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Comment on Supermarkets destroy food if it doesn't sell. We can always feed the world. We just don't.

It seems to me that affordability starts with housing, because it is usually a household’s single largest monthly expense. And it seems to me the best way to make housing more affordable is to make it non-profit. That doesn’t necessarily mean city owned or other public housing, nor does it mean tax payer funded or subsidized housing, but having apartment buildings owned by a non-profit organization that charges tenants only enough rent to cover their expenses without any extra going to the owner as profit. And the thing, non-profit housing isn’t only theoretical. It exists right now, but it’s relatively rare. The reason is for-profit landlords don’t want it because they can’t compete.

Let’s say you have two identical apartment buildings, but one is owned by a non-profit housing cooperative and the other is owned by a private landlord. The non-profit housing cooperative is going to have the same ongoing expenses (property management, maintenance, etc) as the private landlord, because the apartments are identical, but rent will be lower at the non-profit housing because they charge only enough rent to cover expenses whereas the private landlord charges rent to cover expenses plus some for his own personal profit.

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Xerxos@lemmy.ml ⁨7⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
There is also the rent-to-own option, which nearly no one uses. After paying the rent for X years, it’s your house now - a portion of the rent went toward buying the place. It should be transferable to another person or paid out if needed.

That’s how you generate generational wealth, even in lower-income situations.

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gandalf_der_12te@feddit.org ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
yeah, in germany a few weeks ago the news made the headline that for-profit rent-out company vonovia makes 30c profit for every 1€ revenue. that’s extreme. that means they’re charging almost 50% more than they had to to operate at-cost.

also in vienna there’s a lot of city-owned apartments and rents here are really affordable. sincerely, written from my 550€/month apartment (roughly $600/month)

also a huge roadblock to lower construction costs is unnecessary complex building codes, zoning laws, and again zoning laws.

unnecessarily complex construction regulations for example include zoning laws that prescribe that you can’t build multi-family houses on a single lot. this means two houses instead of two apartments in one house, which makes construction significantly more expensive.

zoning laws also forbid in many places for example to operate supermarkets close to where you live. this is mostly a problem in the US, not so much in europe. it means you have to drive everywhere, which makes your cost-of-living higher.

zoning laws, again, prescribe things such as minimum lot-size, which means you only have the option to buy 1 large lot instead of 1 small lot, even if you would be content with a smaller house on a small lot. also if not enough area is designated in a city as land for building, then that means that there’s a lack of supply, which makes the land more expensive, which makes the house more expensive.
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