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

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

#81

Post by epistasis »

thfuran wrote: post #75
epistasis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not caused by companies. This is caused by individual homeowners exerting local control over the amount of housing in their small local area. The few companies making money off this are just piggy-backing on the homeowners who drive the political process. Private equity saw what homeowners have done in the US and thought "hey we can benefit from this regulatory capture without even having to do any of the wor…

Private equity may own a fairly small amount of the total housing stock, but there are metros where 20+% of home sales over the last year or two were to investors. That's surely enough to distort the market.

Not really, it's only a tiny fraction of purchasers. Their market power during purchase time is not enough to drive down prices and benefit them, and post purchase they do not own enough fraction of existing homes to help drive up sale prices.

Unless they are systematically paying above market, which is what Zillow did (for a tiny tiny number of homes, relative to supply). Which would be a transfer of wealth from Private Equity to individual home buyers.

Housing is one of the least centralized markets that we have, and even when ownership is highly concentrated in a market, it's very rare that pricing can be controlled by an entity. Even the widely publicized "pricing software" for rentals was just better at showing comparable apartments with less work, enabling price discovery. It didn't enable price collusion.

The shortage of housing and resulting high prices are best understood (IMHO) through class politics, where class is defined as already owning a housing asset or not.

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

#82

Post by jorvi »

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…

Yup. It might be painful for homeowners in the global West to realize, but for a healthy housing market, owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline.

The benefit of owning a house should be that you get to customize it to your liking. The benefit of a rental should be that you can switch up relatively quickly.

Houses being an investment vehicle is slowly poisoning society. Having a decent roof of your head is a human right, just like access to clean water or healthy food is.

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

#83

Post by tomohawk »

Not a boomer, but from long observation, boomers tend to carry a lot of debt in order to have a certain lifestyle. This includes borrowing money for depreciating assets, not paying off homes, buying too much house because financing was available, consolidating debt into a loan secured by your house, etc. The risk associated with this gets much higher as your earning potential gets shorter. Yet, a lifetime of borrowing habits are tough to kick.

Boomers also started out in an age when pensions were a thing. The problem is many of those pensions did not work out due to wall street raiders, bankruptcy, etc. For example, the unlawful restructuring of GM voided the retirements of thousands of engineers and other white collar employees. If you were expecting a nice pension to continue to finance your debt, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

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

#84

Post by phyrex »

Kretinsky wrote: post #64
somewhereoutth wrote: post #52

It never ceases to astonish me how the richest country on the planet is still in 'survival mode' where everyone has to justify their claim to, well, anything at all. In Europe (even as it was largely laid waste after WW2), it is understood that we are all together, and simply by existing we have a right to at least a basic level of living. Perhaps part of that is that because communism was so close, for so long, it w…

It's the richest country because everyone is in survival mode and has a strobg pressure to get their head above the water. In socialist euro countries you can go with the flow created by the welfare state.

It’s the richest country because it has tons of natural resources and wasn’t bombed to pieces in WW2

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

#85

Post by snowpid »

shrimpx wrote: post #68
somewhereoutth wrote: post #52

It never ceases to astonish me how the richest country on the planet is still in 'survival mode' where everyone has to justify their claim to, well, anything at all. In Europe (even as it was largely laid waste after WW2), it is understood that we are all together, and simply by existing we have a right to at least a basic level of living. Perhaps part of that is that because communism was so close, for so long, it w…

Which Europe? Plenty of destitution, poverty, far-right inclinations, ultra-nationalism and anti-migrant racism in Europe. (Often against migrants from other countries in Europe.)

ar-right inclinations, ultra-nationalism is far more spreaded in US than just say Germany.

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

#86

Post by sokoloff »

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…

> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population.

This happens all the time in government. Every politician who campaigns on “we’re going to raise taxes on these other peiple to do this thing” is campaigning on this effect. Sometimes it’s this direct; other times it has extra steps. Surely this can’t be the first time you’ve seen this happen.

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

#87

Post by carlosjobim »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #35
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 issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funnelled to the very wealthy. For example, medical bills. For example student loans. For example zero interest rates with zero wage inflation meaning accommodation cost…

> The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funneled to the very wealthy.

This has happened in all of the industrialized world, and it's happening very quickly right now. The reasons you mention are very US-specific, but the funneling happens everywhere, usually by more traditional means such as rents and taxes.

Yes, taxes are greatly beneficial for the rich, just scrutinize any European government budget and you'll see it is in large part a scheme to pay out money to wealthy people that are in favour with the political class.

The reason for this massive wealth distribution is the inflationary monetary system, that's the common denominator in all countries experiencing it, and it's not hard to see how.

In the past, serfdom was at least more honest. You knew your tax payments went to the lord for his own benefit.

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

#88

Post by gcanyon »

fnimick wrote: post #60
Ensorceled wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the standard conservative "big government" and "young people today don't want to work" rant. > The problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Regulation yes, but it's not the lack of building; we're building like crazy all over North America. Many new homes are "lost" and become second or third homes for the wealthy or airbnb rentals. Regul…

Agreed. We're in this mess because of unregulated capitalism, but sure, removing even more regulations will definitely solve it! (for the people who are fortunate enough to "have a venture" goes unsaid - the rest will be left poor, and they deserve it, for they weren't good / useful enough) There is absolutely an argument to be made here about regulatory capture with respect to zoning laws, parking minimums, etc maki…

> We're in this mess because of unregulated capitalism, but sure, removing even more regulations will definitely solve it!

I'm not arguing that removing regulations will solve it, but it is possible to have an island of misery in the middle of two more pleasant extremes. Meaning that both more and less regulation would make the problem better, just in different ways.

To your point, you can't simply ridicule the solution you don't like and call that an argument.

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

#89

Post by dantheman »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #35
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 issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funnelled to the very wealthy. For example, medical bills. For example student loans. For example zero interest rates with zero wage inflation meaning accommodation cost…

There are not enough houses in the right place, which is all that matters.

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

#90

Post by tomohawk »

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…

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