Libs love bad faith arguments about housing. Even if they agree that more housing needs to be built - they never want to talk about how that could even begin to happen.

I had some annoying convos at Bluesky about housing. Sometimes I wonder why I ever talk to any lib online. Anyway - I guess I'll keep trying.

Do you have any articles or web pages...

  • About the pernicious influence of institutional buyers in the housing market. Related to this is lib tedium like "it is a myth that institutional buyers control a large part of the market."

  • That help me avoid any tedious, bad faith, lecture that "it is a myth that there are more vacant homes than homeless people". I want something I can link to so I can say - Look, I don't expect the number of vacant homes in the US to be zero but look at this.

  • And I want another this link to avoid lectures that "it is a myth that a meaningful number of homes are kept 'off the market' to raise prices".

  • [Whatever else I'm forgetting. Surely there are at least two more list items.]

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NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie is a social media lib darling. The following post is a thing of beauty that I discovered an hour ago. He managed to squeeze in a lot of these annoyances into a single post.

Anyway, it is a myth that there are more vacant homes than homeless people. It is a myth that institutional buyers control a large part of the market. And it is a myth that a meaningful number of homes are kept “off the market” to raise prices.

https://subium.com/profile/jamellebouie.net/post/3kzcoa3xjsk2c

  • AstroStelar [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    2 days ago

    On the other end you have YIMBYs who bootlick real estate developers and reduce everything to restrictive zoning and "build, build, build", dismissing concerns about gentrification, new housing just being bought up by speculators or it just being too expensive anyway. The urbanist Youtube channel "Oh the Urbanity!" is like this from my experience, though it was a long time ago since I last watched them.

    For me housing supply and housing affordability are two related, but separate issues, because there are other factors than supply and demand that affect housing affordability.