Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state • Hacker News Board

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#111

Post by rayiner » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:41 PM UTC

gremlinsinc wrote: post #89

bonestormii_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having worked a lot in a rental market with a very active housing subsidy program, I agree that the administration of such programs is an actual nightmare, but you really are missing the point I think. Start with the assumption that people need to be able to afford a place to live, and that a full time job should be able to achieve that. Do you agree? Now, if we both agree that a housing subsidy program is an adminis…

or just institute a UBI program specifically covering housing that is the average rent cost for a 2 bedroom apartment in the locale in which you live. So you always have rent covered, regardless of your paycheck. They could maybe double that, and have it cover food stamps too, to cut out some of the administrative costs to manage both programs. This works for married couples too, because you'd get double that, which…

Do you have any idea of the scale of the numbers you’re talking about here? 1/3 of the defense budget is nothing, about $250 billion. A UBI that’s double the cost of a 2BR in NYC would be $7,500 per month, or $540 billion per year for every adult in NYC. And NYC is just 2.5% of the country’s population. You’d have to cut 1/3 of the defense budget about 80 times.

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#112

Post by woodandsteel » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:42 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #8

Is minimum wage workers affording an average 1-2 bedroom apartment with no other householders a goal we have set? The French minimum wage is 1,521 euro per month. 30% of that is 456 euros, or about $513. According to the underlying study, the average 1BR in Alabama is $665. Is housing in France, on average, really that much cheaper than Alabama? I don’t think these abstract targets are very helpful. According to the…

The promise of the free market economy is that the standard of living keeps improving over time, and that includes housing. For probably a majority of the population of the US, that has not been the case for a number of decades.

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#113

Post by bonestormii_ » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:44 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #99

bonestormii_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I was young, I had roommates. I don’t think every working person should be able to afford a 1 bedroom apartment. Not everyone working minimum wage is doing it "when they were young." Do you really think it's a good objective for a 55 year old cook for a non-profit organization to be living with room mates? Would you want that? The solution is there if you are willing to reduce the wealth generated by investmen…

> The solution is there if you are willing to reduce the wealth generated by investment properties for an already much wealthier investment class. How do you justify your priorities ethically? Do you think the world works according to ethical priorities or market forces? Imagine if engineers could use similar logic as political theorists. We could will our airplanes to fly by setting the right priorities!

Market forces are real, but can be regulated to align with our priorities. It's not a matter of explaining "how the world works." The market works how we design it to work. If it is unregulated, it frequently reflects exploitation.

You make a quip about engineers and political theorists, but fail to explain why a market cannot be regulated in order to benefit society in general. We do it all the time.

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#114

Post by bonestormii_ » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:48 PM UTC

thephyber wrote: post #106

bonestormii_ wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even when there is a rental price cap, that tends to only work in the short term and exacerbates supply/demand problems long term. San Francisco, for example, implemented a rent control system in ~1980. Since then, only 40% of rental units are eligible for rent control and lots of potential rentals stay off the rental market. There are loopholes which allow conversion of a rent-controlled unit to a market-priced re…

> You can't just add 15,000 people to a neighborhood and not add parking or public transit capacity. That's exactly why suburbs in Silicon Valley are stressing the large cities and the cities are suing each other to ensure they alleviate traffic congestion as they grow the residential units. Those who live in the burbs and commute into the cities don't want city dwellers to be able to make the reverse commute to come…

And it all goes back to all entities paying their fair share of taxes to fund infrastructure, etc.

As if there isn't enough money in San Francisco to build roads and trains! The city governments certainly don't have it, but it's there.

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#115

Post by sanderjd » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #95

sanderjd wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument here seems very circular to me. You ask "when did we decide that?". That implies that there is some discrete point in time in the past when societal decisions are made. But that's not how societies work, not how politics work. The way it works is that we are continuously "deciding" things like this, through conversations like the one here, and articles like the one we're talking about. It doesn't make s…

No, the framing of the article is disingenuous. If you want to make an argument that someone working minimum wage should be able to live in a separate 1BR, go ahead and make that argument. But that’s not what the article does. It claims there is a “housing affordability crisis” because minimum wage workers can’t afford an average 1 or 2 bedroom apartment. That isn’t an argument for raising the standard. It acts like…

Ah, see, the way I read the article is that it is saying that they have already decided that this is the standard for a crisis, not that we have decided. Where "they" in this case is the National Low Income Housing Coalition, and perhaps also the author and maybe by implication the editorial voice of CNBC. I don't see an attempt being made to put words in my mouth; I see an author using their own words to make an argument mostly based on a study by another institution.

You're right that articles and studies often use terms like "housing crisis" that don't have objective definitions in a way that fits their subjective definition without doing any throat-clearing to call that out. But I don't think there is any real way around that, it seems like you just have to read things with that in mind. Maybe I'm wrong though. Should every article say things like, "there is no objective definition of a housing crisis, but the NLIHC believes this should be considered one". Perhaps they should!

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#116

Post by bonestormii_ » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:50 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #111

gremlinsinc wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or just institute a UBI program specifically covering housing that is the average rent cost for a 2 bedroom apartment in the locale in which you live. So you always have rent covered, regardless of your paycheck. They could maybe double that, and have it cover food stamps too, to cut out some of the administrative costs to manage both programs. This works for married couples too, because you'd get double that, which…

Do you have any idea of the scale of the numbers you’re talking about here? 1/3 of the defense budget is nothing, about $250 billion. A UBI that’s double the cost of a 2BR in NYC would be $7,500 per month, or $540 billion per year for every adult in NYC. And NYC is just 2.5% of the country’s population. You’d have to cut 1/3 of the defense budget about 80 times.

It's almost as if $7,500/month for a 2BR apartment is ridiculous, no matter where it is.

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#117

Post by Wowfunhappy » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

cameronbrown wrote: post #53

centimeter wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all 40-hour-a-week jobs are valuable enough to support a high adult standard of living. If adults are still doing those jobs, it’s not a problem with the jobs.

This is the real issue. Imo: there's not enough upwards mobility in jobs because people are retiring later in life. We need to make it cheaper to retire and for workforces to move up the ladder. I know this sounds elitist, but when I worked in a shop, I didn't expect to be able to afford a house.

Just musing a bit further, there are multiple ways you could attack this. For instance, you could also encourage people to work shorter hours—we've all become much more productive in the past century, so why are we still working 40 hours a week at minimum?

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#118

Post by erik_seaberg » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:53 PM UTC

eggsmediumrare wrote: post #30

rayiner wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re begging the question. Is having your own 1BR apartment a “basic standard of living”? When did we decide that? Is that a goal other developed countries have set and achieved? Those are the pertinent questions, not what ideas “we like.” According to the study, that standard would require a $30-40 minimum wage in places like New York. Is that something any country has done?

Why wouldn't we want that? Isn't the point of progress to improve life for everyone?

Higher wages in an industry are good for workers who make the cut, but bad for everyone else.

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#119

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #16

standardUser wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it from the other direction. Is working 40 hours per week but not being able to afford a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment a goal we want to set? If so, we have achieved it! I think most of us like the idea that if you put in 40 hours of work every week, regardless of the specific job, you are able to afford a basic standard of living.

You’re begging the question. Is having your own 1BR apartment a “basic standard of living”? When did we decide that? Is that a goal other developed countries have set and achieved? Those are the pertinent questions, not what ideas “we like.” According to the study, that standard would require a $30-40 minimum wage in places like New York. Is that something any country has done?

[deleted]

Re: Minimum wage workers cannot afford rent in any U.S. state

#120

Post by mjevans » Thu, Jul 16, 2020, 11:55 PM UTC

autokad wrote: post #85

mjevans wrote: post #15

Due to how much it cost and also a glut of Federally insured mortgages, housing became a defacto investment for baby boomers. Housing should be a liability, owning land should be a liability. Neither of these should be investments. That's the true solution to spiraling prices.

No. Housing should be an asset. If all housing and land were liabilities, then they would all be owned by the government (we tried that, most people didn't like it). The fact that homes are assets are not stopping people from owning homes (and why the f would someone want to own one if they were a liability in the first place?!?!). the median income in the US is about 60k and median home price is about 200k. you only…

You're using averages from a statistically highly invariant sample range.

If a mean average is taken of everyone in society and all of the places in society, some fit that might sound reasonable is very likely.

However like the article what matters are prices within actual places that people want to live. Like a city they grew up in, a city that actually has jobs, a place with a functional educational system for their children.

I assume you and everyone else would like to have service workers inside of big cities? Where should they live? Where should everyone else that isn't in the top 10% of income earners live?

How can owning a home close to a job, and actually being able to put down roots and build a community be incentivized? In my mind that is logically divorced from renting and serfdom, and thus housing should be a liability rather than an asset.