A Boring Dystopia

They also had an incredibly corrupt and repressive society full of black markets and very few people actually spent that little rent due to all the corruption. and just like in capitalist societies, the poor struggled paid most of their income to basic necessities and the rich paid hardly anything. housing in desirable areas and cities are hardly abundant. You wanted off the waiting lists, you had to bribe someone, often repeatedly. Bribery was illegal, but the person getting bribed would just bribe the officials and law officers.

But I mean, yeah if you wanted to be miner in Siberia and live in a shack housing was cheap. Not so much if you wanted to live Moscow or St Petersberg. That's also true of the USA. Plenty of cheap houses in crappy places nobody wants to live where there is little economic opportunity.

Roads are made, streets are made, services are improved, electric light turns night into day, water is brought from reservoirs a hundred miles off in the mountains — all the while the landlord sits still. Every one of those improvements is affected by the labor and cost of other people and the taxpayers. To not one of these improvements does the land monopolist contribute, and yet, by every one of them the value of his land is enhanced. He renders no service to the community, he contributes nothing to the general welfare, he contributes nothing to the process from which his own enrichment is derived…The unearned increment on the land is reaped by the land monopolist in exact proportion, not to the service, but to the disservice done.