[Truth To Power]

If they want to have legal title to their homes, they do.

Then you are no longer talking about people not having a home to sleep in. You are talking about them not owning real estate. Different issue.

Otherwise the authorities can simply bulldoze their homes and forcibly move them off the land they are illegally occupying.

No, that's just absurd and disingenuous garbage with no basis in fact. You don't have to own land to legally and securely occupy it. There are billions of tenants all over the world who do not have legal titles to their homes, and they are in no danger whatever of being forcibly removed and having their homes bulldozed. You know this.

This happens so often in developing countries that it barely needs to be mentioned; it’s common knowledge. It even happens in the UK.

It happens when people are occupying the land illegally. But you don't have to own land -- or participate in the housing market -- to occupy it legally, if you have your natural individual liberty right to use land. Our remote ancestors exercised those natural liberty rights to house themselves for millions of years without ever having a legal title to land or participating in a housing market. You are merely unable to conceive of such a world because as a socialist, you refuse to know what the natural individual right to liberty is.

Yet that is not the world in which we live.

Sure it is.

And without intervention in the “free market” of housing, it never will be.

There is no free market in housing because landowning is forcibly subsidized, as I already explained.

Irrelevant. Demand for housing includes rented housing as well as privately owned housing.

It is extremely relevant, because the market for ownership of land is entirely different from the market for occupancy of housing. Again, because your brain is full of Marxist garbage, you are unable to understand such facts.

Lol. Yes, I am. As you well know.

Well, there's your problem. As long as the preservation of your false and evil socialist beliefs is more important to you than liberty, justice, or truth, you will not be able to find a willingness to know the relevant indisputable facts of objective physical reality that I identify. We have seen this in my extended, tedious, comprehensive and conclusive, yet entirely fruitless, demolition of ckaihatsu's Marxist tripe.

The “subsidies” are not “forced”,

They are most definitely and indisputably subsidies, and they are most definitely and indisputably forced.

but are a direct consequence of the private ownership of land, which is perfectly legal under capitalism.

Exactly: the legal private ownership of land that is by definition required under capitalism is inherently a forcible subsidy to landowners. That is why "free market capitalism" is an oxymoron.

And even if the land were to be confiscated from its legal owners by the government, the logic of the free market in housing would still exist -

It doesn't exist now, as I already proved. But it could if, at a minimum, there were no forcible subsidization of idle landowning.

the market, in order to function as a free market (i.e., using the price mechanism to achieve equilibrium between supply and demand) must price some people out of the market, so that their need for housing never manifests itself as a demand for housing.

Unless everyone has their natural individual liberty right to use land restored, or just compensation for its abrogation, as in the geoist system. Then EVERY RESIDENT CITIZEN would have enough effective purchasing power in the land market to trade for housing -- indeed, enough to trade for room and board in a low-rent location.

[Unthinking Majority]

Ordinarily, a lot of homelessness is due to people who are unable to earn or keep any decent amount of money for rent for whatever reason. Sometimes it's drugs, sometimes mental illness, sometimes both. People addicted to drugs are so addicted they will spend their rent money on drugs and thus are evicted. Or they are so addicted they can't keep a job in the first place and the welfare they earn they again spend on drugs. Free social housing is the only option for them since they can't handle money.

I think now more and more we're quickly seeing many of the homeless simply priced out of the market, which I could see happen if a person is making minimum wage.

[Pants-of-dog]

Why? The people living in NYCHA's crumbling apartments are not homeless.

I mean, their housing sucks but they don't count as homeless.

Yes, how silly of me!

The homeless people are those people dying of heat in Phoenix.

[wat0n]

Yes, how silly of me!

The homeless people are those people dying of heat in Phoenix.

Do you really want to discuss the quality of housing in actual socialist regimes?

[Pants-of-dog]

Do you really want to discuss the quality of housing in actual socialist regimes?

You probably think I do.

And will probably discuss it no matter what I may or may not have said.

So feel free to discuss that whataboutism. Please understand if I do not reply to you.

[wat0n]

You probably think I do.

And will probably discuss it no matter what I may or may not have said.

So feel free to discuss that whataboutism. Please understand if I do not reply to you.

If living with low quality housing counts as being homeless, which I can actually agree with to some extent, then how can you honestly say that socialist regimes did not have to deal with homelessness? Their housing was and is most certainly regarded as low quality under Western standards.

[Pants-of-dog]

@wat0n

Feel free to talk about that.

-------------

About 750 homeless people die each year from too much heat. These numbers will only go.up in the future unless the US stops sucking in this regard.

[wat0n]

@Pants-of-dog so then just house them in rodent infested public housing with no heating and no AC. I mean, that's what you think works isn't it?

[late]

[usermention=27484]

@Pants-of-dog[/usermention] so then just house them in rodent infested public housing with no heating and no AC. I mean, that's what you think works isn't it?

Why are you hiding in the past?

[wat0n]

Why are you hiding in the past?

Past? That's the state of NYC's public housing before the pandemic. I doubt this has improved ever since.

[late]

Past? That's the state of NYC's public housing before the pandemic. I doubt this has improved ever since.

Intellectually, that's ancient history.

[wat0n]

Intellectually, that's ancient history.

What is this supposed to mean? This is a concrete issue that NYC has yet to solve... If it can even solve it.

[late]

What is this supposed to mean? This is a concrete issue that NYC has yet to solve... If it can even solve it.

It means you attack the causes. Zoning that keeps supply artificially low. Housing policy that actually helps the poor, that sort of thing.

[wat0n]

It means you attack the causes. Zoning that keeps supply artificially low. Housing policy that actually helps the poor, that sort of thing.

I agree, but voters won't. And this happens even in "socially conscious" places.

[late]

I agree, but voters won't. And this happens even in "socially conscious" places.

This is a backwards country, Progressives always have to try and do the impossible.

[wat0n]

This is a backwards country, Progressives always have to try and do the impossible.

At least even voters in progressive jurisdictions don't vote for them. I mean, just check California and San Francisco's zoning laws.

They just don't regard densification and the associated loss of quality of life (of their lives) to be acceptable. Solidarity doesn't go that far.

[Pants-of-dog]

If the wealthiest and most powerful capitalist country cannot deal with homelessness, it is logical to assume that Marxist criticisms are correct.

[wat0n]

If the wealthiest and most powerful capitalist country cannot deal with homelessness, it is logical to assume that Marxist criticisms are correct.

No, because Marxists can't deal with it either. Unless you count abysmal quality public housing as a solution

[Pants-of-dog]

@wat0n

Do you understand how your claim is illogical?

[wat0n]

@wat0n

Do you understand how your claim is illogical?

It's not. The Marxist critique includes a solution that we know doesn't work.