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The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

moneywise.com

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Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#451

Post by ryandrake »

thedaly wrote: post #376
gniv wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it seems it would help more if the government would step in to disallow large leasing companies buying up giant swathes of the housing stock My instinct is to disagree. That could create other problems and it's not a given that it would help prices. Encouraging growth by changing zoning seems preferable. We know that it works, since Japan has been doing it forever.

If the policy goal is to have more homeowners, which I think it should be, you have to do something about private equity buying up all the home stock. Blackrock and its ilk of private equity firms buying up single family homes to turn them into rentals stands in direct opposition to the goal of more people owning homes.

Where was Blackrock when I was desperately trying to sell my home last year? Reduced price three times, and I can assure you that Mister Blackrock didn't contact my agent even once. For an evil wizard intent on gobbling up homes, he didn't seem interested in mine.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#452

Post by Daishiman »

c_crank wrote: post #254
voisin wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Education has traditionally been a primary method for upward economic mobility. Once student loans became a thing, colleges jacked up tuition to put it out of reach of anyone but the super wealthy unless student loans were used.

But no one forced those people to take on those loans.

No one forced me to not try the one thing everyone says will keep you out of poverty.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#454

Post by BytesAndGears »

ryandrake wrote: post #440
spir wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What specific government policy is causing developers to only build $2k+/mo rentals? You can't just vaguely say "government" is at fault without connecting the dots. This seems more like the market's fault. If homes in a particular area are going for $2k/mo, then that's what they are going for. If this is the government's fault, are you proposing price controls?

You can’t built a “$2k rental”. You can only build a rental that someone will pay for. Landlords are building luxury housing because it’s the only thing that’s profitable right now due to the immensely ridiculous laws that don’t help people. But if an apartment building popped up in downtown SF charging $800/mo, it’s not like only the low income people would live there. Many people living in $3000/mo apartments also want cheaper apartments, which pushes up the price! So you can’t build “cheap apartments” or “luxury apartments”. Only “apartments”. And lots of them.

But if we suddenly built a million “luxury” apartments in each major city, then they couldn’t all charge high prices because there would be a bit of competition for tenants. Prices on the “slightly less luxury but still nice” apartments would have to drop faster.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#455

Post by HPsquared »

voisin wrote: post #350
c_crank wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But no one forced those people to take on those loans.

Not explicitly but the choice is “stay in your economic class or invest in the only thing reliably proven to improve your future”.

People basically did remain in the economic class though. The school doesn't have much to do with it. Has class mobility significantly increased since the adoption of mass tertiary education?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#456

Post by ebiester »

Elyra wrote: post #332
escapedmoose wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete What makes you say that? As someone who's currently dating a Chinese immigrant I have been made aware of an entire world I didn't know existed. They often have much better family support so their parents will send money from home to help them buy a house. From her masters program at university, which was all immigrants because universities here se…

It's likely true. It's also relatively small relative to the amount of money being funneled through the REITs.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#457

Post by granshaw »

escapedmoose wrote: post #192
jongjong wrote: post #16

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 Blackrock issue is overhyped. Saw a post recently showing that the percentages aren’t actually that high, don’t have time to find it now but hope to do so later

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#458

Post by jollyllama »

jongjong wrote: post #16

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…

>The government should not allow itself to be weaponized against part of the population for the benefit of another.

Great post, but isn't that the definition of government?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#459

Post by DontchaKnowit »

mgolawala wrote: post #362
peyton wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think houses should be used by anybody to build up wealth.

Thank you for pointing this out. Houses can be cheap, or they can be a good investment. Not both. I think I read that here on hacker news a few years ago, and it has stuck with me.

I don't think this is true. The investment value of a house is not its appreciation, but rather its ability to generate income in the form of rent.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#460

Post by fisf »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #74
lm28469 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Generally immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do I don't want to generalise things, but since you're doing it yourself: In France migrants and descendant of migrants are between 50% and 100% more unemployed than the rest of the population. They also represent 28% of social spending despite being 12% of the population https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiqu…

Be very careful how you frame things. Here’s another framing: 1. Migrants and their descendants are poorer than average. 2. Social spending is higher among poor people, because that’s the whole point. 3. Disproportionately poor people represent a disproportionate amount of social spending, duh .

That's not a framing issue. The original claim was

> Generally immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do

And this is (at least in the context of many European countries) not true.

It is not relevant if this is simply because they are poor, and poor people receive a disproportionate amount of social spending.

The observation is that immigration in that case drives up housing demand, while at the same time being a net-negative in financial terms for society.

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