Hear Me Out: Don’t Blame Capitalism For The Housing Crisis

Slate Debates

Slate Podcasts

Society & Culture, News

4.6 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2024

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On today’s episode of Hear Me Out: housing the nation. We have an affordable housing problem — and an affordability problem, period, but that’s another show. When we talk about solutions to homelessness and cost burden for renters and homeowners alike, many progressives lean toward government intervention… because capitalism seems to have failed us. But has it, really? Or is for-profit development the surprising answer to affordable housing? Jon McMillan of TF Cornerstone – and author of a chapter in Housing The Nation – joins us. If you have thoughts you want to share, or an idea for a topic we should tackle, you can email the show: [email protected] Podcast production by Maura Currie. You can skip all the ads in Hear Me Out by joining Slate Plus! Sign up now at slate.com/hearmeoutplus for just $15 a month for your first three months. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is Here Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley. You probably know we're facing a housing affordability crisis in this country.
0:09.0	Maybe you're one of the 23% of homeowners and 50% of renters who are cost burdened, meaning you spend
0:16.7	more than a third of your income on housing.
0:19.8	One in six American households spend more than half of their income on housing.
0:24.8	It's a widespread issue and it touches all of us.
0:27.6	That's not even mentioning the roughly 600,000 Americans who are now unhoused. A lot of people blame capitalism and the private
0:35.2	housing sector for this crisis, but what if the private sector is actually the
0:39.2	answer? I'm trying to argue that you know developers are out there building in the communities
0:45.7	and they can be a part of this solution and want to be.
0:48.6	John McMillan joins Hear Me Out in just a Moment. Stay with us.
0:57.0	Welcome back to Hear Me Out. I'm Celeste Hedley.
1:00.0	The nation is facing a housing crisis.
1:02.8	Most Americans agree with that statement regardless of political party.
1:06.8	But solutions often get mired in partisan politics.
1:10.6	That's because this big problem is really lots of smaller problems.
1:15.7	Zoning laws, for example, are handled on the city or state levels.
1:19.3	Inflation, the cost of living. Those are connected but unique complicated issues and there's the
1:25.0	question of too much demand for a short supply. The mortgage financer Freddie Mac
1:29.7	says we're short about 4 million homes right now.
1:33.7	Progressive like Bernie Sanders and AOC say the answer is more public housing.
1:38.5	But a chapter in a new book about the housing crisis argues,
1:41.5	a better solution could be found by leaning more into
	...

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