I don't know when you came to this country, but as one who was here through the 1970s I can tell you that it fucking SUCKED.

Paging Comrade Sawant...

The 1970s was when OPEC formed and started the supply side economics disaster we continue to suffer through to this day. Minnesota in general has been extremely progressive not carrying water for the chief con-artist Ronald Reagan in either of his elections and it's good to see they continue to see through the BS.

I came to read about Minneapolis, what of Spain??? How many affordable units did Minneapolis build and how did they pull this all off? Other than the inflation piece, many signs of a healthy economy are everywhere.

"Housing could be absolutely free and inflation could be zero and it would have no effect on whether lazy layabouts prefer an opium haze to productive contribution." @4

When do we vote on this plan?

@5, I agree that homelessness should be illegal but who get punished? The homeless or the policymakers who made them homeless? Homes of all kinds, not just precious private castles with lawns/private parks, but missing middle housing up to 6 floors, SROs for those who want/need them…when policymakers allow these things to be built along with the transit to connect them to work and play, we might see something different. But let's worry about graffiti…/eyeroll

@4 "Housing could be absolutely free and inflation could be zero and it would have no effect on whether lazy layabouts prefer an opium haze to productive contribution."

So fucking what? That is like saying that free housing won't cure cancer.

Sure, but it would eliminate homelessness. Remember, homelessness is a housing problem. Eliminate homelessness and we still have plenty of people walking around with mental illness, or addicted to drugs like alcohol, meth, and opiates. We still have people who are victims of domestic violence. We still have children whose parents aren't wealthy or people working minimum wage jobs. The difference is those people would have a home.

Unlike a lot of social ills, homelessness isn't that complicated. Just read the report from the professors who did the studies: https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

Mr. Mudede conveniently forgets to note that part of the reason Minneapolis is enjoying a construction boom is that they have so far rejected rent control that their across the river neighbor St. Paul has instituted. Pretty much overnight housing construction new starts dropped 30-60% in St. Paul and accelerated by almost exactly the same amount in Minneapolis. Hmm.

@10 BUT housing will never be free. It may be SUBSIDIZED to the end user to the point of being free to them, but somebody has to pay to build it, pay to operate it, pay to maintain it, pay utilities, and so on. If we really had "free" housing for everybody we would also have vastly higher taxes and guess what - the same group of people who can't afford housing now would not be able to afford or would refuse to pay those taxes and would still end up driven to the fringes of society. Even if (and when) we house the 'layabouts' or however we choose to describe chronically homeless they will almost all also require constant supervision to prevent destroying their free housing or continued destruction of themselves if behind closed doors. Any huffy response should first be preceded by doing research on what happens to buildings that get squatted in since that is basically a no-consequences anything-goes housing option for certain people. A few years of that and a perfectly good home/building can be completely destroyed.

Is the implication that Seattle’s current state of anarchy, crime, and overdose deaths can be attributed to inflation?

That’s maybe the best one yet.

Minneapolis is a relatively small part of a sprawling urban area. Like so many midwestern cities, they just keep building out further, which makes housing relatively more affordable.

@15 None of that happened, but you're not the only one here typing paragraphs that manage to fit a minimum of three or four falsehoods per sentence

@17 that absolutely did happen

https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/king-county-taxpayers-paying-roughly-330k-month-empty-hotel-renton/ZKZ7IE4QANDW3M2XUFJB55YBYU/?outputType=amp

Hers even further proof that giving mentally ill addicts housing without treatment is a waste of time.

https://www.wweek.com/news/2023/06/07/a-28-million-low-income-apartment-complex-descends-into-chaos-in-just-two-and-a-half-years/

@17: Toby was merely being hyperbolic. The former Red Lion still stands, but as a derelict eyesore, which does nothing but cost King County taxpayers money.

(If you had actually read the news reports, instead of just assuming any statements you don’t like simply must be lies, you could have known there might have been multiple fatalities from that arson, but the Renton Fire Department was able to rescue those mobility-challenged residents.)

I think the failure with the Red Lion experiment was the tenant selection. That should have been reserved for working homeless who passed a mental evaluation.

@22: As usual, you are correct, dear. The entire problem with Seattle/King County’s approach to the Homelessness Crisis has been in treating it as if it is a housing-affordability crisis amongst locals. In reality, it has been as a public-health crisis amongst persons who have moved to Seattle, most of them arriving already homeless. That far larger, latter population cannot be helped by a “housing first” model. Attempting to do so produced the results described here.

@24: Sad, isn’t it, to think of all the locals Seattle might’ve helped stay housed, or made their homelessness a brief and one-time affair, had that half a billion dollars not been flushed down the toilet of the Homeless-Industrial Complex?