Poverty revisited, how to kill the beast

To eliminate poverty, we must find jobs for those who are underemployed. Not just any job, these must be jobs that pay a livable wage that ensures all the essential needs of the person are covered; a shelter, food, water, and clothes. Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone to have, and there are also sadly not enough homes to put those people in as shelters. Society has become enamored of the idea of building large single dwellings that would house the rich, while blatantly ignoring the plight of the poorest in society. These buildings are an inefficient use of municipal land space, as the population density of these buildings is much lower than of condominiums or other affordable housing. These buildings could be replaced with condominium towers that could then be used to house larger numbers of homeless people for the same cost and revenue produced by a single larger home.
Of course, the inner cities have a different problem, in that the condominium spaces already being created are devoted solely for high income persons, and are not designed to be used as cooperative or subsidized housing. This is disappointing, as it is the inner cities where such a program of housing subsidization would be most effective. The solution here is to allow governments to subsidize part of the rental costs of the unit, so that lower income citizens can also be considered for occupancy of current housing projects.
What I propose is that those persons who are in the two lowest income tax brackets or are currently searching for employment be allowed to join construction crews who are specifically tasked to the construction of government-owned cooperative housing. These low income persons would be joining crews of regular construction personnel and would be given the training needed to occupy a construction zone safely. The goal of such a project is twofold; to first give these persons a wage and therefore an ability to consume goods and contribute to the tax base of the province and secondly to provide these citizens with a stable home and job from which they can wean themselves off of government assistance. These cooperative housing projects, once completed, would be rented out in a fashion similar to privately developed property, except that the owner would be the Provincial Government which could charge rates equal to the fair market value of such a space, with subsidies available for those in lower income brackets, ensuring that over time, the project becomes a net asset to government revenue.
Completed projects would of course be open to all citizens who could pay the fair market value for the apartment, but preferential treatment would go towards those who worked on the construction project. Further preferential treatment would be given to those who work on the project by means of further reducing rent payments per month and through on site job placement counseling. This specific service would ensure that those who worked on the original project would not be condemned to returning to poverty immediately after completing work, and would instead be able to find a new job that would continue to pay a living wage necessary to survive in their new home.
Obviously, there are certain issues that must be worked out from both a political and economic viewpoint in order to adequately fund and complete these projects. First, from a political standpoint, the Provincial government must be willing to accept high initial costs that will eventually be offset by the new stream of revenue being produced by the government owned housing complexes. Particularly in the current recession, this is difficult to do thanks to the rising deficit and the unwillingness of being portrayed as spending limitlessly. Political will and leadership will be required here, as the long term benefits may not immediately be seen by the party that enacts this policy. This should not be a consideration, as improving the lives of the people these projects would affect is the primary concern.
Secondly, the problem of hiring on new people to construction firms, particularly those who would not initially be trained to participate in such an occupation. There are legitimate safety and organizational concerns that could be brought up by current employees, specifically related to lack of specialized training and the appearance that non-unionized labour was being created from the working poor to replace those who already worked for the company and have been retained for long periods of time. Any form of this legislation would have to pass a clause stating that this new labour source would have to be used as a supplement to the regular construction crews, and could not be used as lower waged replacements for long tenured workers. To this end, the new workers could be paid ten percent less than the unionized and tenured crew staff, in order to ensure that fairness in the workplace is respected while still ensuring adequate financial stability for the new crews.
Corporations themselves would balk at such an enormous cost to their operating expenses, which could be appeased through a large, targeted tax cut specifically for those companies that decide to embrace the program. Furthermore, these companies would, naturally, be awarded the contracts to build the housing projects, but would also receive preferential treatment in the bids for other construction processes for the next twelve calendar months, to ensure that profits, and additional projects for local employees, continue to rise instead of stagnating.
This once again brings us to the problem of preventing government budgetary collapse, particularly in the middle of a recession. It is this author’s opinion that nothing should immediately be done to recuperate the cost these projects would impose upon the fiscal situation of the province. These imbalances, which would spike in the initial part of the project, would continue to decrease over time, while revenue would remain steady and begin to increase as more tenants enter the projects at market value and more projects are completed. This would cause revenues to increase at a vastly superior rate to the declining cost of expenses, eventually reaping into a budgetary asset as opposed to a liability.