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Originally Posted by Ch.G, Ch.G
Ugh. I hate this/find this very troubling as well. At the risk of sounding like a right-wing caricature, I will add that I think it's also very un-American. The micro-apartment trend (well, "trend") is perfectly illustrative. A lot of folks on the left decry it because they claim compact spaces are inhumane, a pretty fucking classist value judgment: It's perfectly fine when you willfully subject yourself to dorm room living for four years on your parents' dime in the name of higher education, but it's unacceptable for the relatively poorer to prioritize, say, a centralized location over extra living space to save time/money on their commute? (You're allowed that kind of agency; they're not?) But their preferred outcome--large units for everyone!--is an obvious nonstarter. So the cobbled together compromise solution we're left with still privileges one group--the poorest--over others--the poor--restricting the latter's access even more and, in fact, perversely disincentivizing financial success for those just above the cut-off. Talk about a moral inversion. Yet this system, in which a token but arbitrary handful of the more destitute are spared at the expense of, among others, the slightly less destitute, is somehow preferable to one that only a hardened Marxist could argue doesn't still have the capacity to reward those who merit it?
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I consider myself a political moderate, not in the American sense, but in the actual real sense of the phrase. Politics in modern America are shifted far to the right of centrist policies and democratic (small d) policies.
As such, I believe government has a strong role to play in regards to housing and even local governments in terms of zoning for housing.
Government has a responsibility. A democratic, people-responsive responsibility to mandate affordable, clean, livable housing. Not necessarily through direct ownership or construction of buildings, but policies to promote larger units, properly accessible education and infrastructure and transportation services, etc.
I'm not sure if what Paris is doing is the right thing or the wrong thing, but cities and states/nations need to promote limited housing inflation, interest rates on mortgages that discourage profiteering on flipping properties, and many other policies to ensure units are built large enough to live in.
You see a lot of condo units in the 1960's and 70's that were over 1,000 sq ft where average incomes could purchase keep shrinking. Now its common for affordable new units to be 500, 600, maybe 700 sq ft for a barely affordable unit.
I'm not here to say I have a solution, but government owes itself to promote policies to make for larger units with more affordable prices. It doesn't happen when government has complete control and ownership, and it doesn't happen when the market runs amok without any rules or regulations. The answers are more nuanced and the gov't has a strong role to play.