Non-Profits versus Profit Maximization: For a New Social Housing Policy
In the US, creating a non-profit or cooperative housing sector and long-term low interest loans are crucial remedies to gentrification and exploding rents. Unfortunately these remedies are not discussed and market failure and state failure are repressed or made taboo. Where neoliberal myths (market as sacrosanct, wages are only cost factor, regulations decrease profits, government as the problem) prevail, problems are individualized into psychological and motivational problems and systemic or structural failure are impossible. Many in Germany regret the privatization of social housing.
Housing as a human and social necessity is eclipsed by housing as a speculative asset. Housing as a human right is subverted by the right of speculation. Here are links to important articles that help in reconceptualizing:
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2016/06/432565.shtml
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2016/06/432478.shtml
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/627516
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/06/266635.shtml
