- A guaranteed-basic-income program in Austin gave people $1,000 a month for a year.
- Most of the participants spent the no-strings-attached cash on housing, a study found.
- Participants who said they could afford a balanced meal also increased by 17%.
A guaranteed-basic-income plan in one of Texas’ largest cities reduced rates of housing insecurity. But some Texas lawmakers are not happy.
Austin was the first city in Texas to launch a tax-payer-funded guaranteed-income program when the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot kicked off in May 2022. The program served 135 low-income families, each receiving $1,000 monthly. Funding for 85 families came from the City of Austin, while philanthropic donations funded the other 50.
The program was billed as a means to boost people out of poverty and help them afford housing. “We know that if we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families, it leads to better outcomes,” the city says on its website. “It leads to better jobs, increased savings, food security, housing security.”
While the program ended in August 2023, a new study from the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank, found that the city’s program did, in fact, help its participants pay for housing and food. On average, program participants reported spending more than half of the cash they received on housing, the report said.
Well, in that case, assuming that collectivizing housing will solve the issue is just as erroneous as assuming it won’t, isn’t it.
Not exactly. Saying something cannot work can be disproven by showing a single example of it working. There are plenty.
What I am trying to say is that housing should not be run for the sole pursuit of profit. People should own their own house, should own and manage an apartment block collectively, or have institutions that “own” and manage housing not for profit but for social and global benefit. But Individuals or corporations shouldn’t be allowed to own other peoples houses for profit. Or land for that matter. At least not as “capital”.
So you can “own” your own house and keep it for your children but you’re more like a steward, you can’t rent it out or own the housing of lots of people. It would cease to become a commodity and be much cheaper then.
That’s very radical and faces many potential problems but you can’t say it’s erroneous proposition. What you’d need are scientific studies that compare different models in different countries and account for all the variables including political corruption to sabotage public housing. And what benefits can be shown.
I don’t propose state socialism because that kind of total concentration of all economic power was shown to be very corrupt. But we need better models because right now wealth inequality is so vast than most housing is being bought off and concentrated for the 0.1% - which is very similar to state socialism too!
Saying something cannot work can be disproven by showing a single example of it working.
But something working in a single instance does not automatically prove it will work in all instances (see: Prisoner’s Dilemma, Efficient Market Paradox)
Yes, collectivized housing CAN work. Private housing cooperatives, for instance (which is what you seem to be describing) DO exist and are a decent alternative for sustainable homeownership. They probably won’t solve the homeless crisis, however.
My point was/is not to argue and collectivized approaches to housing in principle, but only against the idea that there exists some sort of “one size fits all” approach that will do everyone justice. That is simply not the case, regardless of how much some people want it to be true.
Well any discussion about this is good because right now the acceptable ideology and mainstream discussion about this is overwhelmingly one sided. There is no resistance to insane wealth concentration.
I have the feeling that UBI is doomed to fail if the basic necessities of live will continue to be owned and run for profit. Give people $1000 bucks more and the prices will increase because “they” own and control everything.
So maybe there should be two economies: One socialist for the necessities to live a prosperous life (not luxurious or consumerist) and one for all the rest. The first one should be sustainable and some kind of circular economy where everything is build to last and be repaired and recycled, the other is free market made for competition to innovate and create new products and services.
