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Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

economist.com

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Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#251

Post by coxmichael »

ThrustVectoring wrote: post #237

Housing crises are a symptom , not a cause. The root issue is demographics, specifically the worker-to-retiree ratio growing at a rate that outpaces productivity growth. Since saving is essentially impossible at societal scales and generational timeframes (how exactly is a car built in 1980 supposed to cause more nurses to provide healthcare in 2020?), tomorrow's workers have to be coerced into transferring real good…

I feel like this kind of zero-sum argument does the rounds quite frequently.

The reality is that housing is the main mechanism used by the older wealthy folk for their pensions, and subsequently transfers wealth up through the generations.

What we need is a way for all that unproductive capital used to directly fund the businesses of the young, growing the real economy (rather than the financial).

Alongside that, additional legislative arrangements to provide security for renters.

Pension pots should be a return on investment, not speculation.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#252

Post by TaylorAlexander »

pdonis wrote: post #223
fezfight wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think folks overlook just how wealthy certain investors are when they propose the fix is to just build new properties. Those will also get snapped up by investors. To fix the problem, investing in housing needs to be either banned or made very unattractive. You only need one house to live in.

> You only need one house to live in. Many people do not want to own a home, they would rather rent. Someone has to be the landlord for all those people, and to all those someones, the home is an investment. You can only get rid of homes as investments if you get rid of renting.

This line of reasoning is flawed. The government can build housing so that people have places to rent, in a way that isn’t “an investment” in the profit-seeking sense. That’s what they do in Vienna and it seems to work great.

https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl...

And then in Singapore they have very high home ownership rates, so we could also be dramatically reducing the number of people who actually need to rent, reducing the need for private investment:

https://charterforcompassion.org/shareable-community-ideas/p...

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#253

Post by mikkergp »

Loughla wrote: post #194
ghaff wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I get a form every year from my town to confirm my particulars. I sign it and send it back. I guess if I weren't registered I'd go down to the town hall and do so. If I couldn't for some reason, I assume I could call the town clerk, and they'd send me a form in the mail. When I go into Cambridge around election time, I frequently see various tables set up to register people. Obviously registering (and voting) i…

>I guess if weren't registered I'd go down to the town hall and do so. What if your job wouldn't let you off during the town hall's regular hours? What if you don't have transportation? What if you don't have the necessary forms of identification? > I assume I could call the town clerk, and they'd send me a form in the mail What if you're not already registered and cannot just fill out a form to send in? What if you…

> I guess my point is, it's very flippant to just say, "well it's easy for me, so it's probably pretty easy for everyone else, so it must be apathy as the only solution."

Right but the data suggests that apathy is the primary reason. I think we should make it easier to vote, but it’s not empathy if the people you’re trying to empathize with don’t actually feel that way.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#254

Post by foobarian »

NoSorryCannot wrote: post #240
l33t2328 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s what every parent hopes to leave their kids with: an obligation

Oooor they can sell it, as originally stated. Goodness. The point is reduce land entitlement a little bit. Yes, there's going to be some light incentive to cut loose and that's OK.

Now the US is way ahead of the game here compared to Europe. There are no property taxes in most of Europe and families hang on to their homes for generations.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#255

Post by bobkazamakis »

pessimizer wrote: post #228
datacruncher01 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with you, that's a whole other problem. But housing like many goods is still subject to supply and demand. The investors buy the properties because they are actually good investments in situations where housing is in demand, and that's true in all the major cities where we're not building enough housing and appropriately sized housing. If we increase the supply, if we make smaller housing units so there are a…

Everybody has a place to live. Housing isn't scarce. When housing is scarce, people are homeless or living in extremely tiny spaces. They are not. The problem is that people wouldn't be able to afford to own the places where they live. Housing is only "scarce" in desirable places, and that's simply tautological. The sum of unfulfilled desires is the contrapositive of scarcity. Housing is a market in which a very tiny…

Ah yes, everyone without a home is simply a lazy poor who should just move to Mississipi where the land is cheap and the jobs are abundant.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#256

Post by doliveira »

lesuorac wrote: post #123
doliveira wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Election day not being a holiday in the USA is weird

I dunno, having election day be a holiday seems like a poor solution as plenty of people do work holidays and probably the same people who have trouble finding time to vote. Mostly, I don't think we should be encouraging a ton of people to all show up at the same place at the same time. That's just asking for long lines and other issues. I think it'd be much better to just drag voting out of the course of a month and…

> plenty of people do work holidays and probably the same people who have trouble finding time to vote

It's a country with 300 million people, there's plenty of people for anything. I'd wager that in percentual terms, the absolute majority would benefit from an election day holiday.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#257

Post by dont__panic »

pdonis wrote: post #223
fezfight wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I think folks overlook just how wealthy certain investors are when they propose the fix is to just build new properties. Those will also get snapped up by investors. To fix the problem, investing in housing needs to be either banned or made very unattractive. You only need one house to live in.

> You only need one house to live in. Many people do not want to own a home, they would rather rent. Someone has to be the landlord for all those people, and to all those someones, the home is an investment. You can only get rid of homes as investments if you get rid of renting.

> Many people do not want to own a home

I hate to go all "citation needed" on you, but I'm not sure this is true.

Do I want to pay for upkeep of a property? Probably not. But since renting is basically equivalent to burning money in our economy, any responsible renter will eventually feel a pull towards ownership if only to stop the bleeding.

I think we need a society where renting isn't so expensive AND owning a property isn't so heavily subsidized by tax breaks. The entire housing market is a massive bubble because of investors and speculation. At some point, that bubble prices people out, leading to homelessness and missed opportunities because people aren't willing or able to move.

Much like freedom of car-free movement, housing ought to be a fundamental human right. Not a business or a place to hide your money.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#258

Post by DubiousPusher »

probably_wrong wrote: post #32
plankers wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you didn't even hit the core dependency: a capitalist operating system which inherently directs capital to a small pool of people

As much as I'd like to throw capitalism under the bus, communist Russia was well known for its housing problems too.

During the early years yes. Though this was likely as much to do with the fact that Russia was undergoing industrialization and urbanization in these years, which is a stage of development that has produced housing shortages in almost every country that has undergone it.

Also there is the fact that much of the urban West had been destroyed in the incredibly brutal fighting of WWI, the Russian Civil War and WWII which left as many as 7 million unhoused orphans alone. With these considerations it's not as easy to ascribe the lack of housing to the Soviet political economy. Remember, the Soviet Union didn't get a Marshall plan like Europe.

The housing projects under the post Stalin premiers eventually mitigated much of the problem but there appear to have been chronically homeless still that were largely jailed (an outcome ironically similar to what we see in the U.S.).

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#259

Post by foobarian »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #243
Supermancho wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15000 in rental income doesn't even cover half of your Mortgage That depends on how much you put as a down payment. Work backwards from the payment to make it sensible.

Give me a break. You'd need a down payment of ~400K to have a mortgage low enough to barely break even at $15,000 in rent per year. None of his math makes sense. Of course you would really rent a 500k property at something more like 2500 a month but even then you'd need a down payment near 200k to start making a profit.

You don't need to make a profit, there are ways to get loans against the property and continue acquiring more inventory.

Re: Housing is at the root of many of the rich world’s problems (2020)

#260

Post by dionidium »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #252
pdonis wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You only need one house to live in. Many people do not want to own a home, they would rather rent. Someone has to be the landlord for all those people, and to all those someones, the home is an investment. You can only get rid of homes as investments if you get rid of renting.

This line of reasoning is flawed. The government can build housing so that people have places to rent, in a way that isn’t “an investment” in the profit-seeking sense. That’s what they do in Vienna and it seems to work great. https://www.huduser.gov/portal/pdredge/pdr_edge_featd_articl... And then in Singapore they have very high home ownership rates, so we could also be dramatically reducing the number of people who…

I rented (by choice) for many years. I never once thought, "I wish the government were my landlord." The arrangement actually works pretty great just how it is. I was very happy to write that rent check every month and always felt like I got a good deal for my money, even when I lived in a very expensive market (NYC). In every case, I desired something that was very important to me and for which there's a lot of demand. I was happy, therefore, to pay for it.
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