4 ms·
> It's very expensive to be poor. True indeed. This article gives many more examples: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-expensive-to-
by blackshaw 4y ago
> It's very expensive to be poor.
True indeed. This article gives many more examples:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-expensive-to-be-poor/282979/ https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/it-is-e...
> If you can’t afford the first month’s rent and security deposit you need in order to rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a kitchen or even a refrigerator and a microwave, you will find yourself falling back on convenience-store food, which—in addition to its nutritional deficits—is also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan, as most poor people eventually do, you will end up paying an interest rate many times higher than what a more affluent borrower would be charged. To be poor—especially with children to support and care for—is a perpetual high-wire act.
- Plasmoid 4y agoPeople create a lot of laws around rental housing that are designed to help the poor. The effects tend to make housing completely inaccessible to the working poor but more accessible to middle class. For example, making it difficult to evict someone will cause landlords to raise the qualifications for renting.
- harvey9 4y agoThe downside of less regulation may be homes with mould. While that is better than sleeping in a doorway, we should aspire to have eveyone in safe homes and the free market won't do that it the cheaper end of the spectrum. Granted it's also failing to do it even with regulation because of a lack of enforcement of same.
- Plasmoid 4y agoHousing is a pretty terrible product. Everything is bespoke, but often durable enough that you can defer maintenance for a decade without paying for the costs. We've also tied a bunch of financial planning into the mix which amps up the bad ideas.