4 ms·

Eh, people can either decide to live an unaffordable hell holes or not. I wasn't surprised to see LA here. When I was a young adult. , anyone could get a minim

Eh, people can either decide to live an unaffordable hell holes or not. I wasn't surprised to see LA here. When I was a young adult. , anyone could get a minimum wage job, and while it wasn't the absolute best apartment, you at least had a roof over your head. Now the city is a living nightmare for anyone who doesn't make at least 100K a year, I also noticed in the last 10 years or so the city got much meaner. The charm is gone, but I think rational people will move and be fine. If you want to be stupid, and watch your rent increase well beyond what you can afford, stay. This isn't just LA, but any unaffordable city.

CydeWeys 5y ago
Moving cities is expensive (the actual moving expenses plus up front costs of a new lease, and also no income until you can find a new job). If you're already struggling to afford rent then it's likely beyond your financial capabilities.
- fundad 5y ago
  Yeah agreed. People with the money to move to a new city and live indoors aren’t the ones losing their homes. I do think our housing shortage makes hiring even harder in a tight labor market.
scythe 5y ago
Telling people to move away might be good individual advice, but it isn't a "solution" to managing a city, and it's bad for the national economy as a whole if people can't live in productive metropolitan areas. Statistically, there are always going to be some growing cities and some shrinking cities, because a stochastically generated distribution like population movement should have a nonzero standard deviation. If growing cities are consistently unaffordable, that's a national problem.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  I have no faith in the people who run cities like LA. They have no ability, nor will to fix such a massive problem. With LA this has been in motion for decades. You let everyone say construction offends them, and make it so only luxury housing is profitable to build. This is the result. LA is uniquely horrible since you both need a car and an extremely expensive apartment. Even on the low end you're talking about $600 to $1,000 for the privilege of driving.
  - carnitas 5y ago
    Just piling on to say dear lord La is trash. I am counting down the months until my lease is up so I can leave. I make well over 100k but nearly all of it is siphoned off for housing and I would prefer living in a third world Country because my Standard of living would be higher and the streets would be less trashed
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  >If growing cities are consistently unaffordable, that's a national problem. Affordable and unaffordable is a subjective measure. Clearly there are a lot of people willing to live on the razor's edge for the benefits they perceive coastal California cities provide (and other areas with higher than average demand relative to supply).
  - scythe 5y ago
    >Affordable and unaffordable is a subjective measure. No it isn't. Affordable and unaffordable can be defined objectively for a specific population (e.g. "Americans") by observing that population's behavior. If people avoid living somewhere due to the cost of living, it's unaffordable. There's nothing terribly ambiguous about that. The consequences can also be expressed with numbers, e.g.: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2016/12/07/zoning-reducing-american-productivity-and-making-the-poor-poorer/?sh=5f69ded249bd https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2016/12/07/zoning-r...
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      >If people avoid living somewhere due to the cost of living, it's unaffordable. For the people living somewhere despite its cost of living, it is affordable. For their definition of affordable, because it is subjective. It is like the joke "I would rather be dead in <insert place> than alive in <insert another place>".
      - scythe 5y ago
        >For the people living somewhere despite its cost of living, it is affordable. You substituted a useless definition for a useful one. Nobody cares about the affordability to a particular individual. There's probably somebody living in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco paying $500/month, but it's plainly nonsense to argue on that basis that rent in San Francisco is $500/month. Aggregate affordability is operationalized via its effect on population movements, and San Francisco is not affordable, period. Debasing the metrics won't save you, it's just frustrating to deal with people who find it convenient to deny reality.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  So what's the solution, tax people in Iowa to cover rents in Los Angeles?
mullingitover 5y ago
> Eh, people can either decide to live an unaffordable hell holes or not. People live in these places because that's where the jobs are. You can move to a 'cheap' city, but you'll find that it's cheap because the pay is equally cheap. The bigger problem is that the landowning class is viciously extracting far more wealth from the populace than is warranted by the service they provide, and using that wealth to lobby to prevent competition that would reduce the rents they extract.
- 999900000999 5y ago
  >People live in these places because that's where the jobs are. You can move to a 'cheap' city, but you'll find that it's cheap because the pay is equally cheap. I was making just as much in Chicago as I was in LA, and my rent was about 50% less, and I didn't need a car. This was in a much more desirable area where I could do all of my grocery shopping, hit several bars, and generally socialize ( met my first real girlfriend in real life) without driving. >The bigger problem is that the landowning class is viciously extracting far more wealth from the populace than is warranted by the service they provide, and using that wealth to lobby to prevent competition that would reduce the rents they extract. The competition is the rest of America, you can find a $1,500 two-bedroom in Chicago because several other landlords have to compete. If you mentally trap yourself in a place like LA, then sure two bedrooms start at $2,800 and there's nothing you can do. Sure, you can hop on Twitter and complain. Your rent is still 2,800. Aside from a full-blown communist revolution, I don't see a way to make a place like LA affordable for normal people
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    > The competition is the rest of America, you can find a $1,500 two-bedroom in Chicago because several other landlords have to compete. Not many places can compete with southern California's mild climate. Yes, Chicago is cheaper, but it also has ~100 fewer days of sun per year, and the mental trap of living in LA is matched by the literal trap of Chicago's weather forcing you indoors for a full third of the year.
    - 5y ago
datacruncher01 5y ago
Sadly this is the common theme among all of the large population centers. And if you want a high paying job you have to live in a large population center or get paid sub-standard wages with poor career growth that will not keep up with rising housing costs that occur even in rural locations. Relative to rent, wages are not keeping up and we are facing a future where a significant portion of the population will not have stable housing.

CydeWeys 5y ago

Moving cities is expensive (the actual moving expenses plus up front costs of a new lease, and also no income until you can find a new job). If you're already struggling to afford rent then it's likely beyond your financial capabilities.

fundad 5y ago
Yeah agreed. People with the money to move to a new city and live indoors aren’t the ones losing their homes. I do think our housing shortage makes hiring even harder in a tight labor market.

scythe 5y ago

Telling people to move away might be good individual advice, but it isn't a "solution" to managing a city, and it's bad for the national economy as a whole if people can't live in productive metropolitan areas. Statistically, there are always going to be some growing cities and some shrinking cities, because a stochastically generated distribution like population movement should have a nonzero standard deviation. If growing cities are consistently unaffordable, that's a national problem.

999900000999 5y ago
I have no faith in the people who run cities like LA. They have no ability, nor will to fix such a massive problem. With LA this has been in motion for decades. You let everyone say construction offends them, and make it so only luxury housing is profitable to build. This is the result. LA is uniquely horrible since you both need a car and an extremely expensive apartment. Even on the low end you're talking about $600 to $1,000 for the privilege of driving.
- carnitas 5y ago
  Just piling on to say dear lord La is trash. I am counting down the months until my lease is up so I can leave. I make well over 100k but nearly all of it is siphoned off for housing and I would prefer living in a third world Country because my Standard of living would be higher and the streets would be less trashed
lotsofpulp 5y ago
>If growing cities are consistently unaffordable, that's a national problem. Affordable and unaffordable is a subjective measure. Clearly there are a lot of people willing to live on the razor's edge for the benefits they perceive coastal California cities provide (and other areas with higher than average demand relative to supply).
- scythe 5y ago
  >Affordable and unaffordable is a subjective measure. No it isn't. Affordable and unaffordable can be defined objectively for a specific population (e.g. "Americans") by observing that population's behavior. If people avoid living somewhere due to the cost of living, it's unaffordable. There's nothing terribly ambiguous about that. The consequences can also be expressed with numbers, e.g.: https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2016/12/07/zoning-reducing-american-productivity-and-making-the-poor-poorer/?sh=5f69ded249bd https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogervaldez/2016/12/07/zoning-r...
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    >If people avoid living somewhere due to the cost of living, it's unaffordable. For the people living somewhere despite its cost of living, it is affordable. For their definition of affordable, because it is subjective. It is like the joke "I would rather be dead in <insert place> than alive in <insert another place>".
    - scythe 5y ago
      >For the people living somewhere despite its cost of living, it is affordable. You substituted a useless definition for a useful one. Nobody cares about the affordability to a particular individual. There's probably somebody living in a rent-controlled apartment in San Francisco paying $500/month, but it's plainly nonsense to argue on that basis that rent in San Francisco is $500/month. Aggregate affordability is operationalized via its effect on population movements, and San Francisco is not affordable, period. Debasing the metrics won't save you, it's just frustrating to deal with people who find it convenient to deny reality.
Mountain_Skies 5y ago
So what's the solution, tax people in Iowa to cover rents in Los Angeles?

mullingitover 5y ago

> Eh, people can either decide to live an unaffordable hell holes or not. People live in these places because that's where the jobs are. You can move to a 'cheap' city, but you'll find that it's cheap because the pay is equally cheap. The bigger problem is that the landowning class is viciously extracting far more wealth from the populace than is warranted by the service they provide, and using that wealth to lobby to prevent competition that would reduce the rents they extract.

999900000999 5y ago
>People live in these places because that's where the jobs are. You can move to a 'cheap' city, but you'll find that it's cheap because the pay is equally cheap. I was making just as much in Chicago as I was in LA, and my rent was about 50% less, and I didn't need a car. This was in a much more desirable area where I could do all of my grocery shopping, hit several bars, and generally socialize ( met my first real girlfriend in real life) without driving. >The bigger problem is that the landowning class is viciously extracting far more wealth from the populace than is warranted by the service they provide, and using that wealth to lobby to prevent competition that would reduce the rents they extract. The competition is the rest of America, you can find a $1,500 two-bedroom in Chicago because several other landlords have to compete. If you mentally trap yourself in a place like LA, then sure two bedrooms start at $2,800 and there's nothing you can do. Sure, you can hop on Twitter and complain. Your rent is still 2,800. Aside from a full-blown communist revolution, I don't see a way to make a place like LA affordable for normal people
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > The competition is the rest of America, you can find a $1,500 two-bedroom in Chicago because several other landlords have to compete. Not many places can compete with southern California's mild climate. Yes, Chicago is cheaper, but it also has ~100 fewer days of sun per year, and the mental trap of living in LA is matched by the literal trap of Chicago's weather forcing you indoors for a full third of the year.
  - 5y ago

datacruncher01 5y ago

Sadly this is the common theme among all of the large population centers. And if you want a high paying job you have to live in a large population center or get paid sub-standard wages with poor career growth that will not keep up with rising housing costs that occur even in rural locations. Relative to rent, wages are not keeping up and we are facing a future where a significant portion of the population will not have stable housing.