ursaminortaur wrote:CliffEdge wrote:Not everyone can own their own house because there aren't enough houses for everyone to own one. Therefore whatever happens to prices, houses will not become more affordable - unless many new houses are built or many of the proles die.
Actually many old proles are scheduled to die but their replacements arrive across the channel every day.
Of course there aren't enough houses for everyone to own as a single occupant. However there are enough rooms in those houses to more than accommodate everyone. Most houses are multi-bedroom but a fairly large percentage of those privately held houses have one or more spare bedrooms.
Landlords are undoubtedly more efficient in filling those rooms than your average family since a rented room provides additional income to the landlord.
With the combination of owner occupied housing and landlord owned rented properties we have managed to roughly keep the balance so that most people have a roof over their head rather than sleeping rough on the streets. We aren't back in the depression of the 1930s with shanty towns in city parks like the US Hoovervilles.
https://www.insider.com/new-york-central-park-hooverville-great-depression-photos-2020-9
In the early 1930s, New York City's Central Park was home to a small shanty town that residents experiencing homelessness built.
The ramshackle town was a "Hooverville," named after Republican President Herbert Hoover. Americans held him responsible for not doing enough to alleviate the Great Depression.
Hoovervilles appeared all over the US in the 1930s, some with as many as 15,000 residents. Despite their dilapidated condition, reports highlight how those living in them did their best to keep their homes tidy, and themselves presentable.
One man told a New York Times reporter in 1931: "We work hard to keep it clean, because that is important. I never lived like this before."
Would ownership of a room or two be some kind of lease?
