Here’s the thing: imagine if we fixed the housing market, so that the price of housing only increased to match inflation. That would be great, right? Except, homeowners typically spend $2000-$10000 per year on maintenance. So homeownership would go from an investment to an endless money pit, just like renting. The idea of a house as an investment, a house as a way to build wealth, requires that housing prices increase faster than inflation forever, which means that the burden of housing costs on working people must keep increasing forever, and the number of homeless people must keep increasing forever.
The housing crisis isn’t just a result of greedy landlords and investors. It’s an inevitable result of social policies that encourage people to treat their houses as in investment. Because once a homeowner internalizes the idea that their financial future depends on housing prices going up, they start favoring policies (such as NIMBYism) that make housing prices go up.
Conversely, if we want to end homelessness for good, we need to accept that housing is someone we’ll all have to continuously pour resources into, because buildings are complex physical objects that break a lot.
The reason I say this is because every time I read an article about the housing crisis, they always say something along the lines of “The housing crisis has robbed people of the opportunity to build wealth via homeownership!” without acknowledging that the housing crisis is what created the opportunity to build wealth via homeownership
