The only concern cities should have for housing is making sure there's room and ordinances that make it easy to build and maitain more housing. This often requires ripping down old buildings, building new ones, especially skyscrapers, and then providing the infrastructure to the new dwellings.
The city should not be providing housing for anyone, but instead working to get people into their own housing that they own or rent. The city can't build housing for people, it always decays into politics and ill-kept 'projects' that are disdained by both the people living within them and the people who live outside of them.
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We should give the public housing to the tenants who live there, coupled with appropriate training in property management and investment. We would overnight solve several problems. One would be the steady poverty of public housing residents -- they would be moved into at least the lower middle class immediately as they now have an asset that they didn't have before. And the constant public political fights about public housing and funding it would be gone. It simply removes a whole area of contention within a city. Another benefit would be the probably reduction in crime and maintainence costs as the new owners take a new view of the situation they are in. xxx |
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Rent controls invariably prevent the construction of new housing and thus add to the housing shortage and thus drive up rents in the long run. While they should be phased out over time, they must be eliminated eventually. Rents in cities with no rent controls are always lower than rents in cities with rent control. That's because the housing stock is always being increased in non-control cities and it is static in controlled cities. XXX . |
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Cities would do well to allow residents to deduct the absolute cost of the repainting of their dilapidated housing from their property tax bills. By doing this they would be increasing the net value of houses as they are spruced up. They would also bring a new sense of well being into communities that are struggling to seem OK. With more houses painted, those houses that are in further need of repair would now get more attention. The neighborhoods they are in would do better. XXX . |
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Cities would do better if they put in clinics and assisted living housing and other special need housing within the communities in samll doses. This would lessen opposition, and make it easier to provide the services needed to be provided. By pushing for big programs the city always creates opposition through the mere size of the changes. Most people can't deal with big change. But small incremental steps would do wonders. XXX . |
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Departments of Housing in cities should be slowly phased out as all publically owned housing is sold or given to the residents. The city should require that for so many full rent housing units built there should be a certain number of subsidized housing units mixed in -- but over time as the people get wealthier through other sound city and state policies even this need will dissapate. The problems have been decades in brewing -- we should not expect them to be solved overnight. XXX |
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