Ask HN: How do I create a social movement to change the world?
I'm deeply angry about a particular social issue and feel helpless. So what can I do? I've concluded the only thing I can do is try to create on online community and movement.
So I come here to my community Hacker News, where there is infinite skill and capability in building online community, campaigns and movements and I ask for help.
It seems to me that any social movement needs a catchy name, so I've created that (see below).
The next thing I have done is create a subreddit with the name of the social movement (again see below).
I also created a website a while back, although does not use the catchy name I created, so it needs updating (again, see below).
But really the things I've done above are just guesses. I have no idea how to create a social movement and change the world.
Thanks!
I have the subject matter below, to avoid this post being seen as HN spam:
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The subject of the social movement:
The catchy name "Real Estate Rebellion".
The goal: I want to end housing as a financial investment in Australia.
The issue: I'm deeply angry about what has happened with house prices in Australia.
Ordinary people - teachers, nurses, public servants will never be able to buy a house in Australia. In fact even well paid people who don't currently own will never be able to buy a house. It wasn't like this before. In Australia, some people own multiple houses, 1/2/3/4 or more and others own none - society has been split into renters and landlords. The politicians all own multiple houses and dare not say a single word against raging house prices.
I want to end housing as a financial investment in Australia. I know this is a deeply radical idea but I think it's valid - why should housing be a financial instrument? Let's end the house prices ponzi scheme.
The subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/realestaterebellion/
The website: https://site-153316-2260-6863.mystrikingly.com/
Here's what the (unattainable) end goal of a successful grass roots campaign would look like to me:
1: end foreign ownership of residential real estate, close the markets to non-residents. It's obvious isn't it? Selling our houses to overseas buyers is reducing the supply and driving up prices. Time to end all foreign ownership of Australian residential real estate. Existing foreign owners will get 4 years to sell currently owned properties. Only citizens and people holding permanent resident visa will be permitted to buy residential property. Companies may only own new residential property that is in the process of being sold to individuals.
2: end negative gearing entirely. "Negative gearing" is an Australian tax policy which effectively pays government money to people who buy multiple houses. It is simply giving money to property investors and worsening the problem. Negative gearing to be unconditionally eliminated.
3: Heavy extra taxes for "Monopoly" property hoarders. The government rewards people who "Monopoly hoard" residential properties. Instead of paying money to monopoly hoarders, we will introduce new taxes to discourage accumulating portfolios of residential properties. Call it "positive gearing" if you want.
4: There's no reason for a family to own more than two houses.
5: Active, direct government financial co-ownership support to help anyone who wants to buy a house.
86 comments
[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 151 ms ] threadYou can fight this by buying bitcoin and encouraging others to do the same.
If you're looking for other references on activism the Radical Book Club (https://status451.com/tag/radical-book-club/) series of blog posts has detailed book reviews and recommendations. It's targeted at right-wing readers but the advice applies regardless of your views.
By all means, start a community... but have a call to action to go with it.
Presumably if I am alone in my passion for the subject then no-one will ever comment/reply/email/express their agreement.
If however lots of people start to agree, to put their hands up and say they feel the same, then I can take a next step which is I'm guessing to do what you say which is to define a call to action - but what would that be, can you suggest?
You don't have to wait for others to agree with you. Part of activism is making other people aware of an issue and inspiring passion about it.
> If however lots of people start to agree, to put their hands up and say they feel the same, then I can take a next step which is I'm guessing to do what you say which is to define a call to action - but what would that be, can you suggest?
The book Playbook For Progress: 16 Qualities of the Successful Organizer has a detailed description of how activism works. It isn't theoretical - the author founded the Bus Rider's Union (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_Riders_Union_(Los_Angeles)).
Maybe if you can popularize that policy somehow you might speed things along. Do any of the smaller or regional political parties already support that?
Found this while googling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Tax_Review
Nothing stops them from doing that at all; in fact they should.
Total rent = (rent from the improved structure on the land) + (rent from land)
Landlords should be given the right to extract money from people because they have built a nice house for renters to live in. Where Georgism disagrees is that that landlords shouldn't be given the right to extract money from people simply because they own land there (the second part of the equation). Or to be more precise, a large chunk of the money extracted from land ownership gets taken from landlords so that they don't derive much value simply from owning land and doing nothing with it.
That incentivises landlords to increase the value of the building on the land (e.g. higher density housing, batteries and solar panels, longer-lasting structures) in order to increase the portion of the rent that the landlord gets to keep.
They need to put some serious brakes on housing as a investment in aus. It's fucking our country. But fat luck telling half the country your about to make them feel judgement day for their shitty high risk low value house stock as it comes crashing back to reality.
But there is a necessary one. You have to start locally, you just have to try something. The part about it that's equally annoying and exciting is that you're not going to end up where you thought you would, but you will be able to look back and have done something -- and probably found some new set of problems or opportunities to tackle.
(Source: I started a STEM non-profit. That exploded into a ton of very different random and messy-but-good things that I'm a part of, but I don't do much of the STEM education part that I intended to, these days)
Even if you ignore Marx completely, the basic idea that “perhaps it is bad for most people to have society ruled by a small elite” is a quite reasonable one to have.
Meanwhile, I hear that "capitalism works" but we have tens of thousands of Americans dying each year due to lack of basic medical care, our students are saddled with educational debt that the boomer generation did not have to pay, people cannot survive working full time on minimum wage, and our politicians are pocketing huge financial gain to avoid a rapid conversion to renewable energy or affordable health care.
If you call that "working" then let me say we can do much much better.
So far your arguments are just a wishlist: you say what you want, but don't explain how to get it.
> So far your arguments are just a wishlist: you say what you want, but don't explain how to get it.
Actually I often explain how I’m going to help create a system that can free people from the need to work. The fact that I’ve not explained it to you so far in this conversation is not evidence that I don’t have a plan.
I am a skilled robotics engineer and I will work with others to create productive machinery which lowers the cost of living until those benefitting from this system do not even need to work to get what they need.
What you do not realize is that the Marxist critique of the way capitalism organizes production can be applied to engineered systems without any use of force or state power. I will simply collaborate with others to build machines we own which provide for us. In this way we will create community ownership of the means of production in a voluntary system that works without any laws in the USA changing. This is a plan informed by Marx’s critique of capitalist production, and also informed by the failure of authoritarian communism.
Take for example your use of "libertarian communist." These are mutually incompatible ideologies. Libertarianism promotes maximum individual liberty (freedom). Communism by its very nature limits personal liberty to the maximum extent possible. You cannot have both because nature of communism will immediately begin to erode all liberties you may have envisioned.
No gulags or prisons? But where do you put the people who oppose the ideas you are proposing? But you will convince them your ideas are pure and you just want the best for everyone so you won't need to lock them away or dispose of them. But what about those who don't want to be convinced? Or the people who just don't like being told what to do? How will you incentivize them? There's a lot of people like that out there. You'd need an entire bureaucracy to promote your ideas to the non-believers. But some people would be silent dissenters - stirring up doubt and pursuading others away from your ideas through less public means. You'd need a way to keep tabs on these people to make sure they don't try to overthrow your administration before its had a chance to succeed. And what if they do find evidence of a conspiracy to abandon your ideas? Because your ideas are pure and the outcomes are expected to be glorious, anyone who rejects them must be...
And what of the people who do support you? How will you reward achievement and promote innovation in a system without means of reward? How will you keep them loyal? You will find the solution is quite simple actually - a system without reward mechanisms still has mechanisms for punishment.
So no - communism is not just misunderstood, it is not just implemented badly, it is not just attempted by the wrong people. It is rotten to the core. It is a fractally bad idea.
The same place the creators of Wikipedia put people who don’t like Wikipedia - nowhere, they don’t do anything to people who don’t want to participate.
> But what about those who don't want to be convinced? Or the people who just don't like being told what to do? How will you incentivize them?
My system is purely voluntary and it works with the participation of a small number of volunteers. You really have not appreciated that when I say it is libertarian I actually know what I am saying.
> You'd need a way to keep tabs on these people to make sure they don't try to overthrow your administration before its had a chance to succeed. And what if they do find evidence of a conspiracy to abandon your ideas?
You’re really letting your mind wander. Again think of Wikipedia. If someone wants to stop contributing, absolutely nothing will happen to them.
> So no - communism is not just misunderstood
At least on your end, the misunderstanding is significant. It would be great if, instead of telling me libertarian communism is an impossibility and wholly misinterpreting my goals, you kept an open mind and considered what a libertarian communism would be like.
Do you know about the Sikhs in India? How they produce and give away over one million free meals a day across the country? How they have massive Langar kitchens that produce 100,000 free meals a day? I am a robotics engineer, and a damn good one. I want to create facilities which can produce tens of thousands of delicious healthy organic meals per day to distribute for free or with a payment optional model. I want to provide free community robotics classes so the members of the community can learn useful skills to help repair and improve the machine and to get better jobs.
I call what I aim for communism because it is based on Marxist principles of community ownership of the means of production, and based on the ideals of libertarian communists from the past (there is a long history of that term going back to the 1800’s and you should look it up before so horribly misunderstanding it).
You could say “giving things to people in need is capitalism! It’s charity!” And the truth is the meaning of the terms overlaps. And we can both be right. But I follow in the libertarian communist tradition and I’m quite proud of that. I don’t usually hear capitalists saying every person deserves food and shelter and clothes no matter whether they can or do work.
I want to help create a world where having a job is totally optional. And we can do that through concentrated automation of core human needs with machines owned by the community they serve. Community ownership of the means of production. Imagine how much freedom a person would have if they did not have to work! They would have the freedom to spend time with loved ones, to paint, to read, to bike. For the average person this would be a life changing situation. One that our current form of capitalism seems to have no interest in producing.
I believe the disconnect here is you seem to be suggesting that Marxist / communist ideology can be safely restrained from eroding personal liberty. I do not and would rather not run the experiment because history has shown it tends toward genocide - regardless of the good intentions of its supporters. It's the parable of the scorpion and the frog.
I'm happy to encourage people to continue to help the needy. But communism is a hard nope.
The problem with all that and the people you mentioned is authoritarianism, not their preferred way of organizing production.
In the USA post-McCarthy “communism” was understood as synonymous with authoritarian communism. But authoritarian communism does not and has never represented the whole of communist thought. There have always been libertarian communists also called anarchist communists, as Peter Kropotkin identified himself in his famous 1892 book.
If you think all communism leads to authoritarianism then of course you would oppose it. But isn’t is the case that capitalism is just as susceptible to authoritarian control, as we see when the USA overthrows governments to secure cheap oil and a pliable labor force?
We can an must oppose authoritarianism in all its forms.
But you’re getting hung up on terms. I’m sure if I told you I want to marshall resources from donors to build a facility that makes automated meals for everyone, you’d be supportive. It is only when I say that every person deserves this regardless of their ability or desire to work that you will get concerned.
In the words of Hélder Câmara: “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”
So to answer your question, there was a brief period in American history for about 50 years where housing was affordable (1945-1995) then shit just went sideways. But it required massive investment from the government (freeways & GI bill). To return to this would require massive, complicated legislation; or some simple push that collapses the housing market as an investment strategy. Maybe higher interest rates. Maybe killing the mortgage deduction. Maybe an inheritance tax with teeth.
> When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world. I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change my nation. When I found I couldn't change the nation, I began to focus on my town. I couldn't change the town and as an older man, I tried to change my family. Now, as an old man, I realize the only thing I can change is myself, and suddenly I realize that if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact on my family. My family and I could have made an impact on our town. Their impact could have changed the nation and I could indeed have changed the world.
- Rabbi Israel Salanter (1809-1883)
-- George Bernard Shaw
The key word here is change v/s progress.
The classic example of this is commuting via car v/s bicycle. The staggering amount of resources dedicated to solving this problem can be termed as progress with better infrastructure, cars (self-driving even) - contrast it against the change that those who can change to commute via bicycle.
We can only know progress in hindsight and only at things that can be quantified. It is self-serving in that sense, when you exclude the non-measurable.
I'm rather aware that change is difficult.
It's far more difficult if you give up before you begin.
And it's helpful to have an understanding of the problem and its space (see my long comment to this thread, and the failure / success chain). Often the obvious / simple solution won't work, though again, if you simply give up you'll never recognise that and seek other options.
It is not about surrendering or giving up. There is difference between when you have to stand up for something, when you find yourself in a situation where you have to go beyond yourself and where you "want" to be a hero. This myth of the hero needs to die. Think about it, a society that doesn't need heroes is a better one.
I am not sure if you realize but there is nothing humble about starting a social movement to "change the world" - which is what the original question was about. Engineered v/s emerged - one is hubris, the other one is just is. I wish one could ask all the successful people who "started" a social movement (as opposed to one that emerged), whether with the hindsight of how it played out over the decades, would they still have done it.
To paraphrase the life comment - change happens while you are busy wanting to create it.
Attempting the physically or logically impossible, or the effectively counterproductive. The point is to identify a problem, an achievable preferred state, and to work toward that.
Note that even towering mountains, given time, technique, or resources, can be overpassed, leapt over, or tunneled through. And that there are projects which take generations. The Swiss Alps are now laced with roads (rail, cable, and automobile), overflown by aircraft, and pierced by tunnels.
The best heros aren't of the Charge of the Light Brigade variety. They're the ones who identify a viable method and exploit it --- Odysseus and his Horse, Turing and his cipher-breaking tools, Gandhi and his Salt March.
A social change that doesn't need to be engineered ... doesn't require heros. One that won't happen without a specific concerted effort, or which might tip in any number of directions with some vastly preferable to others, do. I'd argue that part of the genius and heroism comes from recognising such loci, recognising the societal magnitude of the task, and searching for a solution space. As with scientific, engineering, and business innovation, even failures teach lessons, and diversifying investments over multiple strategies --- not in the blind sense of blindly inspiring cannon fodder to charge into fire (the Light Brigade, again), but to seek out more favourable options and avoid obvious low-probability / high-risk attempts --- is all but certainly the way to go.
And again: declaring defeat in advance, or throwing up ones hands and declaring that "all is foreordained" won't get you there.
I do advice research (see again previous) and marshalling and conserving your own energies. But not doing nothing at all.
Even slow moving water and the blowing wind can, in time, cut through or wear down that mountain.
I am not sure why what I said comes across as defeatist :).
>> I'd argue that part of the genius and heroism comes from recognising such loci, recognising the societal magnitude of the task, and searching for a solution space
I agree. Thank you for the thoughtful responses and the references.
There are people who've left their mark who haven't followed that specific track, and the implied suggestion that it is the only and/or best method ... wants for evidence.
If you consider that you are one of the tools that you're applying to change, then it makes sense to keep that tool functional. Look out for yourself, first, that you may aid others and larger efforts.
A useful example to me comes from the field of ag engineering, and a story I was told at Uni. The practice often makes use of minimal capital and equipment to accomplish major changes. One example is riverbed engineering.
One approach is the US Army Corps method of bulldozers, earth-moving equipment, dredges, concrete, and explosives.
The preferred method of the ag engineer in remote and low-income regions is the gabbion --- a cage made of wire holding stones. Placed in the streamflow, these use the power of the water itself to reshape the streambed in the desired manner --- directing water to or away from a bank, speeding or slowing flow, enhancing or slowing erosion. It's an application of an intervention to maximum effect with minimum effort.
(That's not to say there aren't problems which bulldozers, diesel, dynamite, and portland cement can't solve far more quickly. But where you're bootstrapping from a minimal position, the gabbion method has merits.)
And that's the essence of what I'm suggesting. Study the problem area, see where behaviour is most strongly influenced, and modify that point. Let the energies within the system do the rest. Judo and ju-jitsu work similarly. I've heard RMS's creation of the GNU GPL described as an example of "ju-jitsu law" --- it takes copyright and uses precisely the law's own strengths to work against it. A certain amount of change was accomplished.
Another great concept comes from the field of navigation by Charles H. Cotter: "The Art of ship handling involves the effective use of forces under control to overcome the effect of forces not under control."
Ship's captains don't recede within themselves to control their ships. They master the craft, learn the practice, read conditions, and act to maximum benefit. There's the natural "ship of state" metaphor, and ... it's not entirely applicable (countries are far more complex than ships, and tend not to have a unitary chain of authority). But the notion of working on the possible remains.
I also think you need to balance the pros and cons of online activism. The pros are, obviously, that you can spread a message cheaply and build communities. A major con is that it's easy for people to just do the online part. If people have some impulse to support your movement, and they can entirely satisfy that impulse by participating in a subreddit, you may find that all you accomplish is building a subreddit.
I have no advice or idea about how to balance the pros and cons, it just seems to me that there are pros and cons. A group that just complains about something is easier to create than a group that solves a problem. Maybe the complaining group is necessary to raise awareness - but maybe it is also a distraction.
Finally, I would think you would want to experiment and iterate. Both with your approach to organizing and with your actual solution. There is a benefit in starting small - easier to make changes and less consequences if you're wrong.
Mainly because calls to action are often about whipping up passion about an issue, without often doing the work to identify the actions that would actually be productive.
Aaron Swartz's example of working backwards to figure out how to write a bestseller is not too different from Youtubers working backwards to figure what content to make that will generate views. It's about identifying the concrete steps that will take you from one state to the next, finally culminating in the goal.
The one thing missing from this approach however, is an explicit treatment of feedback loops (or "reflexivity" -- something which Soros claims to have applied to economic systems). It's a different way of thinking, but people who grasp systems and feedback loops often have a more realistic understanding of the world than people who think linearly and simplistically.
When you work backwards, you can't just think of what you need to do to get there, but also the 5-6 other 2nd, 3rd or higher order effects that will occur (including an accounting of adversarial forces). These will have unintended consequences that can either help or impede you. You need to find ways to enter positive feedback loops and exit negative ones. If you're able to enter a positive feedback loop, you'll have a flywheel that will amplify itself.
More people want to live more in cities (due to access to society’s benefits and jobs) then housing prices will rise. This seems normal to me? I.e more people means more competition means price will rise.
If someone wants cheap house, they can just move far to the suburbs and work there or commute to the city.
Am I mistaken to think that there is no inherent problem in rising house prices? It is just the way it is and it happens everywhere even in 3rd world countries.
The actual answer is: do nothing at all. Simply sit back and wait for one year. I promise you, the problem will solve itself.
It's called a Housing Market Bubble, and the thing about bubbles is, they pop--taking down millions of smug, clueless 'investors' with them. Happens on a regular cycle, like clockwork. Nobody ever learns anything.
This bubble is a particularly nasty one that will wipe out tons of idiots, both the deserving and nondeserving kind, sadly.
Oh, I did forget one small preparation you can make: load up on popcorn. Lots of popcorn.
This is the final, definitive answer. Print it and hang it on your fridge.
Sincerely, your worthless (according to HN) hillbilly friend in Alabama.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll use HN as intended in the future. The guidelines are here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
You dweebs have created an echo chamber here where only groupthink and echoing the batshit crazy opinions associated with your alternate fantasy reality are allowed. It's really pathetic how weak you are, that you cannot openly debate facts, but must hide behind the coat tails of your Communist dictatorship moderation system to silence all dissent.
Fortunately for humanity, a great big tidal wave will soon come and flush all you turds out to sea, along with all your bloated Javascript frameworks and all the other garbage you churn out, and good riddance to your retarded geek asses.
If you don't feel such a death is warranted, feel free to email me at eatadick@faggo.ts to explain why you should be allowed to live. But it's not actually in my hands, so really, that would be a waste of time, and I wouldn't bother.
In the mean time, let me catch you out on the street somewhere without your gay ass web server and admin privileges for protection, and we will have a REAL conversation that will both scare the shit out of you and make you understand just what a useless PUSSY you are.
Look in the mirror: you Nazis are the source of your own problems.
Whatever you do, don't ever fucking give up. Give them hell.
https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-welfare/home-owne...
There’s a very similar group to yours in Canada called /r/canadahousing. They made a lot of noise, but in the end were a flash in the pan movement that didn’t change anything.
Why? Because in Canada the vast majority of people own their homes. What you call a crisis was actually also massive middle class surge in wealth.
Basically if you want change here, you must address housing challenges in a way that doesn’t impact middle-class wealth.
The problem you may face next is the consequences of what you have done.
Where will all those investment funds that were destined for housing end up instead? What will be the effects of that shift?
Who will buy the politicians next, and what will they make them do?
So long as you are prepared to keep on making and spending new vast fortunes, you will always be able to right the wrongs you see in society by buying more politicians over and over again so that your view prevails. That's the inherent strength of a liberal democracy like Australia. It is robust and responsive to the wishes of the people.
The irony is that had I made a vast fortune, I would likely not care about this issue.
I've noticed that people who own houses don't give a second's thought to this issue, or they don't see it is a problem. In fact, the opposite - if you own a house then you want to opposite of what I am campaigning for - you want prices to keep skyrocketing to infinity.
The only people who own a house who care about this issue are those who have kids/grandkids and are concerned that those kids are forever renters.
Put more simply: if you own a house then you don't give a ** about people who don't own a house.
Buy your own land, build a multi-unit building, and then rent it out to people at a fair price.
You’ll come away with a much greater practical understanding of the issues at hand than you’ll ever get by trying to organize people over the internet, and you’ll have tangibly helped yourself and a few other people.
Part of the issue is that our efforts are unlikely to have any lasting effect.
Founding the movement on an enduring ethical basis is a tricky feat.
Your quoted phrase is both honest and indicative of the challenge in making any changes that will outlast the individual who implements them.
Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uwl3-jBNEd4 for more info.
$10 says every passing year will make you less happy with renting.
People nearer the end of their life and with no children who own houses are the big winners here.
If you own a home and want a bigger one, then the price rises hit you proportionately. If you want to move to another location, you may come out even but it adds a lot of drama to the process. You've probably overinvested in housing, because you see a need for a big house later and buying/renting your own current needs would hurt you later.
If your kids want to move out then you'll probably end up using your gains to get them onto the owner side of the equation.
So most people probably want to unwind this. The problem is (like climate change) one of 'collective action' (See Mancur Olson) in order for most to benefit they need to act together (your social movement) but therr will be small, concentrated pockets of power that can take advantage of the situation for their own benefit.
In the past, your whole community needed to feel that change was necessary otherwise people would just accept the current situation. I argue anti-vax wouldn't exist if there wasn't a meeting place for people with vaccine related anxiety to meet. That place is the internet. And we see how much of an impact it has had on vaccination rates.
Regarding housing issues, to me the solution is simple but untenable to most western cultures. Limit population growth to natural growth unless the vacancy rate of housing is 3% of existing supply. Unfortunately, this would require reducing immigration which would mean wages would need to rise for all workers.
The part I don't understand is how government don't see wage rises as a positive thing. Income taxes make up the vast majority of the tax base in western countries and yet the government seems focused solely on corporate interests. Any country that targets high levels of immigration during a housing crisis must be corrupt.
You see a website and think, the website is doing the work, but it isn't. The organisers are working super hard, grinding away.
Your Reddit community might be a piece of the puzzle but just a small one.
There are many books on the theory of social change. Start reading. Your specific issue here (housing affordability) is at least defined in scope and on political parties radar. But you need to find out why they talk about it but never fix it.
Building and departing on that somewhat:
Do study what has worked, and what hasn't. Keep in mind that success may be based on chance, and negative examples also teach.
Keep in mind that there are many ways in which political movements fail (and a few that help them succeed). The study of failed utopian projects is highly illuminating. My view is that creating a self-perpetuating "intentional community" is a possible approach. For these to work, the community itself must be practically viable, and address basic levels of human needs: shelter (obviously), food, work, society, etc. In my view the college town is amongst the more successful of these in the past century or two, though that itself may be based on conditions no longer broadly present.
I strongly recommend Jo Freeman's "Tyranny of Structurelessness". https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm
I'd strongly recommend going to the communities most affected by the problem at hand and getting their perspective. I don't believe that those oppressed by a system always fully understand the nature of that system or the solution. I do feel that they can offer highly useful insights, and that if you hope to enlist their support they will want to be participants and not mere passengers.
The general problem is one called "politics". It turns out there's a literature on this stretching back millennia. Old dead men (mostly, there are some exceptions) have something to teach.
There are a number of reforms based around the question of real estate and property. There's an increasing amount of current focus on this. Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center strikes me as particularly good, his book is a set of recipes for reform you should find useful, The Affordable City (https://www.worldcat.org/title/affordable-city-strategies-fo... https://islandpress.org/books/affordable-city). Simon Winchester's written on the question of land ownership recently, Land (https://www.worldcat.org/title/land-the-ownership-of-everyth...)
There are Henry George, Koprotkin, Tolstoy, and others.
I've written a Hierarchy of Failures in Problem Resolution which some have found useful. (Invert the cases to "success in..." and you find an essential success chain.) https://old.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/2fsr0g/hierarc...
There are a number of especially critical points. Many people recognise that there is a problem, and even the nature of the problem. Trouble usually starts with goals and methods, the getting-there-from-here problem.
Often you'll find that progress is blocked by those who 1) deny that there is a problem, 2) aren't interested in solving it, or 3) benefit by the existence of the problem itself. Overcoming these factors is a major challenge.
There are parts of the world which have far less of a housing and real-estate problem than others. Berlin, Vienna, and Tokyo are often mentione...