7 ms·

Evictionland

23 points by kawera 9y ago

jgh 9y ago
I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to gentrification, so perhaps someone could help me understand: how it is that we're simultaneously hearing about how poor millennials apparently are overall compared to their parents generation, and gentrification and spiraling housing costs in seemingly every city?
- drefanzor 9y ago
  Millenials are probably waiting for their parents to pass away, and then inherit their property. It's the path with least resistance.
  - remarkEon 9y ago
    I qualify as a Millenial and I don’t know a single person who’s planning on doing this. I rent right now in a major city but am looking to buy, maybe, in the next few years. For my peer group anyway that’s the norm. What I do find as one of the major drivers of increased housing costs are actually Boomers (aka my parents generation) engaging in a nasty kind of NIMBYism - a sort of “I got mine” mentality. My fear is that we’re building in a lot of tail risk into our cities by behaving this way and not building. There’s all sorts of absurd zoning rules all over the country. Things won’t change until there’s another collapse.
  - phil21 9y ago
    They would collectively be in really bad shape if that is the case. I don't think the average boomer is leaving much in terms of an estate behind. I expect a whole lot of HELOC and reverse mortgaging going on in the next 10-20 years as the severe lack of retirement savings of that generation comes into focus.
- pcr0 9y ago
  Increasing wealth inequality. Economic activity and investments are being concentrated in big cities.
- crystalmeph 9y ago
  To be upfront, I don't know this for a fact, but what I always hear when this topic is discussed is that corporations are buying a lot of properties as an investment and leaving them vacant or renting them out via AirBNB, etc., thereby preventing that unit from actually serving as someone's home. If we accept this, it appears that a relatively small number of people is basically shutting off a large chunk of the available real estate. Again, this is just what I hear, not what I know, but it is possible that this is at least part of the explanation.
  - Spooky23 9y ago
    That’s exactly what happened in cities hit hard by the last recession. Private equity types bought thousands of houses under an array of LLCs from banks. My wife worked for a utility at the time and noticed this when things started picking up. About 100 different LLCs bought 600 properties in one area all with 3 billing addresses. One of the other posters described it best. Capital is both more sophisticated and dumb. We’re in an era very different than anything that has happened before.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      Does private equity actually hold properties vacant for long periods of time? Blackstone, for example, owns a ton of real estate, but it's actually in the landlord business.
- closeparen 9y ago
  Millennials who are able to find good jobs do so by migrating to a handful of cities, driving up the cost of housing there. When they do, they rent urban/transit-connected apartments, which white professionals haven't really done en masse since White Flight [0]. Stagnant cities and (especially) their outlying freeway sprawl are cheaper than ever. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
- lbotos 9y ago
  I live in NYC. Gentrification happens like this right now: 1. lower income neighborhood becomes trendy because poor artists (read: cool people) live there because it's cheap. 2. Rich people who want to be cool start to also move there for more access to culture. 3. This is the "sauce": Wealthy developers buy up 3 story homes and convert them into 3 apartments. (I live in one.) 4. They then rent these apartments out at rates that are "affordable" to a person willing to live with 4 other roommates. 5. The poor lower income people (read: families) that used to live there are getting priced out due to the wealthy developers and "single" people who are banding together. Now, your point about comparing to my parents: they purchased a house when they were 2 years younger than I am now. (mid late 20's) I work in tech, so I make close to 2-3x more than most of my non-tech friends. I'm still about ~4 years away from comfortably being able to put a downpayment on a home in anywhere I want to live and I live debt free and am an aggressive saver. For most of my non-tech friends, home ownership is literally a dream.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    0. The local economy adds thousands of competitively paid knowledge-work jobs, recruits the best candidates from around the country and world to fill them, and makes offers that are at least good enough to fund a bachelor lifestyle without the benefit of tenure in the city.
itronitron 9y ago
reading this makes me think that social media is the 21st century's debtors prison
pdonis 9y ago
So finding somewhere to live that cost less than $2K a month wasn't an option?
- jdavis703 9y ago
  Many leases are for a set amount of time, and breaking the lease frequently requires a multiple of the monthly rent price.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    I own property. I’ve evicted people, sadly. Exactly zero landlords anywhere would prefer that they’re forced to go through this entire eviction process vs. the tenant just disappearing one day and you never seeing a dime of what they owe. Eviction is expensive, stressful, and time-consuming. And even though I own rental property, I’m a human being and don’t like putting anyone in a bad position.
    - mbajkowski 9y ago
      ^ exactly this - evictions can be very stressful and overall very expensive. Although most contracts are written such that they make it seem that the landlord will go after you should you need to get out of a lease early - most smaller landlords would rather you part willingly as soon as possible and would rather turn the property around as quickly as possible without having to go through the eviction process.
      - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
        I have seriously considered just paying bad tenants to leave. It’d be faster and cheaper. The problem is one of adverse selection though: don’t want a reputation as the landlord who pays bad tenants!
      - cameldrv 9y ago
        Fine, then why don't you write your leases in a way that reflects your preferences? Instead of saying that if they break the lease early, that they owe you 3 months rent, say that as long as they give you 30 days notice, and the apartment is clean and empty on the 1st, you call it even.
cameldrv 9y ago
To me, this isn't a story about gentrification. It's more of a story about the modern American job, housing, financial, and social status markets. 1. The job market, especially in media jobs, has changed into one where you can be fired at any time. Similarly, forty years ago, someone who had a good media job would not have felt safe making such inflammatory (right or wrong) statements. 2. American housing markets have adjusted higher to essentially consume all of the practical discretionary income of renters and buyers. A lot of this has to do with the securitization of these obligations, and the corresponding loosening of credit requirements. If the rope that the bank or the landlord is willing to give you increase, it's not just a personal decision about how much risk you're willing to take, because it affects the loans and leases everyone else in the market gets. Just because your neighbor is taking out a crazy loan he can't afford if anything goes wrong doesn't mean he isn't pushing up the housing prices just as much as if he could do it comfortably. 3. The financial markets have become much more sophisticated on one hand, but also much less local and much shorter term focused. If 10% of borrowers default, that's not necessarily a problem as long as the cost they cause covers the profit from the others. If the 10% cause major social problems, the holder of the CDO in Qatar has no idea, and wouldn't care if he did. 4. The increased availability of credit, and the increased willingness of markets to give credit to risky borrowers has forced people to extend themselves to the max in order to compete for social status. If your friend has a BMW and a big house even though he's practically bankrupt, you are pushed into doing the same thing. The girls at the next table at the bar have no idea that he's is being fiscally irresponsible, they just know that he has a cool car and a nice house.
- discoursism 9y ago
  > The increased availability of credit, and the increased willingness of markets to give credit to risky borrowers has forced people to extend themselves to the max in order to compete for social status. This is optional, though. If you opt in to it, that's somewhat on you. Granted that our social systems could be improved so that natural human tendencies push people toward right actions. However, I think the injustice is far more severe in cases where there's no out that's within a person's power to reasonably grasp. And "the girls at the next table in the bar," don't know about your friend's car or house, unless your friend is an insufferable jerk who carries pictures of his ride in his wallet. And they likely don't care that much either way.
ryanwaggoner 9y ago
I find this article pretty infuriating. Poverty and housing insecurity are definite societal problems, but does that make it the fault or responsibility of each individual landlord? The author of this article basically stole tens of thousands of dollars in free housing from some private party and then wrote an article blaming them for the end result. There was apparently no attempt to work something out, no attempt to move out without being forced out, no recognition of their own responsibility in this situation, and I suspect no ultimate attempt to pay back what they owe. I have owned several small rental properties for almost 15 years. I’ve had to evict two tenants, never getting quite to the point of having the Sheriff show up while we pile their stuff on the curb, but I have that scheduled right now for Feb 22. This tenant has not paid their rent since Oct. The eviction has been grinding through the process since Nov. Every week, it’s a different sob story about the bad luck that is preventing this tenant from paying their rent. I’m not a monster. I don’t want to force anyone out. But seriously, what am I supposed to do? I can’t afford to just let my tenants not pay rent, and without the threat of eviction, some wouldn’t. So seriously, what am I supposed to do? I’ve been at this long enough that I know the answer: give one second chance, then evict. But it still infuriates me to see people who are happy to steal from me write articles implying that I’m a racist heartless monster because I dare provide market-rate housing and hold them to their word when they sign a lease. EDIT: think of it like this: someone hires you to work on their website idea. You work for months, fully fulfilling your end, then they refuse to pay. You take them to court and “win” (though you still never collect), then they write an article about how web developers are too greedy and expensive and they actually have the audacity to demand payment for their work!
- nsnick 9y ago
  Maybe he was already in a lease and could not get out of it without paying money to the property management that he did not have. Your response demonstrates a complete lack of compassion and I hope you end up in his situation some day so that you may develop some empathy.
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
    I’m positive he was in a lease. I’m equally positive that it would have been better for him to break that lease and just not pay the fees than to drag this out to its inevitable conclusion, which cost everyone else more money in the end. Also, why did he actually make them put his stuff on the street? Why not just move it into the storage space instead before they showed up?
ilaksh 9y ago
I live in one of the lowest income sections of my city. But the rent still isn't really cheap, it's $1200 for a one bedroom. This apartment complex is month-to-month. One month I didn't save and was waiting to get paid for my contract (payment promised on the 1st) to be able to make rent. I was short about $100 and they would not allow me to pay part of it. Three days after it was due, there was a notice on my door saying they would file for eviction or something with the court in three days. I didn't get paid for another two days so theoretically I was a day away from getting served for eviction when I paid my rent about a week late. Recently I have been doing a better job of saving so I don't cut it close like that. There is no severance or anything for most contracting jobs and if you are like me and have trouble saving much then the point is that it could be as little as a few weeks to become homeless. Like I said now I am saving at least to give myself a 30 day cushion but if I had any significant expense that would evaporate. BTW, please no lectures about personal finance or other advice. The point of this comment is not to solicit that. The point is that it is even easier to become homeless than is depicted in that article.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  If it helps, it would take weeks minimum to go from paying late to being on the street and likely 1-2 months or more. It takes time to get a court date, time to get Sheriff’s deputy to schedule the eviction, etc. And honestly, the route you’re taking now where you have a small cushion to cover you in case you need it is what you should have been doing. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but just pointing out that it’s not fair for you to just assume that if you’re late, your landlord can just cover you for a few days. That’s not the agreement you made, right?
  - ilaksh 9y ago
    I asked for no lectures. There was nothing in my description that would lead one to believe I thought it was wise not to have savings. You are being an ... and I said a few weeks..
    - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
fanzhang 9y ago
FYI, here is the original reason for he was fired for the curious: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/politico-suspends-reporter/2012/06/22/gJQAvvf8uV_blog.html?utm_term=.4b981f47c6d5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/politi... I know it's not related to the eviction process immediately, but I think given that we (I) are learning from this as a narrative and a data point, I think for some the context can be interesting at the very least. To me it seems like a badly-thought-through comment on his side but not worth being fired over.
_nalply 9y ago
What's missing: The complexity of life. Even in Europe with its stronger social welfare it doesn't take much to get seriously tumbled. A job loss coupled with a depression episode is enough to derail one's life. I being Deaf know many people who struggle in Switzerland. For example they don't understand the letters social welfare sends them. Hell, even a hearing woman whose son attends kindergarten with my son, openly admitted that she had an episode where she stopped opening letters because she was just overwhelmed. Here at Hacker News there seem to be people who are successful and simply don't understand that they were lucky. They learnt to navigate and overcome hurdles. But what about people who grew up under not so ideal circumstances and will be always somewhat limited in their resiliency? It's not completely their fault if they stumble.
pontifier 9y ago
I've been close to this issue lately. My family owns many rental properties, and most of our income comes from rent. Several months ago I left my home at my wife's request and had a huge dilemma. You see, I had a situation with some storage units last year that helped me to discover that I HATE paying rent. Seeing it from the landlord side for many years has shown me how worthless it is for the tenants... They pay upward of %30 of their income, and next month do it again. It's truly modern slavery. I hate paying rent so much that I'd rather be homeless than pay someone else rent. I slept in my car, and on the side of the road and thought a lot about this problem. Rent and homelessness are big issues, and I discovered that the real problem is a major stigma in our society against truly affordable or alternate housing. Housing doesn't need to cost $2k per month. Most people don't need huge houses. Many people could do just fine in MUCH cheaper housing, shared housing, or even non-housing such as sleeping in a car. Super cheap housing can be a legal problem. In my town, it's illegal to rent a house to more than 3 unrelated people. That's totally insane. If people want to shack up 5 to a room to save money that should be their right. Reducing the stigma against this would essentially reduce housing demand and lower prices across the board. I'm also working on a project to turn the entire real estate market on it's head... This will also help to solve this housing catastrophy. I'm confident this housing problem will be seen as one of the most preventable inhumane practices we currently engage in.

23 points by kawera 9y ago

jgh 9y ago

I'm pretty ignorant when it comes to gentrification, so perhaps someone could help me understand: how it is that we're simultaneously hearing about how poor millennials apparently are overall compared to their parents generation, and gentrification and spiraling housing costs in seemingly every city?

drefanzor 9y ago
Millenials are probably waiting for their parents to pass away, and then inherit their property. It's the path with least resistance.
- remarkEon 9y ago
  I qualify as a Millenial and I don’t know a single person who’s planning on doing this. I rent right now in a major city but am looking to buy, maybe, in the next few years. For my peer group anyway that’s the norm. What I do find as one of the major drivers of increased housing costs are actually Boomers (aka my parents generation) engaging in a nasty kind of NIMBYism - a sort of “I got mine” mentality. My fear is that we’re building in a lot of tail risk into our cities by behaving this way and not building. There’s all sorts of absurd zoning rules all over the country. Things won’t change until there’s another collapse.
- phil21 9y ago
  They would collectively be in really bad shape if that is the case. I don't think the average boomer is leaving much in terms of an estate behind. I expect a whole lot of HELOC and reverse mortgaging going on in the next 10-20 years as the severe lack of retirement savings of that generation comes into focus.
pcr0 9y ago
Increasing wealth inequality. Economic activity and investments are being concentrated in big cities.
crystalmeph 9y ago
To be upfront, I don't know this for a fact, but what I always hear when this topic is discussed is that corporations are buying a lot of properties as an investment and leaving them vacant or renting them out via AirBNB, etc., thereby preventing that unit from actually serving as someone's home. If we accept this, it appears that a relatively small number of people is basically shutting off a large chunk of the available real estate. Again, this is just what I hear, not what I know, but it is possible that this is at least part of the explanation.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  That’s exactly what happened in cities hit hard by the last recession. Private equity types bought thousands of houses under an array of LLCs from banks. My wife worked for a utility at the time and noticed this when things started picking up. About 100 different LLCs bought 600 properties in one area all with 3 billing addresses. One of the other posters described it best. Capital is both more sophisticated and dumb. We’re in an era very different than anything that has happened before.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Does private equity actually hold properties vacant for long periods of time? Blackstone, for example, owns a ton of real estate, but it's actually in the landlord business.
closeparen 9y ago
Millennials who are able to find good jobs do so by migrating to a handful of cities, driving up the cost of housing there. When they do, they rent urban/transit-connected apartments, which white professionals haven't really done en masse since White Flight [0]. Stagnant cities and (especially) their outlying freeway sprawl are cheaper than ever. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_flight
lbotos 9y ago
I live in NYC. Gentrification happens like this right now: 1. lower income neighborhood becomes trendy because poor artists (read: cool people) live there because it's cheap. 2. Rich people who want to be cool start to also move there for more access to culture. 3. This is the "sauce": Wealthy developers buy up 3 story homes and convert them into 3 apartments. (I live in one.) 4. They then rent these apartments out at rates that are "affordable" to a person willing to live with 4 other roommates. 5. The poor lower income people (read: families) that used to live there are getting priced out due to the wealthy developers and "single" people who are banding together. Now, your point about comparing to my parents: they purchased a house when they were 2 years younger than I am now. (mid late 20's) I work in tech, so I make close to 2-3x more than most of my non-tech friends. I'm still about ~4 years away from comfortably being able to put a downpayment on a home in anywhere I want to live and I live debt free and am an aggressive saver. For most of my non-tech friends, home ownership is literally a dream.
- closeparen 9y ago
  0. The local economy adds thousands of competitively paid knowledge-work jobs, recruits the best candidates from around the country and world to fill them, and makes offers that are at least good enough to fund a bachelor lifestyle without the benefit of tenure in the city.

itronitron 9y ago

reading this makes me think that social media is the 21st century's debtors prison

pdonis 9y ago

So finding somewhere to live that cost less than $2K a month wasn't an option?

jdavis703 9y ago
Many leases are for a set amount of time, and breaking the lease frequently requires a multiple of the monthly rent price.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  I own property. I’ve evicted people, sadly. Exactly zero landlords anywhere would prefer that they’re forced to go through this entire eviction process vs. the tenant just disappearing one day and you never seeing a dime of what they owe. Eviction is expensive, stressful, and time-consuming. And even though I own rental property, I’m a human being and don’t like putting anyone in a bad position.
  - mbajkowski 9y ago
    ^ exactly this - evictions can be very stressful and overall very expensive. Although most contracts are written such that they make it seem that the landlord will go after you should you need to get out of a lease early - most smaller landlords would rather you part willingly as soon as possible and would rather turn the property around as quickly as possible without having to go through the eviction process.
    - ryanwaggoner 9y ago
      I have seriously considered just paying bad tenants to leave. It’d be faster and cheaper. The problem is one of adverse selection though: don’t want a reputation as the landlord who pays bad tenants!
    - cameldrv 9y ago
      Fine, then why don't you write your leases in a way that reflects your preferences? Instead of saying that if they break the lease early, that they owe you 3 months rent, say that as long as they give you 30 days notice, and the apartment is clean and empty on the 1st, you call it even.

cameldrv 9y ago

To me, this isn't a story about gentrification. It's more of a story about the modern American job, housing, financial, and social status markets. 1. The job market, especially in media jobs, has changed into one where you can be fired at any time. Similarly, forty years ago, someone who had a good media job would not have felt safe making such inflammatory (right or wrong) statements. 2. American housing markets have adjusted higher to essentially consume all of the practical discretionary income of renters and buyers. A lot of this has to do with the securitization of these obligations, and the corresponding loosening of credit requirements. If the rope that the bank or the landlord is willing to give you increase, it's not just a personal decision about how much risk you're willing to take, because it affects the loans and leases everyone else in the market gets. Just because your neighbor is taking out a crazy loan he can't afford if anything goes wrong doesn't mean he isn't pushing up the housing prices just as much as if he could do it comfortably. 3. The financial markets have become much more sophisticated on one hand, but also much less local and much shorter term focused. If 10% of borrowers default, that's not necessarily a problem as long as the cost they cause covers the profit from the others. If the 10% cause major social problems, the holder of the CDO in Qatar has no idea, and wouldn't care if he did. 4. The increased availability of credit, and the increased willingness of markets to give credit to risky borrowers has forced people to extend themselves to the max in order to compete for social status. If your friend has a BMW and a big house even though he's practically bankrupt, you are pushed into doing the same thing. The girls at the next table at the bar have no idea that he's is being fiscally irresponsible, they just know that he has a cool car and a nice house.

discoursism 9y ago
> The increased availability of credit, and the increased willingness of markets to give credit to risky borrowers has forced people to extend themselves to the max in order to compete for social status. This is optional, though. If you opt in to it, that's somewhat on you. Granted that our social systems could be improved so that natural human tendencies push people toward right actions. However, I think the injustice is far more severe in cases where there's no out that's within a person's power to reasonably grasp. And "the girls at the next table in the bar," don't know about your friend's car or house, unless your friend is an insufferable jerk who carries pictures of his ride in his wallet. And they likely don't care that much either way.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago

I find this article pretty infuriating. Poverty and housing insecurity are definite societal problems, but does that make it the fault or responsibility of each individual landlord? The author of this article basically stole tens of thousands of dollars in free housing from some private party and then wrote an article blaming them for the end result. There was apparently no attempt to work something out, no attempt to move out without being forced out, no recognition of their own responsibility in this situation, and I suspect no ultimate attempt to pay back what they owe. I have owned several small rental properties for almost 15 years. I’ve had to evict two tenants, never getting quite to the point of having the Sheriff show up while we pile their stuff on the curb, but I have that scheduled right now for Feb 22. This tenant has not paid their rent since Oct. The eviction has been grinding through the process since Nov. Every week, it’s a different sob story about the bad luck that is preventing this tenant from paying their rent. I’m not a monster. I don’t want to force anyone out. But seriously, what am I supposed to do? I can’t afford to just let my tenants not pay rent, and without the threat of eviction, some wouldn’t. So seriously, what am I supposed to do? I’ve been at this long enough that I know the answer: give one second chance, then evict. But it still infuriates me to see people who are happy to steal from me write articles implying that I’m a racist heartless monster because I dare provide market-rate housing and hold them to their word when they sign a lease. EDIT: think of it like this: someone hires you to work on their website idea. You work for months, fully fulfilling your end, then they refuse to pay. You take them to court and “win” (though you still never collect), then they write an article about how web developers are too greedy and expensive and they actually have the audacity to demand payment for their work!

nsnick 9y ago
Maybe he was already in a lease and could not get out of it without paying money to the property management that he did not have. Your response demonstrates a complete lack of compassion and I hope you end up in his situation some day so that you may develop some empathy.
- ryanwaggoner 9y ago
  I’m positive he was in a lease. I’m equally positive that it would have been better for him to break that lease and just not pay the fees than to drag this out to its inevitable conclusion, which cost everyone else more money in the end. Also, why did he actually make them put his stuff on the street? Why not just move it into the storage space instead before they showed up?

ilaksh 9y ago

I live in one of the lowest income sections of my city. But the rent still isn't really cheap, it's $1200 for a one bedroom. This apartment complex is month-to-month. One month I didn't save and was waiting to get paid for my contract (payment promised on the 1st) to be able to make rent. I was short about $100 and they would not allow me to pay part of it. Three days after it was due, there was a notice on my door saying they would file for eviction or something with the court in three days. I didn't get paid for another two days so theoretically I was a day away from getting served for eviction when I paid my rent about a week late. Recently I have been doing a better job of saving so I don't cut it close like that. There is no severance or anything for most contracting jobs and if you are like me and have trouble saving much then the point is that it could be as little as a few weeks to become homeless. Like I said now I am saving at least to give myself a 30 day cushion but if I had any significant expense that would evaporate. BTW, please no lectures about personal finance or other advice. The point of this comment is not to solicit that. The point is that it is even easier to become homeless than is depicted in that article.

ryanwaggoner 9y ago
If it helps, it would take weeks minimum to go from paying late to being on the street and likely 1-2 months or more. It takes time to get a court date, time to get Sheriff’s deputy to schedule the eviction, etc. And honestly, the route you’re taking now where you have a small cushion to cover you in case you need it is what you should have been doing. I don’t mean to be an asshole, but just pointing out that it’s not fair for you to just assume that if you’re late, your landlord can just cover you for a few days. That’s not the agreement you made, right?
- ilaksh 9y ago
  I asked for no lectures. There was nothing in my description that would lead one to believe I thought it was wise not to have savings. You are being an ... and I said a few weeks..
  - ryanwaggoner 9y ago

fanzhang 9y ago

FYI, here is the original reason for he was fired for the curious: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/politico-suspends-reporter/2012/06/22/gJQAvvf8uV_blog.html?utm_term=.4b981f47c6d5 https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/post/politi... I know it's not related to the eviction process immediately, but I think given that we (I) are learning from this as a narrative and a data point, I think for some the context can be interesting at the very least. To me it seems like a badly-thought-through comment on his side but not worth being fired over.

_nalply 9y ago

What's missing: The complexity of life. Even in Europe with its stronger social welfare it doesn't take much to get seriously tumbled. A job loss coupled with a depression episode is enough to derail one's life. I being Deaf know many people who struggle in Switzerland. For example they don't understand the letters social welfare sends them. Hell, even a hearing woman whose son attends kindergarten with my son, openly admitted that she had an episode where she stopped opening letters because she was just overwhelmed. Here at Hacker News there seem to be people who are successful and simply don't understand that they were lucky. They learnt to navigate and overcome hurdles. But what about people who grew up under not so ideal circumstances and will be always somewhat limited in their resiliency? It's not completely their fault if they stumble.

pontifier 9y ago

I've been close to this issue lately. My family owns many rental properties, and most of our income comes from rent. Several months ago I left my home at my wife's request and had a huge dilemma. You see, I had a situation with some storage units last year that helped me to discover that I HATE paying rent. Seeing it from the landlord side for many years has shown me how worthless it is for the tenants... They pay upward of %30 of their income, and next month do it again. It's truly modern slavery. I hate paying rent so much that I'd rather be homeless than pay someone else rent. I slept in my car, and on the side of the road and thought a lot about this problem. Rent and homelessness are big issues, and I discovered that the real problem is a major stigma in our society against truly affordable or alternate housing. Housing doesn't need to cost $2k per month. Most people don't need huge houses. Many people could do just fine in MUCH cheaper housing, shared housing, or even non-housing such as sleeping in a car. Super cheap housing can be a legal problem. In my town, it's illegal to rent a house to more than 3 unrelated people. That's totally insane. If people want to shack up 5 to a room to save money that should be their right. Reducing the stigma against this would essentially reduce housing demand and lower prices across the board. I'm also working on a project to turn the entire real estate market on it's head... This will also help to solve this housing catastrophy. I'm confident this housing problem will be seen as one of the most preventable inhumane practices we currently engage in.