13 ms·

I'm so frustrated by some of the conversations people get in around housing. They want to live in the most desirable places on planet earth, and seem to think

• nikanj 4y ago
  Abolish propery ownership? I’d settle for ”let the newcomers also build homes, the same way the previous generations did”.
  • notch656a 4y ago
    Every single time I've posted allowing newcomers to build houses the same way their great-great-grandaddy built a shack I've gotten an army of people up in arms complaining they're afraid the lack of safety regulations will result in their town burning down. Where I live zoning laws are decent and land cost next to nothing. But you still have to contend with the universal housing codes, which means you're absolutely fucked because grand-daddy built a house that is basically irreplaceable (you can't permit that anymore) that grandson can live in, but fuck you if you want a house like that for yourself because that's all you can afford to build.
• anoonmoose 4y ago
  > Here's a house in Indiana for $125K Laketon, IN, population 606, had its post office closed in 2010 and, from a quick perusal of Google Maps, probably doesn't have a single traffic light. Doubt there's much public transit out that way. Only 30 miles to a town I might be able to get a job in, though...
  • daenz 4y ago
    There's a post office 5 miles away[0], where there are plenty of businesses that you could work at. Let's not be dramatic. 0. https://goo.gl/maps/y3dERcUkD7wMLzEW8 https://goo.gl/maps/y3dERcUkD7wMLzEW8
  • hotpotamus 4y ago
    Are you not able to work remotely? Or is that too much remote?
    • furyofantares 4y ago
      Over satellite internet?
      • hotpotamus 4y ago
        I've got a coworker who's looking into this and he seems to bounce around the idea of Rural New Mexico or Colorado, then another week he's got his eye on some 3K square foot house in Ohio for $125K or something like that, but just as rural. Every place he's looked at has fiber available.
    • anoonmoose 4y ago
      Combo electrical engineer and embedded firmware engineer, who spent the previous ten years in production test engineering...nah, my job is pretty hands-on. I went into a pretty empty building during most of 2020 and 2021 five days a week. I mean, I've got a few skills that might be sharp enough to get me a remote job but I really like the hardware world.
  • tzs 4y ago
    > Doubt there's much public transit out that way. Only 30 miles to a town I might be able to get a job in, though... Lots of people in the SF area and lots of other big cities have commutes of 30 miles or more. And I'd bet the traffic on those commutes is a lot worse, so 30 miles in the Laketon area is likely equivalent to maybe 10 miles in SF. I'd expect entertainment and cultural events are limited in Laketon, but it's a 100 mile drive to Indianapolis and 140 mile drive to Chicago. With all that you'd be saving on housing compared to SF weekend getaways to those cities should be affordable.
• paxys 4y ago
  This is such a twisted framing of the issue. No one wants to "abolish property ownership". In fact housing proponents want the exact opposite – give everybody the opportunity to own a house rather than a select few large corporations and investors. Let me build my own house on a piece of land in or near the city, just like my grandparents did just a couple of generations ago. Remove years worth of excessive permits, reviews and other red tape. Remove restrictive zoning laws. Remove neighbors being able to veto my property because it would cast a shadow in their garden for 6 minutes a year. And no, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" isn't an acceptable answer.
  • desperadovisa 4y ago
    Sorry but with all due respect, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" is absolutely an acceptable answer. You're acting like you're entitled to live where ever you want, but the simple reality is that this is not possible. You need to come to grips with that objective fact.
    • furyofantares 4y ago
      There's a giant gap between "you're entitled to live wherever you want" and "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere." My read is that the person you're responding to is in the middle of that gap; and your response frames them as being on one extreme edge and then says an acceptable answer is to go to the other extreme edge.
    • jeffbee 4y ago
      Clearly it is ethically problematic for the people of San Francisco to squirt out babies and then 18 years later tell them to go fuck off, go live in Gary, Indiana.
      • Kon-Peki 4y ago
        Don't give anyone any ideas or they might discover that they can buy a house like this [1] that is walking distance to the commuter train, walking distance to the beach, and walking distance to the trails in a National Park [2] [3] [4] [1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8725-Maple-Ave-Gary-IN-46403/73340549_zpid/ https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8725-Maple-Ave-Gary-IN-46... [2] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199213,-87.2571163,16z https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199213,-87.2571163,16z [3] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199718,-87.2697873,16z https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199718,-87.2697873,16z [4] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6218829,-87.2348586,16z https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6218829,-87.2348586,16z
• mancerayder 4y ago
  Just to hammer home the point: NYC has rent stabilization, which applies to about 50 percent of the rental stock. The rent can't go up more than a certain amount, one must renew with the tenant with few exceptions, etc. Now, not surprisingly these units are offered by real estate brokers who demand steep fees, and guess who gets first dibs, but brokers and their friends/families.
  • standardUser 4y ago
    Most rentals in NYC no longer work with brokers, especially in the low-to-middle range.
    • mancerayder 4y ago
      On what basis do you say that? The Fee rentals have all returned when the laws banning them were re-interpreted. When you say low to middle range, do you include rent-stabilized units in moderate to hot neighborhoods?
      • standardUser 4y ago
        On the basis of living in Manhattan and knowing a ton of people who have moved places over the last few years, including myself. Also, just go look at StreetEasy.
• KennyBlanken 4y ago
  > seem to think that we should just abolish the concept of property ownership to accomplish this. This is a funny comment given the article is about corporations converting massive swaths of housing in the united states into rental properties.
• H1Supreme 4y ago
  > Go look at Parkersberg, OH. I think you might be referring to Parkersburg, WV. It's right on the Ohio river, next to Ohio.
• danenania 4y ago
  I think the core of the problem is that we're losing the middle class of housing. Obviously the nicest areas of the country, with the best weather, most opportunities, low crime, elite schools, etc. are going to be expensive. But it's getting to the point where it's prohibitively expensive for a middle class family just to live in a place without high crime/drug addiction/homelessness, reasonably good schools, reasonable healthcare options, and some measure of community/walkability (forget about weather and jobs). You can live cheaply if you're willing to sacrifice in some of those areas, but they are major sacrifices that will have a negative influence on quality-of-life and the future prospects of kids who grow up there. It wasn't always like this. I had a neighbor when I lived in North Berkeley (a beautiful neighborhood that checks every box you could want) who told me he bought his house in the late 90s for 150k. Now it's probably worth 2 million or more. I realized that everyone who bought on that block around that time had almost a six figure annual income for most of their adult lives solely from the appreciation of their homes. I'm sure there are good deals out there that can still be found, but we really do have a problem if a table stakes decent family life is only affordable by the top 10% (or less).
  • anon291 4y ago
    Part of the problem is the middle of housing was often in towns anchored by one or two factories or other local businesses. With businesses being hyper-centralized today due to the internet and technology decoupling business from land, employees are now located much more centrally (we'll see how remote work changes this). For example, Google has hundreds of thousands of employees in the Bay Area alone. That's crazy. In the past, this would have formed several towns all across the country (because Google would need such a footprint to be able to deliver services nationally). Now that anyone can start a large company without barely any land investment, it's no wonder people are increasingly concentrating in small portions of the country, while large portions are incredibly cheap, and in some places, depreciating.
  • nineplay 4y ago
    Housing values in and around Silicon Valley have gone up extraordinarily since I was young for reasons that were not easily predictable. It's not a good model for housing costs in the rest of the US. I grew up in uninteresting towns in Monterey County and San Bernardino County and both could check off points of 'acceptable places to live' which are affordable to the middle classes. No one talks about them because no one cares.
• nineplay 4y ago
  I'm with you friend. Posters throw out lines like "property shouldn't be an investment" as though the idea that property has intrinsic value is something invented in the last 50 years or so, not something that has been true for millennia. I've been told that "housing is a right" which, if conceded, still runs into your point - housing may be a right, housing in the most expensive and populated areas in the US is not a right and there's no way to make it one.
  • pickovven 4y ago
    Your point would be more compelling if people weren't specifically blocking additional housing so their investment appreciates.
  • undersuit 4y ago
    How about housing in the most expensive and populated ares in the US is a necessity? If there can't be housing available for all the workers in an area then there needs to be a change. Whether it be higher wages, changes in zoning, or public housing depends on the area, but doing nothing doesn't fix things. Having all the low paying workers commute 2 hours to work every day to make frappes and burgers for the rich locals is not a viable option.
    • nineplay 4y ago
      There are no magic wands here. Property is a limited commodity, it can't be expanded to fit demand. > then there needs to be a change No there doesn't > Having all the low paying workers commute 2 hours to work every day to make frappes and burgers for the rich locals is not a viable option. Viable is in the mind of the beholder. Viable solutions include - low income workers moving to more affordable areas, leaving the wealthy to make frappes and burgers with their Kurigs and air fryers - low income workers continuing to commute feeling it is still the best option for them considering all factors - wages raise in high-income areas to compensate baristas and chefs, allowing them to move closer to city centers. All of these are 'viable' and none of them make housing a right or necessity.
      • 4y ago
• pickovven 4y ago
  The current state of things are that most property rights are abolished. Why do all my neighbors get to decide if my property has 10 or 20 units on it?
• strikelaserclaw 4y ago
  I think it is more like put regulation in place which makes owning housing as an investment untenable.
• bradleyankrom 4y ago
  Picking nits, but Parkersburg is in West Virginia, not Ohio (source: born there).
  • thepasswordis 4y ago
    Ah sorry about that! I was just picking a random spot in Ohio that was kinda nearish the Great Lakes. I guess I moved to Far East. Did you like it there?
    • bradleyankrom 4y ago
      We moved when I was about two weeks old, but a lot of my family is in that area (on both sides of the river). The area is struggling economically, but it has some historical and scenic charm.
• pickovven 4y ago
  It's absurd to frame this as some sort of luxury consumption decision. Sure, that might be true for like beach front properties but we're talking about virtually every major city in the country. People grow up and have social connections in these places. There are jobs there. There are political reasons for moving. But most importantly these are cities, not suburbs. It's just wildly ridiculous to disallow dense housing which would allow more residents and lower housing prices.
• triyambakam 4y ago
  I'm not following - how do the cheap houses in Indian relate to the high prices in SF and abolishing property ownership?
• mabbo 4y ago
  The problem is market power. We want a free market in which supply and demand dictate price without manipulation. But in any given region, there is a fixed supply of property that is slow to change to demand. And there is also a fixed demand- everyone needs a home. If one market participant buys up enough of it, they can choose to raise rents on that entire segment of the market. People need a place to live, and if their job, life, livelihoods are tied up in that specific area then leaving isn't a viable option. The market participant literally is rent-seeking. They aren't improving these homes. They're raising prices by virtue of owning enough of them to be able to manipulate the market. They can charge more for the same service without providing anyone with more value. Saying that anyone opposing this is some kind of communist against property ownership is a straw man argument. We just want to see a fair free market.
• tnel77 4y ago
  I can’t live in Indiana because the entire state is racist. This should be obvious. Edit: /s for those who need it
• themagician 4y ago
  People just want homes to live in, in areas where there are good jobs, and get pissed when entire blocks of SFR housing are turned into Airbnbs or investment properties. You walk down the street and every house has an STR permit on it. It is really not that difficult to understand.