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42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

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Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#191

Post by ryandrake »

alistairSH wrote: post #10

33% of GenX is still depending on their parents? That's shocking... I'm at the young end of GenX at 49yo. So, a slice of the population that is fast approaching retirement age is still reliant on their septuagenarian or octogenarian parents for money? Wow.

Well, that's where the money is.

The 55 and older demographic holds 70% of the wealth in America[1].

The 70 and older demographic holds 31% (almost 1/3) of the wealth in America[2].

1: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/older-americans-control-70-we...

2: https://www.apolloacademy.com/31-percent-of-wealth-owned-by-...

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#192

Post by inigyou »

ironman1478 wrote: post #173
antinomicus wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may or may not meet your definition as a nimby 28 year old. I am all for housing, just not the type being built in my area. Dozens of “luxury” units built cheaply, selling for 4,000$ for a 1 bedroom. They get subsidized by the local government for including maybe 5 units that are “low income” and probably still cost 2k - and those low income units go away as soon as the building gets sold to another corporation. I…

That is all that is allowed due to local and state zoning codes. Loosening restrictions on what can be built will bring down costs and all for more types of buildings. The bland housing is all that pencils out for builders at the moment.

They did this in New Zealand under Jacinda Ardern's government and house prices have started to fall, but only slightly so far. IIRC the rules were something like, lots in a certain radius of a train station or town center are mandatory mixed-use zoning, overriding any city rules to the contrary. It was very controversial for the national government to override city governments like that.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#193

Post by inigyou »

rurp wrote: post #179
ProfessorLayton wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Almost everything you said is a typical NIMBY talking point: > Dozens of “luxury” units built cheaply, selling for 4,000$ for a 1 bedroom A nebulous definition of "luxury", and totally ignores the fact that people with money can get what they want anyway, pushing those with less out. So yes, more "luxury" builds help. > They get subsidized by the local government for including maybe 5 units that are “low income” and…

It's all talking points on both sides. "Build more housing" being the one true solution has become a religious tenant in a lot of wonkish circles. I see it repeated uncritically every single time this topic comes up on HN and similar spaces. The reality is that demand is always going to far outstrip supply in certain areas. You can only cram so many houses into a place like San Franciso, even if you raze the city to…

Isn't SF infamously a SFH zone that makes no sense? If you razed the whole city and rebuilt it like Manhattan, you wouldn't have 25% more inhabitants, you'd have 25000% more. And if you improve public transit (I heard BART is some that's pretty good by American standards but not by European standards?) you can drastically widen the area that feels like the core city (just take a look at Berlin which I'm familiar with) giving maybe another 1000% multiplicative increase.

Every time I'm in Berlin I love the public transit system there. I think that's because they have a relatively dense network of lines through the city center, and the trains run every 4-5 minutes which means you don't have to check the timetable before going to the station, you can just show up. I haven't visited London or NYC though. I know some cities with more modern train signaling have trains every 1-2 minutes so there is basically always a train at every metro station.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#194

Post by boogieknite »

have a large extended family almost entirely living in the Seattle area while i grew up in rural Oregon

i moved out after high school and did my best to stay out (of course occasionally life has other plans). nearly all of my 30ish Seattle cousins stayed with their parents until getting married, some never moved out. i was so confused because i was close with my cousins and we seemed pretty like-minded, but it really just came down to housing costs

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#195

Post by inigyou »

ironman1478 wrote: post #167
JKCalhoun wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree. So often I see people complaining "people treat their home as an investment…". Because in fact it turns out it is? Are we supposed to pass laws that fix the price of a home based on the square footage? (I wonder if jewelers complain that the reason silver is so expensive is that people treat it as an investment .)

Nobody advocates for fixing the price. People want more supply which will bring the cost of housing as a whole down or at least provide more price diversity. Is it even beneficial to have a house worth a lot of money? Think about places where property is expensive, it is also expensive to live there in general because housing costs so much. The cost of housing means employers have to pay their employees a lot to keep…

Expensive housing means expensive commercial rent too, which means high prices and less quirky niche shops. In Berlin I've watched them disappear and get replaced by a McDonalds or a cryptocurrency startup firm.

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#196

Post by inigyou »

alphawhisky wrote: post #113
jayGlow wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

are these areas with declining populations and rising housing prices increasing the number of houses? it could be that the population declines because no one can afford to live there however it's still a desirable area so prices remain high. cities like Austin are seeing reduction in housing prices despite population increase due to construction of new housing.

That only covers a portion of the population. Don't forget the middle of nowhere towns that refuse to tax their citizens (but eat grant money like pigs) and refuse to allow new housing. All of this is essentially being done to maximize property value and keep new people out. This is why people are moving to cities in the US. Not a desire, but a need in order to make ends meet and get on the property ladder.

People move to cities because of lifestyle and jobs. Cheap housing has never been an attraction of cities...

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#197

Post by inigyou »

mothballed wrote: post #166
alphawhisky wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civil Engineer/City Planner here. The bottleneck is legislative. NIMBY's are all over in US politics right now, local and larger. These folks put together legislation that makes it extremely hard to build without City/County/Township permission, unless the project benefits them in some way. So, most places will disincentivize new construction unless they get a grant for it, because they feel obligated to help their c…

This is exactly it. I built a house for 60k a few years ago in a HCOL area by finding a legal loophole to permitting/planning that bypassed civil engineers, code inspections, and almost all planning. The house next to me, quite similar and 50 years old, is selling for 5x that. In the old days it was common to build your own house. And it usually allows a house for half or less the market price. But this is effectivel…

What was the loophole?

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#198

Post by inigyou »

mothballed wrote: post #188
inigyou wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's legally unbuildable, does that mean you're spending 100k just to get yourself imprisoned for having an illegal structure?

Yes edit: as a comment, there are a lot of people in places like big island hawaii for instance, that do something like this under burner LLCs with shipping containers, then just move them when caught and do the same thing over again.

I suppose as long as it's 100% temporary, it might be legal (I am not your lawyer). So maybe a caravan trailer, a tent, or a covered up cargo bicycle will be allowed. But I'm not paying $100k to sleep in a converted bicycle bin, I can do that just as well under a bridge!

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#199

Post by josefritzishere »

nilamo wrote: post #35
josefritzishere wrote: post #8

The parallels between the Great Depression and the conditions now are worrisome.

I don't know what you mean, the DOW is over 50k. /s

The stock market isn't the economy. Those are different things. If you are new to this area, the Wikipedia article is good for basics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy

Re: 42% of adults rely on their parents for financial support

#200

Post by mothballed »

inigyou wrote: post #197
mothballed wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly it. I built a house for 60k a few years ago in a HCOL area by finding a legal loophole to permitting/planning that bypassed civil engineers, code inspections, and almost all planning. The house next to me, quite similar and 50 years old, is selling for 5x that. In the old days it was common to build your own house. And it usually allows a house for half or less the market price. But this is effectivel…

What was the loophole?

Do everything yourself and it never touches commercial regulations on licensing, inspection, and and building plans. I recorded a sworn affidavit with the county I was building it myself on my own property for purely personal residential use and then they issued me a permit explicitly stating I did not need to submit building plans or inspections.

Since the house was built without any compensation and not used for any commercial purpose, it bypasses "commerce" which was the auspice under which housing was regulated. When I was done I literally just sent the county a picture of a house and they closed the permit and that was that.

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