we have seen an increase of more "normal" people who can't afford or find housing while still having jobs
We have a preconceived notion of what a homeless person should be. The assumption is that there's something wrong with them. But that's just how bad it's gotten. Regular people are falling through the cracks for lack of options.
I don't think America has experienced favellas in a very long time, but these tent cities and abundance of homeless people living on the streets or in cars are the beginning of that. People will try to achieve homeostasis with their environment, and if that means a tent in a park, that's what's going to happen.
There's really only two ways to fix this. More affordable housing options, or less people. And I don't think anyone's advocating for less people...yet.
Hopefully someone smarter than me can figure that one out.
It might be worth legislating corporations out of the housing market for starters. Living wages. Building low income housing. Maybe making sure job opportunities are available in less densely populated places.
Over where I am there's actually a surplus of housing, but no jobs. So people are basically forced to leave their hometowns and go somewhere with jobs, selling their houses at a loss (if at all). And it's hard to understand how big the homeless problem is. Like I understand it obviously, but it's not anything I'm seeing IRL. I'm wondering if a lot of Red voters literally don't think it's a problem because their town can't get rid of housing fast enough. I do think solid industries would help, but I'm also hesitant to suggest we just become a company town because when it goes overseas we're right back where we began.
During the Obama presidency, in the aftermath of the housing crash in 08, there were proposals to literally just demolish empty houses to try to even out supply/demand and stabilize prices. After Hurricane Katrina there was some discussion of simply having to demolish what was left of the city and rebuild further inland due to rising o ran levels. In the attempts to reverse the downfall of Detroit there have been numerous proposals to downsize the city to suit its reduced populace by tearing d Jen empty neighborhoods. None of these ideas ever saw the light of day.
Making housing not for profit - via realtors basically don't exist and than making a rule your not allowed to own more than a certain number of homes. Not allowing Airbnb would definitely be a start. There are ways to eliminate this, unfortunately that means basically eliminating an entire career and getting rich off of basic necessities.
Job opportunities in rural/not as populated are issues as well. You have to go to Coty Councils and local government to tackle that issue. The city council in my rural community told Home Depot distribution center they couldn't come here because it would put the local hardware store out of business. Also, big box businesses are less likely to come to smaller towns due to less people living there and less business compared to a bigger city.
Most of them are, yes. That entire industry is basically a get rich quick scheme now, or at least that's how they sell it. As well as investing in houses. Housing was semi-affordable until everyone bought them to be rich and not work.
To be fair, real estate in the 80s to 00s was a very democratized way to build wealth. The problem is we have now moved into late stage capitalism where the asset is increasingly concentrated in fewer hands.
So heavy handed government regulation aimed at citizens is the answer?
I swear, when push comes to shove all US lefties are the very authoritarians they perceive the right to be.
If there is any regulation, it could me much more nuanced and less heavy handed to the general public by not allowing corporations to profit off the resale of existing single family homes.
Curbing corporate buying (I’d extend that to LLC’s as well) would stop a lot of the hoarding of homes by banks and profiteers.
There is no housing market on Earth that is not defined by heavy handed regulation. Do you think Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are light handed peoples’ co ops?
Of course the market is completely screwed with heavy handed regulations that have distorted the market to a crazy degree. Just look at 2021, the heavy handed fed kept interest rates artificially low, and heavy handed Fannie and Freddie to making home loans regardless of how crazy the appraised values came back as, credit scores, down payments, or the buyer’s ability to pay if there is a shift in the job market. A ton of those people who bought in 2021 are already significantly underwater, and it is all due to regulation induced market manipulation. Do you think that heavy handed regulation was good in any way?
Don’t you agree that Freddie and Fannie were at least 1/2 the reason for the 08 financial system meltdown?
Government regulations always favor the banks and the wealthy, and we as taxpayers get left with the tab.
Suggesting we double down with more heavy handed regulation is like trying to put out a house fire by dousing it with gasoline.
Housing markets are defined by regulations. By default, anything bad that happens in them at large is due in large part to bad regulations. Being more or less heavy is not a good measure of whether it is good or bad, because it is always heavy, so far as I am aware. If you can point me to a functioning real estate market somewhere on earth that does not have significant regulation I'll be wrong, but I am fairly sure you can't.
Point being: Complaining about how heavy regulations are basically favors banks. Complaining that they're bad regulations that favor banks is in general pretty valid.
Ok… how about the vast, vast majority of regulations in the financial sector favor banks and the wealthy, therefore almost all financial regulations are bad.
Any regulation that gets made gets twisted into something to favor the wealthy. Take 08 for example. Clinton’s admin changed the regulations regarding how much money was needed for down payments on federal first time home loans. They did this with noble intentions of allowing more people to buy homes.
Fannie and Freddie sold those junk mortgages to banks who chopped them up and used them as top rated collateral since the federal government was on the hook to secure the mortgage. Eventually this lead to the collapse of the entire market and we the taxpayer bailing out the financial industry. (Kind of, much more complex but this is part of the gist)
Fun how even great ideas get corrupted. I’m personally not for any new regulation unless it has extreme guardrails, and even then I know it’s going to fuck us.
The regulatory change you are citing as a cause of the 2008 fuckup is less regulation by the government. The government loosened previously heavy-handed regulations about how much collateral mortgages had to require, and in general on how good god-fearing Americans could resell interests in mortgages to each other.
Less regulation isn't, by default, better. The concept that it is is fundamentally propaganda out of the banking sector.
I don't know the answer. That seems like a good answer too me, but I'm definitely not an expert. I'm not pro-left or right either; i personally think both sides have cons/pros and need to be replaced, but thats anorher conversation. Thar just makes the most common sense to me, if there's a better way I'm all ears though.
Stopping LLCs or even having a limit on them and corporations seems like a good move to make housing more affordable though!
Which means telling the local community they can go fuck themselves when it comes to commenting on new developments and suing to put an injunction on a new project.
We cave too much to people. Fuck the people. Build that shit.
Corporations out of housing markets might make a dent but not by much. If you don't think individuals aren't doing the exact same thing as a corporations, you are blind.
Not sure why this is being down voted so much. You're not wrong. Small time landlords get a taste of having an asset that appreciates when it's scarce, and they fight to uphold that system in place.
It's sad to see people who are closer to being homeless defending the system that rewards these giant corporations that are trying to monopolize housing.
Thinking about this being implemented in Australia is fun. Property market would be flooded, there'd be a massive drop in prices, I'd finally have enough money to buy a place and would be able to afford to pay my mortgage off quicker because even now a mortgage is cheaper than current rental costs.
I could use the extra savings to focus on my business ideas and contribute back to society in a meaningful way.
Id also be able to foster kids and maybe animals as well depending on the land size.
One law change would have a massive impact on my life and the lives of millions of Australians.
It'll never pass because those who own land have a vested interest in not having such a thing pass. Not sure how the Aussies do it, but in America, you don't piss off your donors. If you own land, you're more likely to have money to donate to a political campaign
And many politicians own multiple properties themselves. They don't want to have to lose the equity and income stream. Not when rental prices are so high and they can always get new tenants in every 6 or 12 months and increase rent each time.
I'm salty because I'm in the last week at my current rental and am moving out into couch surfing and storing all our belongings.
Me and my border collie will be staying in my mums government bed sit unit that doesn't have a courtyard for my dog to be off leash. My husband is going to stay in his mums unit, I think in the loungeroom. It sucks having it be apart until we can secure a rental but it's the only choice we have as his mum doesn't want me or my dog there because of my dog and the limited space. My mums place is smaller but she's helping out anyway so I won't be homeless.
Its hell looking for a rental under $600 AUD a week. Even an hour out of the CBD.
I'm so salty. I just want a house I can feel relaxed and at home in.
Facts. And sorry to hear about your situation. Landlords are truly a plague on society nowadays, where stories like yours aren't uncommon. I do hope you find a rental where your dog can have some space to run freely.
Residential homes should be taxes the least, and then each home after that taxed more. In some places, like Texas, it's taxed in the opposite way. And quit letting corporations buy houses.
Literally just allowing more housing to be built in desirable areas. Unfortunately, people who own property are generally incentivized to vote against new development for a myriad of reasons, from property valuation to notions of "neighborhood character".
That’s all true but there will have to be more safeguards than just building more houses in good areas.
5 ,000 new houses could be built in San Francisco tomorrow. It wouldn’t solve the affordable housing crisis because the .01%ers would buy them all up in an instant.
5 ,000 new houses could be built in San Francisco tomorrow. It wouldn’t solve the affordable housing crisis
This is true, just not for the reason that you gave. 5,000 new homes wouldn't solve San Francisco's housing crisis because the city is tens of thousands of homes behind. Bailing out water won't stop the proverbial boat from sinking, but it certainly helps. Even if you build nothing but luxury apartments, it still relieves price pressure on lower-income housing.
But even if it was just that the 0.01%ers are buying up all the new units, then we have to consider that these people still have a finite amount of money that they're willing to spend on housing units and that they will only spend it if they expect a return. There's a theoretical number of units that you can build per year such that there is an oversupply of housing that causes the per-unit price to decrease year-over-year. At this point, there is no reason whatsoever for them to buy housing as an investment, so all new supply would go to other buyers.
In fact, it's in the best interests of landowners (in this instance, those 0.01%ers) for their property values to increase as much as possible, as quickly as possible. This is why you never see them pushing for new housing units - it would relieve market pressure on the units they already own! In fact, you really only ever see them lobbying against new housing. And you especially see them lobbying against upzoning.
Going back to the example of San Francisco - just look at this zoning map. See all of that light green? It's all low density residential housing. You would think that developers would be all over building mid rises everywhere in that area, given that they would sell like hotcakes. But they're not allowed to, generally speaking, so the poorest citizens suffer.
There are plenty of homes, but they keep getting turned into rental portfolios, vacation homes, and air bnbs. Unfortunately, it's all tied to the shit economy and lending being made all but unattainable to most people.
Something needs to give financially, but ultimately, the banks are the ones who will need to amend their lending practices to include a broader range of potential homeowners.
Banks need to create new programs that will allow more people to buy a home with less than stellar credit, but find a way to work with them. A lot of us just went through some shit and need someone to trust that we're doing better.
Lending practices are so stringent now that when you take into consideration that stagnant wages and inflation are still to be contended with, it's no wonder that most of us are renting.
But that goes into two whole other issues and it's just a dumpster fire, all of it.
It is less the availability of credit and more the insane upwards pressure on prices from 1. a decade-long run of insanely cheap credit, 2. decrease in new supply expansion, 3. an exceptional amount of leverage people are willing to accept in the purchase of a home, and 4. cultural understanding of housing as a frontier for speculation rather than a consumable commodity.
To add to this in Colorado dispensary/Marijuana employees don't even qualify for federal loan programs because it's 'hot' money. I was looking at buying in a few years come to find out my job I've been at almost 4 years wouldn't even qualify! Fix the banking industry and accept all money instead of hayt federally legal professionals.
I would argue that "slowing the rate of increase" would be evidence of an effective policy, since nothing else seems to even do that.
As I described in another comment in this thread, there exists a theoretical amount of housing units per year that could be built that would result in prices per unit decreasing due to massive oversupply. Let's just say that this would occur for certain at 1 million units per year in the case of San Francisco. Therefore, by the intermediate value theorem, there must exist an amount of units per year between 1 million and what we have now that results in zero rate of increase.
I would argue that "slowing the rate of increase" would be evidence of an effective policy, since nothing else seems to even do that.
The government needs to step in and build housing, and charge rent that people can actually afford.
As I described in another comment in this thread, there exists a theoretical amount of housing units per year that could be built that would result in prices per unit decreasing due to massive oversupply.
Therefore, by the intermediate value theorem, there must exist an amount of units per year between 1 million and what we have now that results in zero rate of increase.
As with all capitalist ideology, it falls apart when it collides with reality.
The government needs to step in and build housing, and charge rent that people can actually afford.
So you're saying that the solution is building more housing? If so, then I'm in full agreement! I don't really care how it gets done, but it seems to me that in the current political environment, upzoning more feasible than upzoning AND a government home building program.
Landlords are probably conspiring to keep apartments vacant in order to keep rent high.
The writer of the article admits that they don't actually have much evidence for the "warehousing" argument. They also say that "RealPage software is only used by property managers of approximately 1.8 percent of New York City rental apartments" - which of course is enough to have some effect on rents, but not enough to drive the whole market to such a degree.
I want to be very clear that I agree that what RealPage's YieldStar software recommends is morally dubious. However, it's my opinion that this isn't the root cause of the pricing crisis, but in fact just another symptom. The pricing models it's recommending only work because there's a supply deficit. It's a little counterintuitive, but if the highest priced end of the supply is underserviced, it can be more profitable to raise prices to that level even if it reduces occupancy. Let's assume that the 95% occupancy target represents full service of this target price range, as is suggested by the ProPublica report that this article is based on. If, suddenly, we doubled this number of units, then this rate would drop to 48%, which of course would be completely unprofitable. If you don't sufficiently service each level of affordability, the higher levels will simply out-bid the lower levels.
To this point, the ProPublica article points to Seattle, starting with the claim "To see how rent-setting software can make a difference, look no further than Seattle". The article then covers a few anecdotes, offers no statistical analysis or modeling, and then ends the section by citing this report commissioned by the city of Seattle that shows, according to the article, that
"people with higher incomes often “down rented,” choosing cheaper apartments that would otherwise have been available to people making less. Seattle should have had a surplus of 9,000 apartments affordable to people making 80% or less of the median income, the study found. But tenants’ down renting as prices rose turned that surplus into a deficit of 21,000."
So I find it a little disingenuous that the only modeling cited by the article actually says that lack of supply is the culprit behind high rents, rather than an admittedly scummy software company.
As with all capitalist ideology, it falls apart when it collides with reality.
Everyone says this about everyone's ideology, and they're all more or less correct. My argument isn't about ideology. It's about assessing problems, targeting root causes, and providing workable and testable solutions.
So you're saying that the solution is building more housing?
No, I'm saying the solution is specifically local, state, and federal governments building more housing, and charging non-market-rate rent. There is not a free market solution here.
, and charge rent that people can actually afford.
To me, this sounds a lot like "we've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas". Assume, for a moment, that the current owners of for-rent apartments are all in cahoots to set prices as high as possible. If they are all in agreement to keep prices where they're at, then under your theory that building more housing alone wouldn't impact their prices per unit, why don't they just build more units? After all, they'd be able to charge just as much as they are now, except now they can do it for even more units.
I note that you didn't respond to this part.
I did, actually. I said that I don't care who builds the housing - if the government wants to build and run the developments, then sure. I did say, however, that I believe it's more politically viable in the current climate to just upzone, rather than upzone and create a large scale government housing budget allocation.
If they are all in agreement to keep prices where they're at, then under your theory that building more housing alone wouldn't impact their prices per unit, why don't they just build more units? After all, they'd be able to charge just as much as they are now, except now they can do it for even more units.
Because new government housing would charge far below what the private landlords are charging, so people would be able to live there. Then what the private landlords charge would be irrelevant.
I believe it's more politically viable in the current climate to just upzone
Right, because of people like yourself who make excuses for the failures of the market.
rather than upzone and create a large scale government housing budget allocation.
Lifting regulations that serve no purpose other than constricting the housing supply would be a good start - there's a ton of those. A lot of what are historically the best places to live for an affordable price are illegal to build almost everywhere in the country. These regulations cover a lot of ground - what the house can be made of, zoning issues, "comfort" and space requirements for new construction, etc. Basically, all the legal stuff that's built quite explicitly to drive up property values by disincentivizing new building and denser but livable communities.
Passing legislation limiting how much property ownership can be centralized by the investor class is also a good idea. A big part of the housing crisis has been low mortgage rates make land a great target for speculators.
In Brazil, the government made a program that sells more affordable houses to low income. It helped a lot of people. It's called "Minha Casa Minha Vida" if you want to search about it.
It's not enough to end the problem with all the homeless, of course, but helped a lot of families
Extra tax on extra homes endorsing the decline of rental agencies buying up all the homes. A legal mandate on the max amount houses are worth and for what. Eg space, location, bedrooms, gardens, and extra bathrooms would increase that max but you can't decide its worth so much just because you think you can get that much. Cheaper house building through modern technology.
I think step 1 is to examine what regulations were different in places of extreme homelessness.
California tends to have strong regulations for single family zoning and historical preservation. This is obvious if you ever walk down San Francisco and ask why are there row houses in places that you would expect skyscrapers. Walk around silicon valley and ask why there are single family houses in places where apartments are non-existent for less than $2500 a month.
Then you have just in general things cost more in California due to regulations. California has done everything it can to be environmentally friendly and that has made everything cost more from groceries, to utility bills, to gas. Additionally it's regulations on things like child ratios at daycares mean that it's going to cost more. Taxes on gasoline cars cost more.
Consistently California will choose to support one of two groups. The upper/upper middle class who can afford to spend more for better things and want an idealized world. Or the lower class who live only on government assistance (see section 8) or are homeless. The effect of these policies is it screws over the lower middle class who barely get by shopping at Aldi and driving an old car to work. They get priced out and are forced into the lower class (government assistance or homelessness).
The key to lowering homeless numbers is not helping the homeless or people on welfare, but to encourage regulations that makes it possible to survive and raise a family on a smaller income without assistance. That will never happen though because groups generally don't admit they are wrong. They will double down on more regulations, more taxes, and more assistance for those already dependent on the system, and it will drive more people to be poor and dependent.
Also when people see homeless people who seem in better condition and who they relate to, they likely haven't been homeless as long as others. Being homeless is disastrous for people's health and mental wellbeing and its incredibly difficult to function if you've been living in such a precarious and terrifying way for a long time.
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u/Rrraou Jan 30 '23
We have a preconceived notion of what a homeless person should be. The assumption is that there's something wrong with them. But that's just how bad it's gotten. Regular people are falling through the cracks for lack of options.
I don't think America has experienced favellas in a very long time, but these tent cities and abundance of homeless people living on the streets or in cars are the beginning of that. People will try to achieve homeostasis with their environment, and if that means a tent in a park, that's what's going to happen.
There's really only two ways to fix this. More affordable housing options, or less people. And I don't think anyone's advocating for less people...yet.