<story><title>What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/07/evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city-matthew-desmond-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jakobegger</author><text>Instead of giving money to poor people, who then have to spend it all on rent, why not provide affordable housing?&lt;p&gt;In Linz we have something called &amp;quot;housing cooperatives&amp;quot; (the German word is &amp;quot;Wohngenossenschaften&amp;quot;). These cooperatives build apartments, and to rent them you become a member of the cooperative. The goal of these cooperatives is not to make a profit, but to provide affordable housing.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s amazing how well that works! Rents are typically 50% lower than average, and the buildings are always well maintained. In general, they also have better amenities (playgrounds for children etc) compared to privately owned apartment buildings. The only problem is that there are very long waiting lists (more than 5 years in some cases).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s amazing how cheap good housing can be when it&amp;#x27;s not necessary to make a profit for the owner.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>madaxe_again</author><text>We used to have something like this in the UK, but then under &amp;quot;right to buy&amp;quot;, the vast majority of the council funded housing was sold off to private landlords (council tenants usually did not have the funds to buy themselves, so were offered deals by large private landlords like &amp;quot;we&amp;#x27;ll give you £10k, you can keep living there for 10 years, we&amp;#x27;ll give you the money to buy it, you then sell it straight on to us&amp;quot;), and they&amp;#x27;re now doing a second round of the same to sell off what remains.&lt;p&gt;So - we now have large corporations like the Curo group who own what was once local authority housing and run it for profit - meaning that at any given time about 30% of their &lt;i&gt;13,000&lt;/i&gt; properties are unoccupied, that their tenants never have any maintenance issues addressed, and the rents are high - and the waiting lists are worse than when it was publicly operated. Never mind the impact on the rest of the property market, with insanely inflated prices, as nobody wants to build anything new as it&amp;#x27;ll decrease the value of their portfolio.&lt;p&gt;So - housing cooperatives&amp;#x2F;local authority housing are great, but beware the state selling them to private profit-making entities. It hasn&amp;#x27;t ended well here, and it &lt;i&gt;absolutely&lt;/i&gt; is the case that poverty is profitable.&lt;p&gt;The poorer and more trapped they are the more secure your investment is.</text></comment>
<story><title>What if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people?</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/07/evicted-poverty-and-profit-in-the-american-city-matthew-desmond-review</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jakobegger</author><text>Instead of giving money to poor people, who then have to spend it all on rent, why not provide affordable housing?&lt;p&gt;In Linz we have something called &amp;quot;housing cooperatives&amp;quot; (the German word is &amp;quot;Wohngenossenschaften&amp;quot;). These cooperatives build apartments, and to rent them you become a member of the cooperative. The goal of these cooperatives is not to make a profit, but to provide affordable housing.&lt;p&gt;And it&amp;#x27;s amazing how well that works! Rents are typically 50% lower than average, and the buildings are always well maintained. In general, they also have better amenities (playgrounds for children etc) compared to privately owned apartment buildings. The only problem is that there are very long waiting lists (more than 5 years in some cases).&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s amazing how cheap good housing can be when it&amp;#x27;s not necessary to make a profit for the owner.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LoSboccacc</author><text>We have those in Italy, as a counter point: it&amp;#x27;s amazing how fast those got occupied abusively and how local criminals use it to either hide their illegal workers or use it as bargaining chips to gain support and omerta from the population.</text></comment>