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A record number of Americans can't afford rent

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Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#81

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dmazzoni wrote: post #75
brightball wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You hit the nail on the head here. The simplest way to solve this problem is a stepped increase in property taxes for home which are not the primary residence. Just as an example: Assume a baseline property tax level of say, 6%. Primary residence - 2% discount to 4% Non-primary residence, in same region (county/city) as primary = 6% Non-primary residence, not in same region as primary = increase 2% to 8% Non-primary…

FWIW, the highest property taxes in the country right now are So your idea is fine, but the numbers are way off. My proposal would be more like: Primary residence: 1% Rental property with 1y+ lease: 1.5% First secondary residence, owner-occupied seasonally: 2% Third residence, vacant, or full-time short-term rental: 5%

> Rental property with 1y+ lease: 1.5%

Isn't that going to push up the price of lower end apartment rentals? Why would we try to squeeze more money from poor people to the benefit of richer home owners?

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#82

Post by janalsncm »

shuntress wrote: post #72

My extreme political opinion is that no one should be allowed to own more than one property in which they do not reside.

Even a less “extreme” version would be: you pay 2x property taxes on your second home, 3x on your third etc. Sorted from lowest to highest property tax.

So if your property tax on the first house (chronologically) is $1, and the property tax on the second is $5, you pay 1 + 5x2 = $11.

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#83

Post by bornfreddy »

cglan wrote: post #25

This is basically the late stage of us continually not building enough housing for years and years. I'm not sure how anyone thought this would turn out differently. As long as housing is an "investment", which in turn means that people lock up big portions of their net worth into housing, and then vote against policies that would make housing cheaper (it's the rational thing to do) then this will be the outcome. Just…

So maybe instead of (just) building, make real estate a poor investment? High taxes for more than one home, more difficult eviction procedure and on the other side affordable mortgages for first homes. This way you make them unattractive for investors and more affordable to actual users.

Of course, this could also result in just rents going up, so maybe also put a cap on that?

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#84

Post by Gibbon1 »

dmazzoni wrote: post #79
ipnon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The city is incentivized to increase housing supply, but the voters are not because their individual net worths are mostly in their home prices. Since a city is really just a set of geographically constrained voters, housing supply decreases.

In my city in California, developers are replacing old single-family homes with multi-family (apartments, condos, townhomes). It's great, it's needed. Every time a new development gets started in our neighborhood, Facebook neighbor groups explode. The older generations hate how it's ruining the character of the neighborhood. The younger generations ask where the fuck they're supposed to live when prices are so high.…

A 12 unit apartment looks better than 12 tents surrounded by trash.

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#85

Post by throwll202402 »

paulgb wrote: post #37
throwll202402 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is worth pointing out that those who cannot afford rent often will not subsidize their situation by renting out extra space and taking on roommates small unit ( will say that "cannot afford" does not really come up for me anymore. I will not rent <650 credit score, good savings, income ratio, recommendations, work etc. tenant protections are so strong and courts so backed up now its just wildly expensive to get…

> I will not rent This speaks to a fear of mine, which is that laws meant to protect tenants end up backfiring against tenants because they reduce the pool of landlords willing to rent to them. E.g. from the article: > At the state level, Colorado lawmakers have proposed a bill to limit the reasons for which a landlord can evict a tenant. (fwiw I am not blaming you -- you're not running a charity. Just pointing out t…

>This speaks to a fear of mine, which is that laws meant to protect tenants end up backfiring against tenants because they reduce the pool of landlords willing to rent to them. E.g. from the article:

yes. really wish "game theory" was something more commonly (ever) in politicians dictionaries. Like not opposed to decent tenant protections at all! but worst words to hear are 4 years after some law "oh we didnt mean for THAT to happen!" like it was friggin obvious it would. think through incentives please!!! there are lots of very reasonable policy goals one could choose, course got my own opinions, but in a democracy can accept if after reasoned debate some other goal is picked. but what sucks is then doing policies that dont help at all vs making things more efficient all around.

- a really good fast dedicated "small claims" style judicial system for example. like for ip or corp law in delaware or whatever, if people can resolve matters quickly with quality and without lawyers big expense/risk reduction.

- or we got all this crazy 3d scan lidar stuff now right? been very impressed by what even old phones can do, got used iphone cuz cant afford new one and made basic floor plans and point cloud of my house, not perfect but neat. and apparently the real deal are amazing. $30k is too much for one but not actually that expensive at gov level. so imagine states have official neutral service, couple of inspectors each with a fast scan unit, paid for by very low rental tax. as completely normal standard required and no extra cost part of renting a unit and leaving a unit, they come by and just do a scan of the whole thing. everyone signs, takes like 5 minutes. now there is official before/after down to centimeter 3d of entire apartments held by the state. or be paid to come again as part of any dispute. no more debate about "that was already there" on either side, for anyone ever again. single inspector could do dozens or even hundreds per day in an area. would not solve everything but stuff like that would add up in terms of getting facts straight, at low cost.

- gov backed insurance for aid programs like section 8 so landlords get made whole for property damage and expenses from the poor, not just rent?

dunno. not a genius on this but would like more innovative approaches tried. but if its risky to rent then risky people wont get rented to, more deposit will be requested, or more consolidation. but incentives always will play out in the market.

>Just pointing out the tension between what lawmakers are attempting and the cold reality of the situation.)

right and define what is "tenant protection" too, like WHICH TENANTS POLITICIANS/ACTIVISTS!?!? because the tenant protections we have now meant it took me 6 months to evict someone yelling racial slurs at other good tenants! it's not always about money. that tenant was well protected from me, but what about the other tenants? racial slurs, domestic screaming fights but not violence are protected speech not like they can sue or have the police arrest them for it. eviction should be the answer lease says you won't ruin other people's enjoyment of their own property but proving stuff is hard. and law compounds. at least we don't live in two party consent state here but if you do and now it is illegal to record them saying slurs now what if no-cause isn't a thing?

anyway sorry for the rant. just wish things were better, wish bad landlords got stomped, wish bad tenants could abuse things less too tho.

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#87

Post by gottorf »

cglan wrote: post #70
itsoktocry wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just look at the 30 year fixed rate mortgages. They're an insane subsidization for homeowners. Canada is in worse shape, and doesn't have 30 year fixed mortgages (most are 5 years), and you can't write off mortgage interest expenses. In other words, our homeowner incentives are worse, and yet the house crisis is also worse. That's leaves what you mention off-the-hop: we aren't building enough. But why? Is it a supp…

i mean 30 year fixed mortgages aren't the only thing. I just pointed it as example. The insane keys to power we've given homeowners to essentially fight back against any kind of building in the form of environmental reviews, and community boards are a much bigger problem. It's all a problem. Most western countries have fallen into the same trap in terms of homeownership.

> The insane keys to power we've given homeowners to essentially fight back against any kind of building in the form of environmental reviews, and community boards

That's right. The states that have the least land-use freedom[0] are some of the worst in terms of housing availability.

[0]: https://www.freedominthe50states.org/land-use

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#88

Post by lukas099 »

darkwizard42 wrote: post #33

Looking to learn more on the subject, but why isn't it in the interest of any city these days to NOT build more housing? They are almost perfectly incentivized to attract working young people and families to help increase their tax base (property tax, income tax, sales tax) and housing would help them do that. Given most large cities are facing huge financial deficits, wouldn't this make sense? (Yes, I'm aware of reg…

It IS in the interest of the city. This does not translate into policymaking because of the intersection of these realities:

1) The 'special interest' effect — where narrow groups of highly-motivated individuals become more politically organized and effective than the rest, whose interests are at odds with the minority group but whose members are, on an individual basis, not affected enough to take political action. This is especially true when the special interest group is highly-resourced.

2) The USA system of deciding what gets constructed where is slow, bureaucratic, and tends to have lots of nucleation sites for local special interest groups to assert their political power.

2) NIMBYs are, by definition, landed gentry, and therefore more highly-resourced than young renters.

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#89

Post by weard_beard »

monkpit wrote: post #78
weard_beard wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So one out of the five costs only applies to some properties? How does that make me wrong? You also failed to say, “nothing needs to be fixed at MY property! Why did my rent go up!?” Because it takes several years to save up to replace an HVAC system or a rotten deck or plumbing failure and I have to charge based on the projected cost.

Sewer, trash are negligible compared to the cost of rent. If they double you’re looking at rent going up by around 3% and that’s if the landlord isn’t making the renter pay those fees directly. Maintenance costs and taxes are the only ones that could be a factor out of your original 5 - your point is drowned out by the poor supporting facts. And taxes aren’t even going up, just the valuation of the properties - which…

I will say that market rate has outpaced these costs. My wife and I ignore market rate and are always below, but we do adjust based on our actual costs. For a 3 bedroom in a Midwest metro area we had to raise rents based on our actual and projected costs by 300$/month last year. We are still below average rents in our area by 300-500$/month

Re: A record number of Americans can't afford rent

#90

Post by cglan »

janalsncm wrote: post #73
cglan wrote: post #25

This is basically the late stage of us continually not building enough housing for years and years. I'm not sure how anyone thought this would turn out differently. As long as housing is an "investment", which in turn means that people lock up big portions of their net worth into housing, and then vote against policies that would make housing cheaper (it's the rational thing to do) then this will be the outcome. Just…

Any explanation for the explosion in housing costs cannot simply consider the United States. The U.S. has some idiosyncratic problems, but it’s not the only place with expensive housing.

pretty much every country follows the US in terms of not building housing. In europe, they block for historical reasons (aka not killing the vibe of the cute towns and stuff)
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