29 ms·

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population want

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to pay higher rents. I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Voting for more immigration which drives up demand for houses and voting for more regulations which constrain the supply of housing. At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. Instead, they resort to their own financial schemes, illegal activity, freeloading government benefits; they've checked out from the system. Even those who would like to contribute increasingly find that they can't due to government regulations and their inability to amass enough capital to get started on their venture. It seems that we are headed for an economic and political disaster. The government should not allow itself to be weaponized against part of the population for the benefit of another. The other problem is related to the role of debt in modern society. It doesn't make sense that modern banking is centered around mortgages. The point of debt was to finance new business ventures to create economic value to empower people to provide as much value as possible; not to prop up massive financial schemes which jeopardize people's ability to keep a roof over their heads.

8jef 3y ago
This
dwallin 3y ago
Immigration is such a straw man, an influx of people with generally low capital availability and incomes is clearly not the cause of expensively priced housing and rents. Saying government regulation causes it is also meaningless unless you specify WHAT government regulation you believe is causing housing issues, historical evidence clearly indicates that no regulation doesn’t lead to the outcome you desire. It’s very clear that the key is figuring out what sorts of regulation, taxes and laws would lead to an optimal solution and in order to begin to do that you really need to break down how the demand and supply of housing actually works. The demand side of rent prices is generally based on the surplus value created by an area for its residents. The value of rent prices is all about providing signals about relative utility to potential residents. This is key because it means that absolute rent is largely unimportant, the relative rent is the key. All rent paid above actual services provided does not create economic value, it instead captures surplus value from its residents and delivers it to rentiers. The issue with rent control and other similar regulation is not that it limits overall rent levels, it’s that it distorts the relative signaling. However this needs to be balanced with the negative effects large rent increases have upon tenants. A world where people are constantly forced to move due to a rapidly changing market might be price efficient, but it creates lots of negative externalities. The key here is establishing rent rules that are loose enough to create accurate price signaling, but tight enough to minimize these externalities. The demand side for purchasing for individuals is based on individuals and companies evaluating on a range of criteria which largely boils down to the utility it directly provides, the rent you can charge others for their utility in the properly (or conversely, the rent it allows you to avoid), and its value as a speculative investment. However it is clear that in the problematic markets we are discussing, the prices are extremely dominated by the latter two. This leads to the supply side of this also being somewhat counterintuitive. People seeking to invest their capital in property actually have two primary ways of profiting: via rent collected or by appreciation in property value. If you own property, and you have additional capital to invest, do you invest in improving your existing housing stock or into buying additional property? The answer is you invest in whichever has the highest rate of return. In low housing stock environments the answer is going to typically be to invest it in additional property over improving existing properties. You might think that rising rents would change this ratio, but this gets it backwards. Rising rents leads directly to increased property values and so largely has the opposite effect, it encourages investment in buying property over improving it. This makes it clear that to increase investment in housing stock, your best method is to discourage speculative investment in favor of investments that raise the quantity and quality of housing stock. The way you structure regulation, incentives and taxation should reflect this. Everything else is noise, and doesn't actually solve the problem. Side note: An exception here happens in cases where development leads to massive differential between start and end value. This is why in these sorts of high speculation environments development becomes highly slanted towards turning low density buildings into massively high density, high margin buildings. This is generally not ideal, as this type of construction has lots of negative externalities on its surrounding neighborhoods, and tends to make communities averse to further development. Making lots of small incremental improvements in housing stock is far less disruptive to neighborhoods but will only really happen in environments slanted towards improvement over speculation.
SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago
I wouldn’t attribute this to immigration. Generally (eta: in my understanding in the usa where this study also is) immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do. I otherwise agree the homeowning NIMBY class who want to retain neighborhood character or whatever suck, because as a consequence they are restricting housing. I also want to point the finger at corporations that buy up housing as an investment; there’s no reason any Corp should be buying up residential family housing and bleeding people dry through rents.
- ejb999 3y ago
  Just keep telling yourself that... NYC would strongly disagree. When you let 5-10 million +/- people into the country in a short amount of time - where are they supposed to live? Of course it drives up homelessness and home prices - use your common sense.
  - addicted 3y ago
    NYC also had the same housing stock in 2020 as in 2000. Despite adding several Boston’s worth of population at the time. So I’m not sure it’s as simple as arguing it’s only the demand side when clearly the supply side hasn’t kept up.
- TapWaterBandit 3y ago
  Immigration is clearly an undeniable part of the problem. I am in Australia and when immigration was halted during covid rents declined in many places, often substantially. Now we are full-tilt on immigration again and rents are soaring. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that putting more people in a given area with the same amount of housing will cause the rents to rise.
  - addicted 3y ago
    It was clearly the immigration because there was nothing else going on at the time that could explain the changes.
epistasis 3y ago
It's not only the regulations, but that regulations put Boomers in control of allowing housing locally. The combination of a generation that pulls up the ladder as soon as they have something, plus a government that caters to local homeowners has created a catastrophe for all but the wealthiest. Housing austerity benefits the wealthy (by which I include all homeowners) by extracting economic rent from everyone less wealthy.
- TapWaterBandit 3y ago
  It really isn't just the boomers. It is landowners/homeowners of many different generations. The whole "blame the boomers" thing plays into the hands of the landowners shaking down the rest of us. Don't fall for it and focus on the actual problems not attacking a group.
  - roenxi 3y ago
    I certainly agree with you, it is more about how people behave than anything else. Nevertheless, if we look at how the Boomers acted, they: - Presided over a bunch of aggressive and needless wars. - Led the slow decay of the US economy, weighed down with regulation, struggling to build things and stuck in a money printing spiral. - Have done a terrible job of letting up the political reins to new blood, and generally allowed liberty to backslide in some stunning and catastrophic ways (pointing particularly at the monetary system that has been consistently getting more repressive and the surveillance state). In some sense it is impressive that they only got a few things wrong, as a generation there was some amazing technological work done. But it is hard to recover from political and economic mistakes that profound. There isn't enough real wealth generation, retirement savings have been blown up in a lot of exotic foreign countries like Iraq and someone is going to have to do without. It'd be fairest if the blow fell on the Boomers, they set this up. The next generation can pay for their own mistakes.
    - tantamounta 3y ago
      >> - Presided over a bunch of aggressive and needless wars. Sorry, help me out. What "bunch" of wars did they "Preside" over? Boomers were born 1946-1964 (per Wikipedia).
somewhereoutth 3y ago
The issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funnelled to the very wealthy. For example, medical bills. For example student loans. For example zero interest rates with zero wage inflation meaning accommodation costs don't fall as a proportion of income. The solution is to address wealth inequality. This means taking wealth away from those who have amassed too much, and returning it to those who had it stolen from them.
- colonelpopcorn 3y ago
  Pretty sure the under class is by design. Anyone who's ever used the phrase "real job" believes in the necessary existence of an under class.
  - dantheman 3y ago
    Not at all, there a jobs that are good for students and other low skill/low experience workers... you can walk in and generate value, the phrase real job as I've heard it means career where with experience the amount of value increases.
    - giraffe_lady 3y ago
      What do you call a low experience worker, who only has access to jobs that pay insufficient to the cost of living? Underclass works fine for me. It seems like you do agree, you just either don't see that you do, or aren't honest enough to admit what the agreement means for the people who work these jobs. Their status as students or "other low skill" is irrelevant to their need to pay for food, housing, transport, healthcare etc.
      - BytesAndGears 3y ago
        It’s totally relevant because someone in their 20s might be able to live with their parents, or has multiple roommates etc. The amount of money that they need is much less than that of someone more established. It is a really interesting contrast though, that in Amsterdam where I now live (and many other parts of Europe), this divide doesn’t exist as strongly. We have a perfectly happy and healthy ~40 year old woman come to the office to tend to the plants, and she’s paid a totally fair livable wage. The guy who works at the cafeteria for the office complex supports his family in that job (and I’ve talked to him about it). Same with many other “low skill” workers that I talk to. Baristas at a cafe seem to still be mostly 20 year olds, but maybe a bit less so than in the US
lm28469 3y ago
It's more about real estate being seen as an investment vessel than "government regulations". Most building regulations have sounds basis, they exist because without them people were building very shady and dangerous housing Also people aren't homeless because there are no "homes", it usually runs much deeper than that
- fnimick 3y ago
  Building regulations yes, zoning regulations no. There's a community near me that has enormous housing shortages and yet they maintain a 1 acre minimum lot per single family house only to "preserve character". Does that sound like a safety issue to you?
  - rootusrootus 3y ago
    That sounds very unique, to the point of implausibility. Any community with a 1 acre minimum lot by definition doesn't have anything like an enormous housing shortage. That's rural density.
    - fnimick 3y ago
      You're right, the solution has been fixed as of this April (which I didn't realize until I went looking - thank you!) But up until then, Lexington had a huge housing shortage and skyrocketing prices, with strictly enforced zoning which basically banned all new housing construction. Teachers in the local schools were looking at a housing situation where prices started at around 30x their annual salaries. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/business/with-high-costs-little-new-housing-lexington-becomes-first-town-meet-ambitious-new-zoning-law/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/business/with-high-co...
    - antisthenes 3y ago
      > Any community with a 1 acre minimum lot by definition doesn't have anything like an enormous housing shortage. That's rural density. It could or it couldn't. It depends on how many people currently live there and how many people are _trying_ to live there, and how much is available for sale at any given time (e.g. real estate liquidity).
Ensorceled 3y ago
This is the standard conservative "big government" and "young people today don't want to work" rant. > The problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Regulation yes, but it's not the lack of building; we're building like crazy all over North America. Many new homes are "lost" and become second or third homes for the wealthy or airbnb rentals. Regulations are not building for high capacity, preferring to sprawl and build monster homes that house few, wealthier people. Regulations are preferring condos to low income rentals. > I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Yep, but unintentionally. Governments are cutting taxes on the wealthy while transferring remaining tax money to their investments in the form of corporate welfare. > Voting for more immigration which drives up demand for houses and voting for more regulations which constrain the supply of housing. One of the parties in the US and a couple in Canada are literally running on "Immigration is bad" platforms. People aren't voting for immigration, they are getting immigration despite how they are voting. > t the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. Instead, they resort to financial schemes, illegal activity, freeloading government benefits; they've checked out from the system. Ah yes, the welfare queen rant. People aren't "refusing to work", many are sick (physically and/or mentally) and/or homeless and can't take on jobs, not because they are lazy but because no one hires someone who smells like they haven't showered in a month. Companies are the ones resorting to financial schemes and illegal activity; wage theft and union busting is big business. Companies are freeloading FAR more than sick people. People have "checked out from the system" because the system has abandoned them. When homes are $1M or more, there is no point working a second or harder job in order to afford a home, for many people owning a home is now forever out of reach. > It seems that we are headed for an economic and political disaster. We are and the biggest part of the problem is people who have fallen for the "it's big government and poor people who are robbing you blind" story.
- fnimick 3y ago
  Agreed. We're in this mess because of unregulated capitalism, but sure, removing even more regulations will definitely solve it! (for the people who are fortunate enough to "have a venture" goes unsaid - the rest will be left poor, and they deserve it, for they weren't good / useful enough) There is absolutely an argument to be made here about regulatory capture with respect to zoning laws, parking minimums, etc making building dense housing impossible. The parent comment started fine and then devolved into typical libertarian drivel about how if we just remove ALL regulations to business, this will definitely get resolved.
lo_zamoyski 3y ago
> The other problem is related to the role of debt in modern society. I.e., state-sponsored usury.
voidwtf 3y ago
This can’t be a real, thought out, response. I’m living in Florida. I will agree with you that rent-seeking and increasingly abusive landlords are a huge problem here. However, the largest drivers of pricing out retirees in my anecdotal observations is uncontrolled healthcare, insurance, and food costs. The electric companies have also increased their rates and been allowed to add insane flat infrastructure recovery costs for storm damages. In the last two years the following has happened: The same box of cereal increased from ~$3.75 to ~$6.59 and gone from 19oz to 17oz. The electric company got an 11% rate increase approved and an additional ~$20 storm surcharge added. (The surcharge is in addition to the existing ~$8 storm protection fee which was supposed to cover storm damages and infra improvement). Vehicle insurance rates increased by ~20%. Homeowners insurance increased by ~40%. Health insurance and prescriptions have increased by insane, unquantifiable amounts. (Rates didn’t just increase, but benefits on plans were changed so significantly as to completely invalidate any previous cost-benefit-analysis. Coverage is no longer predictable due to ridiculously arbitrary rejections of coverage. A single asthma prescription increased from ~$20 to nearly ~$150 a month.) What you see a problem of government regulation I see as a problem of rampant greed and market manipulation to benefit a single class of individual. I watched the market respond to a crisis by increasing customer costs and turning the last couple years into their most profitable ever. I agree with you however that housing has been essentially weaponized, and I believe we’re quickly entering the age of the landlord. It’s preposterous that any person can be homeless while another person owns 50+ properties and provides little, to zero, value to society. It’s preposterous that we’re allowing collusion and price fixing in the rental market via 3rd party property management companies. It’s preposterous that rent amounts for a modest home or apartment require incomes and credit scores that only ~5-10% of the population has.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  > The same box of cereal increased from ~$3.75 to ~$6.59 and gone from 19oz to 17oz. Your claim is that cereal has experienced 96% inflation? Over what time frame?
  - voidwtf 3y ago
    Since the beginning of 2020, yes. Even the delayed statistics appear to support my anecdotal evidence. However, thanks to Publix sending receipts to my email account I can provide a more concrete example. Kellogg’s Fruit Loops “Family Size” 01/16/2020 21oz $4.79 ~$0.23/oz Today 18.4oz $8.59 ~$0.47/oz So yea, over a 100% increase…
btreecat 3y ago
Claiming there's a problem "with regulations" and it's also "the government's fault" is like saying "I'm hungry, have access to food, but actually doing the work to prepare the food and then eat the food, that's just not appealing." The body that created and enforces the regulations can also change them to make things easier. It's not a one direction street. Additionally I don't see much data (certainly none you point to) that supports much of what your claiming. How certain are you that your position is one based on the information at hand vs your feelings on the subject?
- humanrebar 3y ago
  Except a lot of the onerous regulations are local. And local landowners are effectively voting to price their political opposition out of the local housing market. Those people aren't around anymore to vote anymore. They're scrambling to find the next apartment to be priced out of in a few more years.
jorvi 3y ago
Yup. It might be painful for homeowners in the global West to realize, but for a healthy housing market, owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline. The benefit of owning a house should be that you get to customize it to your liking. The benefit of a rental should be that you can switch up relatively quickly. Houses being an investment vehicle is slowly poisoning society. Having a decent roof of your head is a human right, just like access to clean water or healthy food is.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  Why would owning and renting need to have identical economic ROI? As you yourself point out, there are non-monetary benefits with both choices. The renter is buying convenience. The owner is selling convenience.
- jjav 3y ago
  > owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline This is clearly impossible. I think everyone can agree that a house is worth something. It's a roof over your head, so that's worth something nonzero. So if you own it, you own some value. Might be low, might be lower than what you paid initially, but it's worth something nonetheless. If you perpetually rent you own nothing, so your equity is always $0.
sokoloff 3y ago
> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. This happens all the time in government. Every politician who campaigns on “we’re going to raise taxes on these other peiple to do this thing” is campaigning on this effect. Sometimes it’s this direct; other times it has extra steps. Surely this can’t be the first time you’ve seen this happen.
tomohawk 3y ago
[flagged]
someguydave 3y ago
If home buyers had to purchase debt on the private market rather than be granted thirty year inflation shelters by the government then home prices would drop quite a bit.
davidgerard 3y ago
The problem is not building houses. The ratio of empty houses to homeless people is between 5:1 and 35:1. This is not a supply-and-demand issue, this is a failure of public policy.
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  That ratio is bogus. It includes a lot of homes that are abandoned and beyond repair, vacation homes that are seasonally vacant and not even close to the same areas where people are homeless, and homes that are temporarily vacant as they transition between owners or renters. On top of that, the number of homeless people is usually understated. It's definitely a supply and demand issue.
breakyerself 3y ago
It's also a market failure. Entry level homes are not as profitable so less are being built. The government used to build public housing, but no longer does. So it's almost entirely on private industry to meet a public need and the invisible hand isn't as omnipotent or benevolent as Neoliberal policy would have you believe.
maxerickson 3y ago
For an individual, the point of debt is to benefit now from future income or productivity. That's it.
dpeckett 3y ago
I'm increasingly getting worried about the stability of the current situation. We have a tremendous collapse of the construction industry (housing starts at a 50 year low, at least here in germany) and many commentators are predicting ever increasing rents. This in the face of a fertility collapse across the developed world and a rapidly aging population. Most of the youth is waking up to the idea their pensions will be worthless when it comes retirement age. A lot of social services are feeling the strain (and exploding costs). It really is the biggest issue of our generation.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  If I was a kid today, I'd be pissed about those things yes, but I'd be more pissed that we're destabilizing the global climate system. I'm not so surprised about the fertility collapse; I'm more surprised that anyone still has children at all.
  - dpeckett 3y ago
    Ironically enough I'm more optimistic we can mitigate the worst impacts of climate change (as it's more of an engineering and technology issue). Sure the transition will be expensive but we're making solid progress [1] and we still have a bunch of unused tools in our tool belt (geoengineering, cloud brightening, carbon capture etc). Demographically (and by proxy politically) though things are far from improving, we are just getting started. Just look at the massive social unrest caused by European states attempting to raise pension ages. God forbid we try and unwind some of the ZIRP associated housing inflation (in a democracy where the older homeowners hold a political majority it will never happen willingly). 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvlq3oMvEm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvlq3oMvEm8
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      I live in South Texas and the heat this year really broke me. And we're not exactly that far into the climate change experience. I feel like if you don't live in the heat, then it's a lot easier to dismiss it. And globally speaking, carbon emissions only ever increase. I don't disagree that there are potential engineering solutions and the advancement of green energy has been quite impressive. I myself plan on getting an electric car likely before this year is done to hopefully reduce my personal transportation emissions. I feel that it's all too late however. I've always found it odd that societal/financial problems are seen as insurmountable when they are really just human inventions; we could forgive all/some portion of debts, and all the people and infrastructure who exist today would be exactly the same tomorrow. But the very air we breathe contains a third more carbon today than it did when my parents were born; it's an awesome (in the bad way) feat of humanity that we've altered the very atmosphere of our planet in such a dramatic fashion, and there's no simple way to remove it.
escapedmoose 3y ago
Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird conclusion to draw. Zoning law in some places makes building new homes very difficult, so I would like to see less/different local regulation there. But other than zoning it seems it would help more if the government would step in to disallow large leasing companies buying up giant swathes of the housing stock just to flip into rentals. Maybe incentivize those companies to increase their ratio of new construction, to help solve this supply issue.
- packetlost 3y ago
  We, IMO, need a progressive tax system for every home controlled by an entity that isn't their primary residence. You don't want to hurt small individuals trying to build up wealth, but we need to stop allowing large corporations to turn basic necessities into investment vehicles.
  - junofan 3y ago
    I don’t think houses should be used by anybody to build up wealth.
    - gaganyaan 3y ago
      As a blanket statement, I don't think that makes much sense. You'd be opposed to someone working hard on their own house over the years to improve it so that they can sell it when they're older?
      - amrocha 3y ago
        Realistically that doesn't really happen. It's all about land, the building itself is a liability not an asset.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
> Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. It all comes down to one simple problem. Housing is both investment AND acquiring housing is basic survival necessity. As long as both are true, the problem will persist. Imagine a world where rich individuals and investment bankers would decide they have too much cash and want to use it to buy out all food. They calculated this will drive food prices up and they could sell it with a profit. They bought it all and now they sit on piles of food that are increasing in price while majority of the population is slowly dying of starvation. What's more, at some point some will start selling it and the food prices will suddenly go down and they will ask the government to somehow make sure the prices stay high. They already got used to the fact the prices of food will be exorbitant. Maybe they bought it when it was already high? Or maybe they took a loan to buy that mountain of food but the loan is contingent on the price of the food being high. All the while people keep starving. Ridiculous, and yet this is what is happening to housing. There are as far as I know only two basic angles to solve this problem: 1) Make so that houses are no longer investments or at least not the best investment out there. 2) Make so that acquiring housing is no longer necessary for survival. The problem is as you said -- majority of the population who have invested in a property and now think it is more important for them personally to benefit from increasing prices than solve one of the more important problems for the society.
test6554 3y ago
Remote work / flexible schedules has changed how people use their homes. Older homes are not what people want to buy these days. People want a home that they can both live and work in. One in which both partners can possibly work from home at the same time. One that makes caring for kids easier while they work from home. They also want to have media rooms as fewer people go to theaters and more people stream movies from home. Also private pools are still a popular choice, but more so after covid made public pool use off limits. So of course new construction is expensive now. Because new floor plans are in demand.
hk1337 3y ago
> Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. To be fair, nobody wants to see their home value drop except in terms of tax liability. If you buy your house for 400k you don't want the value to drop to 350k
mcv 3y ago
> Part of the problem is government regulation. And not just too much regulation, but the wrong kind of regulation, and a lack of regulation in areas that need it. Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Corporations buying up homes in order to drive up prices shouldn't be allowed. Lots of things are allowed that shouldn't be. And yes, restrictions on building the kind of houses that people really need are also a problem. It's not a case of too much or too little regulation, but the wrong kind.
- alexb_ 3y ago
  > Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Rent gets raised by $500 because someone else would actually pay that much. Rent control is the ultimate "I got mine" - it rewards people who got in early while making it impossible for anyone else to have housing. The reason rent could go up that much is because supply is so artificially constrained.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
    > Rent gets raised by $500 because someone else would actually pay that much. In many cases, rent gets raised by $500 for the unit to be vacant so the landlord can claim to have $500 more in revenue per month (and get loans on that). In some parts of the country - you have >50% of units in large population centers owned and/or operated by just a few companies. Like KSA reducing oil supply by 10% to increase prices 5% - sometimes strange things make sense when you have a cartel. In SF, I had many friends have their rent raised by 10% - move out - the unit sit vacant for 6 months, and then the price reduced back to what it was and still be vacant. I wouldn't assume any time landlords are raising prices - it's because they had a bidding war on the unit and someone's paying more.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      Those are different from the places where the vacancy rates are low, people have trouble finding vacant apartments at any price, and the rent increases are limited. It was a nightmare finding a place to rent in Lausanne. The rents were affordable compared to my salary, but the competition for units was fierce. Since bidding wars weren’t allowed, landlords would use other criteria to select tenants (being a foreigner was a negative).
turdprincess 3y ago
Curious - which individuals benefit from housing values rising? It seems like if you own a home, and it gets more expensive, you have more money on paper, but how do you benefit from that? If you sell your house and buy another, you wont make more money - your profit theoretically wouldn't change. Same with selling and renting if rents are going up as well. Is it primarily then people who invest in real estate outside of their primary home?
- sonotathrowaway 3y ago
  The current size of the heloc (home equity line of credit) market is around 336 billion dollars.
  - turdprincess 3y ago
    I’m not sure I buy this - who is looking to max out their HELOC? Of course one good reason to do that is to buy another property, but of course, this again is a chicken or egg problem where no actual gain being made.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  People who are downsizing later in life benefit while alive. People who move from an expensive area to a lower cost area benefit while alive. People who intend to leave an inheritance benefit after death (and therefore psychologically while alive). People who borrow against the property (via a cash-out refinance or HELOC) benefit while alive. People who sell their individual condos and move in together might benefit from price appreciation (depending on how much more expensive the shared place is). People who do none of those things but who realize they could downsize or move to a cheaper area if things went sideways benefit from the psychological security aspect.
gymbeaux 3y ago
People seem to more or less recognize why utilities like electricity and water should be regulated and government-run/non-profit, but why doesn’t that same attitude apply to housing? Housing is at least/more important than access to electricity and potable water yet we rely on companies like KB Home to build housing for this country. They will build as long as it’s good for business, and stop building as long as it’s good for business.
- trident5000 3y ago
  The only reason they're regulated is because of logistical and permitting issues. Not because they're special for any other reason. If there was private competition for delivering water it might even be cheaper.
  - etc-hosts 3y ago
    I tried to find an example of a water system in America that posted cheaper rates after being privatized. I could not. I found a couple of examples of complete disaster though. Do you have any examples I can read about?
    - trident5000 3y ago
      Im going to have to decline doing a research project for you. Regardless and back to the main point of my comment - the reason 3/4 of water delivery is a public service is from permitting and other red tape primarily. Not because of reasons having to do with pricing.
      - etc-hosts 3y ago
        You're the one claiming privatizing a water system could be cheaper! I could not find an example. I did try.
        trident5000 3y ago
        Im sure you put a royal effort into that.
pierat 3y ago
Ive seen your Reaganite "the government and regulations are the enemy" comments since Ive been born, and it was crap then and it's crap now. In fact, dereg is how we've gotten to this point. Housing has been turned from "a place to live" to a "place we can extract rents to make bank". And with the nature of landlording, the rents are priced to "mortgage+profit", so they get their mortgage paid on our backs and grow their personal wealth, and top it off with even more profit. Policies that include a highly progressive tax after 2 homes should definitely be enacted, along with proper policing of flop houses (airbnb) in non-hotelier situations. Time to de-profit-ize housing.
- jpadkins 3y ago
  > Time to de-profit-ize housing. Can you cite an example of where this policy has worked out well? It seems counter intuitive because removing the profit incentive seems like it would remove investments + labor and therefore reduce housing construction.
  - pierat 3y ago
    "Can you do the dirty job of recreating the housing market, and cite your sources in what amounts to a blog post?" Sure. Let me get right on that, after I get elected to be a Congresscritter.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - jpadkins 3y ago
      Can you at least try it locally on a small scale first? Also, what do you mean by de-profit-ize housing? Do plumbers and tradesmen no longer get to profit from building homes? Surveyors? Architects? Electricians? Financiers? How do you get homes built if no one is allowed to profit from their trade?
      - pierat 3y ago
        Since you have severe problems with "whataboutism" and scope creep to idiocy; my rates to answer your questions are $150/hr , payable as a donation to the EFF.
Eric_WVGG 3y ago
> At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. I was with you right up to this comment. No, most of us who do not own homes do not descend into some weird shadow economy. We just keep showing up to work and giving all of our money to landlords and imagine what it would be like to have retirement savings.
loeg 3y ago
> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Voting for more immigration which drives up demand for houses and voting for more regulations which constrain the supply of housing. Yes, sure. > At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. This seems more like a fringe conspiracy theory. I don't think it's true in an anecdotal or statistically measurable sense.
tzs 3y ago
Older people generally are more likely to vote for the anti-immigration party.
FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Everyone says its regulations. But nobody wants leaky pipes, and faulty electrical wiring. Which is what happens when you start cutting back regulations, because construction contractors will cut corners, to a really shocking degree.
- coryrc 3y ago
  1. Those aren't the regulations people are mostly referencing; it's mostly zoning. 2. The electrical regulation requiring AFCI breakers increases the panel cost from $500 to $2500+ for a negligible safety increase. This is a problem!
  - FrustratedMonky 3y ago
    "negligible". Is the problem. One persons "negligible", is another persons lost finger. Construction contractors don't really care if you die. They might shrug, feel bad for an hour. The current regulations are for "MINIMUM" standards. And those already get pushed. If we reduce the regulations, then those will also get pushed beyond. Then we become like third world countries were buildings just collapse.
lasermike026 3y ago
The problem is the market. Corrective action and regulation must be made.
damnesian 3y ago
>Part of the problem is government regulation Perhaps, but I think the more difficult issue in communities is how developers take over city councils and hamstring especially high-density development to benefit themselves personally- to eliminate competition and only let their or friends' own pet projects see the light of day. Also since they are almost always wealthy, they do not want housing to assist the poor or nontraditional housing that takes advantage of alternative energy to be built near their properties because in their mind it devalues them. I think they are going to be tragically wrong in the near future, but the bubble around capitalist-oriented real estate is VERY strong and unlikely to burst until it's catastrophic.
jxramos 3y ago
I'm starting to wonder about the debt and housing matter more deeply of late. I don't know what avenues investments should pour into but it seems like propping up housing as some trustworthy investment return seems to be an indicator of no one knowing where else they should park their money productively. Somehow housing investment is like an admission we don't know of any future productive and lucrative prospects any longer.
jollyllama 3y ago
>The government should not allow itself to be weaponized against part of the population for the benefit of another. Great post, but isn't that the definition of government?
jklinger410 3y ago
America has commodified every aspect of itself, turning everything into a market. Houses should have strict regulation around who can own them (ie fewer investment schemes), and the fed should have anti-NIMBY laws at a federal level.
dmn322 3y ago
Every major religion says to take care of the poor. Maybe there's a deep sociological reason for it. > they've checked out from the system Everyone checks out of participation in a group that does nothing to benefit them. Rich people complain about taxes taking "their" money, but the system is taking something much more precious from the poor. It's taking their time and their ability to experience the things that make life worthwhile --- time with friends and family, time in nature. You can say all you want that people need to work for it, but they also need to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and that's not happening.
webdoodle 3y ago
Unless you inherited $$$ you are more likely a debt slave via indentured servitude; student loans, credit card debt, etc.
klipt 3y ago
> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population With varying degrees of subtlety, I think this is most of politics. Corporations and small business/asset owners lobby or vote for laws that favor or subsidize them all the time. Homeowners are a very large class of voter that all own the same type of asset. But at least for people with kids it seems very short sighted to cripple your own kids' lifestyle just for a higher number in your bank account.
hparadiz 3y ago
Local governments also want to see the price increase because it increases their tax revenue disproportionally. You've got local governments in high col areas way overfunded. This creates an incentive for local governments to block housing with "open space" laws that environmentalists love. The area where I live outside LA was built in the 50s and 60s and then in the 80s they passed a bunch of laws to make it illegal to build more. The selfishness of that generation will never cease to amaze me. It's not boomers. It's their parents. Think Reagen.
fnordpiglet 3y ago
This situation is the first generation facing the end of pensions, the first generation trying to retire on market individualized retirement plans and basic social security alone. The free marketeers and the “you can do better than your pension fund” evangelists, most of whom are involved in asset management themselves, brought us this disaster. Compound that with the “die broke” movement that extolls profligate spending in mid life over saving, the urbanization of the populace, cost of health care, and unwillingness of people to relocate to much less expensive locations (I’ll leave affordable housing out of the equation, as there is affordable housing, just not in the hyper growth cores and the debate in those cores is toxic and intractable), and you have a situation where an entire generation is unable to afford life at their age, let alone retire. My parents are well educated, successful in their healthcare career, saved their entire life eschewing vacations and nice cars, and were self employed so didn’t have access to employer match, benefits, and paid double taxes on their business income then personal income. They have enough, and live in a very inexpensive part of the country. But even then it’s a just barely situation. I have to help them with repairs and wonder if they have enough for 15 or 20 years. I figure at some point they’ll be dependent on me. At some point we have to acknowledge the free market doesn’t work for everything. That what sounds good in a screed doesn’t always work well in the real world, where every permutation plays out in a human life but without do-overs, where the average experience isn’t a sufficient metric, where optimal expectation isn’t the singular goal, where it’s not just someone else, someone else’s parents, it’s you and your parents. And one day, it’ll be your kids. How many generations will we subject to this 1980’s republican dystopia?
kuschku 3y ago
It's primarily the missing middle. Skyscrapers and high rises only work for luxury apartments or shitty soviet style blocks. Single family homes only work in rural areas. The vast majority of cities and housing demand is in-between, which is entirely missing in the US. You'd expect 90% of housing to be row houses or 3-4 floor apartment buildings, but in the US, that's just not existing. Sure, the housing market in Europe is struggling as well, but it's not even close to the situation in the US because so much affordable housing in mixed-use middle density buildings is available. And with small shops on the bottom floor, offices on the second floor and 2-3 floors of housing above, this greatly reduces traffic (and in turn, infrastructure cost) as well. I believe the US is finally wising up to this with "5 over 2" style housing, but I don't know enough about that to actually judge how well it works.
- mcntsh 3y ago
  > Sure, the housing market in Europe is struggling as well, but it's not even close to the situation in the US because so much affordable housing in mixed-use middle density buildings is available. Housing affordability in Europe is, in most places, way worse than in the US. Not sure where Americans get this idea that it's better there.
  - kuschku 3y ago
    I'm not an american, I actually live in Germany. And as long as you rent instead of buying hohsing affordability is okay in most cities, and in those where it isn't the transit network is good enough that you can easily commute without an expensive car.
    - mcntsh 3y ago
      Yeah I also live in Germany and housing affordability is much much worse than in the USA. The ratio of the median income to the median housing cost is significantly worse: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... Renting in the US also is very cheap outside of cities. You can rent in New Jersey and take the train into NYC, or rent in Vallejo and take the train into San Francisco. Over all the income/rent or mortgage ratio, in my experience having rented and purchased in both countries, is much more favorable in the US. Quality of life is a different story.
blastro 3y ago
Not that I disagree with the direction of your post, but: > The government should not allow itself to be weaponized against part of the population for the benefit of another. That is literally the point of the government.
zackmorris 3y ago
It's odd to me that the wrong take has risen to the top of the comments, but not surprising. HN isn't what it used to be, demonstrated by how long threads dominate the front page while the actual answers fall below the fold. Regulation isn't the problem, or even part of the problem. Wealth inequality is. Which is counterbalanced by progressive taxation. But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are. Quite literally, this Silent Depression is your fault - the titans of the tech industry. Since we can't rely on our last best hope for breaking this generational trauma we're trapped in to bring actual solutions like UBI, then tech and the financial system it metastasizes may be the enemy. I've had this feeling for a long time, at least since the Housing Bubble popped, 9/11 and the Dot Bomb, but probably as far back as the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s, and even before that with the disingenuous messaging coming out of the Reagan administration before I was old enough to understand politics. I remember the news being filled with imagery of tanks rolling through the Middle East and starving children, asking myself why the world would even have wars or hunger when we have nuclear weapons and billions of dollars that could help people. Until I learned that financial elites stoke those fires to further US hegemony to prevent the owner class from being toppled. I dunno, I just have this feeling that it's probably over. Young people are looking around and asking why they should take that third job to make rent and feed their kids this month, when that money just goes to paying Boomers' retirements in Vanguard and BlackRock. Maybe they can just take this year off instead, by taking this month's income and camping indefinitely, pulling the plug on the rat race and just living. Eventually forming small communal city states that provide for their citizens while the business world consumes itself since it doesn't produce anything like workers do. So it's looking like the working world will probably go communist in some fashion for survival. Not just in the US, but in Asia and the Global South. That's what I see in the red state I live in, with the influx of financial refugees, flying the libertarian flag in the frontier towns they've constructed without understanding their own communist tendencies. While with even the slightest central planning, continuing FDR's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, we could have been living like the Jetsons in 2023. Instead of selling out for trickle down economics and colonizing our own country with the poors propping up the service industry so that billionaires can richsplain to us how if we just worked harder we could be rich someday too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
- 3y ago
3seashells 3y ago
More houses, more area, more highways, more traffic, more jams. This whole solution was tried again and again, and failed predictably. What works is denser, more life able cities, instead of renimating 60s visions of suburbia to escape the problems inflicted by the.. 60s visions of suburbia. It's dead Jim..
Gibbon1 3y ago
I remember something you absolutely do not remember about cities in the bay area 50 years ago. There was open land inside cities in the bay area 50 years ago. All zoned for housing. And there were tracts of open land between cities. It's all gone. There isn't any infill to be filled. In the meantime it's become obvious that development model, convert another 100 acres of farmland to single family housing and add another lane to the freeway is terrible.
xg15 3y ago
Why do you suddenly need so much additional housing in the first place? Was there an earthquake I missed? Or a sudden population explosion? And which regulations are you talking about specifically?

8jef 3y ago

This

dwallin 3y ago

Immigration is such a straw man, an influx of people with generally low capital availability and incomes is clearly not the cause of expensively priced housing and rents. Saying government regulation causes it is also meaningless unless you specify WHAT government regulation you believe is causing housing issues, historical evidence clearly indicates that no regulation doesn’t lead to the outcome you desire. It’s very clear that the key is figuring out what sorts of regulation, taxes and laws would lead to an optimal solution and in order to begin to do that you really need to break down how the demand and supply of housing actually works. The demand side of rent prices is generally based on the surplus value created by an area for its residents. The value of rent prices is all about providing signals about relative utility to potential residents. This is key because it means that absolute rent is largely unimportant, the relative rent is the key. All rent paid above actual services provided does not create economic value, it instead captures surplus value from its residents and delivers it to rentiers. The issue with rent control and other similar regulation is not that it limits overall rent levels, it’s that it distorts the relative signaling. However this needs to be balanced with the negative effects large rent increases have upon tenants. A world where people are constantly forced to move due to a rapidly changing market might be price efficient, but it creates lots of negative externalities. The key here is establishing rent rules that are loose enough to create accurate price signaling, but tight enough to minimize these externalities. The demand side for purchasing for individuals is based on individuals and companies evaluating on a range of criteria which largely boils down to the utility it directly provides, the rent you can charge others for their utility in the properly (or conversely, the rent it allows you to avoid), and its value as a speculative investment. However it is clear that in the problematic markets we are discussing, the prices are extremely dominated by the latter two. This leads to the supply side of this also being somewhat counterintuitive. People seeking to invest their capital in property actually have two primary ways of profiting: via rent collected or by appreciation in property value. If you own property, and you have additional capital to invest, do you invest in improving your existing housing stock or into buying additional property? The answer is you invest in whichever has the highest rate of return. In low housing stock environments the answer is going to typically be to invest it in additional property over improving existing properties. You might think that rising rents would change this ratio, but this gets it backwards. Rising rents leads directly to increased property values and so largely has the opposite effect, it encourages investment in buying property over improving it. This makes it clear that to increase investment in housing stock, your best method is to discourage speculative investment in favor of investments that raise the quantity and quality of housing stock. The way you structure regulation, incentives and taxation should reflect this. Everything else is noise, and doesn't actually solve the problem. Side note: An exception here happens in cases where development leads to massive differential between start and end value. This is why in these sorts of high speculation environments development becomes highly slanted towards turning low density buildings into massively high density, high margin buildings. This is generally not ideal, as this type of construction has lots of negative externalities on its surrounding neighborhoods, and tends to make communities averse to further development. Making lots of small incremental improvements in housing stock is far less disruptive to neighborhoods but will only really happen in environments slanted towards improvement over speculation.

SamoyedFurFluff 3y ago

I wouldn’t attribute this to immigration. Generally (eta: in my understanding in the usa where this study also is) immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do. I otherwise agree the homeowning NIMBY class who want to retain neighborhood character or whatever suck, because as a consequence they are restricting housing. I also want to point the finger at corporations that buy up housing as an investment; there’s no reason any Corp should be buying up residential family housing and bleeding people dry through rents.

ejb999 3y ago
Just keep telling yourself that... NYC would strongly disagree. When you let 5-10 million +/- people into the country in a short amount of time - where are they supposed to live? Of course it drives up homelessness and home prices - use your common sense.
- addicted 3y ago
  NYC also had the same housing stock in 2020 as in 2000. Despite adding several Boston’s worth of population at the time. So I’m not sure it’s as simple as arguing it’s only the demand side when clearly the supply side hasn’t kept up.
TapWaterBandit 3y ago
Immigration is clearly an undeniable part of the problem. I am in Australia and when immigration was halted during covid rents declined in many places, often substantially. Now we are full-tilt on immigration again and rents are soaring. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that putting more people in a given area with the same amount of housing will cause the rents to rise.
- addicted 3y ago
  It was clearly the immigration because there was nothing else going on at the time that could explain the changes.

epistasis 3y ago

It's not only the regulations, but that regulations put Boomers in control of allowing housing locally. The combination of a generation that pulls up the ladder as soon as they have something, plus a government that caters to local homeowners has created a catastrophe for all but the wealthiest. Housing austerity benefits the wealthy (by which I include all homeowners) by extracting economic rent from everyone less wealthy.

TapWaterBandit 3y ago
It really isn't just the boomers. It is landowners/homeowners of many different generations. The whole "blame the boomers" thing plays into the hands of the landowners shaking down the rest of us. Don't fall for it and focus on the actual problems not attacking a group.
- roenxi 3y ago
  I certainly agree with you, it is more about how people behave than anything else. Nevertheless, if we look at how the Boomers acted, they: - Presided over a bunch of aggressive and needless wars. - Led the slow decay of the US economy, weighed down with regulation, struggling to build things and stuck in a money printing spiral. - Have done a terrible job of letting up the political reins to new blood, and generally allowed liberty to backslide in some stunning and catastrophic ways (pointing particularly at the monetary system that has been consistently getting more repressive and the surveillance state). In some sense it is impressive that they only got a few things wrong, as a generation there was some amazing technological work done. But it is hard to recover from political and economic mistakes that profound. There isn't enough real wealth generation, retirement savings have been blown up in a lot of exotic foreign countries like Iraq and someone is going to have to do without. It'd be fairest if the blow fell on the Boomers, they set this up. The next generation can pay for their own mistakes.
  - tantamounta 3y ago
    >> - Presided over a bunch of aggressive and needless wars. Sorry, help me out. What "bunch" of wars did they "Preside" over? Boomers were born 1946-1964 (per Wikipedia).

somewhereoutth 3y ago

The issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funnelled to the very wealthy. For example, medical bills. For example student loans. For example zero interest rates with zero wage inflation meaning accommodation costs don't fall as a proportion of income. The solution is to address wealth inequality. This means taking wealth away from those who have amassed too much, and returning it to those who had it stolen from them.

colonelpopcorn 3y ago
Pretty sure the under class is by design. Anyone who's ever used the phrase "real job" believes in the necessary existence of an under class.
- dantheman 3y ago
  Not at all, there a jobs that are good for students and other low skill/low experience workers... you can walk in and generate value, the phrase real job as I've heard it means career where with experience the amount of value increases.
  - giraffe_lady 3y ago
    What do you call a low experience worker, who only has access to jobs that pay insufficient to the cost of living? Underclass works fine for me. It seems like you do agree, you just either don't see that you do, or aren't honest enough to admit what the agreement means for the people who work these jobs. Their status as students or "other low skill" is irrelevant to their need to pay for food, housing, transport, healthcare etc.
    - BytesAndGears 3y ago
      It’s totally relevant because someone in their 20s might be able to live with their parents, or has multiple roommates etc. The amount of money that they need is much less than that of someone more established. It is a really interesting contrast though, that in Amsterdam where I now live (and many other parts of Europe), this divide doesn’t exist as strongly. We have a perfectly happy and healthy ~40 year old woman come to the office to tend to the plants, and she’s paid a totally fair livable wage. The guy who works at the cafeteria for the office complex supports his family in that job (and I’ve talked to him about it). Same with many other “low skill” workers that I talk to. Baristas at a cafe seem to still be mostly 20 year olds, but maybe a bit less so than in the US

lm28469 3y ago

It's more about real estate being seen as an investment vessel than "government regulations". Most building regulations have sounds basis, they exist because without them people were building very shady and dangerous housing Also people aren't homeless because there are no "homes", it usually runs much deeper than that

fnimick 3y ago
Building regulations yes, zoning regulations no. There's a community near me that has enormous housing shortages and yet they maintain a 1 acre minimum lot per single family house only to "preserve character". Does that sound like a safety issue to you?
- rootusrootus 3y ago
  That sounds very unique, to the point of implausibility. Any community with a 1 acre minimum lot by definition doesn't have anything like an enormous housing shortage. That's rural density.
  - fnimick 3y ago
    You're right, the solution has been fixed as of this April (which I didn't realize until I went looking - thank you!) But up until then, Lexington had a huge housing shortage and skyrocketing prices, with strictly enforced zoning which basically banned all new housing construction. Teachers in the local schools were looking at a housing situation where prices started at around 30x their annual salaries. https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/business/with-high-costs-little-new-housing-lexington-becomes-first-town-meet-ambitious-new-zoning-law/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/business/with-high-co...
  - antisthenes 3y ago
    > Any community with a 1 acre minimum lot by definition doesn't have anything like an enormous housing shortage. That's rural density. It could or it couldn't. It depends on how many people currently live there and how many people are _trying_ to live there, and how much is available for sale at any given time (e.g. real estate liquidity).

Ensorceled 3y ago

This is the standard conservative "big government" and "young people today don't want to work" rant. > The problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Regulation yes, but it's not the lack of building; we're building like crazy all over North America. Many new homes are "lost" and become second or third homes for the wealthy or airbnb rentals. Regulations are not building for high capacity, preferring to sprawl and build monster homes that house few, wealthier people. Regulations are preferring condos to low income rentals. > I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Yep, but unintentionally. Governments are cutting taxes on the wealthy while transferring remaining tax money to their investments in the form of corporate welfare. > Voting for more immigration which drives up demand for houses and voting for more regulations which constrain the supply of housing. One of the parties in the US and a couple in Canada are literally running on "Immigration is bad" platforms. People aren't voting for immigration, they are getting immigration despite how they are voting. > t the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. Instead, they resort to financial schemes, illegal activity, freeloading government benefits; they've checked out from the system. Ah yes, the welfare queen rant. People aren't "refusing to work", many are sick (physically and/or mentally) and/or homeless and can't take on jobs, not because they are lazy but because no one hires someone who smells like they haven't showered in a month. Companies are the ones resorting to financial schemes and illegal activity; wage theft and union busting is big business. Companies are freeloading FAR more than sick people. People have "checked out from the system" because the system has abandoned them. When homes are $1M or more, there is no point working a second or harder job in order to afford a home, for many people owning a home is now forever out of reach. > It seems that we are headed for an economic and political disaster. We are and the biggest part of the problem is people who have fallen for the "it's big government and poor people who are robbing you blind" story.

fnimick 3y ago
Agreed. We're in this mess because of unregulated capitalism, but sure, removing even more regulations will definitely solve it! (for the people who are fortunate enough to "have a venture" goes unsaid - the rest will be left poor, and they deserve it, for they weren't good / useful enough) There is absolutely an argument to be made here about regulatory capture with respect to zoning laws, parking minimums, etc making building dense housing impossible. The parent comment started fine and then devolved into typical libertarian drivel about how if we just remove ALL regulations to business, this will definitely get resolved.

lo_zamoyski 3y ago

> The other problem is related to the role of debt in modern society. I.e., state-sponsored usury.

voidwtf 3y ago

This can’t be a real, thought out, response. I’m living in Florida. I will agree with you that rent-seeking and increasingly abusive landlords are a huge problem here. However, the largest drivers of pricing out retirees in my anecdotal observations is uncontrolled healthcare, insurance, and food costs. The electric companies have also increased their rates and been allowed to add insane flat infrastructure recovery costs for storm damages. In the last two years the following has happened: The same box of cereal increased from ~$3.75 to ~$6.59 and gone from 19oz to 17oz. The electric company got an 11% rate increase approved and an additional ~$20 storm surcharge added. (The surcharge is in addition to the existing ~$8 storm protection fee which was supposed to cover storm damages and infra improvement). Vehicle insurance rates increased by ~20%. Homeowners insurance increased by ~40%. Health insurance and prescriptions have increased by insane, unquantifiable amounts. (Rates didn’t just increase, but benefits on plans were changed so significantly as to completely invalidate any previous cost-benefit-analysis. Coverage is no longer predictable due to ridiculously arbitrary rejections of coverage. A single asthma prescription increased from ~$20 to nearly ~$150 a month.) What you see a problem of government regulation I see as a problem of rampant greed and market manipulation to benefit a single class of individual. I watched the market respond to a crisis by increasing customer costs and turning the last couple years into their most profitable ever. I agree with you however that housing has been essentially weaponized, and I believe we’re quickly entering the age of the landlord. It’s preposterous that any person can be homeless while another person owns 50+ properties and provides little, to zero, value to society. It’s preposterous that we’re allowing collusion and price fixing in the rental market via 3rd party property management companies. It’s preposterous that rent amounts for a modest home or apartment require incomes and credit scores that only ~5-10% of the population has.

gcanyon 3y ago
> The same box of cereal increased from ~$3.75 to ~$6.59 and gone from 19oz to 17oz. Your claim is that cereal has experienced 96% inflation? Over what time frame?
- voidwtf 3y ago
  Since the beginning of 2020, yes. Even the delayed statistics appear to support my anecdotal evidence. However, thanks to Publix sending receipts to my email account I can provide a more concrete example. Kellogg’s Fruit Loops “Family Size” 01/16/2020 21oz $4.79 ~$0.23/oz Today 18.4oz $8.59 ~$0.47/oz So yea, over a 100% increase…

btreecat 3y ago

Claiming there's a problem "with regulations" and it's also "the government's fault" is like saying "I'm hungry, have access to food, but actually doing the work to prepare the food and then eat the food, that's just not appealing." The body that created and enforces the regulations can also change them to make things easier. It's not a one direction street. Additionally I don't see much data (certainly none you point to) that supports much of what your claiming. How certain are you that your position is one based on the information at hand vs your feelings on the subject?

humanrebar 3y ago
Except a lot of the onerous regulations are local. And local landowners are effectively voting to price their political opposition out of the local housing market. Those people aren't around anymore to vote anymore. They're scrambling to find the next apartment to be priced out of in a few more years.

jorvi 3y ago

Yup. It might be painful for homeowners in the global West to realize, but for a healthy housing market, owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline. The benefit of owning a house should be that you get to customize it to your liking. The benefit of a rental should be that you can switch up relatively quickly. Houses being an investment vehicle is slowly poisoning society. Having a decent roof of your head is a human right, just like access to clean water or healthy food is.

rootusrootus 3y ago
Why would owning and renting need to have identical economic ROI? As you yourself point out, there are non-monetary benefits with both choices. The renter is buying convenience. The owner is selling convenience.
jjav 3y ago
> owning a house or renting a house needs to end up having the same amount of return on a 5-10-20-30-50 year timeline This is clearly impossible. I think everyone can agree that a house is worth something. It's a roof over your head, so that's worth something nonzero. So if you own it, you own some value. Might be low, might be lower than what you paid initially, but it's worth something nonetheless. If you perpetually rent you own nothing, so your equity is always $0.

sokoloff 3y ago

> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. This happens all the time in government. Every politician who campaigns on “we’re going to raise taxes on these other peiple to do this thing” is campaigning on this effect. Sometimes it’s this direct; other times it has extra steps. Surely this can’t be the first time you’ve seen this happen.

tomohawk 3y ago

[flagged]

someguydave 3y ago

If home buyers had to purchase debt on the private market rather than be granted thirty year inflation shelters by the government then home prices would drop quite a bit.

davidgerard 3y ago

The problem is not building houses. The ratio of empty houses to homeless people is between 5:1 and 35:1. This is not a supply-and-demand issue, this is a failure of public policy.

rootusrootus 3y ago
That ratio is bogus. It includes a lot of homes that are abandoned and beyond repair, vacation homes that are seasonally vacant and not even close to the same areas where people are homeless, and homes that are temporarily vacant as they transition between owners or renters. On top of that, the number of homeless people is usually understated. It's definitely a supply and demand issue.

breakyerself 3y ago

It's also a market failure. Entry level homes are not as profitable so less are being built. The government used to build public housing, but no longer does. So it's almost entirely on private industry to meet a public need and the invisible hand isn't as omnipotent or benevolent as Neoliberal policy would have you believe.

maxerickson 3y ago

For an individual, the point of debt is to benefit now from future income or productivity. That's it.

dpeckett 3y ago

I'm increasingly getting worried about the stability of the current situation. We have a tremendous collapse of the construction industry (housing starts at a 50 year low, at least here in germany) and many commentators are predicting ever increasing rents. This in the face of a fertility collapse across the developed world and a rapidly aging population. Most of the youth is waking up to the idea their pensions will be worthless when it comes retirement age. A lot of social services are feeling the strain (and exploding costs). It really is the biggest issue of our generation.

hotpotamus 3y ago
If I was a kid today, I'd be pissed about those things yes, but I'd be more pissed that we're destabilizing the global climate system. I'm not so surprised about the fertility collapse; I'm more surprised that anyone still has children at all.
- dpeckett 3y ago
  Ironically enough I'm more optimistic we can mitigate the worst impacts of climate change (as it's more of an engineering and technology issue). Sure the transition will be expensive but we're making solid progress [1] and we still have a bunch of unused tools in our tool belt (geoengineering, cloud brightening, carbon capture etc). Demographically (and by proxy politically) though things are far from improving, we are just getting started. Just look at the massive social unrest caused by European states attempting to raise pension ages. God forbid we try and unwind some of the ZIRP associated housing inflation (in a democracy where the older homeowners hold a political majority it will never happen willingly). 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvlq3oMvEm8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvlq3oMvEm8
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    I live in South Texas and the heat this year really broke me. And we're not exactly that far into the climate change experience. I feel like if you don't live in the heat, then it's a lot easier to dismiss it. And globally speaking, carbon emissions only ever increase. I don't disagree that there are potential engineering solutions and the advancement of green energy has been quite impressive. I myself plan on getting an electric car likely before this year is done to hopefully reduce my personal transportation emissions. I feel that it's all too late however. I've always found it odd that societal/financial problems are seen as insurmountable when they are really just human inventions; we could forgive all/some portion of debts, and all the people and infrastructure who exist today would be exactly the same tomorrow. But the very air we breathe contains a third more carbon today than it did when my parents were born; it's an awesome (in the bad way) feat of humanity that we've altered the very atmosphere of our planet in such a dramatic fashion, and there's no simple way to remove it.

escapedmoose 3y ago

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird conclusion to draw. Zoning law in some places makes building new homes very difficult, so I would like to see less/different local regulation there. But other than zoning it seems it would help more if the government would step in to disallow large leasing companies buying up giant swathes of the housing stock just to flip into rentals. Maybe incentivize those companies to increase their ratio of new construction, to help solve this supply issue.

packetlost 3y ago
We, IMO, need a progressive tax system for every home controlled by an entity that isn't their primary residence. You don't want to hurt small individuals trying to build up wealth, but we need to stop allowing large corporations to turn basic necessities into investment vehicles.
- junofan 3y ago
  I don’t think houses should be used by anybody to build up wealth.
  - gaganyaan 3y ago
    As a blanket statement, I don't think that makes much sense. You'd be opposed to someone working hard on their own house over the years to improve it so that they can sell it when they're older?
    - amrocha 3y ago
      Realistically that doesn't really happen. It's all about land, the building itself is a liability not an asset.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

> Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. It all comes down to one simple problem. Housing is both investment AND acquiring housing is basic survival necessity. As long as both are true, the problem will persist. Imagine a world where rich individuals and investment bankers would decide they have too much cash and want to use it to buy out all food. They calculated this will drive food prices up and they could sell it with a profit. They bought it all and now they sit on piles of food that are increasing in price while majority of the population is slowly dying of starvation. What's more, at some point some will start selling it and the food prices will suddenly go down and they will ask the government to somehow make sure the prices stay high. They already got used to the fact the prices of food will be exorbitant. Maybe they bought it when it was already high? Or maybe they took a loan to buy that mountain of food but the loan is contingent on the price of the food being high. All the while people keep starving. Ridiculous, and yet this is what is happening to housing. There are as far as I know only two basic angles to solve this problem: 1) Make so that houses are no longer investments or at least not the best investment out there. 2) Make so that acquiring housing is no longer necessary for survival. The problem is as you said -- majority of the population who have invested in a property and now think it is more important for them personally to benefit from increasing prices than solve one of the more important problems for the society.

test6554 3y ago

Remote work / flexible schedules has changed how people use their homes. Older homes are not what people want to buy these days. People want a home that they can both live and work in. One in which both partners can possibly work from home at the same time. One that makes caring for kids easier while they work from home. They also want to have media rooms as fewer people go to theaters and more people stream movies from home. Also private pools are still a popular choice, but more so after covid made public pool use off limits. So of course new construction is expensive now. Because new floor plans are in demand.

hk1337 3y ago

> Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. To be fair, nobody wants to see their home value drop except in terms of tax liability. If you buy your house for 400k you don't want the value to drop to 350k

mcv 3y ago

> Part of the problem is government regulation. And not just too much regulation, but the wrong kind of regulation, and a lack of regulation in areas that need it. Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Corporations buying up homes in order to drive up prices shouldn't be allowed. Lots of things are allowed that shouldn't be. And yes, restrictions on building the kind of houses that people really need are also a problem. It's not a case of too much or too little regulation, but the wrong kind.

alexb_ 3y ago
> Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Rent gets raised by $500 because someone else would actually pay that much. Rent control is the ultimate "I got mine" - it rewards people who got in early while making it impossible for anyone else to have housing. The reason rent could go up that much is because supply is so artificially constrained.
- onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
  > Rent gets raised by $500 because someone else would actually pay that much. In many cases, rent gets raised by $500 for the unit to be vacant so the landlord can claim to have $500 more in revenue per month (and get loans on that). In some parts of the country - you have >50% of units in large population centers owned and/or operated by just a few companies. Like KSA reducing oil supply by 10% to increase prices 5% - sometimes strange things make sense when you have a cartel. In SF, I had many friends have their rent raised by 10% - move out - the unit sit vacant for 6 months, and then the price reduced back to what it was and still be vacant. I wouldn't assume any time landlords are raising prices - it's because they had a bidding war on the unit and someone's paying more.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    Those are different from the places where the vacancy rates are low, people have trouble finding vacant apartments at any price, and the rent increases are limited. It was a nightmare finding a place to rent in Lausanne. The rents were affordable compared to my salary, but the competition for units was fierce. Since bidding wars weren’t allowed, landlords would use other criteria to select tenants (being a foreigner was a negative).

turdprincess 3y ago

Curious - which individuals benefit from housing values rising? It seems like if you own a home, and it gets more expensive, you have more money on paper, but how do you benefit from that? If you sell your house and buy another, you wont make more money - your profit theoretically wouldn't change. Same with selling and renting if rents are going up as well. Is it primarily then people who invest in real estate outside of their primary home?

sonotathrowaway 3y ago
The current size of the heloc (home equity line of credit) market is around 336 billion dollars.
- turdprincess 3y ago
  I’m not sure I buy this - who is looking to max out their HELOC? Of course one good reason to do that is to buy another property, but of course, this again is a chicken or egg problem where no actual gain being made.
sokoloff 3y ago
People who are downsizing later in life benefit while alive. People who move from an expensive area to a lower cost area benefit while alive. People who intend to leave an inheritance benefit after death (and therefore psychologically while alive). People who borrow against the property (via a cash-out refinance or HELOC) benefit while alive. People who sell their individual condos and move in together might benefit from price appreciation (depending on how much more expensive the shared place is). People who do none of those things but who realize they could downsize or move to a cheaper area if things went sideways benefit from the psychological security aspect.

gymbeaux 3y ago

People seem to more or less recognize why utilities like electricity and water should be regulated and government-run/non-profit, but why doesn’t that same attitude apply to housing? Housing is at least/more important than access to electricity and potable water yet we rely on companies like KB Home to build housing for this country. They will build as long as it’s good for business, and stop building as long as it’s good for business.

trident5000 3y ago
The only reason they're regulated is because of logistical and permitting issues. Not because they're special for any other reason. If there was private competition for delivering water it might even be cheaper.
- etc-hosts 3y ago
  I tried to find an example of a water system in America that posted cheaper rates after being privatized. I could not. I found a couple of examples of complete disaster though. Do you have any examples I can read about?
  - trident5000 3y ago
    Im going to have to decline doing a research project for you. Regardless and back to the main point of my comment - the reason 3/4 of water delivery is a public service is from permitting and other red tape primarily. Not because of reasons having to do with pricing.
    - etc-hosts 3y ago
      You're the one claiming privatizing a water system could be cheaper! I could not find an example. I did try.
      - trident5000 3y ago
        Im sure you put a royal effort into that.

pierat 3y ago

Ive seen your Reaganite "the government and regulations are the enemy" comments since Ive been born, and it was crap then and it's crap now. In fact, dereg is how we've gotten to this point. Housing has been turned from "a place to live" to a "place we can extract rents to make bank". And with the nature of landlording, the rents are priced to "mortgage+profit", so they get their mortgage paid on our backs and grow their personal wealth, and top it off with even more profit. Policies that include a highly progressive tax after 2 homes should definitely be enacted, along with proper policing of flop houses (airbnb) in non-hotelier situations. Time to de-profit-ize housing.

jpadkins 3y ago
> Time to de-profit-ize housing. Can you cite an example of where this policy has worked out well? It seems counter intuitive because removing the profit incentive seems like it would remove investments + labor and therefore reduce housing construction.
- pierat 3y ago
  "Can you do the dirty job of recreating the housing market, and cite your sources in what amounts to a blog post?" Sure. Let me get right on that, after I get elected to be a Congresscritter.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - jpadkins 3y ago
    Can you at least try it locally on a small scale first? Also, what do you mean by de-profit-ize housing? Do plumbers and tradesmen no longer get to profit from building homes? Surveyors? Architects? Electricians? Financiers? How do you get homes built if no one is allowed to profit from their trade?
    - pierat 3y ago
      Since you have severe problems with "whataboutism" and scope creep to idiocy; my rates to answer your questions are $150/hr , payable as a donation to the EFF.

Eric_WVGG 3y ago

> At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. I was with you right up to this comment. No, most of us who do not own homes do not descend into some weird shadow economy. We just keep showing up to work and giving all of our money to landlords and imagine what it would be like to have retirement savings.

loeg 3y ago

> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Voting for more immigration which drives up demand for houses and voting for more regulations which constrain the supply of housing. Yes, sure. > At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society. This seems more like a fringe conspiracy theory. I don't think it's true in an anecdotal or statistically measurable sense.

tzs 3y ago

Older people generally are more likely to vote for the anti-immigration party.

FrustratedMonky 3y ago

Everyone says its regulations. But nobody wants leaky pipes, and faulty electrical wiring. Which is what happens when you start cutting back regulations, because construction contractors will cut corners, to a really shocking degree.

coryrc 3y ago
1. Those aren't the regulations people are mostly referencing; it's mostly zoning. 2. The electrical regulation requiring AFCI breakers increases the panel cost from $500 to $2500+ for a negligible safety increase. This is a problem!
- FrustratedMonky 3y ago
  "negligible". Is the problem. One persons "negligible", is another persons lost finger. Construction contractors don't really care if you die. They might shrug, feel bad for an hour. The current regulations are for "MINIMUM" standards. And those already get pushed. If we reduce the regulations, then those will also get pushed beyond. Then we become like third world countries were buildings just collapse.

lasermike026 3y ago

The problem is the market. Corrective action and regulation must be made.

damnesian 3y ago

>Part of the problem is government regulation Perhaps, but I think the more difficult issue in communities is how developers take over city councils and hamstring especially high-density development to benefit themselves personally- to eliminate competition and only let their or friends' own pet projects see the light of day. Also since they are almost always wealthy, they do not want housing to assist the poor or nontraditional housing that takes advantage of alternative energy to be built near their properties because in their mind it devalues them. I think they are going to be tragically wrong in the near future, but the bubble around capitalist-oriented real estate is VERY strong and unlikely to burst until it's catastrophic.

jxramos 3y ago

I'm starting to wonder about the debt and housing matter more deeply of late. I don't know what avenues investments should pour into but it seems like propping up housing as some trustworthy investment return seems to be an indicator of no one knowing where else they should park their money productively. Somehow housing investment is like an admission we don't know of any future productive and lucrative prospects any longer.

jollyllama 3y ago

>The government should not allow itself to be weaponized against part of the population for the benefit of another. Great post, but isn't that the definition of government?

jklinger410 3y ago

America has commodified every aspect of itself, turning everything into a market. Houses should have strict regulation around who can own them (ie fewer investment schemes), and the fed should have anti-NIMBY laws at a federal level.

dmn322 3y ago

Every major religion says to take care of the poor. Maybe there's a deep sociological reason for it. > they've checked out from the system Everyone checks out of participation in a group that does nothing to benefit them. Rich people complain about taxes taking "their" money, but the system is taking something much more precious from the poor. It's taking their time and their ability to experience the things that make life worthwhile --- time with friends and family, time in nature. You can say all you want that people need to work for it, but they also need to enjoy the fruits of their labor, and that's not happening.

webdoodle 3y ago

Unless you inherited $$$ you are more likely a debt slave via indentured servitude; student loans, credit card debt, etc.

klipt 3y ago

> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population With varying degrees of subtlety, I think this is most of politics. Corporations and small business/asset owners lobby or vote for laws that favor or subsidize them all the time. Homeowners are a very large class of voter that all own the same type of asset. But at least for people with kids it seems very short sighted to cripple your own kids' lifestyle just for a higher number in your bank account.

hparadiz 3y ago

Local governments also want to see the price increase because it increases their tax revenue disproportionally. You've got local governments in high col areas way overfunded. This creates an incentive for local governments to block housing with "open space" laws that environmentalists love. The area where I live outside LA was built in the 50s and 60s and then in the 80s they passed a bunch of laws to make it illegal to build more. The selfishness of that generation will never cease to amaze me. It's not boomers. It's their parents. Think Reagen.

fnordpiglet 3y ago

This situation is the first generation facing the end of pensions, the first generation trying to retire on market individualized retirement plans and basic social security alone. The free marketeers and the “you can do better than your pension fund” evangelists, most of whom are involved in asset management themselves, brought us this disaster. Compound that with the “die broke” movement that extolls profligate spending in mid life over saving, the urbanization of the populace, cost of health care, and unwillingness of people to relocate to much less expensive locations (I’ll leave affordable housing out of the equation, as there is affordable housing, just not in the hyper growth cores and the debate in those cores is toxic and intractable), and you have a situation where an entire generation is unable to afford life at their age, let alone retire. My parents are well educated, successful in their healthcare career, saved their entire life eschewing vacations and nice cars, and were self employed so didn’t have access to employer match, benefits, and paid double taxes on their business income then personal income. They have enough, and live in a very inexpensive part of the country. But even then it’s a just barely situation. I have to help them with repairs and wonder if they have enough for 15 or 20 years. I figure at some point they’ll be dependent on me. At some point we have to acknowledge the free market doesn’t work for everything. That what sounds good in a screed doesn’t always work well in the real world, where every permutation plays out in a human life but without do-overs, where the average experience isn’t a sufficient metric, where optimal expectation isn’t the singular goal, where it’s not just someone else, someone else’s parents, it’s you and your parents. And one day, it’ll be your kids. How many generations will we subject to this 1980’s republican dystopia?

kuschku 3y ago

It's primarily the missing middle. Skyscrapers and high rises only work for luxury apartments or shitty soviet style blocks. Single family homes only work in rural areas. The vast majority of cities and housing demand is in-between, which is entirely missing in the US. You'd expect 90% of housing to be row houses or 3-4 floor apartment buildings, but in the US, that's just not existing. Sure, the housing market in Europe is struggling as well, but it's not even close to the situation in the US because so much affordable housing in mixed-use middle density buildings is available. And with small shops on the bottom floor, offices on the second floor and 2-3 floors of housing above, this greatly reduces traffic (and in turn, infrastructure cost) as well. I believe the US is finally wising up to this with "5 over 2" style housing, but I don't know enough about that to actually judge how well it works.

mcntsh 3y ago
> Sure, the housing market in Europe is struggling as well, but it's not even close to the situation in the US because so much affordable housing in mixed-use middle density buildings is available. Housing affordability in Europe is, in most places, way worse than in the US. Not sure where Americans get this idea that it's better there.
- kuschku 3y ago
  I'm not an american, I actually live in Germany. And as long as you rent instead of buying hohsing affordability is okay in most cities, and in those where it isn't the transit network is good enough that you can easily commute without an expensive car.
  - mcntsh 3y ago
    Yeah I also live in Germany and housing affordability is much much worse than in the USA. The ratio of the median income to the median housing cost is significantly worse: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... Renting in the US also is very cheap outside of cities. You can rent in New Jersey and take the train into NYC, or rent in Vallejo and take the train into San Francisco. Over all the income/rent or mortgage ratio, in my experience having rented and purchased in both countries, is much more favorable in the US. Quality of life is a different story.

blastro 3y ago

Not that I disagree with the direction of your post, but: > The government should not allow itself to be weaponized against part of the population for the benefit of another. That is literally the point of the government.

zackmorris 3y ago

It's odd to me that the wrong take has risen to the top of the comments, but not surprising. HN isn't what it used to be, demonstrated by how long threads dominate the front page while the actual answers fall below the fold. Regulation isn't the problem, or even part of the problem. Wealth inequality is. Which is counterbalanced by progressive taxation. But none of you want the rich to pay taxes, so here we are. Quite literally, this Silent Depression is your fault - the titans of the tech industry. Since we can't rely on our last best hope for breaking this generational trauma we're trapped in to bring actual solutions like UBI, then tech and the financial system it metastasizes may be the enemy. I've had this feeling for a long time, at least since the Housing Bubble popped, 9/11 and the Dot Bomb, but probably as far back as the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s, and even before that with the disingenuous messaging coming out of the Reagan administration before I was old enough to understand politics. I remember the news being filled with imagery of tanks rolling through the Middle East and starving children, asking myself why the world would even have wars or hunger when we have nuclear weapons and billions of dollars that could help people. Until I learned that financial elites stoke those fires to further US hegemony to prevent the owner class from being toppled. I dunno, I just have this feeling that it's probably over. Young people are looking around and asking why they should take that third job to make rent and feed their kids this month, when that money just goes to paying Boomers' retirements in Vanguard and BlackRock. Maybe they can just take this year off instead, by taking this month's income and camping indefinitely, pulling the plug on the rat race and just living. Eventually forming small communal city states that provide for their citizens while the business world consumes itself since it doesn't produce anything like workers do. So it's looking like the working world will probably go communist in some fashion for survival. Not just in the US, but in Asia and the Global South. That's what I see in the red state I live in, with the influx of financial refugees, flying the libertarian flag in the frontier towns they've constructed without understanding their own communist tendencies. While with even the slightest central planning, continuing FDR's New Deal and Johnson's Great Society, we could have been living like the Jetsons in 2023. Instead of selling out for trickle down economics and colonizing our own country with the poors propping up the service industry so that billionaires can richsplain to us how if we just worked harder we could be rich someday too. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

3y ago

3seashells 3y ago

More houses, more area, more highways, more traffic, more jams. This whole solution was tried again and again, and failed predictably. What works is denser, more life able cities, instead of renimating 60s visions of suburbia to escape the problems inflicted by the.. 60s visions of suburbia. It's dead Jim..

Gibbon1 3y ago

I remember something you absolutely do not remember about cities in the bay area 50 years ago. There was open land inside cities in the bay area 50 years ago. All zoned for housing. And there were tracts of open land between cities. It's all gone. There isn't any infill to be filled. In the meantime it's become obvious that development model, convert another 100 acres of farmland to single family housing and add another lane to the freeway is terrible.

xg15 3y ago

Why do you suddenly need so much additional housing in the first place? Was there an earthquake I missed? Or a sudden population explosion? And which regulations are you talking about specifically?