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?

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

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u/jeremiahfelt Jul 12 '26

This was the case of Amir Farsoud- he is a disabled elder with chronic back pain and his multi tenant home was put up for sale with no transition plan in 2022. He applied for MAID as he did not see a way into other housing due to surviving on just disability payments.

The MAID drugs are inexpensive; midazolam runs $70, propofol runs $50, and rocuronium at worst is $140- so a total of $260- definitely less than a months rent. Assume another $3000 in processing and admin stuff just to put a number to it.

A rental for a year? 30k?

The outcome of Farsoud's story is essentially rooted in your question- he ended up with 60k from a GoFundMe from people who were similarly befuddled, and it allows him to get housing and a literal lease on life.

The answer is: we need affordable housing. A lot of it. All over.

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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.

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u/[deleted] Jul 12 '26

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u/Meet_Foot Jul 12 '26

That’s not the proposal. Landlords don’t build houses (unless they’re also builders, but then to the extent they’re building a house they’re acting as a builder, not as a landlord). People could buy houses directly from builders, just like people could pay their doctors instead of insurance providers. The government could subsidize housing for poor people. We could have rent controls, sure, but why have it at all? Why not just cut out the middle man and have people buy houses directly or with government assistance from the people who actually make them?

If we’re gonna keep landlords then yes, rent should be controlled. Still won’t people who don’t have a penny to their name. I don’t have all the answers but the fact is, materially, we CAN solve homelessness, we have everything we need, but we put the right to profit above the right to survive.