It feels like even while some cities were leveling property that they still had people without homes. And if you have refugees or large numbers immigrating for safety concerns, they need a place somewhere. (The "start" was in my post because obviously a lot more than just a house is needed, but it feels potentially better than a tent city, for example. Without extra support we do have plenty of examples of how public housing can be done really badly though).
A couple of years ago there was a town in either New Brunswick or Nova Scotia, Canada, that was offering free homes to people who relocated there, if they met certain criteria.
www.vice.com
A propos of something, probably:
Zillow, Other Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes
"iBuyers" are gearing up to grow massively in the coming years, with unforeseen consequences for the U.S. housing market.
I find myself agreeing. I mean, I understand all the competing interests: tenants, landlords, home owners, homeless, debtors, creditors. It's not a tidy situation, and while I'd love to see everyone integrated into the system in a legitimate way, I also don't want to see anyone doing okay ending up shafted. (Well, except the predatory ubercapitalist institutions for which a "home" is just a figure on a ledger, instead of a biological necessity for human beings. Those profiteers can go [censored].)
That’s a small tangent off of what I was talking about earlier- the venture capital companies buying up houses to make rental properties. At least Zillow, et alia are putting the homes back on the SALE market, not retaining them as rentals.A propos of something, probably:
Zillow, Other Tech Firms Are in an ‘Arms Race’ To Buy Up American Homes
"iBuyers" are gearing up to grow massively in the coming years, with unforeseen consequences for the U.S. housing market.
Yeah, for the time being. Done right, this approach could really simplify homebuying, especially for people new to the market or who want a really streamlined process.
"Inventory flow." "Portfolio." The bulk realestate "space." And exactly zero regard for housing as "homes" for real human beings. It's just straight-up profit potential. If these investment institutions start offering Zillow, et al, more money than regular buyers, there's no way Zillow, et al, won't be all over that.
Well…there’s lots of ideas, some of which have gotten tested in the real world. But a lot of them- even when proven to be effective or at least better than the current situations- run afoul of powerful people’s self-interests, widely held beliefs about poverty and people work ethics, misconceptions about who actually needs what, actual costs, and so forth.
They were paying people mostly in the sense that if you bought one of these houses you would be exempt from local property taxes for a number of years, and the houses could be bought for few euros but none of these were in livable conditions, so you would need to spend tens of thousands of euros in renovation. These houses are usually in the poorer parts of the country, where for generations people had been leaving to look for work elsewhere, leaving a lot of properties to basically crumble. The goal of these plans is mainly to attract (foreign) tourists who can afford a vacation home in the hopes of boosting the local economy and allowing local people to find jobs without having to emigrate.
