Thread by @bedwardstiek

Hi!
Apropos of a rent bad tweet I'll not amplify here, a reminder that the *most* government-subsidized form of housing in the US is... <drumroll>
.
.
.
the owner-occupied suburban single-family home!

Here's a thread:

1/ The government spends ~2x as much through the Mortgage Interest Deduction as it does subsidizing low-income renters through Section 8.*
*(These figures predate the Trump tax bill, which slightly lowered the MID cap)
apartmentlist.com/rentonomics/im…

1b/ Guess who the MID benefits? High-income households!
That's because:
-The bigger a mortgage, the bigger the deduction (up to a cap of $750k)
-The higher your tax bracket, the more valuable the deduction
-Cheaper homes=lower mortgages=no benefit from itemizing, anyway

2/ AND THAT'S NOT ALL:
That mortgage you're getting tax breaks on? The federal government gives lenders guarantees to make sure it's something you can afford in the first place.
strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8…

2b/
Need help buying? Here are all the programs the federal government has:
govloans.gov/loans/browse-b…

2c/ Fall on hard times?
State and federal government protect your home equity from creditors during bankruptcy: assetprotectionplanners.com/planning/homes…

2d/ Make a killing by doing nothing?
The federal government exempts up to $500,000 in capital gains from taxation when you sell your home.
strongtowns.org/journal/2017/8…

3/ BUT AS IMPORTANTLY, the physical suburbs themselves are basically the product of federal subsidy.
historysouth.org/wp-content/upl…

4/ Basically: Building a free-standing house in an open field is *cheap* (compared to building urban infill). BUT connecting that house-in-a-field to services, job clusters, shops, etc. is pricey.
--> the feds took care of the pricey part! historysouth.org/wp-content/upl…

5/ For instance, take sanitation:
the per-capita cost of sewers and treatment plants are much lower in dense urban areas -- but by the 70s, the federal government was picking up 75% of the tab. nytimes.com/1976/06/20/arc…

6/ Then there are the shops:
Starting in 1954, an IRS rule allowing accelerated depreciation of newly-built income-producing properties steered massive amounts of capital to suburban strip malls and box stores.

7/ And the big one: the freeways that make most suburban development viable.
-After WWII, the federal government covered 90% of the costs of building the interstate system
-To this day, about half of highway funds come from subsidies
vox.com/2015/5/14/8605…

8a/ Freeway subsidies were a racism triple-whammy:
-Facilitated white flight/disinvestment in urban POC neighborhoods
-Construction often meant bulldozing urban POC communities and/or cutting them off from downtowns
-Guess who got left breathing exhaust? ucsusa.org/resources/ineq…

9/ Which is a microcosm of all the suburb subsidies-- discrimination meant they principally benefited whites.
So when you hear someone trashing "public housing" or "subsidized housing," they're probably not talking about ALL subsidized housing . . .
washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…

10/10
. . . they're even not talking about the MOST subsidized housing.
They're just talking about the exception: the minor, meager, and inadequate subset of federal housing subsidies that have disproportionately served the poor and POC.

*real bad twete

Ooh, here's the killer chart on current subsidies. Ref: cbpp.org/research/housi…