• Eheran@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Making it public? Where? Never heard that. They stay empty, people own them, it is essentially the only way for them to save on money (investment), hence this massive housing market with the tons of building shells just rotting. Not to mention the extreme quality issues with their tofu dreg.

    • Sunforged@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      You dismiss the counter argument because you haven’t heard of it?

      What the authorities refer to as “a new model” would replace the old emphasis on ownership with more rentals and use government funds to buy up bankrupt properties so that in time the government’s role in real estate would rise from 5% of the market at present to 30%.

      Beijing will commit the equivalent of $280 billion a year for five years to buy up distressed private residential real estate developments and repurpose them as rental units. The plans also mention building still more units, some subsidized rentals, for a total of six million new units in 35 cities over the next five years. Beijing would impose severe restrictions on who could buy these apartments and would forbid purchasers from trading their units on the open market.

      • Eheran@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Buying out bankrupt properties stabilizes the housing market, so makes sense that they do that.

        Then renting/selling that space is not making it public…? What an I missing?

        • Sunforged@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          What do you consider public housing? Is section 8 not public housing? You realize people in section 8 still pay rent.

          Are you aware of what community land trusts are? It’s how I was able to become a home owner in my sleepy little hometown of Seattle. Government builds/buys the house, sells it at below market prices to people pre-approved for the program and its first come first sold. You as a homebuyer agree that the house will only be sold to other approved buyers in the program at a fixed rate (there is a small equity increase each year lived in the home to cover upkeep and improvements). The city technically owns the land my house is on, but idgaf because my mortgage is about $1,500 cheaper per month than what a unit of equal size would cost us to rent on the open market. I had no chance in hell of buying. This is the way housing should be for everyone, I had friends forced to move away because their previous years income was literally $1,000 over qualifying for the same program. So when I read “Beijing would impose severe restrictions on who could buy these apartments and would forbid purchasers from trading their units on the open market.” it sounds exactly like the program that has given my family a home. That’s fucking rad and I wish the US would do the same to expand public housing to 30% of the market, it would do a lot to negate the insanity that is our housing market.

          So that is how public housing can be rented or sold and still be public housing.

          Does it stabilize the market, yes that’s obviously the point. However it’s not a bail out ála US too big to fail. The businesses that are insolvent will deal with the consequences and the government gets rock bottom prices.

          China is spending 8x more than the US on housing, while we are spending billions funding a genocide, while our homeless problems are magnitudes more than 8x China’s and your still trying to justify the war mongering of this “article” with their real estate market. This is not the problem the media is making it out to be.

          • Eheran@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            If that is what public means in this case, then sure, correct. To me, that simply means/meant something else. Like any other public area, where public does not mean government owned and otherwise identical, but instead that everyone can use it - hence public.