public housing doesn't address the root of the problem. Housing prices are insane because it's expensive and difficult to acquire and develop land. There's two primary reasons- zoning, and speculative investment that keeps good land off of the market.
This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have a hard time getting involved in tight markets, where most development is now handled by the national builders on a huge scale.
We need to approach this from a different perspective. One is to kill speculative land investments with a land value tax, causing people who aren't using the land to sell off. Two is to streamline zoning and permitting processes to make it much easier for upstart developers to get started on smaller scales.
This make land very expensive to developers and limits competition. Developing, rezoning, acquiring land can take expertise and political capital. Small developers have a hard time getting involved in tight markets, where most development is now handled by the national builders on a huge scale.
We need to approach this from a different perspective. One is to kill speculative land investments with a land value tax, causing people who aren't using the land to sell off. Two is to streamline zoning and permitting processes to make it much easier for upstart developers to get started on smaller scales.