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So $3B for 4000 is $750K per house. Does it really cost that to build these days, basic houses presumably with limited variety? Is that just for the construction, or is the "public land" costing money besides money to service it with pipes?

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The usual estimate is that construction costs are about $500K per apartment, so the $2B in repayable loans will fund the building of about 2000 apartments at a time. And then there's another $1B in grants for projects which need them to be economically viable - I'd like to see the details on an example project to see what that looks like.

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Yeah, I'm reminded of the discussions that went around when Wall St. was being bailed out, not Main St. ("Bailout" by Neil Barofsky, who was in the middle of it, is great reading; the worst stuff you imagined about that bailout is all true.)

One had to wonder how much further the bailout money would have gone if all the people just $50K from keeping the house got $50K; all those who needed $100K got $100K, and so on. A logistical nightmare, handing out the money, so nobody even suggested it, but the efficiency gain would have been multiples.

Same here with building homes; subsidizing purchase just pushes up prices; but subsidizing construction should not.

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