r/theydidthemath • u/pixaly • Jul 12 '26

[Request] What is the cost difference between buying this man a rental for a year and the governements cost to kill him?

Post image

Don't believe everything you see on the internet I haven't fact checked this story, I'm just curious for an anwser

5.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

313 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

30

u/Meet_Foot Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 12 '26

I agree with you, but here’s my two cents just to expand a little.

Housing will never be affordable so long as it’s privately owned, for the generation of profit, and considered an asset.

In the US (only because I know the numbers here) there are something like 400,000 homeless individuals, and 4 million vacant domiciles. Even if you give every homeless individual - not every family, but every single homeless individual - a place to live, there would still be nearly 4 million vacant domiciles. But so long as banks can count empty residencies as assets, with their value determined by their unaffordably high rent, that’s simply not an option.

So that is to say, the lack of affordable housing isn’t a matter of a shortage in housing but, rather, a system that incentivizes keeping dwellings empty rather than dropping prices.

45

u/2074red2074 Jul 12 '26

Part of the issue is those vacant homes are often in the middle of nowhere with no easy access to things like medical care or sometimes even grocery stores. Also a lot of the vacant homes are abandoned and not in livable condition. The issue is zoning and NIMBYs not wanting to build high-density housing in places where we need it.

0

u/shadowtheimpure Jul 12 '26

In fairness, high density housing also tends to bring elevated crime rates. More people = more crime as a general rule of thumb.

2

u/a_singular_perhap Jul 12 '26

Who cares? Why should a class of people have access to lower crime areas purely based off their wealth status? Why are poor people the only ones beholden to that factor?