, is too a possibility. Only I’d separate them - a building is either inhabited by owners\renters\guests, or by people needing temporary housing, not both at once.
What did I write …
untorquer@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s a potential solution to one problem. Sounds like a japanese hotel lmao!
Honestly i could keep nitpicking but this post shows that you can at least see a concept for caring about someone’s humanity beyond economics. If only we could get those imbecilic billionaires to do the same.
Interesting chat, cheers!
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Economics of this are generally beneficial for everyone (… non-sociopathic, it will “make rich richer” too, but reduce their relative power, and the latter is more important for such people), because of scale, standard design and modularity making this cheaper, and because of the variant involving sale affecting the rent market well too, and because the fruit of this will be enormous new economic development.
I was thinking of something between Japanese hotels and “studios” they sell here as the most available kind of apartment, ha-ha, just a bit downgraded to the level of Khruschev-era mass construction plus the idea of standard modular insides of those capsules.