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This shows median rents and income moving roughly together, and claims that therefore rents haven't gotten more expensive. But people choose places to live that
by tlb 7y ago
This shows median rents and income moving roughly together, and claims that therefore rents haven't gotten more expensive. But people choose places to live that are affordable for them, say around 40% of income. When rents rise, people move to smaller and crappier places they can afford.
So rents could rise 10x per square foot, and when the dust settled people would end up paying about 40% of their income for a place 1/10th the size.
The rent crisis manifests in people living in small, crappy places far from their work, not in any of the statistics presented here.
- jedharris 7y agoThis is an interesting thesis. Do you have any statistics? For example if true this implies that the median square feet of living space per person has been falling at least in the last few decades. The census does collect data on this. Anyone with the government data access skills care to reply?
- 1123581321 7y agoThat assumes that houses and apartments get worse the further away/cheaper they get from dense city centers. That’s evidently not true—just drive around suburbs/spoke cities for a couple hours!
- nerdponx 7y agoAnecdotally: 1. Moving out of the city center under these conditions doesn't mean moving out of the city, it means moving into a low-rise apartment among urban sprawl that's underserved by transit and good quality food sources. 2. A long commute is a significant quality of life decrease.
- 1123581321 7y agoThis should be a reply to the post I replied to, which said, “people living in small, crappy places far from their work.”
- nerdponx 7y agoNo, it's evidence contrary to your implication that being forced to move out of a city center isn't a bad thing.
- 1123581321 7y agoI didn’t say it was or wasn’t. I only commented on the assumption that it had a link to the size and quality of housing stock relative to the price.
- pj_mukh 7y agoThis was exactly my thought. I remember people in SF claiming that there are roughly 1million people in San Francisco [1] . And roughly 1million total housing units. Therefore there is no housing crisis. Galaxy brain stuff really. [1] https://48hills.org/2018/04/myth-housing-underproduction/ https://48hills.org/2018/04/myth-housing-underproduction/