7 ms·

A class of people unable to afford a home sounds like a societal problem.

sokoloff 5y ago
A class of people unable to afford housing is a societal problem. Unable to purchase a home in a specific city is not nearly so obviously a problem. (Much of Europe seems happy to rent for life.)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- diffeomorphism 5y ago
  Same difference. Rent prices and house prices are tied. If houses are unaffordable, so is rent.
- clippablematt 5y ago
  Much of Europe has to rent for life, but isn’t happy about it. (at least in my experience of like everyone I know).
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    I’ve got a couple close friends who relocated to Europe and many colleagues. All are in high-tech and all seem perfectly content to rent (which I don’t understand but my close friends assure me it’s the case [and when something breaks or leaks in my house, I do understand some of the appeal]).
    - csomar 5y ago
      Maybe they are happy to rent because they are temporarily in Europe?
  - zajio1am 5y ago
    Not really. In EU, 70 % of population owns, while 30 % rents: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-1a.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-1a.h...
- linguae 5y ago
  But if economic opportunity is concentrated in cities that are too expensive for average working people to live in (even when renting instead of buying), then this is a societal problem. Even if the shift to working from home for some occupations becomes permanent, not all jobs can be performed from home. While some metropolises such as Tokyo seem to be set up well for providing housing at a wide range of price points, others such as the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles do a much worse job; there are some people who regularly commute 2-3 hours each way from these metro areas because this is all they can afford, yet the job markets in the Central Valley (near the Bay Area) or the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley (both near Los Angeles) areas are rather anemic at best. For many of these people, the choice isn't between a condo in Fremont versus a single-family house in Tracy. Instead, it's an apartment in a place like Stockton or Modesto versus moving outside of the orbit of the Bay Area; that's how bad the housing crisis has gotten for many people. The chief cause of this is zoning regulations and other policies in the Bay Area and Los Angeles that discourage denser development, thus encouraging sprawl further and further out; hence, the "drive until you qualify" phenomenon. The normalization of mega-commuting has social and environmental consequences. Yes, there are cheaper metro areas, but these cheaper metro areas tend to offer fewer job opportunities compared to the more popular metro areas. Part of what fueled the social divide between "blue state" and "red state" America is economic opportunity being increasingly concentrated in a handful of coastal metro areas, while these opportunities have largely failed to trickle down to much of rural America and the Rust Belt. What's needed are two solutions: 1. Change the zoning policies of certain metro areas in order to accommodate the demand through densification instead of sprawl. 2. Find ways to encourage the economic development of areas outside of the coasts.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    What about a Singapore style solution? As a city state, they don't have the benefit of having anywhere else to go, so public housing schemes (government provides affordable apartments to rent, no short term speculations allowed) are the main way to go. Or we could make housing depreciate like in Tokyo (and allow for low end small rooms without central heating).
    - 5y ago

A class of people unable to afford housing is a societal problem. Unable to purchase a home in a specific city is not nearly so obviously a problem. (Much of Europe seems happy to rent for life.)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
diffeomorphism 5y ago
Same difference. Rent prices and house prices are tied. If houses are unaffordable, so is rent.
clippablematt 5y ago
Much of Europe has to rent for life, but isn’t happy about it. (at least in my experience of like everyone I know).
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I’ve got a couple close friends who relocated to Europe and many colleagues. All are in high-tech and all seem perfectly content to rent (which I don’t understand but my close friends assure me it’s the case [and when something breaks or leaks in my house, I do understand some of the appeal]).
  - csomar 5y ago
    Maybe they are happy to rent because they are temporarily in Europe?
- zajio1am 5y ago
  Not really. In EU, 70 % of population owns, while 30 % rents: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-1a.html https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/digpub/housing/bloc-1a.h...
linguae 5y ago
But if economic opportunity is concentrated in cities that are too expensive for average working people to live in (even when renting instead of buying), then this is a societal problem. Even if the shift to working from home for some occupations becomes permanent, not all jobs can be performed from home. While some metropolises such as Tokyo seem to be set up well for providing housing at a wide range of price points, others such as the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles do a much worse job; there are some people who regularly commute 2-3 hours each way from these metro areas because this is all they can afford, yet the job markets in the Central Valley (near the Bay Area) or the Inland Empire and Antelope Valley (both near Los Angeles) areas are rather anemic at best. For many of these people, the choice isn't between a condo in Fremont versus a single-family house in Tracy. Instead, it's an apartment in a place like Stockton or Modesto versus moving outside of the orbit of the Bay Area; that's how bad the housing crisis has gotten for many people. The chief cause of this is zoning regulations and other policies in the Bay Area and Los Angeles that discourage denser development, thus encouraging sprawl further and further out; hence, the "drive until you qualify" phenomenon. The normalization of mega-commuting has social and environmental consequences. Yes, there are cheaper metro areas, but these cheaper metro areas tend to offer fewer job opportunities compared to the more popular metro areas. Part of what fueled the social divide between "blue state" and "red state" America is economic opportunity being increasingly concentrated in a handful of coastal metro areas, while these opportunities have largely failed to trickle down to much of rural America and the Rust Belt. What's needed are two solutions: 1. Change the zoning policies of certain metro areas in order to accommodate the demand through densification instead of sprawl. 2. Find ways to encourage the economic development of areas outside of the coasts.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  What about a Singapore style solution? As a city state, they don't have the benefit of having anywhere else to go, so public housing schemes (government provides affordable apartments to rent, no short term speculations allowed) are the main way to go. Or we could make housing depreciate like in Tokyo (and allow for low end small rooms without central heating).
  - 5y ago