There is another solution to the problem which is ridiculous. . You would need a benevolent billionaire. They would buy million-dollar properties and then just rent them for the tax/insurance/maintenance. Over time properties build equity. That is they gain value because the bank comes back and says "wow, you've improved this place by painting and doing landscaping and adding a new roof. Now it's worth x-amount more than it was." So if you have a building worth $1M and you put $200k into fixing it up, but it's full of poor people who don't pay rent at market prices, what will the bank say? They're not going to appraise it any higher than it was. So you can't recoup part of the money to put into more property or continue fixing up the building. Meaning you have to charge more or keep dumping benevolent billionaire money into it.
You can do that for a while but eventually the billionaire dies and then what happens to the property? The people living there can't afford to buy it. The banks take it or their children take it and sell it at market prices to normal landlords.
On a fundamental level, the value of a property is, at least in part, its ability to generate future income for someone. Buildings full of people who don't pay rent is not generating future income. This is how capitalism pushes for profit by definition. It's an axiomatic part of the system.
As ridiculous as this scenario sounds, it does put into perspective how a lot of people have an instinct to believe billionaires are generous. Because that level of hypothetical generosity could step around the boundaries of typical profit seeking behavior, so billionaires are capable of changing some people's lives for the better much more than the average person. But they don't because they have no reason other than pure altruism and they wouldn't do that because they're flesh automatons made from concentrated evil.
There is another solution to the problem which is ridiculous. . You would need a benevolent billionaire. They would buy million-dollar properties and then just rent them for the tax/insurance/maintenance. Over time properties build equity. That is they gain value because the bank comes back and says "wow, you've improved this place by painting and doing landscaping and adding a new roof. Now it's worth x-amount more than it was." So if you have a building worth $1M and you put $200k into fixing it up, but it's full of poor people who don't pay rent at market prices, what will the bank say? They're not going to appraise it any higher than it was. So you can't recoup part of the money to put into more property or continue fixing up the building. Meaning you have to charge more or keep dumping benevolent billionaire money into it.
You can do that for a while but eventually the billionaire dies and then what happens to the property? The people living there can't afford to buy it. The banks take it or their children take it and sell it at market prices to normal landlords.
On a fundamental level, the value of a property is, at least in part, its ability to generate future income for someone. Buildings full of people who don't pay rent is not generating future income. This is how capitalism pushes for profit by definition. It's an axiomatic part of the system.
As ridiculous as this scenario sounds, it does put into perspective how a lot of people have an instinct to believe billionaires are generous. Because that level of hypothetical generosity could step around the boundaries of typical profit seeking behavior, so billionaires are capable of changing some people's lives for the better much more than the average person. But they don't because they have no reason other than pure altruism and they wouldn't do that because they're flesh automatons made from concentrated evil.