> Thats why housing should never be part of a market, because people don't want houses, people need houses.
I don't understand this at all.
A market is designed to solve the problem of allocation of resources (think: scarce).
Can you state your non-market proposal to provide housing (in economic terms)? Sorry, but the idea of managing allocation of resources without a market is very foreign to me. I just don't know what you're proposing, and I can't imagine how it would work.
Separately - not much talk about the importance of location. NYC housing is expensive... why live in NYC?
I don't know where you're from, but it's generally known under the name "public housing" and is basically a gigantic success throughout many western countries. So much so, that its systematic demolition throughout the neoliberal glory-years of the 80/90s has caused serious housing crises throughout those countries, which we are now stuck with.
Managing resources without a market is actually quite simple: you work out what people actually need, and what you have, and you divide what you have over the people that need it.
This might sound weird because we're bringing it up in the context of housing, but it's something we do all the time everywhere. Some good examples here are: healthcare, insurance, infrastructure, military, utilities, public transport, science, education, etc. Basically anything your taxes go to is managed this way, its pretty boring stuff.
Most of these things have long histories of socialist community-thinking that make them very obvious shared resources that are placed outside markets, but somehow housing missed the boat. This does not make housing significantly different in any way though: one can own a mansion just like one can own a Tesla, it does not prevent public housing or public transport from existing, nor does it adversely affect the market from profiting off luxury goods where common goods are freely available. The trouble is, a house is now a luxury, even though you can feel in your guts that this is just not true.
The market effect on housing should decide the quality of house that you have, not whether you have a house at all.
> Can you state your non-market proposal to provide housing (in economic terms)? Sorry, but the idea of managing allocation of resources without a market is very foreign to me. I just don't know what you're proposing, and I can't imagine how it would work.
Easy. There are so many options. Here is one:
Establish housing trusts, whose purpose of existence is to house people. Non profit (that is not their purpose) . No debt, start them off with a huge wad of cash. Allow them to build, convert, do what ever.
Such a trust can set up its own systems for allocation, but not entirely at whim. There can be political control too.
Allow an occupation right where tenants cannot be evicted for no reason (that can be applied to all housing, and in civilised places it is - not where I live amongst barbarians)
Not perfect, nothing is.
There is no need to outlaw private property or private land lords, there will still be niches for them. But the great mass of rental housing could be supplied by such trusts.
> but the idea of managing allocation of resources without a market is very foreign to me
Please open yur mind, look into some economic history, look around the world. Markets are not the only solution to allocation and markets can reach terrible equilibriums.
The Irish Potato Famine happened in a free market. Markets can even be genocidal.
Lots of people live in vans by choice, I've considered it. A PO Box, a cell phone and a van is pretty cheap.
Furthermore, in context of the topic at hand, we're talking about housing _in NYC_, which people certainly don't need. I certainly don't. I don't even want it.
You need land to park your van on. Land is pricey. Land in or near "a city where all the jobs are" is even pricier. A house (residential building) on land near amenities is going to be expensive. All a van does is reduce the cost of building on top of that land - and not by a great deal. I mean the UK has large numbers of "trailer parks" in the South East and those suckers go for 100K plus. More than half the cost of average house price in the UK.
A van does not solve the problem. A van is a shitty place to raise a family. And remote working is not going to cut it - if your job does not pay you enough to afford a house, it's unlikely to be a nice middle class job where you can sit at a laptop.
Your way of argumentation can be applied to anything.
"People don't need nutritious food, you can survive just fine on bread and water for many decades. Do people suddenly "need" to live long healthy lives."
The point is that society should agree on some level of basic needs, if you think a van fulfills the requirements for a residence for the majority of people this discussion needs to be held on a much more fundamental level of how you view other people and their requirements for life.
And yes, if you want the future to be in any way a human future, "being able to raise a family" is absolutely in the "need" column.
Finally, to give you some perspective of problems a real society would actually face if this ridiculous scenario were true: what do you think would happen to the price of Walmart parking spots if "van-life" was a common choice.
> Your way of argumentation can be applied to anything.
That's because it's a good argument. And no, people don't need nutritious food either. Unless you _want_ them to live healthy lives. To satisfy your "want", there is a list of "needs". If you really want to, you can turn any want into a need by applying it to a higher level want. I happen to want people to live long healthy lives but I'm not going to frame that as a "need" because it simply isn't.
> The point is that society should agree on some level of basic needs
Ok, let's start there.
> how you view other people and their requirements for life.
I would _like_ everyone to live a happy and fulfilled life free of suffering. I pay taxes and donate to charity to help provide that for people. It is, however, not a requirement for life or a "need" in any way.
> And yes, if you want the future to be in any way a human future, "being able to raise a family" is absolutely in the "need" column.
Ok. If that's the goal, yes. Is that the goal? People are having children at a sub-replacement level. It doesn't seem like that's really a goal for those people.
I _want_ to live in a free society. I _want_ there to be no or minimal human suffering. If humanity goes extinct through a process of dwindling birthrates because people choose not to have children, I really could not care less.
Every "need" has an implicit "in order to accomplish [goal]" on the end of it. Framing something as a "need" assumes a common goal which is often abused people to put more and more things into the "need" column when there is no consensus goal.
So what do people "need" housing for? The availability of affordable housing is already an accomplished goal. The availability of affordable housing in NYC is not an accomplished goal.
The availability of affordable housing in NYC is only a need for the survival of NYC itself which I, again, could not care less about (provided humans don't suffer in the collapse).
People talk past each other constantly by omitting their priors discussing these things. When you say "housing is a need", for what? And in the context of this article, I'd interpret your statement of "need" to be NYC specific so, "housing in NYC is a need", for what?
Feel free to reframe the word "need" into a philosophical all or nothing, what-does-it-even-mean-to-want-something kind of way, but then there's no common ground to discuss anything on. Talk about omitting priors, how about this prior: lets use words the way people use words generally.
If you don't consider happiness and lack of suffering a goal that is worthy of using the word "need" you are just doing some Jordan Peterson-esque word salad defense of something that cannot be coherently understood outside your in-group, even if you wrote a book on it.
How many van-living people do you think will be able to squat on Walmart property before they're getting knocks with armed officers and drug dogs in the middle of the night?
Yes, without question being able to raise a family is a need for a functional society. Longterm living mobile in a van is not viable for anyone except the most fringe members of society.
As long as a good is scarce and controlled by the market there is no reason for the situation to improve for people who want that good.
Thats why housing should never be part of a market, because people don't want houses, people need houses.