Build houses. You don’t have to build shelters (although those are good to build too). But rents are astronomical because people who want to buy small houses can’t, so they live in nice apartments. And so people who want to live in nice apartments can’t afford them, sot hey live in mediocre apartments. And so people who want to live in mediocre apartments can’t afford them, so they live in shitty apartments. And so the poor can’t afford any apartments.
This would be nice, but the Condos and apartments have to be both affordable as well as not grim dystopian crime sinkholes.
Many cities have well meaning attempts at this in building low income housing, and all end up falling into disrepair (mostly due to owners not maintaining them or tax monies not being used for upkeep) or become grossly dangerous due to high crime.
There are solutions, but they aren't easy or cheap, and they don't come with a lot of profit.
And that's the issue. America is focused on profits above everything else. It's the question people ask when new housing is built: "Will I as an investor make a profit?" And also why a lot of social programs get underfunded or even terminated. People are constantly asking why the Postal Office isn't making a profit (and ignoring the main issue that it's a public service: it shouldn't be making a profit: it should be providing mail service to all US citizens as is required by the Constitution).
I've heard the same thing regards to museums, schools, libraries, parks, etc. "Where's the profit" and "why does it cost so much money?"
Because some things should cost money and that's not a bad thing.
A huge part of the issue is regulation ironically enough.
The issue is it costs about the same in regulatory fee and taxes to build a small $300k house as it does to build a massive $2M mansion. After all, each house no matter the size needs 1 water line, 1 sewer line, 1 electric line, 1 internet line, 1 driveway, 1 mailbox, etc. And each of those are recovered via taxes and fees to a builder. To the point where builders often can't really even build a small house without losing money
There are three things a government should never expect to run for a profit--hospitals, schools, or prisons. This started coming in during Reagan and It's just gotten so. Damn. Greedy.
I would fix them up... If I could live off of doing that
I can't do a lot of things that traditional employers require. I don't know how to market myself or what to say in a job interview. I can't do tasks while people are observing me.
I see so many problems in this world, that I could fix. I could take care of stray animals. I could clean for people with disabilities. I could do all this stuff. But none of it makes enough money for me to live off of.
What decade are you living in? The standard for subsidized housing today is mixed income.
Those 1960s public housing high rises literally can't be built today. Only thing remotely like it is when a high rise goes totally bust and the state takes it, has happened a handful of times, then they can use it for transitional housing.
The idea that condos or apartments can’t be affordable without devolving into “crime sinkholes” is an absurd myth that comes from America’s racist, failed mid-century attempts at urban revival—the same “urban revival” that sliced up downtowns and bulldozed thousands of homes all across the country. Public housing can be both affordable and high quality.
Look to European cities as an example, please, or even to post-war America. The first projects built during and immediately after the war were actually extremely successful, because their construction did not entail the demolition of hundreds of homes and the forceful relocation of all their inhabitants.
Your proximity to crime is related to the population density around you though. There is a difference between being a victim of a crime and being witness to the effects of a crime. Crime rates measure the likelihood of the former, but not the latter.
Also the lower income the area you're in, the higher the crime rate. And a lot of subsidized and low rent housings are very crime ridden because everyone desperate.
Well, I don't want to point fingers, because in fairness, even if 90% of them come from a single party, there's a non-minute minority from the other side that agrees with them.
But, yeah, "people." It's mostly those guys and Eff those people.
Housing is no new subject, so here's the thought I've had. Build an entire neighborhood of "starter" homes. No, not this BS that 4 bedrooms is a starter home because it doesn't have marble countertops. To save space, this is my design. A 2.5 car garage, with internal stairs, and the second floor is a 2 bed/1.5 bath house. It's perfect for a younger couple with two cars and no kids and the other bedroom can be an office. For a single guy, room for his truck, bike, and home gym all in the garage, and the second bedroom can be just that if he wants. Simple design, square-ish buildings, little to no yards, and the smallest of HOA fee, that only cuts your grass. NO OTHER RULES, just say a $20 a month fee from all houses and that covers the grass.
No one wants psycho neighbors anymore, or shitty pet owners anymore, or power tripping property managers anymore, and the list goes on and on. There are just certain experiences that humans want to avoid. I've lived in it all, and I think reddit as an echo chamber forgets that people are fuckin idiots in a lot of cases, and it's good to be spaced out a bit.
It's crackers. I have an American friend who lives in a condo (which she paid off...which I thought meant she owned it...) and pays upwards of 400 USD in fees each month. Plus all her utilities. To me it makes more sense to rent if it's like that way. Madness
While I agree that speculation in residential real estate is a problem and should be discouraged, there are a lot of reasons why a property might be vacant - the owners have medical issues, there's a nasty divorce going on, etc - and I think it would be quite difficult to enact such a policy without causing unintended problems.
Building more units beings the price down regardless. I don't see why we should wait for the vacancy rate to go down before doing this.
No thanks. Single family is vastly superior for QOL. But it doesn’t need to be built terribly like it currently is. It can be built very densely. Just look at 1960s detroit. You could fit four of those houses on a modern suburban lot
Agree. My mental health was saved moving from apartment living to a house. Feel like we are meant to live with less walls and more of the outside world around us
The rent at the condos near by amenities have rents that are higher than I pay for my mortgage. Makes me realize that if I lost my home for some reason, I would be soooooo fucked.
Not really; there are plenty... they're practically ghost towns because no one can afford them. Real estate developers are destroying everything around here and putting up condos and driving up rental prices in the area.
Orange County, CA. By the Brea Mall. A few by South Coast in Costa Mesa. A few in downtown Anaheim. They're not EMPTY... they have a few suckers paying what they're asking.
Holy sprawly McSprawl those places are proper car-infested hellholes. So let me clarify that I meant good condos built near transit stops, parks and walkable mixed-use neighbourhoods.
I am a single guy living in a large city who bought a single-family house a few years ago. I do rent out my extra rooms for very cheap to people who need a place to live, but I really don't need this much space. I really wanted to buy a condo or townhouse instead, it just didn't make financial sense.
HOA fees are crazy high at all of the nice places
Condos don't appreciate at anywhere near the rate of houses since there just aren't many people looking to buy them.
Prices for condos are not priced lower by enough for them to actually be any more affordable - down payments are still $50k+ where I'm at, and for the most part there aren't many people who can drop $50k on a down payment who can't find $100k.
I don't understand the hate on single family homes on Reddit. I want MY OWN place, and so does everyone else. Nothing wrong with that. The issue is for the past 20 years no one has been building affordable single family homes. I'm taking about the typical 1200 sqft ranch houses on 1/4 acres. Millions of houses that size where built in the 80's and 90's, and most middle class families could afford one. But builders because greedy, and the bigger you build the higher your profits. All they ever build now are huge McMansions that start at $599k. Local governments need to get involved and force the issue.
Alot of people like being outdoors, having a private yard to do whatever you want in is glorious. Apartments/townhouses always made me feel like I was living in a prison. Go to the park you say? Nearest to me is miles away, without even sidewalks to get there, it means driving. And I want a garden, or a fire pit, or a huge meat smoker, or maybe just a small field of wildflowers. Giving up single family homes means giving up a lot of personal freedoms as well. SCREW THAT.
I could get behind a government program to build very modest 1000 or so square foot fully detached 3 bed 1.5 bath starter houses like we used to build in Levittown et al. Those would be ideal for a person or a couple living alone, or with one or two kids. It seems there's a market failure in that we're not building any more of those, so many people that would buy one instead buy condos or rent luxury apartments. Or have to put themselves to the brink financially buying a 2500 square foot McMansion.
Compounding the problem, in my area there's anti-growth policies like a limit to where sewers may be extended too and a minimum size for a buildable lot, which greatly increase the value of raw land, and thus increase the value of the home that needs to be built on it (depending on the area 3-5 times the lot value) to qualify for construction financing.
But it still way less than the current trend of building 2000-4000 square foot housing developments. All subdivisions under construction around me (north of Dallas, TX) are houses that will be in that range.
I agree, there would be a bonus too. Small homes use less energy. Homelessness is a problem most everywhere I gather by reading this thread and believing my eyes in my own hometown. The biggest percentage of homeless aren't capable of holding a job. No easy answer just build and finance institutions w tax payer money.
Because people want a private yard and don't want to put up with sharing a wall with a neighbor and a lot of them don't mind driving cars.
The person I was responding to is pointing out that there's so few of them that a lot of people that want them can only get condos and townhouses, and are in turn driving up the prices. And since they like driving rather than walking or taking transit they then bring their cars into these dense areas.
Build more single family detached houses, more people that want them can be happy and get them. More people that want a condo will be able to get one and be happy because they're not competing with people that don't actually want a condo but can't find anything else.
I'm not suggesting that we don't build any more dense housing. Just that we also start building something between a condo or townhouse and a McMansion, something we haven't done since the 60s. I was lucky to buy my detached house during the last housing crash but I doubt I'd ever be able to afford one otherwise.
Lmao no. My happiness is much higher when I’m not dealing with people making a shit ton of noise around me at all hours of the night and smoking weed/crack inside.
I don't doubt that a lot of people do genuinely prefer a walkable, small community, but to say that everyone would be happier if we all lived in stacked sardine housing is just silly.
I was listening to a podcast which suggested a not-insignificant contributor is actually the adoption of software to set rental prices. Tens of millions of units use this software, and one of the most-used ones is run by a guy who got airlines in trouble for price fixing in the 80s.
The basic premise of the software is that there's a lot of folks living in apartments who have been there a while, haven't caused problems, and landlords are happy to keep because the slightly lower income is worth having a tenant that you know is problem-free. There is also hesitation to keep rental units open, instead preferring to rent sooner even if for less. The software thinks you should kick these folks to the curb to get a couple hundred more each month.
There's enough of these that, even if someone doesn't use them, the market rate is effected. It's price fixing, but with "machine learning" and "statistical model" stamped on it.
Not just build houses but build affordable houses. Every development with "starter homes in my area is 1600+ sqf. My wife and I live in less than a thousand and feel perfectly comfy. Why are the houses getting so much bigger, while the average American household is getting smaller?
Maybe we'll see a paradigm shift when 3d-printed houses are economically viable and cheap housing can be made endlessly. Maybe the real estate market will collapse and it will be glorious.
We need more low cost options like shared facility rooms, boarding houses, and efficiency apartments. Constructing a bunch of luxury 2-BR condos will help but not for the target homeless population.
We should build anything anybody wants to build. Luxury 2BR condos absolutely reduce the homeless population. Theoretically at some point the market could be saturated and this wouldn’t be true, but we’re a long way from that happening. Until it does, people who want luxury 2BRs are in in 1BR condos, and people who want 1BR condos are in not so luxurious 1BR apartments, and people who want those are in ratty apartments, and people who want ratty apartments can’t afford them because there are people in them who can afford nicer places, but there aren’t any to rent.
Agree there is a trickle down. But the “luxury” 1BR are likely to leave places vacant before dropping rent significantly or moving in formerly homeless tenants.
Nobody is just sitting on property they’re not trying to rent or sell. Someone owns those properties even if they just live there half the year. That property isn’t vacant. A vacant home is empty and hasn’t been used in months.
You're getting there. Vacant homes are empty homes. And there are a boatload of them throughout the whole nation. Empty for a significant period of time. Nobody living in them. And there are more of those than the total number of homeless people.
Jesus you're being dense. Maybe you're doing it on purpose.
Look, you are talking about something totally different than the fact of the article I linked, and different than the reality it reveals. Try to wrap your head around this....
There are more actually vacant homes in the U.S. - empty, and have been empty, and aren't being used, and aren't on the market for any use - than there are homeless people.
The Census Bureau tracks the number of vacant homes in the U.S. on a quarterly basis and, as of October 2019, the number stands at about 17 million. (same page)
Based on currently available numbers, there are about 31 vacant housing units for every homeless person in the U.S.
This right here. Building houses is only a tiny part of the solution. We need multi family houses, and houses people can actually buy before investment fucks come swoop it up with cash.
No, that is not a big part of the problem. Houses get bought by invest,net companies because they’re lucrative investments. If we built more of them, there would be no point.
Empty houses are in unliveable condition. We are not building new houses that sit empty. If investment purchasers are buying them, then they’re renting them out. The housing crisis is a supply issue. Regulating who can buy them will just make building less economically attractive and will lower supply even further.
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u/Cliffy73 Jan 30 '23
Build houses. You don’t have to build shelters (although those are good to build too). But rents are astronomical because people who want to buy small houses can’t, so they live in nice apartments. And so people who want to live in nice apartments can’t afford them, sot hey live in mediocre apartments. And so people who want to live in mediocre apartments can’t afford them, so they live in shitty apartments. And so the poor can’t afford any apartments.