Oh I thought it was Point/Wickenden

This is gonna suck for cyclists biking past there

>In all honesty to make a proposal of this nature is downright negligent and ignoring the real problem at hand which is rent control.

I hope you mean lack of rent control

Fuck her up, dude. People like this need to see consequences for their actions.

The point is that the idea is slowly becoming more mainstream. Cancelling student debt was a pretty fringe position only 5 years ago. By this year it was mainstream enough that our centrist democrat president picked it up and enacted it.

The idea of preemptively rejecting the best solution is unappealing to me. Many of the most beneficial things our government has done were called crazy and unrealistic before they were implemented. Public libraries, the FLSA, Social Security, Medicare...

Expanding public housing wasn't even a subject of conversation 20 years ago. Now it's a common plank in progressive platforms. I wouldn't be so quick to give up.

There are places in the world where social housing is common, and affordable, and even desirable. There's no reason it cannot be done, and done right, in America.

It's an issue of political will, plain and simple. If the will can be found, the money can be found.

So you think that everyone who waits tables should live in substandard housing

Or you think no one should wait tables

Which one?

The gubbmint

It's called a public developer and it was a big plank in Bernie's platform, as well as Gonzalo Cuervo's (on a much smaller scale obviously)

Or do you mean who swings the actual hammers?

Actually it's directly building housing without involving profit seeking.

It's definitely not a solution in and of itself. Though mandating more than 10 would be a good start. Ultimately the city/state/the US as a whole needs to start cutting out the middleman and just start building housing.

More housing is good. In the long term, it may drive prices down in Providence as a whole. But in the short term, more projects without affordability requirements (i.e. market rate housing) are going to further gentrify Federal Hill and further displace longtime residents.

When you attract a bunch of people who can pay the high price of new apartments, you also attract businesses that cater to them, and you change the atmosphere of the neighborhood from leaning working class to leaning "young professional" (it's already pretty far in that direction). That attracts more young professionals and further drives up rent.

I'm not saying market rate housing shouldn't be built at all, but so often the urbanist attitude is "this will drive down rent for the city/region in the future" without considering the shorter term effects on the more immediate neighborhood. That's why we need a public developer to build enough affordable housing for all.

With housemates, very possible

Biking up college hill every day does keep me fit though