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A record number of Americans can't afford rent

apnews.com

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

#121

Post by buzzert »

lukas099 wrote: post #31
EA-3167 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is inevitable when vast numbers of people all want to live as close to the centers of a handful of major cities as they can. You either build megacities, let the market dictate who can afford to live there, or maybe start seriously realizing that from an economic and environmental point of view... maybe remote work is the solution.

I'm not convinced remote work is better than the market solution from an environmental point of view. Seems like having people as densely concentrated as they can be is best from an environmental standpoint. Remote is definitely better than the status quo of subsidized suburbs housing car commuters though.

> subsidized suburbs housing car commuters

Suburbs are subsidized? What do you mean?

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

#122

Post by yonran »

effingwewt wrote: post #120
yonran wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, the article is about rents being too high. If you force investors to sell existing housing stock to owner-occupiers, what direction do rents go? Up. If you are anti-rental property investor, then you are also anti-renter. Instead of pitting renters against homeowners, think of policies that reduce costs for both renters and homeowners by adding supply. E.g., relax zoning to raise height limits and allow apartm…

Again. Housing should not be an investment full stop. Every single landlord is stopping somone from owning a home. If people need to rent we can offer apartments. This isn't rocket science.

I see now that you are making the distinction between single-family homes, which are primarily owner-occupied, and multifamily homes, which are primarily rental, and you are saying that the shift of some single-family homes to rental is a bad thing. First, there’s nothing wrong with a household buying a condo or renting a single-family house, so I don’t see why one should be banned.

But to explain the increasing share of rental housing, the book Kevin Erdmann, Building from the Ground Up explains that the problem is not investors overinvesting in houses, but residents who are locked out of the mortgage market due to post-Great Financial Crisis regulations that killed the homebuilding industry across the country. If residents had the same access to credit that they did before the GFC, then they would be able to outcompete investors. There’s no point in suppressing rental investment just because we mistakenly suppressed mortgages.

But whether you are looking to buy or looking to rent, more supply helps, so that is the underlying problem to address.

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

#123

Post by causi »

cycrutchfield wrote: post #20
causi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's something very gross about owning a home you don't live it.

OK, I’ll bite: why should you care about what other people own?

Land is a finite resource that nobody created. Would you be offended if someone claimed to own a cubic kilometer of the sky and declared nobody else could use it without paying him?

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

#124

Post by NoGravitas »

sjwhevvvvvsj wrote: post #108
memen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make the case for the opposite: - there is a housing shortage - as a society, we should make sure that resources are available for the ones who need it most - people who earn more money, deliver more value to society (not necessarily true of course, but well, capitalism) - as a society, houses should be available for the highest earners first Therefore, everyone should increase prices as much as possible. U…

Great idea, but incomplete. I think you need to take the logical next step that those that aren’t valuable in terms of earning power should be executed en mass to make commutes of the wealthy more enjoyable. How many people clogging up 101 really need to be alive anyway?

They don't have to be executed; just stash them away someplace where the wealthy can't see them, don't let them leave, and let them basically fend for themselves. Needs a sympathetic name, though... maybe something like "Sanctuary Districts".

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

#125

Post by NoGravitas »

dmazzoni wrote: post #80
pyrophane wrote: post #19

So are landlords making money hand-over-fist or what?

Sadly a lot of landlords have learned that they make a lot more money by doing exclusively short-term rentals on AirBnB. That reduces the supply of long-term rentals and drives prices up even higher.

Even for normal long-term rentals, some landlords own enough properties that it is more profitable to hold some of them off the market to raise prices than it is to rent them all out at lower prices. So it's also a product of the concentration of the housing rental market. I seem to recall seeing not too long ago a "market intelligence" product that basically allowed landlords to collude with each other to do this, except the collusion was through a service and algorithm that provided plausible deniability with regard to price fixing.

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

#127

Post by janalsncm »

cglan wrote: post #90
janalsncm wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Ok, but again, other places exist. Housing is extremely expensive in China too, and they arguably had the opposite problem (building too much).

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

#128

Post by cycrutchfield »

causi wrote: post #123
cycrutchfield wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I’ll bite: why should you care about what other people own?

Land is a finite resource that nobody created. Would you be offended if someone claimed to own a cubic kilometer of the sky and declared nobody else could use it without paying him?

Land is a finite resource, but buildings can be built up vertically. Unless your town looks like manhattan, land is not scarce for new housing.

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

#129

Post by cycrutchfield »

tmnvix wrote: post #62
cycrutchfield wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I’ll bite: why should you care about what other people own?

I think most people would be a bit put out if a significant portion of the radio spectrum was owned by people that were not utilising it (or only using it to send their Christmas messages).

But in this case most housing is being utilized, either owner-occupied or rented.

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

#130

Post by cycrutchfield »

alistairSH wrote: post #98
cycrutchfield wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I’ll bite: why should you care about what other people own?

If a house in a popular area sits dormant, that's one less unit available to house the general public. Reductio ad absurdum... if rich Chinese businesspeople buy every home in Vancouver (strictly to park money, not live or rent), nobody who works in Vancouver can live there and everybody has to commute from the suburbs. Edit - at an indivual level, you're right, who cares. At a policy level, ensuring reasonable housi…

If people want to buy houses and not live in them, more power to them as long as they pay their property taxes. Housing is not a finite resource, more can simply be built as long as there is demand for it. At a policy level, we sure are spending a lot of time worrying about the fraction of a percent of houses that are not being rented and not nearly enough time worrying about why not enough new housing is being built to meet demand.
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