Don't forget that they're marketed as "Luxury Apartments" because the appliances were made in the last 10 years.

I will stand ten toes down to defend that brutalism, as the philosophy of being honest with your material usage, is the most Beautiful form of architecture.

Most people will agree that mid century architecture is one of America's most beautiful designs. The school of thought behind all famous mid century architecture is always that of honest material usage.

Now what does honest materials mean? It means when you're using wood, you emphasize the grain. If you're using metals, you embrace it's utility. Stainless steel conveys surgical levels of cleanliness. When using brass or copper, the patina is expected. Stonework, isn't used as a façade. The inclusion of masonry is obviously structural, and it's implementation is deliberate and planned out like a painting.

It's also always a picture from mid-winter times. Never one from summer or springs

Everything they don’t like is left wing. Their brain doesn’t function beyond that.

That's in part because they are far past their original designed lifespan, as these were meant to give everyone a house. Despite their other egregious excesses, the Soviets at least said they believed in housing as a human right, and implemented policies to that effect. Not only for building housing at record rates with innovative prefab construction, but also for upkeep of those buildings.

That is in stark contrast to the radical chicago school of economics "reforms" after the collapse of the soviet union, which basically created an oligarchy overnight. Those buildings were sold for pennies at private auctions to private landlords. Whole populations who used to have the security of free public housing, suddenly found themselves having to rent the house they have always lived in. Meanwhile those landlords never have nor will invest anything in upkeep, which likely accelerated the deterioration of these buildings significantly.

I do agree social housing should if possible be beautiful. However, the first concern should always be to build enough of it so everyone who wants housing can get it. Most of the western world is in a deep housing crisis, so IMO any social housing is beautiful.

They also have an accessibility issue because anything 5 stories or less does not have an elevator and smaller cities would often build tons of those 5 story ones, meaning all the cheap-ish apartments are 4th or 5th floor.

I've seen a few here in Estonia that went through renovations to become much nicer than new, but you're still stuck with some things structurally that aren't all great and despite kredex funding assistance, most of those buildings are stuck with 10-25 year loans after those renovations, making them a bit more expensive to live in.

And they don't necessarily solve homelessness anyway. For example in the US there are significantly more vacant homes than homeless people.

Homeless people need a lot more help than just a roof over their heads. In places where they don't allow drunk people in shelters and there are winters, they have homeless people in the summer, but not necessarily in the winter when it's too cold to be drinking outside. Mental health issues tend to be a large factor in someone becoming permanently homeless vs temporarily due to financial difficulties (the latter often means couchsurfing till you get a new job, etc). And being surrounded by commie blocks can't be good for your mental health, they definitely make me feel depressed and I'm glad I've never had to live in one.

Fuck these old commie blocks, we can do better without significantly worse costs per unit.

It would be relatively cheap and easy to retrofit them with moss/fern panel facades or other types of plants. Improves the visual appeal while also contributing to cleaner air and cooler temperatures, and creating food/habitat for wildlife.

There's really no reason not to do it.

Like Finland. Their recently built public housing is pretty aesthetically pleasing

🇺🇸But it's the greatest shithole nation! 🇺🇸

And to top it off, here some photos from thr "Wohnausanlage Sandleiten" consisting of around 1500 housing units that was built for the common folk in the 1920 (and has been brought up to modern standards since - all electrical work redone, refitted elevators, all windows and doors replaced, thermally brought up to code):

Thats the fountain in front of the library, a very nice place with lots of shadow on hot summer days (the trees have grown a lot since that photo was taken)

Also, i dont care about visuals here but growing up in one of those, there’s too little free space for human worthy life. Playgrounds covered in trash, srynges, dogpoop. Anything with grass covered in dogpoop. Sketchy people trying to snatch children being a daily occurance.

This sounds like a maintenance/cops issue. Especially when people are crammed in and there's so little green space, ya can't cut corners on things like cops and firemen and ambulances.

As if you can equate an architectural style to a political philosophy.

The answer usually is the Soviet Union. And the why is usually because it was cheaper to do it that way.

What's more interesting is the way liberal built housing in America is done where they tend to purposely make the housing a little bit shitty so that poor people can't feel like they live in good housing because it would be wrong to "get something worthwhile for nothing". Because even the liberals in the United States are a bunch of capitalist assholes.

Anything that isn't stepping on the necks of the poor is political. Anything going out of it's way to harm the poor is just fine.