Lastly, jtr is a closest socialist (in that regard) who wants us all to live in gov't run housing in big cities like happened in the USSR.
Frankly I think Fannie and Freddie are just a big scam to get as many people dependent on the gov't as possible. People think they need gov't help to buy a house.
Speaking of socialism, you conveniently left out a few socialist aspects of government which you probably benefit from:
1) The home mortgage interest deduction is effectively the government paying part of your mortgage interest in the form of reduced taxes. If a similar break was available to renters then at least everyone would be treated equally under the law. I'm personally against either tax break. In fact, I'm against an income tax period because the government will always use deductions for social engineering.
2) The gasoline you use in your car has enormous indirect subsidies. Little things like foreign wars to secure oil supplies are a start. And then who pays for all the people who get sick from pollution? And who pays to clean up the mess pollution causes? This certainly isn't figured into the price of gasoline.
3) The roads and infrastructure to jump start suburban living were largely subsidized by government. They're deteriorating now in many places. The suburban residents can't be taxed at a high enough rate to even maintain the existing infrastructure, let alone rebuild it.
Funny how socialism which directly benefits
you isn't seen as such. Unlike you, I realize that there are certain endeavors too huge and risky to expect private industry to lead the way, and provided these things have widespread public benefit I see nothing wrong with the government getting involved. I don't necessarily object to the government paying to build roads, for example, provided they generate enough traffic to pay for their operating expenses afterwards (note I said operating expenses, not initial cost). What I do object to is favoring roads over rail. Why is rail expected to entirely pay its own way (including the initial infrastructure), but it's OK for the government to pay for both building and maintaining roads? This has skewed the whole living arrangement we have here in favor of suburbia. Same thing with cheap gasoline.
I'm not for forcing people to live anywhere. But by the same token living in suburbia is something the majority could not afford if it wasn't indirectly subsidized. The problem with subsidies is they can't last. Now we're finally starting to pay something resembling the real cost of the fuel we're using. Cheap loans to subsidize housing in places where it wouldn't exist in a free market are finally coming to an end as well. As a result probably two-thirds of America's housing stock is no longer economically viable. People will live in a way they can afford, which will mean denser living, and for many giving up
mechanized personal transportation (although bicycle usage will undoubtedly increase). And maybe rail will finally start to get the same share of subsidies as roads.
As for government-funded housing, the only reason it has existed is because the free market in some places is either unable or unwilling to provide affordable housing. Take NYC for example. All I see being built are luxury condos. That doesn't do much good for an average worker making, say, $35,000 annually. These low-wage workers perform many essential functions, and they're not going to live 150 miles from where they work just because the affordable housing might be there. Builders are astonishingly often given tax breaks to build affordable housing, and then skew the definition of affordable to deny this housing to the very people it was supposed to serve. They sell it at near market rates instead. In effect, the government tax breaks increased the profits of a private entity while failing to provide the desired public benefit. This is why housing subsidies are falling out of favor. In theory they're a good idea in some markets. In practice most of the time they end of lining the pockets of real estate developers while providing little tangible benefit. Same thing for government-funded home loans. The builders got rich. The home "owners" who were duped into buying more house than they could afford are going to lose everything. In many cases their homes are worth less than the purchase price. But the problem of where and how to house the average workers needed in big cities isn't going to go away anytime soon. Whether through direct rent subsidies or tax breaks some way needs to be found to house the influx of displaced suburban residents in the next decade in places like NYC which have a high cost of housing.
We have hard times ahead but at the same time the changes being made now are going to bring a return to normalcy. People will once again live where and how they can afford. The suburbs will largely be a place where the wealthy few live, just as it was prior to the 1950s. Remember that the cities only recently became expensive. Two generations ago there were loads of affordable middle class housing in NYC. I'm sure we can return to that.
