@tsrams @QasimRashid Almost certainly.

If you don’t want to think about economics, you can just look empirically at places where it’s been tried. In the UK, the previous government tried several variations of this and each one was later measured to have increased house prices and reduce home ownership by young people. They made property developers a lot of money though, which is why the Conservatives were so enthusiastic about the policies: they could pay government money to companies that they invested in while pretending it was a thing to help poor people.

If you have a basic understanding of market economics, you’d conclude that increasing access to funds for buyers will drive up demand and, when demand goes up so does price. Without understanding anything special about the economics of the housing market, this is the obvious outcome.

If you understand a bit more about the housing market, you realise that most people own one home and sell their existing one to buy a new one. Their purchasing power is affected by the sale price. If you’re selling a starter home and now buyers of starter homes have more money, you can sell for more and then spend more, so the house-price inflation effects propagate up through the market. They also get a small multiplier so the biggest winners are people who own expensive houses. Big real-estate investment firms will see the value of their portfolio increase, which increases the amount that they can borrow and will let them buy more, which further drives up cost for buyers (though may make more rental property available). Disclaimer: I invest in a few funds backed by US real estate and would expect this to make me money if it passes, I just wouldn’t expect it to help the people it’s supposed to help.

If you understand how fractional reserve banking works, you realise that the money supply is increased when people take out loans to fund houses because it adjusts to match the value of assets that people have borrowed against. This means that it is likely to be inflationary across the entire economy, not just limited to housing.

There’s a reason economists warned our government that it was a bad idea when they proposed similar ideas. If you know anything about economics, it’s a bad idea, the more you know the worse it seems.

@Geoffberner @QasimRashid same as the idea of a renter's subsidy - for the short term yes, get people into housing, importantly keep them there, but it only lines the pockets of landlords

until Govs stop the rapid corporate buyout of housing stock, set real limits on increases, and mass build government owned housing, which is out of reach of capital fuckery, this problem will only increase

Look at Vienna for answers

@QasimRashid
So #TaxTheRich until there are no #billionaires

Seriously, billionaires have no reason to exist

$900,000,000 is far, far, far too much money for any human being to control in a reasonable world

So get some math majors in, and turn the dials on the tax law back to before the #Reagan administration until we got that straightened out

That will give us plenty of resources to fix so many problems

And a lot of things will naturally correct themselves as this balances out