I don't think that you're making this up. I think that the advice would still be to leave units vacant and bring them up market even in the presence of extremely landlord-friendly eviction policy...

this dynamic will always be true: "folks with higher incomes are seen as less likely to trash the place, less likely to sue, less likely to stop paying"

I think government incentive should focus on changing this, as I attempt to describe in https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=AYBABTME#29087565

Basically, this is somewhere I think govt. _constructive/supportive_ intervention is needed, because today's punitive policies creates economics that don't allow a humane end result.

Government just needs to crank out large volume affordable housing. With modern tools and methods (+R&D), enough scale and a long term plan for maintenance this is entirely doable. The goal shouldn't be to house everyone but to create a surplus. (Lots of empty homes) Popular locations with insufficient space will continue to get more expensive, as it should be.

I like the idea but I think the concept of using technology to build big, low cost volume housing is mistaken. The act of concentrating affordable housing is not desirable and easily forgotten about. It creates ghettos. Watching interviews about homelessness, a lot of homeless folks will talk about how dangerous it is to hang out in places like Skid Row. That it's dangerous to be surrounded by other people with problems. Read about the struggle faced by youngsters in poor neighborhoods, about how their surrounding were a huge strain on their ability to develop and escape. The environment in which you are located, when you're facing economic struggle, really dictates your odds of recovering. I grew up poor in a single-mom family, and lived in lower income neighbourhood and know first hand how their influence is bad for kids. My mom did all she could to pull us out of there, so we wouldn't be influenced too much by the neighbourhood. Still, had plenty of time to see sad things and be originally influenced in suboptimal ways.

I think we should build more single unit affordable housing! And shove it all over the place, in affluent neighbourhoods! Help people leave their problems behind.

This thread is getting deep for HN and it's hard to respond, but I had shoved my random thoughts on this in https://twitter.com/AntoineGrondin/status/145489614700107776...

> The act of concentrating affordable housing is not desirable and easily forgotten about.

We know how to plan this properly. Mistakes will no doubt be made but there is no reason to think they will be this obvious.

Almost everything you describe is the effect of a housing shortage. The new houses wont happen overnight, it takes quite a bit of time to create a surplus.

creating housing by the the government is a possibility. (a ton of plattenbau build straight after ww2 is still used in my country).

if they could fix the housing crisis my bombed out city straight after ww2, I'm pretty sure the US is able to do so 80 years later with modern construction methods.