4 ms·

There is no housing crisis. U.S. has more than plenty of good quality, large, and more than affordable houses (many of them are probably beyond repair but this

There is no housing crisis. U.S. has more than plenty of good quality, large, and more than affordable houses (many of them are probably beyond repair but this is a consequence of their abundance and lack of demand). Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. There is no way to "fix" this because even if housing is by some magic affordable, so many people will flock there that commute times will increase beyond survivability and people will pay with their time instead of money (that works in exactly the same way as home prices rise when mortgage fall: this is a free market). If you want to fix it, you need to stop these places from being attractive, or prevent people from moving. Both sound like a Soviet Union-style dystopia. It's better to just concede to the fact that housing in attractive areas is a scarce resource for which there is always a competition and most people who are there, simply shouldn't be there, them being there is just a result of their Dunning-Kruger effect. There is a middle ground of "regulated rental" but this is precisely a compromise, a middle ground between buying and market renting. Buying a place in attractive location is winning a lottery: if place is ALREADY attractive, the rental yield there is low because price to buy is sky high due to countless trillions of printed money sloshing around, so it makes no sense buying, it only makes sense buying before it gets attractive, but it can't be predicted. Regulated rental gives you same opportunity: rent now and if in 30 years the place became attractive, you are renting at a small fraction of real cost, you won. This is not a solution, it is just a step halfway to the Soviet Union where the Party decided where you should live.

Pet_Ant 6y ago
> Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. Why not build hyper-dense housing? If you have functional public spaces you don't need as much private space. We used to have boarding houses etc. I don't need my own bathroom, I need a bathroom. I rarely use my kitchen, I just need access to one.
- anovikov 6y ago
  How about commuting? Pollution? School, hospital and other public services capacity? Crime arising from simply the rich place being affordable, inviting undesirables?
  - Pet_Ant 6y ago
    Those come from the savings from not having to maintain as much less power grids, less roads to maintain, less roads to plow, less helicopter ambulance rides to pick up injured remote people. Sure you need more city busses now. Giving the "undesirables" a decent place and means to live reduces crime.
    - anovikov 6y ago
      Don't you think that in general, the drive to push as many people as possible into places as tight as possible, like high density urban areas, is abnormal? People by nature love to enjoy space, and this is what U.S. has in abundance. Work on making geographic location less important, on decreasing the value of being in a particular place. Embrace remote work. It will solve the "housing crisis". Forcing millions of adults into dorms, won't.
      - Pet_Ant 6y ago
        Do you think dorms are less ugly than suburban sprawl or endless exapanse of ranches? I mean how many places in the US can you find a 5mi x 5mi square of land unmolested?
        souprock 6y ago
        Depending on what you mean by "unmolested", a 5mi x 5mi square of land is really easy to get in most of the USA. (probably weeds, not pristine old-growth forest) It's pretty cheap, and there won't be any utility bills to pay. You can use it to graze cattle or something like that.
- sesuximo 6y ago
dredmorbius 6y ago
The Scarlet E: Unmasking America’s Eviction Crisis Two years ago, the Federal Reserve found that 44 percent of us couldn't cover a sudden 400 dollar expense without borrowing or selling something. And so if you don't have family or friends you can tap, anything unexpected–health issues, accidents, car trouble, reduced work hours–can trigger calamity cascades.... When we first got these national data and we mapped it on the United States, I don't really know what I was expecting. But I spent a lot of time in Milwaukee, I thought evictions were incredibly high there. One in 14 renter homes in the inner city of Milwaukee's evicted every year formerly. Right? Huge amount you walk down any inner city block, look on your left look on your right, one of those families is not gonna be there by the end of the year. You crunch the numbers and you look and Milwaukee isn't even in the top 50 highest evicting cities in the country. You see South Carolina exploding, North Carolina exploding, Georgia–up the Mississippi to Detroit. Tulsa, Oklahoma is in the top 20. Albuquerque, New Mexico, I think one in twenty-one renter homes is evicted. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking-americas-eviction-crisis https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking... Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. https://www.evictedbook.com/books/evicted-tr https://www.evictedbook.com/books/evicted-tr

Pet_Ant 6y ago

> Housing crisis is only about the very few already overpopulated spots being hyper-attractive for people to move in because that's where opportunities are. Why not build hyper-dense housing? If you have functional public spaces you don't need as much private space. We used to have boarding houses etc. I don't need my own bathroom, I need a bathroom. I rarely use my kitchen, I just need access to one.

anovikov 6y ago
How about commuting? Pollution? School, hospital and other public services capacity? Crime arising from simply the rich place being affordable, inviting undesirables?
- Pet_Ant 6y ago
  Those come from the savings from not having to maintain as much less power grids, less roads to maintain, less roads to plow, less helicopter ambulance rides to pick up injured remote people. Sure you need more city busses now. Giving the "undesirables" a decent place and means to live reduces crime.
  - anovikov 6y ago
    Don't you think that in general, the drive to push as many people as possible into places as tight as possible, like high density urban areas, is abnormal? People by nature love to enjoy space, and this is what U.S. has in abundance. Work on making geographic location less important, on decreasing the value of being in a particular place. Embrace remote work. It will solve the "housing crisis". Forcing millions of adults into dorms, won't.
    - Pet_Ant 6y ago
      Do you think dorms are less ugly than suburban sprawl or endless exapanse of ranches? I mean how many places in the US can you find a 5mi x 5mi square of land unmolested?
      - souprock 6y ago
        Depending on what you mean by "unmolested", a 5mi x 5mi square of land is really easy to get in most of the USA. (probably weeds, not pristine old-growth forest) It's pretty cheap, and there won't be any utility bills to pay. You can use it to graze cattle or something like that.
sesuximo 6y ago

dredmorbius 6y ago

The Scarlet E: Unmasking America’s Eviction Crisis Two years ago, the Federal Reserve found that 44 percent of us couldn't cover a sudden 400 dollar expense without borrowing or selling something. And so if you don't have family or friends you can tap, anything unexpected–health issues, accidents, car trouble, reduced work hours–can trigger calamity cascades.... When we first got these national data and we mapped it on the United States, I don't really know what I was expecting. But I spent a lot of time in Milwaukee, I thought evictions were incredibly high there. One in 14 renter homes in the inner city of Milwaukee's evicted every year formerly. Right? Huge amount you walk down any inner city block, look on your left look on your right, one of those families is not gonna be there by the end of the year. You crunch the numbers and you look and Milwaukee isn't even in the top 50 highest evicting cities in the country. You see South Carolina exploding, North Carolina exploding, Georgia–up the Mississippi to Detroit. Tulsa, Oklahoma is in the top 20. Albuquerque, New Mexico, I think one in twenty-one renter homes is evicted. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking-americas-eviction-crisis https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/scarlet-e-unmasking... Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Evicted transforms our understanding of poverty and economic exploitation while providing fresh ideas for solving one of twenty-first-century America’s most devastating problems. Its unforgettable scenes of hope and loss remind us of the centrality of home, without which nothing else is possible. https://www.evictedbook.com/books/evicted-tr https://www.evictedbook.com/books/evicted-tr