Why wouldn't that someone want to make a profit?

> The state, the city, not-for-profit entities owning them, for example.

That'd just make each individual eternally indebted to the state, at the whims of bureaucrats and vulnerable to political punishments while the costs wouldn't come down by much, because the state generally sucks at doing these things.

Because they are not a for-profit company or institution? Public housing is often owned or managed by such entities. Also there can be other incentives besides direct profit; a city can build flats to encourage people to move and live there. The city will profit from the economic activity this will bring. In that case the city has a motive to have a larger, not a smaller, supply of flats.

> That'd just make each individual eternally indebted to the state, at the whims of bureaucrats and vulnerable to political punishments while the costs wouldn't come down by much, because the state generally sucks at doing these things.

The state may generally suck at doing these things, but nevertheless this is the way it works in some places and works good in some of them. In a different thread I mention Vienna where around 220'000 flats are owned by the city and another 220'000 are indirectly influenced by them which together housing about 25% of the population. The city started this program at the beginning of the 20th century when 300'000 people didn't have a place to live - it's obviously much better now. So maybe it's not a completely broken way of doing things?

Hard to say. How would Vienna look, and how many people would be able to live there at what cost if it hadn't? I'm absolutely not opposed to the state getting involved when there's a crisis, or the investments required are too large, e.g. creating the first power plants, railways etc. But if you let it remain with the state, you typically get crumbling infrastructure at high prices with lots of bureaucracy.

We have public housing in Germany, and it's nice-ish because the rents are cheap. But generally, the bureaucracy is large, the inefficiency and corruption runs rampant, the quality is subpar and they're constantly at risk to be sold off when the next mayor wants to spend money on a new air port or some policy their voters like.

The interest of the state are not aligned with those of renters. The state could certainly build great apartments, but only for a small number of citizens, while the rest would have to fund it. It then becomes a lottery: are you lucky enough to get one of the lottery apartments? Congratulations. For everyone else: well, sucks. We can remove the middle man bureaucracy in that case, just make everyone spend half their money on the lottery.

If you want the interests to align, just use a private entity, like cooperative housing. And the best thing about that? It's completely voluntary, no need for state involvement, no need to force others to fund it etc.

I completely believe all of that. It's still much better than here in Slovakia where public housing is pretty much nonexistent, most people own their flat/house outright and if you live in a rented property people are looking down on you. As a result there are on one side scores of people who live in their own house in so-called 'hunger valleys' where they can't find work and on the other side lots of available employment roles but no affordable living in the cities.

> If you want the interests to align, just use a private entity, like cooperative housing. And the best thing about that? It's completely voluntary, no need for state involvement, no need to force others to fund it etc.

I already mentioned Slovakia, so I can continue with that: a private entity first would have to acquire land suitable for flats and get all the planning permissions. Land is scarce and regulations complicated. It's made worse by the outdated building code, and the state is not really incentivized to update it. So I think interests would be better aligned if the state decided it wants to really support building new housing instead of only paying lip service to it.

Cooperatives are member-owned, so essentially you + 100 other people would get together, each put up a bit of money, get a loan from the bank, and build a house for all of you to live in. They're not-for-profit entities, they exist to apartments to their members. But they're explicitly not the state, so they're not a tool being (ab)used by politicians.

> So I think interests would be better aligned if the state decided it wants to really support building new housing instead of only paying lip service to it.

I agree, but I believe that would only be temporary, and as soon as they no longer accidentally align, you'd be in a tough spot. This is different in a cooperative entity, where renters = owners.

Why aren't more rentals being created in Slovakia? Just because of social stigma of not owning?

The issue is to acquire land suitable for housing, which is scarce. The suitability itself is defined by various regulations. The state can (and should) change the regulations. The state can (and should) update the building codes, too.

> Cooperatives are member-owned...

Yes that is clear, but as they are explicitly not the state, the state has sadly no incentive to help them. The state also does not help the cities to build housing. The private developers always find a way to build flats, but as you can probably imagine, sometimes corruption can be involved and that makes the resulting product expensive.

Also cooperatives are problably not really trusted here; people fear being taken advantage of, so they mostle care about themselves. Each one for himself, that is our society in a nutshell. See also Covid mortality. Sorry for the off-topic.

> Why aren't more rentals being created in Slovakia? Just because of social stigma of not owning?

Partly that. Also the aforementioned complications mean that new developments are expensive and are marketed as luxury. And the demand for housing is huge so the developers are catering to the high-margin end of market and are not interested in long-term rented property management.

Most European states do a great job of this - the suck part comes (like in the UK), when the state stops supporting this and a generation of people are left without decent housing options.

No structural homelessness problem (beyond the rare addiction victim), new social housing being built rather than relying on housing built 60+ years ago, no/few state subsidies to a private rental sector preying on social tenants etc etc. Just because it is not perfect doesn't mean it isn't better than 95% of the alternatives.

One place that does it better is Austria - the Vienna model of social housing provision enables lower classes to live well in what is one of the world's most expensive places to buy housing in.

I'm not sure what you're referencing -- most social housing is done by private entities with state subsidies. Many local governments have set a minimum amount of social housing for new projects, so e.g. 30% of apartments (or by square meters) have to be done as subsidized housing. That aside, I'm sure that it's possible to do worse, but that doesn't make it great.

If Vienna has found a way to make the state work efficiently, I'd love for them to export it. So far, I've not seen that happening in any of the industries it is involved.

In the 1970s in the UK, some on the left saw council houses as a bit like people see Universal Basic Income these days. That the state should provide everyone with a (modest) rent-free house.

That might seem extreme, but it was actually pretty moderate when the competition was soviet communism. And at the time interest rates were >10% so mortgages were a big risk and put a lot of money into someone else's pockets.

Some of the housing stock built in that time was really good quality; the council built it, and knew they'd have to maintain it, so they went for durable options even when they weren't the cheapest. Modern homes are lower quality in some regards, as the house builders know the maintenance is someone else's problem.