Now THIS is the way thanksgiving dinner political discussions should be! A spirited discussion on housing right after I finish my chapter on housing in my book! So yeah, Cenk Uygur and Hasan Piker had a political discussion for thanksgiving (for those who don't know, they're related), with much of it discussing Zohran Mamdani and housing. Given how immediate the idea is in my mind given my own research, I thought I'd give my opinions on it.
A lot of this debate with your typical liberal vs leftist back and forth, with me being a bit in between the two. In this debate I'd say I leaned closer to Hasan, but I still would say I'm in between the two. So...they discussed a few things, but I mostly wanna talk about their debate around Zohran Mamdani and his video on red vienna. I recently reacted to this video for myself, and it helped springboard me back into the housing debate for my book, and since it's fresh in my mind, I'd give my own views.
Again, in between the two, although closer to Hasan. Why? because Hasan actually thinks systematically, breaks things down, and proposes actual steps toward solving problems. While I'd agree with Cenk this model goes a bit too far and is a bit TOO far left for me, I still gotta respect the initative. Meanwhile, Cenk seemed a bit more out of his depth, thinking in terms of "well yeah we need housing for everyone but we need to do it with the private market." Okay, but HOW? HOW do we do this, Cenk, what's YOUR policy prescription. And a lot of liberals who talk like this seem a bit mealy mouthed on it. They speak in platitudes about "yeah we want affordable housing" but when someone proposes something to their left, they're often like "no, not like that, without thinking about what it means."
So...my own stance. Yes, we need a housing program. I think the red vienna model here is interesting and my own approach is somewhat the same in the sense that we need the government to build more housing, but I would agree that the vienna model is flawed and goes a bit far. It's great for renters, but makes home ownership hard. Given my own values of encouraging economic independence within capitalism, I'm not really on board with that. I also am under the impression that it worked in large part because Vienna hasn't had a lot of population growth over the past century and while that is changing in recent years due to immigration, Europeans, including Austrians are becoming increasingly anti immigrant in response to this. And I know this is true in Vienna as well, where they fear immigrants coming in and taking up a lot of the housing without giving back to society. It's a valid concern, which is why, I'm so moderate on immigration.
I also don't necessarily want the government to run the majority of the housing market. Or even worse, to abolish markets. I dont think we need to have another discussion on how bad the USSR's housing policy was and how replacing the market led to repression and restricting freedom of movement to some degree, and it seems like even socialists understand we still need a market, just administered by the state, but still. I kinda am with Cenk that public housing should be aimed mostly at the poor, with a private market for everyone else. Actually, I would go so far to say that my housing program can be adapted to the middle if we wanted it, but given the standards the middle class would have with housing, and how building units like that would scale cost wise, eh...I'm not sure that would fix the housing market much.
What we really need is a form of "universal basic housing" aimed primarily at the poor, where the government, much like with the vienna model, buys up land and builds housing on it, but again, the model is kinda basic. Like, I'm talking microhomes and micro apartments that are 10x10 feet, or maybe 20x20 feet. Point is, they're typically below 500 square feet. In dense urban areas they might be apartments, whereas in less dense areas we might have neighborhoods full of microhomes. They're not gonna be large luxurious accommodations. of course, that's the issue with housing in part. A lot of people want to not just live alone, but live alone in large accommodations, and quite frankly, people can't fit in these dense urban areas with their inefficient use of land. In some cases, even with maximum density like NYC, you STILL dont have enough room for people. What should we turn into hong kong or kowloon where you basically have a little hole in the wall you can barely move around in? It's ridiculous. Like, even the homes I imagine are significantly larger than that, and trust me, they're not that large.
Either way, we need to keep this in mind, while supply and demand is a big issue, the for profit industry just isn't incentivized to provide housing for lower income people. AT ALL. They don't care. The direction the market is going in is toward making all housing expensive AF and pricing people out of the market where they all gotta pile in on top of each other where you got several poor people working just to make rent. It's not working. The market IS NOT WORKING. I mean, it's working for the wealthy, but it's not working for normal people.
So...the government does need to step in and provide housing for the lower income side of the spectrum. It's just a matter of how. I'd agree with Cenk, maybe luxury apartments for the middle class is a bit too much. I imagine much cheaper construction in order to minimize costs and maximize productive output, with people paying say, 1/3 of their UBI ($450 for an individual, $600-900 for a family) toward a smaller apartment. I can even imagine a rent to own program, where people rent these units for 10 years and then own it outright after making enough qualifying payments. This would ensure a path to home ownership for all, even if it is like some tiny microhome or apartment.
And yeah. Cenk seemed open to it, but still seemed to think the private market would somehow solve the problem. It's not, dude, not without a lot of incentives and carrots and sticks. Like, my own housing program would be paid for by a land value tax targeted at for profit entities, which would disincentivize them from holding into a lot of property, and if they do, they're encouraged to make efficient usage of it. We also need to discourage stuff like house flipping, which is a scourge to affordability in the modern market.
I mean, I know im somewhat uncharitable to Cenk here, I just understand that yeah, we need a system where we build affordable housing on a mass scale. Bernie Sanders, who Cenk loves, is also for this; he also wanted to build millions of units across the country as well. Not sure how the specifics of his plan would work out, but yeah. Build build build. It's the primary solution. We do need some "socialism" here, although I would say it's closer to a "public option" than literal socialism. I'm more like "let's have a public alternative because the private ones aren't doing it." I do try to make them inclusive to all, but first and foremost, targeted toward the bottom half of the spectrum.
In philosophical terms, I can't just help but think more closely to hasan though. When discussing politics, we need to have a defined idea of what the problem is, and then we need to come up with concrete steps to solve it. Cenk seemed to avoid committing to specific policy solutions, which reminds me of a very "liberal" thing to do. A lot of platitudes and virtue signals, but little actual substantive action. Hasan, like it or not, he had a plan, he had ideas for how to do things. We can disagree with those things. I know i disagree with hasan/mamdani/red vienna on the details, but hey, at least they have a defined approach to solving the issue.
So yeah, that's my impression on that. Either way, I just like to see two related political commentators arguing over substantive policy on thanksgiving. Beats your typical arguing with your maga uncle most people seem to dread. If we had more discussions like this, maybe we can actually solve problems, even if we're not all on the same page.
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