“Universal basic income usually covers people’s basic needs but we want to see what effect this unconditional lump sum has on people’s mental and physical health, whether they choose to work or not,” says Will Stronge, the director of research at the thinktank Autonomy, which is backing the plan.
while what you’re saying is generally accurate, i think this talking point isn’t a good one because it papers over the distribution of those homes, which isn’t a trivial detail. upon examination, the vast majority of them aren’t where people want to live (usually these are in rural, exurban, or suburban areas where there are few or no social services and job opportunities) and probably wouldn’t live short of forced relocation. quite a lot of them are also decrepit, unsafe, or just really old and not that good.
some house is without question better than no house, but i do also think we should aspire to give people housing where they want to live, and give them better housing than a lot of what’s technically available by the numbers.
@alyaza Absolutely, that’s exactly the underlying idea of UBI imho, to give people choice. An UBI puts people in a much better position to negotiate all kinds of contracts like rent, mortgage, or employment, as they don’t have to accept the next best offer for having trouble making ends meet.
Since those houses are empty and there are homeless people, it seems to me that those houses are in fact worse than having no house at all, which is a very sad commentary on the situation here.
Agreed, that’s an inefficient use of resources from a humanist’s perspective. Would UBI allow the homeless to move into the empty houses until they were pushed out by working people?