Re:I call it the Homeless Industrial Complex
by jeffbee on Tuesday September 19, 2023 @10:34AM
(#37570567)
Among housing advocates we usually call this the Non-Profit Industrial Complex. The NPIC is a shakedown racket that uses government powers to thwart market forces and funnel tax funds into their own pockets. It is simple corruption, because these organizations are also politically active, and the "community benefits" they extract amount to bribes, which are partly laundered into coordinated campaign spending. If you are ever dealing with people who say market-built housing is evil and we can only accept 100% non-profit housing, you are dealing with the NPIC.
The NPIC relies on your ignorance of the scale of the housing crisis. This article, as poorly written and argued as it is, appears to commit the same mistake. "Hundreds of millions of dollars" is nothing, can make no impact in a city the size of Seattle. In Berkeley, where I live, every little apartment building costs at least $100 million. That's just how much a building costs these days. Private industry in my county spent $6.8 billion on new construction last year. If you live in a county of several million people and the NPIC plan of record is to spend low hundreds of millions over a decade, that indicates that your local NPIC intends to perpetuate the housing crisis, which makes sense for them because otherwise they would need to get new jobs.
The only serious response to the American housing crisis involves West Coast cities spending at least $10k per capita per year on new construction for the foreseeable future. At least 95% of this money needs to come from private investment.
The NPIC relies on your ignorance of the scale of the housing crisis. This article, as poorly written and argued as it is, appears to commit the same mistake. "Hundreds of millions of dollars" is nothing, can make no impact in a city the size of Seattle. In Berkeley, where I live, every little apartment building costs at least $100 million. That's just how much a building costs these days. Private industry in my county spent $6.8 billion on new construction last year. If you live in a county of several million people and the NPIC plan of record is to spend low hundreds of millions over a decade, that indicates that your local NPIC intends to perpetuate the housing crisis, which makes sense for them because otherwise they would need to get new jobs.
The only serious response to the American housing crisis involves West Coast cities spending at least $10k per capita per year on new construction for the foreseeable future. At least 95% of this money needs to come from private investment.