How Housing Policy Benefits from a Socioeconomic Perspective
Over at the web site of the Calgary Homeless Foundation, I’ve written a blog post titled “How Housing Policy Benefits from a Socioeconomic Perspective.”
Points raised in the blog post include the following:
-Leaders in Canada’s non-profit housing sector should think beyond just housing, and think hard about the importance of economic and social factors that have an impact on housing and homelessness.
-Even though it’s hard to show how various economic and social factors have impacted housing and homelessness, well-researched arguments can still be made about the impact that major economic and social changes have likely had on housing and homelessness.
-Major economic changes that have taken place in Canada since the 1980s can likely be reversed. Indeed, unemployment likely can come down, and public social spending can increase.
-Leaders in Canada’s non-profit housing sector should try to partner with researchers and advocates in other realms of public policy (I offered the Alternative Federal Budget as an example).
-Even though many non-profit housing providers can’t afford in-house public policy researchers, they can always ask students to write annotated bibliographies on research that has already been done on questions that are of particular interest to them.
The link to the full blog post is here.
Further remarks from Bill Mitchell:
William Mitchell is Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia
http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=30293
“The UK Green’s leader gave an interview on the party’s housing policy, which was reported on ABC News today (February 26, 2015) – Natalie Bennett, leader of Britain’s Greens, apologises after struggling on party polices in ‘very bad’ interview.
She was asked how the Party would pay for the land necessary “to build 500,000 new social rental homes” and replied:
Right, well, that’s, erm, you’ve got a total cost, erm, that will be spelt out in our manifesto …
You can listen the interview via the ABC report. Cringe a while then think about the problem.
She could have simply said – “If we are in government, then the British people will understand we issue the currency and we will pay for this by increasing the deficit and instructing the Bank of England to credit the necessary bank accounts to facilitate the purchases.”
That is the plain truth of it.
They can do that. If there is a need for 1/2 million more social houses then they should do that as long as it is within the real economy’s capacity to provide the housing.
If it is not in the capacity then they would have to assess priorities and perhaps have to raise taxes to withdraw spending capacity from the private sector.
Simple macroeconomics.”