this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2023
43 points (100.0% liked)
World News
22058 readers
7 users here now
Breaking news from around the world.
News that is American but has an international facet may also be posted here.
Guidelines for submissions:
- Where possible, post the original source of information.
- If there is a paywall, you can use alternative sources or provide an archive.today, 12ft.io, etc. link in the body.
- Do not editorialize titles. Preserve the original title when possible; edits for clarity are fine.
- Do not post ragebait or shock stories. These will be removed.
- Do not post tabloid or blogspam stories. These will be removed.
- Social media should be a source of last resort.
These guidelines will be enforced on a know-it-when-I-see-it basis.
For US News, see the US News community.
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Hypothetically, could a city or other regional government, or even larger scale one, create a state run development company, under mandate to build up the housing supply in a given area even if investors won't do it?
Yes, but without money from investors they'd have to cover the construction costs from taxes, so it's not free either.
And government run initiatives have to be very careful with how they set their goals. If the legal mandate is to maximize the number of apartments constructed, and the people in charge are rewarded based on the number of apartments they created on paper, then the result will likely be the bare minimum of what counts as "apartment", even if it's not something most people would want to live in. That means that government initiatives need to specify in high detail what the quality of the apartments should be.
Investors have the goal of getting their money back through rent, so they will usually ensure that what they pay to build is something people will actually want to live in and pay money for. If the housing shortage is severe enough they too can get away with pretty crappy places, but if there's enough housing available that renters can be a little picky, any investor who built bare minimum apartments would regret their choice.