I grew up in an economy where it was. When I was born, we were living in a 4-people, 3-generational, ~500sqft 1.5 room flat (the large kitchen was subdivided to make a tiny bedroom); later, the govt decided that we deserve better and I ended up growing up in a 4-people, 2-generational, ~650sqft 2-room flat. I wonder what my parents, two engineers, would have been able to afford in the USA?
I think I had a very happy childhood but comparing these things kinda allows you to reflect. Interestingly, the low standards stick; when we bought a small 1100sqft house with my wife (in the USA), some of my friends back in Russia were like "oh, a big house, are you planning for kids?" ;)
I lived in a country where housing (at the time) was provided by the government. It's not as great as it might sound. Want to move? Do the paper work and wait for a few years. Want a bigger place? too bad. Not to mention single room for the whole family, shared kitchen and washrooms.
The quality of the housing is going to be proportional to the wealth of the country per capita. In the US, we simply allocate quality of housing based on ability to pay, so many people have incredibly bad housing conditions.
Right, of course the only choices we have are government provides housing or everyone sleeps on the street. Not like we have any examples of any other system.
Our highways are free because they're a public good (in the economics sense) and prone to monopoly pricing due to geographic constraints on competition.
While it isn't inconceivable that housing could be public, the same underlying economic rationale isn't there, and private housing works really well. You'd be solving a non-problem (or, to the extent that there is a problem, it's one that's easily addressed by simply increasing private housing stock) and risking a lot to do so.
> Our highways are free because they're a public good (in the economics sense) and prone to monopoly pricing due to geographic constraints on competition.
And homes are not? Certainly not at the same scale, but we are seeing the same problems with landlords that we see with monopolists.
Landlords are able to charge extremely high rents and there is not enough available/affordable land to build competition, especially in cities experiencing NIMBYism and gentrification.
> You'd be solving a non-problem (or, to the extent that there is a problem, it's one that's easily addressed by simply increasing private housing stock)
It's clearly a problem. That's why we're here talking about it in the first place. It's also clearly not "easily addressed", or that would have happened already. Sure, we need to remove barriers to increasing housing stock, but that isn't likely to be enough; especially in the short term.
Homes aren't a natural monopoly. Highways largely are.
"there is not enough available/affordable land to build competition"
There definitely is in the large majority of places. The only city that can possibly say that honestly is Hong Kong, but even there they could go a bit more vertical and more dense if they needed.
"It's also clearly not "easily addressed","
Whatever lobbying hurdles you need to overcome to reduce regulatory interference on increasing the housing stock, you're going to face those same hurdles (and then some) if we're talking about public housing. So it doesn't make sense to immediately go for the radical and untested solution when an easier and proven solution is waiting. If we build vertically and it doesn't work (which it will, but nevertheless) - only then does it make sense to consider something more radical and more difficult to push through.
