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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

#281

Post by owebmaster »

fragmede wrote: post #245
toast0 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Always check the pockets of jackets before donating! My mom snuck $100 in a jacket my wife almost donated without realizing.

Then again, the person receiving the donated jacket could use the $100 more than the person donating it. It's fun to imagine what I might do if a billionaire gave me a million dollars, or 0.1% of their wealth. Thing is, me giving $5,000 to a homeless person would change their life more than me getting that million dollars.

> me giving $5,000 to a homeless person would change their life more than me getting that million dollars.

Ironically yes, it could even get the person killed

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

#282

Post by mancerayder »

slibhb wrote: post #273
mancerayder wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

California problem. There's no constrained supply in Houston or Austin or a few other cities in the US that are now crashing from over supply. Another one is Manhattan. There's no space to build so things get retrofitted (office conversions) and new zoning (Hudson Yards) but it's expensive - high hourly rates to pay people on buildings with more 99 units, many many permits required, land is expensive, etc So it's lux…

While it's definitely true that NIMBYism isn't the problem everywhere, I live in Virginia.

The only point I was trying to make is, "it's more complicated than ." The household affordability problem is extremely complicated. In some cases it's indeed NIMBYism - some law that limits to single-family housing, or complicated HOA rules, etc. Local board approvals required.

Sometimes it's just plain-old high-demand. Who doesn't want to live in a big fancy metropolis as a 25 yr-old with money? More people move in than it's physically possible to build (we're not China).

Sometimes it's regulations - you need to pay construction workers a min wage of $50/hr if you build a unit more than 99, or no tax breaks for you. Sometimes land is expensive. But so is the architect, the materials, the permits. Then you have environmental regulations, sometimes that make sense, some that are too difficult. Then you have regulations to protect the consumer so the place doesn't burn up or fall on our heads, sometimes that make sense, some that are too difficult.

You have interest rates that are high.

We have the private equity investors buying up bulk new construction.

We have wage growth that didn't match the growth of housing costs.

Hopefully I've made my case that housing affordability has many factors.

I'll need to save this message so I can cut and paste it elsewhere because about once a month on HN someone posts that the problem with housing affordability is not enough building and NIMBYism, which is only one of the factors here.

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

#283

Post by brailsafe »

magicalhippo wrote: post #261
brailsafe wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, they're taxed higher in the sense that they're not exempt from capital gains, like primary residences are, but in my view it seems like that would at-most be a marginal disincentive if renters don't have much in the way of other options or protections (which vary across the country). Likewise, I'm fairly sure a mom+pop residential landlord can save on tax for any expenses related to secondary suites…

Here in Norway non-primary residences were taxed higher but not very much. They've changed that in recent years, so now you get taxed about 100%. However here it's not (just) capital gains, it's wealth, so you pay a percentage of what the estimated street price is for the place each year. The result is that in the last couple of years landlords have gotten rid of many rental units. This primarily affected smaller apa…

Early in my adulthood, the balance of rent vs buy was closer, and renting was either the choice for someone without much money, or you paid a premium for the convenience of renting, but otherwise the cost of borrowing for the same place was much more similar to the rent cost. I didn't have any interest in buying, not just because I didn't have the money yet, but because I didn't see any value in owning over renting. I still don't see much value in owning, but now it's nearly impossible, and rents are half of cost ownership.

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

#284

Post by tsoukase »

As a Greek, and I believe fellow Italians do, I cannot believe how one can live for the first 10-20 years of his adult life without their parents' help, especially today. Old money, inheritance and a house are almost always existent and extend the intergenerational bonding. I don't know if I am jealous or repelled by northern Europeans or even the USA that don't exhibit thus behaviour.

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

#285

Post by busterarm »

vel0city wrote: post #69
busterarm wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boomers can be trust fund babies too.

Not only that, if you're a single boomer with a living parent and neither of you have much other incomes its probably better to cohabitate in that old family house that was paid off in the 90s and share what little benefits you both receive.

I think people also underestimate what a serious obligation this can be.

I'm taking care of an elderly parent with dementia who cannot afford the care that they need. It costs me significant time and money. It has completely stalled my career. I'm not actually getting anything from them and it's worse than taking care of a newborn baby.

It's interesting because I'm around the age where most of my peers are dealing with something like this and it's something I'd never heard talked about seriously even once my whole life. I was totally unprepared for it and it seems to be a thing that large numbers of people are quietly suffering with. It has given me a lot of empathy for people who I may have judged as underperformers, etc.

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

#286

Post by ieatcandlewax »

scoofy wrote: post #257
ieatcandlewax wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how people can see San Francisco and think "I wish this entire skyline was all 20 story apartment buildings so that rootless cosmopolitans can have marginally cheaper rent". If you want to live like that, new york is a great place and there is no need to sacrifice a beautiful and historic (by american standards) city for it. This is all on the backdrop that the only reason people are complaining ab…

What the hell are you talking about? I live in SF. Like half the city is literally single family homes. You could trivially double or triple the population of the city by just legalizing the cute, three-story Victorians they have in the Haight city wide. People live here and would like to build a life for themselves instead of living with roommates into their 40s and 50s.

I'm guessing you live in the northern half if your using cute and Haight in the same sentence. Esp when Inner Sunset has effectively the same architecture.

You could feasibly quadruple the population if you wanted to, I guess my question is to why? It wouldn't decrease rent appreciably, and you would have to move out to daly city to raise your family in something other than an apartment.

You could do all this building and ruin the atmosphere of the lower half of the city just for Amazon, Salesforce and whatever other software companies are still downtown to move to some desert and have the rents drop back down to normal ranges.

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

#287

Post by ieatcandlewax »

rsynnott wrote: post #260
ieatcandlewax wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how people can see San Francisco and think "I wish this entire skyline was all 20 story apartment buildings so that rootless cosmopolitans can have marginally cheaper rent". If you want to live like that, new york is a great place and there is no need to sacrifice a beautiful and historic (by american standards) city for it. This is all on the backdrop that the only reason people are complaining ab…

> rootless cosmopolitans ??? I hadn't realised _Stalin_ had a HN account.

My bad, I thought it was just an apt way of describing modern tech workers, didn't know it was an antisemitic slur.

I love Isreal and pledge my allegiance to the Zionist cause.

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

#288

Post by scoofy »

ieatcandlewax wrote: post #286
scoofy wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell are you talking about? I live in SF. Like half the city is literally single family homes. You could trivially double or triple the population of the city by just legalizing the cute, three-story Victorians they have in the Haight city wide. People live here and would like to build a life for themselves instead of living with roommates into their 40s and 50s.

I'm guessing you live in the northern half if your using cute and Haight in the same sentence. Esp when Inner Sunset has effectively the same architecture. You could feasibly quadruple the population if you wanted to, I guess my question is to why? It wouldn't decrease rent appreciably, and you would have to move out to daly city to raise your family in something other than an apartment. You could do all this buildin…

>You could feasibly quadruple the population if you wanted to, I guess my question is to why? It wouldn't decrease rent appreciably

You live in a fantasy world if you don't think increasing the housing supply by 4x will do anything to prices. Austin is a near-perfect natural experiment... not that you likely care about good-faith discussion with a month old throwaway account.

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

#289

Post by vel0city »

busterarm wrote: post #285
vel0city wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only that, if you're a single boomer with a living parent and neither of you have much other incomes its probably better to cohabitate in that old family house that was paid off in the 90s and share what little benefits you both receive.

I think people also underestimate what a serious obligation this can be. I'm taking care of an elderly parent with dementia who cannot afford the care that they need. It costs me significant time and money. It has completely stalled my career. I'm not actually getting anything from them and it's worse than taking care of a newborn baby. It's interesting because I'm around the age where most of my peers are dealing wi…

It's a story I've seen a lot. Proper care for those people in such situations is a hard full-time job on its own, and something we in society are mostly undervaluing.

We really suck at late stage life planning and discussions.

I'm sorry for all the difficult times you've experienced so far and the hard times to come. It's a lot to give. Be sure to look for what benefits you/they quality for. Be sure to still spend time to ensure you stay mentally healthy as well.

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