Real estate has always been commodified. But now there are more people with access to it than ever before. See home ownerships rates in the census [1].
There are real issues around the costs of developing. Building is insanely difficult and expensive now. There's tons of regulation around it increasing the cost, and ironically the labor movement makes it way more expensive in terms of labor (and materials... which also require labor to produce). Then you've got endless numbers of regressive NIMBYs masquerading as progressives who fight development with political means (via zoning), legal means (via lawsuits), and emotional means (via attacking it as gentrification). You face people like professors who decry gentrification, despite having moved into the area, owning multiple properties, acting as a landlord, and then collecting bogus evidence to prevent turning a private dog park into housing [2].
In Philly, you can either spend months or years getting a housing project approved and bribe council people like Darrell Clarke (who stays in office via appealing to NIMBYs and restricting development in blighted areas [3]), or you can build single family homes "by right" (according to existing zoning). Which means single family homes instead of high density or mixed use structures.
Even if land were free, building would still cause housing to be very expensive. Average cost to build a house in Philadelphia (cheap compared to other big US cities) is 300k. There are many places where you can get free land [4] but it turns out people want to live in a limited number of places generally.
There are real issues around the costs of developing. Building is insanely difficult and expensive now. There's tons of regulation around it increasing the cost, and ironically the labor movement makes it way more expensive in terms of labor (and materials... which also require labor to produce). Then you've got endless numbers of regressive NIMBYs masquerading as progressives who fight development with political means (via zoning), legal means (via lawsuits), and emotional means (via attacking it as gentrification). You face people like professors who decry gentrification, despite having moved into the area, owning multiple properties, acting as a landlord, and then collecting bogus evidence to prevent turning a private dog park into housing [2].
In Philly, you can either spend months or years getting a housing project approved and bribe council people like Darrell Clarke (who stays in office via appealing to NIMBYs and restricting development in blighted areas [3]), or you can build single family homes "by right" (according to existing zoning). Which means single family homes instead of high density or mixed use structures.
Even if land were free, building would still cause housing to be very expensive. Average cost to build a house in Philadelphia (cheap compared to other big US cities) is 300k. There are many places where you can get free land [4] but it turns out people want to live in a limited number of places generally.
1. https://www2.census.gov/programs-surveys/decennial/tables/ti...
2. https://billypenn.com/2021/03/29/west-philly-poop-study-feca...
3. https://whyy.org/articles/philly-council-limits-development-...
4. https://www.wideopencountry.com/free-land-in-the-us/