The appeal and beauty to the ancient wisdom of separating the wheat from the chaff will hopefully be clarified by this fact-packed article. Fran Quigley is an attorney who is a self-described socialist.  Whatever someone thinks about socialism, for or against, in fairness to Quigley, in his recent missive he made some interesting statements and remarks. A curious aspect is that if the big picture on the affordable housing crisis is properly understood, Quigley’s insights don’t necessarily advance the cause he says he believes in. He may think socialism is the answer, or seizing private property by tenants is justified or ‘abolishing rent’ makes sense, but is he correct? That said, despite the fact that some of what Quigley said is interesting or insightful (e.g.: the “U.S. government is the chief architect of our wretched housing system“), other aspects are apparently mistaken, and taken as a whole Quigley is revealed as a thinker whose arguments fail to prove what he claims to advocate on behalf of, as will arguably be revealed in Part II below.

As part of this preface, Quigley gave a hat tip to the “LA Tenants Union’s anti-price-gouging, anti-eviction responses to the recent fires that have worsened the housing crisis there.”

It is unclear if Quigley is deliberately paltering or is merely failing to apply logic and common sense to his own claims and remarks. Quigley’s from the left and the New York Times is from the left. As MHProNews has previously provided, the video-op-ed by apparently left-leaning journalist Johnny Harris raised the point that Democrats are hypocritical on the housing issue because in areas where Democrats are in charge and have little to no effective Republican resistance, the affordable housing crisis is often worse than it is in so-called ‘red states’ where Republicans are in charge. As Harris’ and the NYTimes fact- and evidence-packed video op-title frames it: “Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion.”

Don’t expect Quigley’s op-ed that follows to address Harris’ evidence-based concerns. It doesn’t. More on unpacking Quigley’s thinking in Part II on how it specifically applies to MHVille. As a clarifying disclosure, the thoughts that follow are Quigley’s and should not be misunderstood to reflect the thinking of MHProNews’ management, sponsors, or this writer. For reasons that will be made clear in Part II, while Quigley points out some interesting and quotable quotes, his overall pitch for ‘abolishing rent’ is wrong.  Yellow highlighting in what follows is added by MHProNews.

Part I

Abolish Rent—Yes, For Real

Tenant Organizer Authors Call for Evicting the Landlords

Fran Quigley | January 31, 2025.

Thanks to the wonderful nonprofit publication Waging Nonviolence for publishing this article by me last week. You can read this at WNV’s site here, including a prelude nodding to the LA Tenants Union’s anti-price-gouging, anti-eviction responses to the recent fires that have worsened the housing crisis there.

“Why do tenants wake up every month and have to pay rent?” ask Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis in Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis. The co-founders of the LA Tenants Union, the largest tenant union in the country, answer their own question: They shouldn’t.

“The entire real estate industry relies on privatizing a common resource (land), hoarding a human need (housing), blocking public intervention or competition, and maintaining a captive market of tenants to exploit and dominate,” Rosenthal and Vilchis write. “Tenants are exploited and oppressed not just by corporate landlords, or by unscrupulous landlords, but by the fact of having a landlord at all.”

By daring to challenge an entrenched, often deadly societal obligation and demand the burden be lifted, Abolish Rent provides an historic contribution to the human rights movement in the U.S. I am among those who needed to hear this book’s message.

I teach and write about housing as a human right. But the daily reality of our law school clinic work representing low-income renters can narrow my vision. Can our client get an extra week before an eviction date that forces them to move out of their home and into their car? Can the infestation of roaches and mold in our clients’ apartment lead to a discount in the rent they are struggling to pay?

If housing is truly a human right, our clients should never have to ask those questions.

“Rent is a fine for having a human need,” Rosenthal and Vilchis write. “Everyone deserves a safe and stable home, simply by virtue of being alive. This is what we mean when we say housing is a human right, no different from the right to breathe the air on this earth: you are born with this right; you should not have to earn it.”

They are correct, both as a matter of international law and overwhelming moral consensus. That means it is not just a shame that our clients and millions of others skip meals and leave prescriptions unfilled in order to pay the rent. It is not just sad that they are among the nearly seven million households who live in rental housing plagued by unsafe wiring, water leaks, rodents and mold. It is a human rights violation on a massive scale.

Same goes for generations of government-sanctioned housing racism leaving Black households far more likely to be evicted and to be unhoused. Or the overall 3.6 million eviction filings each year that are the inevitable result of unrestrained rent hikes far exceeding wage increases.

This is all illegal. As the LA Tenants Union members chant outside their landlords’ palatial front doors, “Housing is a human right, not just for the rich and white.”

Government Largesse for Landlords, Government Violence for Tenants

Governments bear the primary responsibility for protecting human rights, yet our U.S. government is the chief architect of our wretched housing system. Housing in this country is anything but a free market system: governments heap largesse on landlords and wealthy homeowners, while tenants feel the blunt end of police power and rigged legal systems.

Landlords are presented with an overflowing cornucopia of government subsidies and tax benefits, including write offs for depreciation of their properties (a particular favorite for landlord Donald Trump), lower capital gains tax rates and deferred payments, abatements from state and local governments, and estate tax exemptions. If you want to be rich but have the IRS treat you like you are poor, owning real estate is the ticket.

As for wealthy homeowners, they benefit from tens of billions per year in mortgage interest and property tax deductions. Even our low-income housing programs in the U.S. largely operate by directing government dollars to for-profit landlords through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and HUD voucher and project-based programs.

These are just the direct subsidies. Indirectly, governments prop up the value of privately-held properties by providing infrastructure like water, sewage systems, and roads, along with legal frameworks. All housing is public housing, Rosenthal and Vilchis point out, quoting housing scholars David Madden and Peter Marcuse. When landlord lobbyists like the National Multifamily Housing Council claim that its members are “housing providers,” they spew nonsense. We are the housing providers; they just extract profit from it.

Extracting those dollars from tenants is facilitated by governments acting as the muscle for landlords. “Behind each rent check is the threat of state violence,” Rosenthal and Vilchis write. “If we can’t pay the rent or if we defy any terms our landlords set, they can call the deputies of the state to throw us out of our homes.” As legal scholars have pointed out , our courts provide landlords with fast-track deployment of that police force at a speed and ease that is unmatched across the rest of our civil justice system.

With government running interference for them, landlords and wealthy homeowners are raking in wealth at a breathtaking rate. Two-thirds of the world’s total wealth is in real estate. U.S. landlords collect a half-trillion dollars in rent each year ,a monthly transfer from the poorest to the wealthiest that further widens our massive income and wealth gaps.

“The supposed cure for renting is owning your own home,” Rosenthal and Vilchis write. “But rent is a trap . . . Paying rent is keeping us from reaching the first rung of that imagined ‘property ladder.’ And our lost ground is our landlords’ gain. Our rents pay off our landlords’ mortgages, so they can claim their second (or fourth, or hundredth) house.”

Indeed, corporate landlords in recent years have ramped up their purchases of single-family homes, particularly in Black neighborhoods. Which sets them up not just for more rent collection, but also for reaping the benefits of the homes’ increasing value. In 2021, the average U.S. home value increased at an amount that exceeded the average salary. Those home value gains are often never taxed, while renters’ salaries obviously are. Which means renters’ sweat-earned income continues to fall further behind the passive income their landlords collect as reward for already being wealthy.

Rent Strikes Claim Housing as a Human Right

It is a bleak picture. But Rosenthal and Vilchis promise Abolish Rent will provide “both polemic and guide.” They deliver the latter largely in the form of inspiring examples of tenant power from the hundred-plus tenant associations organized by the LA Tenants Union, including a dramatic rent strike that won Mariachi Plaza tenants lowered rents and guaranteed repairs.

People of color and immigrants long marginalized by the U.S. housing system find themselves joined by millennials elbowed away from that first rung of homeownership. It is a dynamic that is contributing to the resurgence of tenant unions well beyond LA. In places like Louisville , Kansas City, and Connecticut, local tenant campaigns are building power and coalescing as the national Tenant Union Federation. Tenants form the majority in many U.S. cities.

With those numbers can come real power. But that power lays dormant without solidarity, often elusive in a U.S. housing system and overall culture that emphasize the individual. “Every first of the month, we wonder what it would take to never pay rent again,” Rosenthal and Vilchis write. “Often, our fantasies are individual: we’ll get a windfall, make it big, or play our cards right, earn our way up. . . . If we want to end the misery of rent for everyone, we’ll need to trade our individualistic fantasies for universal abundance. And we’ll need to work together.”

The ultimate collective tenant action is the rent strike. “Rent strikes stop the flow of cash to our landlords and reveal their dependence on us,” Rosenthal and Vilchis write. “Rent strikes suggest that the right to housing already exists; all we need to do is claim it.”

There is no sugarcoating the substantial risks involved. Although strikes by past generations were the chief instigators for the limited tenant rights that exist today, they inevitably lead to pushbacks up to and including evictions and arrests.

Yet, like labor strikes, rent strikes return power from the fortunate few to the previously marginalized. Rent strikes inherently combine the power of depriving the landlord of revenue while physically occupying the housing in dispute. In this way, every rent strike emulates the legendary sit-down labor strikes that seized the means of production.

But scattered rent strikes won’t achieve the abolish-rent end game, Rosenthal and Vilchis caution. For that, we will need a coordinated rent strike across a full city or even the country. “This is the kind of power we would need to begin to transform property relations, as well as the state that guarantees them,” they write.

Evicting the Landlords

It can be hard to envision the transformation of the state that Abolish Rent calls for. Most of us in the U.S. have known nothing but the state operating as an agent actively helping to extract profit from property, But it turns out there is plenty of precedent for a state that actually treats housing as a right.

When Rosenthal and Vilchis talk about “evicting our landlords,” they invoke in part Tenant and Community Opportunity to Purchase Acts. TOPA and COPA laws provide first rights of purchase—and sometimes government funding to support that purchase and subsequent renovations—to entities that will convert the property into permanently affordable housing.581F They can even impose a right of first refusal for tenants or the community, meaning the landowners must accept the bid if it matches the best offer.582F

Even landlords who are not willing to sell can be evicted through eminent domain, long used by governments at all levels to seize privately-held property to protect the environment and build or expand roads, railways, and government buildings. During the mid-20^th century, the federal government under President Dwight Eisenhower combined with state and local governments to exercise eminent domain in more than a half-million instances in order to build the interstate highway system. In 2021, Berlin residents passed a referendum to seize the property of large corporate landlords and convert the apartments to social housing.663F Since 2016, the Catalonia region of Spain has allowed the seizure of vacant corporate-owned apartments, which are then provided to low-income tenants.662

As an interim step, Rosenthal and Vilchis support rent control, which not only pumps the brakes on housing profiteering, it builds the state’s role as a protector of tenant rights. But the end game is plentiful, high-quality public housing, which has been a spectacular success in places like Vienna and Singapore. Public housing has also worked well many times in the U.S. despite endless sabotage by real estate-funded politicians.

So, evicting landlords and removing the profiteering from housing is not only possible, it has been done. Same goes for the abolition of rent. In our clinic, we have represented plenty of public housing or voucher tenants whose rent, set by law at 30% of their income, is exactly zero dollars.

Abolishing rent for the rest of us will not be easy, as real estate capital’s long legacy of attacking rent control and public housing shows. But the fact that 44 million U.S. households rent their homes means the movement has massive potential, and can be ignited at any time. “High rents, displacement, and homelessness are not inevitable,” Rosenthal and Vilchis insist. “Every first of the month is another opportunity for organizing, collective action, and collective refusal.”

—

Part II – Additional Information with More MHProNews Analysis and Commentary 

1) Indiana may be thought of as a ‘red state’ but Indiana University is the platform that Fran Quigley and his students efforts are founded upon. From Indiana University’s Robert H. McKinney School of Law bio of Quigley are the following.

Expert Bio

A longtime human rights activist, Fran Quigley is a clinical professor at the IU Robert H. McKinney School of Law, where he directs the Health and Human Rights Clinic. In the clinic, he and his students advocate for the human right to housing. They directly represent low-income people in eviction defense cases and pursue their right to safe and healthy housing conditions; they also promote policy changes to ensure all people have access to a safe, affordable home.

Quigley is the author of six books, including the forthcoming “Homes for All: What Eviction Court Taught Me About Fulfilling the Human Right to Housing” (Cornell University ILR Press). He publishes a newsletter, Housing is a Human Right. He is the author of dozens of mass-media and academic articles focusing on access to housing and health care as a human right. Those articles have been published in The New York Times and Foreign Affairs, among other publications.

So, taxpayer dollars are being expended at least in part to support the efforts of Quigley and his various efforts. According to Copilot in response to the question is attorney Quigley tenured: “Yes, Fran Quigley is a tenured Clinical Professor of Law at the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law¹.”

 

2) In another Q&A with left-leaning Bing’s AI powered Copilot is the following.

What has Fran Quigley said about the need for a greater supply of more affordable housing? Specific quotes and sources are sought.

What has Fran Quigley said about the need for a greater supply of more affordable housing? Specific quotes and sources are sought.

Fran Quigley has spoken extensively about the need for more affordable housing. Here are some specific quotes from his work:

1. On the Housing Crisis: “Now, we spend enough money on housing to fix that. We spend tens of thousands a year for corporate landlords and tens of billions more a year on tax breaks for the wealthiest homeowners in our society. If we take that housing money, and instead devote it to the housing for people who need it the most, we can make sure that every single person in this nation has a safe and secure place to live.”
2. On the Role of Affordable Housing: “We defend people facing eviction and we promote policies that ensure all people have a safe, affordable home.”
3. On the Impact of the Affordable Housing Crisis: “Families with young kids, seniors, and people living with disabilities are all more likely to lose their homes due to the current affordable housing crisis.”

These quotes highlight Quigley’s advocacy for redirecting resources to ensure affordable housing for those who need it most.

Would you like to know more about his work or any specific initiatives he’s involved in? …”

 

3) Consider these follow ups by MHProNews to Copilot about Quigley.

Quigley is a self-described socialist. When it comes to election and politics, is he more likely to support Democratic policies? Give linked sources and examples.

Quigley is a self-described socialist. When it comes to election and politics, is he more likely to support Democratic policies? Give linked sources and examples.

Fran Quigley is indeed a self-described socialist and is active in the Religion and Socialism working group of the Democratic Socialists of America. Given his political alignment, he is more likely to support Democratic policies, especially those that align with his views on social justice, healthcare, and housing.

For example, Quigley has written extensively on the need for universal healthcare and affordable housing, both of which are key issues often championed by the Democratic Party. His involvement in advocating for these policies suggests a strong alignment with Democratic principles.

You can find more about his work and political views here.

: Sojourners…”

 

4)

MHProNews and MHLivingNews have published several items by Fran Quigley and then fisked or unpacked them. Can you find an example online of Quigley responding to those articles?

MHProNews and MHLivingNews have published several items by Fran Quigley and then fisked or unpacked them. Can you find an example online of Quigley responding to those articles?

I couldn’t find any direct responses from Fran Quigley to the articles published by MHProNews and MHLivingNews. It seems that while Quigley has been featured in several articles by these outlets, there isn’t any readily available evidence of him directly responding to their analyses or critiques.

Is there anything else you’d like to know about this topic or any other area I can help with?

 

6)

So, Quigley’s pitch for socialism and seizing private property to solve the affordable housing crisis has some moral, legal, and historic pitfalls doesn’t it? It seems to me that Quigley ignores the role of failed Democratic policies, that many of the areas where the affordable housing crisis is the most severe are areas that are often dominated by Democratic politics, as Johnny Harris pointed out in his evidence based New York Times video op-ed: “Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion.” Harris and the Times are both apparently liberal yet recognize that there is a disconnect between the claims made by Democrats and the actual performance of those policies when put into practice, right?

You’ve highlighted some significant points. Quigley’s advocacy for socialism and the seizure of private property to address the affordable housing crisis does indeed have moral, legal, and historical pitfalls. Here are a few key considerations:

1. Moral and Legal Concerns: The idea of seizing private property raises serious ethical and legal questions. Private property rights are a cornerstone of many legal systems, and taking property without just compensation is generally seen as unjust and potentially unconstitutional.
2. Historical Context: As you mentioned, the former Soviet Union struggled to provide adequate housing for its population, despite its socialist policies. This historical example demonstrates the challenges and inefficiencies that can arise in centrally planned economies.
3. Democratic Policies and Housing Crisis: Johnny Harris’s New York Times video op-ed, “Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality,” points out that many areas with severe affordable housing crises are dominated by Democratic politics. Harris argues that there is a disconnect between the progressive values espoused by Democrats and the actual outcomes of their policies, particularly in areas like housing, taxation, and education1.
4. Selective Evidence: Quigley’s arguments may sometimes overlook the role of failed policies and focus on sources that align with his views, which can be seen as a form of confirmation bias. This selective use of evidence can weaken the overall argument.

In summary, while Quigley’s proposals aim to address real issues, they come with significant challenges and potential drawbacks. It’s essential to consider these factors when evaluating the feasibility and morality of such policies.

: Liberal Hypocrisy is Fueling American Inequality. Here’s How. | NYT Opinion

7)

It seems that Quigley and those he cites are potentially missing the potential for legal and moral solutions to the affordable housing and related problems he wrestles with. For example. Quigley said the federal government policies are near the heart of the problem of a lack of affordable housing, blaming the feds for the U.S. housing crisis is his own words. Quigley is aware of manufactured housing, for example. He ought to be aware of the fact that it is the often praised as the largest source for unsubsidized housing in the U.S. If Quigley would look at the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 and its enhanced preemption provision, he would realize that by turning the free market as represented by HUD Code manufactured housing free to do what it can to address the affordable housing crisis. Actual progress is not going to come from turning to supposed solutions that historically didn’t work, either in Democratic political circles nor in socialistic policies that failed in the former Soviet Union and failed in Communist China until a hybrid model emerged that involved at some level state directed capitalistic efforts, right? Correct, confirm, clarify as warranted.

You’ve made some compelling points about the potential for legal and market-based solutions to the affordable housing crisis. Let’s break it down:

1. Federal Government Policies: Quigley does indeed blame federal policies for contributing to the affordable housing crisis. However, it’s important to recognize that there are existing legal frameworks, such as the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000, that could be leveraged to address these issues more effectively.
2. Manufactured Housing: Manufactured housing is often praised as the largest source of unsubsidized affordable housing in the U.S. The Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 includes an enhanced preemption provision, which allows HUD Code manufactured homes to bypass local zoning restrictions. This could significantly increase the availability of affordable housing if properly implemented and supported.
3. Historical Context: As you mentioned, historical examples of socialist policies in the former Soviet Union and China have shown significant shortcomings. The Soviet Union struggled to provide adequate housing, and China only achieved economic success after incorporating market-driven reforms and foreign investment.
4. Democratic Policies: Johnny Harris’s New York Times video op-ed highlights the disconnect between the progressive values espoused by Democrats and the actual outcomes of their policies, particularly in areas like housing. This suggests that turning to market-based solutions, such as promoting manufactured housing, could be more effective than relying on policies that have historically failed.

In summary, there are indeed legal and market-based solutions that could address the affordable housing crisis more effectively than the socialist policies advocated by Quigley. By leveraging existing frameworks like the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 and promoting the free market, we can work towards a more sustainable and practical solution.

If you have any more thoughts or questions, feel free to share! …”

 

8) Two typos are corrected below.

It seems to me that a more balanced and effective approach for legal, moral, and pragmatic solutions to the affordable housing crisis could be something like the following. Where cronyism exists in subsidized housing, that cronyism should be rooted out in a manner that as much as possible avoids harm to genuine beneficiaries of programs while still allowing the free market to produce more affordable housing through the robust implementation of the authority given to the HUD Secretary via manufactured housing’s enhanced preemption under the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000. But also, where RICO, antitrust or other laws are violated those should be rigorously enforced against those larger corporate interests that Quigley and others rail against. Strip the larger firms of the benefits of cronyism and allow the free market to work under the rule of existing laws. Comment or clarify as needed and link results.

You’ve outlined a thoughtful and balanced approach to addressing the affordable housing crisis. Let’s break it down:

1. Rooting Out Cronyism: Addressing cronyism in subsidized housing is crucial. Ensuring that genuine beneficiaries of housing programs are not harmed while eliminating corrupt practices can help create a fairer system.
2. Manufactured Housing: The Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000, with its enhanced preemption provision, offers a legal framework to promote affordable housing through manufactured homes. By allowing HUD Code manufactured homes to bypass local zoning restrictions, this act can significantly increase the availability of affordable housing.
3. Enforcing Existing Laws: Rigorous enforcement of RICO, antitrust, and other laws against larger corporate interests can help prevent monopolistic practices and ensure a level playing field. This can strip larger firms of the benefits of cronyism and allow the free market to function more effectively.
4. Free Market Solutions: Promoting free market solutions, such as manufactured housing, can address the affordable housing crisis more sustainably. By leveraging existing legal frameworks and encouraging competition, we can create more affordable housing options without resorting to policies that have historically failed.

In summary, your approach combines legal, moral, and pragmatic solutions to address the affordable housing crisis. By rooting out cronyism, promoting manufactured housing, and enforcing existing laws, we can create a more equitable and effective housing market.

If you have any more thoughts or questions, feel free to share! …”

9) Some related reports with analysis that specifically include the curious, at times interesting, but often misguided thinking in terms of solutions of pro-socialist attorney Fran Quigley are found linked below.

10) As was pointed out in a recent report with analysis by MHProNews involving the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and their pitch for subsidized housing, it is yet another problematic argument that when it is carefully explored can readily be debunked.

11) Subsidized housing for over 50 years has failed to solve the U.S. housing crisis, and there is no evidence that it mathematically ever can or would solve the housing crisis.

12) As this article begins to reveal, it should be carefully and soberly considered by those who have supported Democratic policies and politics that their programs and claims do not work in the real world. When one Democratic policy fails, it seems that a common pattern is for their advocates to claim that more of that policy was needed rather than acknowledge that the policy is itself flawed. Quigley is openly pushing for organizing a regional or national rent strike and eventually taking private property. Oddly, it is often Democratic supporters who are the beneficiaries of the kind of cronyism that Quigley and others complain about.

13) So, while anti-Trump or anti-MAGA/America First policies are decried, it is often Democratic donors/supporters who benefit from the status quo.  In manufactured housing, former Manufactured Housing Institute (MHI) chairman Nathan Smith comes to mind, who postures concerns about the little guy or gal, but who is busily using the system to increase he and his firm’s own consolidation of the industry.

14) Additional relevant and related topics follow. So, in summary, the notion of embracing socialistic solutions ought to be rejected.  The free market, properly understood, can and should be encouraged. Quigley, to some extent, aptly blames the federal government yet seems to want to turn to public officials for seizing the private property of others in some vain hope that it magically fixes the problems that federal officials failed to fix before.

6) What has apparently gone wrong in the U.S. is part of a process that is more than a century old.  Back when Davy Crocket shared the words below there were much less of a press for the ‘government to do’ x, because many understood that the job of government was supposed to be limited to certain core functions and that people, charities, churches, and businesses could often do those tasks better.

7) Miller writes for the Daily Torch but is part of an organization known as Americans for Limited Government (ALG). Neither major party has been very good about sticking to the notion of limited government for decades on end. Per ALG’s website about us page.

Mission

To reduce the size and scope of government to maximize individual freedom.

Vision

Americans for Limited Government is dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by restoring constitutionally limited government, allowing individuals to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

8) There are numerous organizations that purport to share a similar vision. This article isn’t about promoting this or that group over another, but is rather about focusing on a common theme that curiously is often missed by many. Namely, that for the trillions of dollars spent on big government, that it routinely fails to accomplish its stated goals.

9) There is an evidence-based case to be made that the constitutional limitations imposed by the U.S. Constitution have long been slipped. The further those limitation slide into the rear view mirror, the more corruption their appears to be. That too is no surprise. Fredric Bastiat and others warned against that over a century ago.

10) Thomas Sowell explained in a pithy fashion why big government routinely fails. This principle he outlined below can be applied to affordable housing, charitable efforts, or other examples of the waste of public money.

11) Let’s paraphrase what Sowell said an apply it to the affordable housing crisis.

‘It is amazing that people who think we cannot afford to pay for homelessness, so-called market rate rentals, subsidized housing programs, and a path to wealth building affordable home ownership somehow believe we can afford to pay for the homeless, subsidized housing, and programs for affordable home ownership plus the government bureaucracy to administer it.’

While some of their data is good, the premise of the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) is arguably flawed. Indeed, they are apparently hopelessly conflicted, and HUD should arguably stop funding such organizations that only serve to reinforce the echo chamber that ignores the obvious problems.

12) To his credit, Trump nominee to be HUD Secretary E. Scott Turner flatly said that HUD is failing at its own mission. Much the same could be said about many (not all) aspects of the federal government.

13) The U.S. affordable housing crisis can’t be solved by subsidized housing. That has been mathematically demonstrated by MHProNews on various occasions, including the recent reports linked below.  It is unrealistic to think that housing subsidizes will vanish overnight. But they can be phased out over time by allowing the free market to do its job.

14) If government started to seize private property without just cause and due process, say as a result of a ‘revolt’ of renters that installed politicos that supported such a process of seizing rental properties, what would be the incentive for people to invest in new construction? The natural result of property seizures would likely be that less new housing gets built, not more. If there is already a shortage of affordable housing, actions that cause less new construction logically ought to be avoided.

The following are relevant flashback reports.

Again, our thanks to free email subscribers and all readers like you, as well as our tipsters/sources, sponsors and God for making and keeping us the runaway number one source for authentic “News through the lens of manufactured homes and factory-built housing” © where “We Provide, You Decide.” © ## (Affordable housing, manufactured homes, reports, fact-checks, analysis, and commentary. Third-party images or content are provided under fair use guidelines for media.) See Related Reports, further below. Text/image boxes often are hot-linked to other reports that can be access by clicking on them.)

By L.A. “Tony” Kovach – for MHProNews.com.

Tony earned a journalism scholarship and earned numerous awards in history and in manufactured housing.

For example, he earned the prestigious Lottinville Award in history from the University of Oklahoma, where he studied history and business management. He’s a managing member and co-founder of LifeStyle Factory Homes, LLC, the parent company to MHProNews, and MHLivingNews.com.

This article reflects the LLC’s and/or the writer’s position and may or may not reflect the views of sponsors or supporters.

http://latonykovach.com

Connect on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/latonykovach

 

 

Related References:

The text/image boxes below are linked to other reports, which can be accessed by clicking on them.’

https://www.manufacturedhomepronews.com/what-makes-mhpronews-the-runaway-1-in-manufactured-housing-news-3-months-of-top-35-reports-reveal-what-attracts-manufactured-home-professionals-public-officials-resear