6 ms·

That'll do it though. It used to be that the cities had lots of single-income families. They only had to compete with each other in the bidding war for good ho

by tropo 7y ago

That'll do it though. It used to be that the cities had lots of single-income families. They only had to compete with each other in the bidding war for good housing. Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes, so now we have lots of two-income households in that bidding war. Same-sex couples also became legal, adding even more two-income households. Meanwhile, low-cost forms of housing were legislated away. You can rent an apartment or be homeless, but you can't rent an SRO (single-room occupancy) or bed cage. The homeless scare away families, and the lack of SRO options forces single people into the bidding war for larger housing.

helen___keller 7y ago
>The homeless scare away families This applies to a narrow subset of urban locations
clairity 7y ago
> "Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes..." the argument that dual-income households becoming necessities for home ownership and raising a family is plausible, if unsupported. but the quoted causal relationship above is not even plausible, let alone supported. women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families, just like men. other societal changes may have aided or hindered that ambition to various effect, but they don't form the driving force as you state.
- nickserv 7y ago
  It's not the full story but is definitaly part of it. Without birth control and legal changes, women would not have been able to follow their ambitions; it's difficult to work when you're pregnant for the 8th time and anyway are not legally allowed to without your husband's permission.
  - d1zzy 7y ago
    Right, but that's like saying "without women we wouldn't have women entering the workforce". Technically true, but not an argument against it.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  > the argument that dual-income households becoming necessities for home ownership and raising a family is plausible, if unsupported. "Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained Before she was a politician, Warren wrote a controversial book about family life and economics. The “two-income trap,” as described by Warren, really consists of three partially separate phenomena that have arisen as families have come to rely on two working adults to make ends meet: * The addition of a second earner means, in practice, a big increase in household fixed expenses for things like child care and commuting. * Much of the money that American second earners bring in has been gobbled up, in practice, by zero-sum competition for educational opportunities expressed as either skyrocketed prices for houses in good school districts or escalating tuition at public universities. * Last, while the addition of the second earner has not brought in much gain, it has created an increase in downside risk by eliminating an implicit insurance policy that families used to rely on." https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/two-income-trap-elizabeth-warren-book https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... > women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families, just like men. other societal changes may have aided or hindered that ambition to various effect, but they don't form the driving force as you state. Regardless of why, increased labor participation from woman joining the workforce in greater numbers than previously [1] was going to drive inflation for inelastic goods and services like housing, childcare, and education. It now has become a prisoner's dilemma: participate in the treadmill or find a way off. [1] https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/women-in-the-workforce-before-during-and-after-the-great-recession/pdf/women-in-the-workforce-before-during-and-after-the-great-recession.pdf https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/women-in-the-workforce-be... (PDF, page 2)
  - clairity 7y ago
    yah, that's good supporting evidence for the 2-income trap. incidentally, my first foray into student loans made me realize a similar trap formed by government guaranteed student loans combined with the inability to discharge them via bankruptcy. those factors practically guarantee rising educational costs due to risk-free money flowing to both educational and financial institutions.
  - oposa 7y ago
- belorn 7y ago
  > Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes >> women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families From a historical perspective, women entered the job market because a world war (ww1) consumed the pool of available men through drafting them to die on the front line and having a war engine that increasingly needed more and more resources. We are talking about a change from ~20% to almost 50% over the time span of 4 years. Neither birth control nor cultural ambitions has that fast effect on society. War does.
  - clairity 7y ago
    sure, women worked during the world wars out of necessity, but they didn't enter and stay in the workforce because of it. while women working during war helped to unveil the value and abilities of women in the workforce, war didn't drive the shift to 2-income households by itself. if women had no other ambitions, they would have just gone back to "home economics" after the wars and the economy would have stayed the same.
    - belorn 7y ago
      It is indeed true that there are many reason why society continued with both women and men in the work force after the war. One of those were political, as it is difficult to argue first that women and men should shoulder equal responsibility during the war and be included in the military draft and equal right to vote, only to do a 180 degree turn a few months later because the war ended. The writing was on the wall and Women's right to vote got voted in 2 years later. The women military draft however was dropped as the emergency of the war died down. The president said a month before the war ended: We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? It is hard to find a stronger sign of a cultural change. 20 years later the second world war started so even if there had been a movement to return to "the old days", it would not have had time. The second world war saw again an major increase in women participation in the work force, including major initiatives for equal pay. Men were being sent to the front line and the factories needed people. The world wars was the period where the cultural change occurred. Trying to revert the culture back to pre-1914 mindset would had been about as impossible then as it is now. Instead people continued on the cultural path that had been established.
malandrew 7y ago
I don't understand why this is getting downvoted. IIRC it's the entire data-backed thesis of Elizabeth Warren's 2003 book the Two-Income Trap. CityLab recently documented the rise and fall of the SRO: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro/553946/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-...
- tropo 7y ago
  If you don't know about Elizabeth Warren’s book, it probably sounds like something from the Proud Boys or the Promise Keepers. It'd be great to agree on the facts, even if people can't agree on how they feel about the facts or if anything should be done to change the facts.
bobthepanda 7y ago
I don’t think this is entirely true. Keep in mind that while earners have increased, households used to be much bigger, with more children and more extended relatives living together. And children and even young unmarried women used to work. So purely single income households weren’t a particularly long time. A bigger issue is that a lot of formerly big housing, at least in New York, has now been subdivided, since the whole is less than the sum of its rents. You are also seeing a large rise in people willing to be roommates with people they don’t know, so if you have three income-earning singles they’ll outbid a two-income family. And students are a special case of that, since the rents will go as high as their student loan balances can sustain.
- bcoates 7y ago
  Roommates are mostly a side-effect of banning SROs. If the NIMBYs had their way they'd be illegal too. Urban singles needing housing isn't new.
  - bobthepanda 7y ago
    It's also no longer socially taboo for single roommates of mixed genders to live together. And of course people are staying single longer, meaning that there are now more urban singles.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    that may be a part of it, but I doubt it's the whole story. people don't just need a small room and a bed; they need kitchens, bathrooms, etc. these can be shared across a floor or a small building, but there's only so many strangers that can share a kitchen before it isn't useful to anyone. it's hard to imagine this being better than at least having the chance to find 3-4 people to split an apartment with.
leetcrew 7y ago
> Same-sex couples also became legal, adding even more two-income households. I'm no expert, and it seems likely that women joining the workforce in large numbers would increase housing prices due to increased purchasing power, but this seems like a bit of a stretch. unless you go back to the times of wide-spread lynchings, wouldn't same-sex couples have lived as "roommates"? also forget about couples, two or more acquaintances sharing a housing unit has been legal and common for quite a long time now. I'm skeptical that this is a significant cause of shock to the housing market.
watwut 7y ago
> Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes Legal changes is fascinating euphemism for "not being punished for it anymore".

by tropo 7y ago

helen___keller 7y ago

>The homeless scare away families This applies to a narrow subset of urban locations

clairity 7y ago

> "Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes..." the argument that dual-income households becoming necessities for home ownership and raising a family is plausible, if unsupported. but the quoted causal relationship above is not even plausible, let alone supported. women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families, just like men. other societal changes may have aided or hindered that ambition to various effect, but they don't form the driving force as you state.

nickserv 7y ago
It's not the full story but is definitaly part of it. Without birth control and legal changes, women would not have been able to follow their ambitions; it's difficult to work when you're pregnant for the 8th time and anyway are not legally allowed to without your husband's permission.
- d1zzy 7y ago
  Right, but that's like saying "without women we wouldn't have women entering the workforce". Technically true, but not an argument against it.
toomuchtodo 7y ago
> the argument that dual-income households becoming necessities for home ownership and raising a family is plausible, if unsupported. "Elizabeth Warren’s book, The Two-Income Trap, explained Before she was a politician, Warren wrote a controversial book about family life and economics. The “two-income trap,” as described by Warren, really consists of three partially separate phenomena that have arisen as families have come to rely on two working adults to make ends meet: * The addition of a second earner means, in practice, a big increase in household fixed expenses for things like child care and commuting. * Much of the money that American second earners bring in has been gobbled up, in practice, by zero-sum competition for educational opportunities expressed as either skyrocketed prices for houses in good school districts or escalating tuition at public universities. * Last, while the addition of the second earner has not brought in much gain, it has created an increase in downside risk by eliminating an implicit insurance policy that families used to rely on." https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/two-income-trap-elizabeth-warren-book https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/23/18183091/t... > women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families, just like men. other societal changes may have aided or hindered that ambition to various effect, but they don't form the driving force as you state. Regardless of why, increased labor participation from woman joining the workforce in greater numbers than previously [1] was going to drive inflation for inelastic goods and services like housing, childcare, and education. It now has become a prisoner's dilemma: participate in the treadmill or find a way off. [1] https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/women-in-the-workforce-before-during-and-after-the-great-recession/pdf/women-in-the-workforce-before-during-and-after-the-great-recession.pdf https://www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/women-in-the-workforce-be... (PDF, page 2)
- clairity 7y ago
  yah, that's good supporting evidence for the 2-income trap. incidentally, my first foray into student loans made me realize a similar trap formed by government guaranteed student loans combined with the inability to discharge them via bankruptcy. those factors practically guarantee rising educational costs due to risk-free money flowing to both educational and financial institutions.
- oposa 7y ago
belorn 7y ago
> Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes >> women entered the job market because they wanted to realize their ambitions and support their families From a historical perspective, women entered the job market because a world war (ww1) consumed the pool of available men through drafting them to die on the front line and having a war engine that increasingly needed more and more resources. We are talking about a change from ~20% to almost 50% over the time span of 4 years. Neither birth control nor cultural ambitions has that fast effect on society. War does.
- clairity 7y ago
  sure, women worked during the world wars out of necessity, but they didn't enter and stay in the workforce because of it. while women working during war helped to unveil the value and abilities of women in the workforce, war didn't drive the shift to 2-income households by itself. if women had no other ambitions, they would have just gone back to "home economics" after the wars and the economy would have stayed the same.
  - belorn 7y ago
    It is indeed true that there are many reason why society continued with both women and men in the work force after the war. One of those were political, as it is difficult to argue first that women and men should shoulder equal responsibility during the war and be included in the military draft and equal right to vote, only to do a 180 degree turn a few months later because the war ended. The writing was on the wall and Women's right to vote got voted in 2 years later. The women military draft however was dropped as the emergency of the war died down. The president said a month before the war ended: We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right? It is hard to find a stronger sign of a cultural change. 20 years later the second world war started so even if there had been a movement to return to "the old days", it would not have had time. The second world war saw again an major increase in women participation in the work force, including major initiatives for equal pay. Men were being sent to the front line and the factories needed people. The world wars was the period where the cultural change occurred. Trying to revert the culture back to pre-1914 mindset would had been about as impossible then as it is now. Instead people continued on the cultural path that had been established.

malandrew 7y ago

I don't understand why this is getting downvoted. IIRC it's the entire data-backed thesis of Elizabeth Warren's 2003 book the Two-Income Trap. CityLab recently documented the rise and fall of the SRO: https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro/553946/ https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-...

tropo 7y ago
If you don't know about Elizabeth Warren’s book, it probably sounds like something from the Proud Boys or the Promise Keepers. It'd be great to agree on the facts, even if people can't agree on how they feel about the facts or if anything should be done to change the facts.

bobthepanda 7y ago

I don’t think this is entirely true. Keep in mind that while earners have increased, households used to be much bigger, with more children and more extended relatives living together. And children and even young unmarried women used to work. So purely single income households weren’t a particularly long time. A bigger issue is that a lot of formerly big housing, at least in New York, has now been subdivided, since the whole is less than the sum of its rents. You are also seeing a large rise in people willing to be roommates with people they don’t know, so if you have three income-earning singles they’ll outbid a two-income family. And students are a special case of that, since the rents will go as high as their student loan balances can sustain.

bcoates 7y ago
Roommates are mostly a side-effect of banning SROs. If the NIMBYs had their way they'd be illegal too. Urban singles needing housing isn't new.
- bobthepanda 7y ago
  It's also no longer socially taboo for single roommates of mixed genders to live together. And of course people are staying single longer, meaning that there are now more urban singles.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  that may be a part of it, but I doubt it's the whole story. people don't just need a small room and a bed; they need kitchens, bathrooms, etc. these can be shared across a floor or a small building, but there's only so many strangers that can share a kitchen before it isn't useful to anyone. it's hard to imagine this being better than at least having the chance to find 3-4 people to split an apartment with.

leetcrew 7y ago

> Same-sex couples also became legal, adding even more two-income households. I'm no expert, and it seems likely that women joining the workforce in large numbers would increase housing prices due to increased purchasing power, but this seems like a bit of a stretch. unless you go back to the times of wide-spread lynchings, wouldn't same-sex couples have lived as "roommates"? also forget about couples, two or more acquaintances sharing a housing unit has been legal and common for quite a long time now. I'm skeptical that this is a significant cause of shock to the housing market.

watwut 7y ago

> Women entered the job market due to birth control and legal changes Legal changes is fascinating euphemism for "not being punished for it anymore".