here's a thought that I don't have a platform to promote, so feel free to use yours Mr. Erdmann.
We need a nationwide housing building initiative, on the scale of the WPA from the 1930s. This would accomplish two complementary outcomes. 1) It would create lots of new housing supply which will eventually drive down prices. And 2) It will offer jobs to the younger millennials and GenZ who complain that they can't find good jobs, giving them both consistent employment and valuable skills. No, Brianna, not everyone gets to work in Marketing. You may need to get dirty in the landscaping department. But at the end of perhaps a 10-year initiative, we'll have significantly reconciled the housing and skills gaps, for far less than the cost of education at universiites.
We could call it the "Civilitary" and recruit like the military does. Sign-up bonuses; 6-week boot camp; then a 2-3 year stint working on building out infrastructure & housing & associated work in the middle of Pennsylvania or down in Alabama or out near San Francisco or Portland or wherever. Sign on for long enough, you could end up with a pension that helps pay off the housing that you helped build. Can you imagine the pride and sense of accomplishment that would come from that?
Plus, just think what we could do if we could figure out how to build a 2-bedroom apartment unit for $80k, which is ridiculously overpriced just from back-of-the-envelope calculations. Pay that off in 10 years ($8k principal / year), and in about a decade and a half we'll be drowning in affordable housing.
That's all well and good, but I don't think it's necessary. It is basically illegal to build more apartments and it is illegal for many households to get a mortgage to buy single-family homes. Until we fix those 2 problems, your work crews will have nothing to do. And if we fix those two problems, builders will build and workers will work. They won't need a new program.
I liked a description you had a few posts back about how legal restrictions make potential building sites "infinite cost" for certain locations. For homeowners that's the most wonderful thing in the universe---if they own single family zoned property in a desirable neighborhood they have an investment that beats all stock markets, bond markets, precious metals, crypto, etc...
here's a thought that I don't have a platform to promote, so feel free to use yours Mr. Erdmann.
We need a nationwide housing building initiative, on the scale of the WPA from the 1930s. This would accomplish two complementary outcomes. 1) It would create lots of new housing supply which will eventually drive down prices. And 2) It will offer jobs to the younger millennials and GenZ who complain that they can't find good jobs, giving them both consistent employment and valuable skills. No, Brianna, not everyone gets to work in Marketing. You may need to get dirty in the landscaping department. But at the end of perhaps a 10-year initiative, we'll have significantly reconciled the housing and skills gaps, for far less than the cost of education at universiites.
We could call it the "Civilitary" and recruit like the military does. Sign-up bonuses; 6-week boot camp; then a 2-3 year stint working on building out infrastructure & housing & associated work in the middle of Pennsylvania or down in Alabama or out near San Francisco or Portland or wherever. Sign on for long enough, you could end up with a pension that helps pay off the housing that you helped build. Can you imagine the pride and sense of accomplishment that would come from that?
Plus, just think what we could do if we could figure out how to build a 2-bedroom apartment unit for $80k, which is ridiculously overpriced just from back-of-the-envelope calculations. Pay that off in 10 years ($8k principal / year), and in about a decade and a half we'll be drowning in affordable housing.
That's all well and good, but I don't think it's necessary. It is basically illegal to build more apartments and it is illegal for many households to get a mortgage to buy single-family homes. Until we fix those 2 problems, your work crews will have nothing to do. And if we fix those two problems, builders will build and workers will work. They won't need a new program.
I liked a description you had a few posts back about how legal restrictions make potential building sites "infinite cost" for certain locations. For homeowners that's the most wonderful thing in the universe---if they own single family zoned property in a desirable neighborhood they have an investment that beats all stock markets, bond markets, precious metals, crypto, etc...
And they will vote to keep it that way.