Interesting New York Times article on the deal a private US real-estate investor had to make to buy into the public-housing market in Germany.
Why aren't our mayors demanding these kinds of concessions when similar deals are made here? Privitization will continue apace unless the Bolivian model suddenly takes off in el Norte (a fantasy outcome that would warm the cockles of my Communitarian heart) but will it be done right? Much like globalization, the question isn't if but how.
Re: real estate, the real question stateside is new development, an issue very much on my mind as Bruce Ratner prepares to turn a large swath of downtown Brooklyn, blocks from my apartment, into a mini-Vegas Strip. The project has elicited a lot of controversy: is Vegas worse than the hole in the earth currently occupied by an MTA trunk line? Can we learn more from a subway routing station than we can from Las Vegas? Community activists are demanding more affordable housing units to be included in the project.
In Germany they demanded similar protections and got them. Why not here?
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