New US homeownership measure puts people first • Hacker News Board

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#51

Post by jltsiren » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:15 PM UTC

redwood wrote: post #34

Everything in the study makes perfect sense. However one thing that's not discussed is change in culture and expectations. For example the United States is probably the only country where there's a general expectation that grandparents parents and adult children all live in separate homes... and most other countries multi-generation living is the norm. And perhaps some of those norms are starting to float into the Un…

There is not much difference between the US and Europe in that. In the Nordic countries, children move out earlier, while multi-generational households are more common in Southern Europe.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#52

Post by twoodfin » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:16 PM UTC

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Owning a home creates a stable, personal nexus with a set of vital institutions: Family, community, local economy, government, …

As a driver and measure of well-being, it’s probably at least 10,000 years old, since agriculture made migratory hunter-gatherer societies obsolete.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#53

Post by lotsofpulp » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Your comment got me thinking how youtube videos are a bad place to get any information that is not showing how to do a hands on activity.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#54

Post by sarchertech » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

smaudet wrote: post #49

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

What crack was the YTber on? Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of its value... Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

What is the time period for you numbers?

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#55

Post by ndriscoll » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #20

ajross wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If however you care about the housing development decisions that will incentivise owner occupancy Genuine question: who, precisely, cares about "incentivising owner occupancy" as a policy goal? What interest does that serve and why should the government prioritize maximizing that metric? Basically right now we measure "what fraction of homes are occupied by an owner" and not "what fraction of people live in their o…

More importantly, nobody cares about the people where renting is their ideal condition (at least for now - in different situations different ways of living are ideal). There should be nothing wrong with renting. Owning your own should be a worse choice if you will live there for less than 5-10 years. Owning a home should be only slightly better if you will live there for more than 10 years - not enough better to make…

I didn't vote when I rented in San Francisco for a few years because I had no intention to stay, and thought it immoral to disenfranchise the locals. Actually in my opinion you shouldn't be able to vote until you've lived somewhere for at least 5-10 years. Certainly even if you can, you shouldn't if you know you're only there temporarily.

I don't see why you think owning should only be slightly better after 10 years; if you don't want to deal with maintenance directly, you could always hire a management company as if you were the landlord and renter, but there's a benefit to you and everyone around you when you are invested in your home and community.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#56

Post by eagerpace » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:19 PM UTC

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

I love to see metrics that evolve over time. Land is a finite resources, as such it inevitably trends up as the best and easiest locations are consumed. So I think the correlation here has to be understood from that baseline.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#57

Post by CGMthrowaway » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:20 PM UTC

smallmancontrov wrote: post #50

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

Health care, housing, and education are the big three drivers of mandatory expenses in most peoples' lives. It's undeniably a little cool that luxuries got cheap, but it's severely un-cool that necessities got expensive. I'm glad to see a focus on pushing statistics to do a better job of reflecting that, but yeah, this is all downstream of structural incentives so fixes are only going to happen through legislative ch…

>this is all downstream of structural incentives

You are mostly right and the structural incentives are more related at root to unsustainable national debt than any legislative choice (unless that's what you were referring to)

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#58

Post by idbnstra » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #40

Perhaps this measure is useful to something but I find it directionally annoying as I don't think "higher is better" as it would be with the more traditional metric. Here's an example from the page - a couple and the wife's parents - a couple and their college grad son In this example the two couples (4 people) are counted as home owners and the 3 others (wife's parents, the son) as non owners - so the ownership rate…

i think it would be best just to do a survey asking what housing situation they are in and if that's what they want. do you really think that every single renter wants to be a renter?

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#59

Post by alistairSH » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

xyzelement wrote: post #40

Perhaps this measure is useful to something but I find it directionally annoying as I don't think "higher is better" as it would be with the more traditional metric. Here's an example from the page - a couple and the wife's parents - a couple and their college grad son In this example the two couples (4 people) are counted as home owners and the 3 others (wife's parents, the son) as non owners - so the ownership rate…

Yeah, I'm leaning towards this new metric could actually be harmful (assuming the government goal is to increase it).

It makes sense for some families to cohabitate. Family with infants cohabitating with grandparents providing some care. Elderly parents being cared for my their middle-aged "kids". Etc.

Re: New US homeownership measure puts people first

#60

Post by smallmancontrov » Tue, Jul 21, 2026, 1:21 PM UTC

smaudet wrote: post #49

GodelNumbering wrote: post #33

There was a youtube video sometime ago that argued about how life has vastly improved in every single aspect (with numbers about how 'stuff' has gotten universally more affordable), only housing has gotten more expensive relative to income and how that proves we have a better quality of life because of that. It got me thinking that maybe the home ownership, or having a place you can call yours, disproportionately aff…

What crack was the YTber on? Income has only raised ~15% (on average), while inflation has been at 30%... meanwhile in the past century, money has lost 96% of its value... Not sure how that translates at all into "stuff" being more affordable...

Durable goods have deflated compared to wages while health care, housing, and education soared. If you are given the job of spinning this (or take it upon yourself in a bid for access), focusing on the former to the exclusion of the latter is how you do it. "Think of the iPhones! Never mind that rent in a mid-rate city is 1 iPhone and 2 big screen TVs every month!"