This is the most brain-dead monument I have ever heard of. On so, so many levels. Wtf I going on? What committee made this decision?

I wish I had your sunny optimism about voters driving the boat.

I believe the phenomenon of people buying houses "as an investment" is relatively new. People historically bought houses as places to live and have stability. They also happened to be a good investments but that wasn't their purpose. The change in primacy of purpose is pretty much a direct result of neoliberalization, which has been underway for decades since the post-WW2 era, but became much more normalized in the 70s/80s.

What I mean to say is that it's a current cultural trend, but hardly a law of the housing market. More problematically, if we make policy based on the assumption that people view houses as investments, it serves to reify that, rather than combat it.

I'd also be shocked if the market prices were primarily driven by your cited 65%. It's been a long time since our markets and policy-making machines have been primarily driven by the majority of the population. We are a democracy composed of powerful, minority (not speaking about racial groups but class groups) interests. Anyone blaming the 65% for our woes isn't paying enough attention to the absurd weight and influence exterted by only a handful of people and institutions.

I am someone with a life-long attachment to the island, and who is surrounded by homeowners both on and off of Cortes. They have seen their home prices go up by absurd percentages in the last 5 years, they all recognize it isn't right, they would not begrudge a market correction. Most people in my experience want everyone to live well and no one well-adjusted takes the "I got mine" attitude when it comes to housing. Meaning, a 20% drop in prices wouldn't cause them to lose their shit. Heck, they may even welcome it if it meant a thriving community. Money stuck in inflated property prices can't be invested in community, after all.

Explain. I've heard short term owners being the problem, and uber rich investment owners being the problem. Explain how long-term home owners who live in their houses year round are the problem.

And they can't wait until we push our govt to build more homes ... So they can buy them up.

Everyone saying we need more supply is a loon. We need a reallocation of existing homes. Building more will just line these assholes' pockets.

The Last Unicorn by Beagle is word candy. Absolutely beautiful prose and imagery. But it is also a quick read, perfect for two days. Can't go wrong.

I'm googling that cast and thinking: is this a teen film?? Like, who the F are these people and why do they all look like children?

I feel this in my bones as an anthropologist when it comes to semi-structured interviews, which frankly have very little to do with anthropological inquiry but have nonetheless become a rote methodology.

Play Sea of Thieves as a female.

Dang this looks SO close to what I'd want. It's just missing big ass creatures.

Sea of Thieves. Always.

So, while you're 100% correct about neoliberalism not belonging to either the left or the right, your basic description of neoliberalism isn't correct. What you describe (deregulation, positive valuation of wealth generation, free markets, etc) is just liberal capitalism.

Neoliberalism names the extension of market-based rationalities into putatively non-market realms of life. Meaning, neoliberalism is at play when people deploy cost/benefit, investment/return, or other market-based logics when analysing options, making decisions, or trying to understand aspects of life that aren't properly markets, such as politics, morality/ethics, self-care, religion, culture, etc.

A concrete example is when people describe or rationalize self-care as a way to prepare for the workweek. Yoga, in this example, becomes of an embodiment of neoliberalism: taking part in yoga is rationalized as an investment in self that results in greater productivity.

Another example: how it seems that most every public policy decision is evaluated in terms of its economic viability, and if it isn't economically viable (in terms of profit/benefit exceeding cost/investment) then it is deemed a bad policy. This is a market rationality being applied to realms of life that didn't used to be beholden to market rationalities.

Hence the "neo" in "neoliberalism" is about employing the logics of liberalism (liberal capitalism, I should say) into new spheres of life.

A good (re)source for this would be Foucault's Birth of Biopolitics lectures, which trace the shift from Liberalism to Neoliberalism. As well, there's excellent literature coming out of anthropology about neoliberalism at work in new spheres, in particular yoga, which is why I used it as my example here.