this is the generation that had it best: jobs for life, good benefits, cheap houses, etc. they also destroyed the planet with their "American dream" style consumption. what's coming for the new generations if these are suffering ?
This was my thought reading the article. They had every opportunity to fail upwards. The numbers will be staggering in the future if the boomer generation is having issues now and didn’t secure a home in the $23,000 home era.
> Part of the problem is government regulation. And not just too much regulation, but the wrong kind of regulation, and a lack of regulation in areas that need it. Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Corporations buying up homes in order to drive up prices shouldn't be allowed. Lots of things are allowed that shouldn't be. A…
> her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. GP: "Government regulation is preventing the construction of more housing" You: "So true. For example, we need more regulation that make housing a legally encumbered asset with uniquely constrained and inflexible financial properties" What is your thought process here? Do you think this kind of thing will encourage the provision of more houses?…
I think your argument is correct with the assumption that houses should be considered investment. I don't think they should, but realise that this statement is only articulated in principle rather than in practical and pragmatic terms. On the other hand, the practical and pragmatic treatment of houses as investment property has driven us to the precipice of one of the greatest potential societal crises at a broadly global scale. We have people literally slaving out to pay for a roof over their head. If the landlord's investment makes that ethically acceptable for them, I am afraid it's not for those who live this reality on the wrong side of the table. It always ends the same way, unavoidably. It will also impact the really productive parts of economy, when consumer base is shrinking because people just try to pay their rent, electricity and gas.
Most Metro areas do not have enough affordable housing. It's well established that local governments cannot build enough new affordable housing, partly because any contractor that bids goes way over the value of a private housing venture. The idea that there's enough housing but "in the wrong place" is like saying there's plenty of jobs, they're just in third world countries and Scandinavia. The idea that the solutio…
It would help if there were any consensus on what actually constitutes affordable housing.
Each state will calculate them differently, for example, New Jersey offers Excel spreadsheets to show exactly how they calculate it.
> The calculators below are for use by administrative agents and developers of affordable housing to determine the initial sales prices and rents for affordable units in compliance with the Uniform Housing Affordability Controls (UHAC).
The quote you've posted is missing current numbers. We're now at 50%. "In a 2020 journal article for the American Society on Aging, Kushel wrote that of all the homeless single adults in the early 1990s, 11% were aged 50 and older. By 2003, she says that percentage grew to 37%. Now, the over-50 demographic represents half of the homeless single adults in the U.S. — with no sign of their numbers slowing, leaving baby…
This metric is weird. Is it somehow better if “young” adults were homeless?
I don't think that was implied, but yes! I'd rather be homeless at 20 than homeless at 70. Wouldn't you? At least I'd be less likely to die from a fall. At least I'd be more able to defend myself/run away.
I wonder why the Robin Hood issue is never a problem when money is moved in the opposite direction :-)
Did anyone force all those students to take student loans?
Uh, in my upper middle class DC suburb you were socially looked down on if you didn't go to college, and no one taught us even basic finance. I have friends who's parents literally put the forms in front of them, told them to sign it so they could go to college. They didn't know what they were signing, now they're possibly on the hook for the rest of their lives
So "forced"? Not with a gun to their head, but when every authority figure, parent and friend you've ever trusted tells you to do the thing at 17...
The parent comment is complaining about the specific amount, $500, and indeed, raising the rent by a large amount (defined percentagewise) is illegal in many jurisdictions. So it seems difficult to come the idea that it is somehow absurd.
Price controls dont work. This is economics 101 and tested many times in the past and as of recent. All you're doing with artificially constraining price and other regulations is reducing supply in the long run. The issue bubbles and then eventually bursts. However, the issue in congested areas is a matter of physics and people unwilling to relocate. Its not from renters simply fulfilling the pricing demand. I mean w…
You have to define the problem too narrowly in order to say that price controls don’t work.
Rental increase caps are not something designed to make the overall housing prices more affordable. That’s just not the goal in the first place. The goal is to provide additional stability to renters. That additional stability will, of course, get priced in.
Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…
You only perceive corporate landlords as the greater problem because we're not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and well-located. In pretty much every major city in North America, it is illegal or there is too much red tape to build the affordable housing people actually want. Why is it that living in a t…
> build the affordable housing people actually want.
And the unspeakable little problem that people don't want to live around the people who will be living in the affordable housing people actually want. Hence, NIMBY.
> Part of the problem is government regulation. And not just too much regulation, but the wrong kind of regulation, and a lack of regulation in areas that need it. Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Corporations buying up homes in order to drive up prices shouldn't be allowed. Lots of things are allowed that shouldn't be. A…
It shouldnt be allowed for people to raise rent on the property they own? Thats an absurd idea. People have been complaining about not having the home they want in the location they want since the beginning of mankind.
It's not absurd because nobody is forcing that person to rent. Housing is a public resource, and contributing to that public resource shouldn't come without asterisks.
Cities need the non-owning class to function, and cities function better when the non-owning class has some degree of stability-- letting landlords juice their tenants for as much as possible is counterproductive to this.
Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…
Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…
> the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market,
And that has a simple cause: they created too much money to prop up both the housing and stock markets.
We're in an inflationary debt spiral that has a very high chance of going the same route as every other one in history; completely devaluing the currency, defaulting on debt, and issuing new currency. The rational play in such a scenario is to take on more debt to buy assets, because the debt will be wiped by inflation. Which is exactly the energy powering the debt spiral. It's nearly impossible to fix.
>given all the videos online of kids beating up teachers and getting away with it I don't think I heard of a single such story in my life. Is it a thing?
Yes unfortunately. There are TikTok "challenges" go slap your teacher for example. Similar to the "challenges" where you should eat a spoon of cinnamon, eat a Tide pod, etc. There's an air of do this and film it for clout. Most kids roll their eyes as well of course, but there are people who follow along.
Facebook was bad, Instagram was worse, but TikTok is downright freaky. It's like each additional layer of multimedia added to social media amplifies whatever mental toxin these platforms feed people.
Edit: as a sibling notes, this particular challenge appears to not actually exist: