r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Comfortable-Wrap-493 • 4d ago
International Politics Is there no solution to housing crisis?
I feel like we are completely stuck.
I know the government can't just snap its fingers and force real estate prices to drop. Property is treated as a huge investment. It's not just the massive corporations and wealthy investors; even regular, lower-income people have their entire life savings tied up in the value of their homes. Crashing the market hurts them, too.
But if we don't find a solution, we are heading toward a future where only the rich will ever be able to afford buying land or a house.
Even renting is getting completely out of control. At the rate prices are increasing, soon only people with high-paying corporate jobs will be able to afford a basic apartment.
So what happens to everyone else? What about the working class, the people who actually sweat and break their backs to keep this country running? If the main workforce is priced out of both buying and renting, how does society even function? What about artistic jobs? What about creativity? Should all just join high paying collar jobs?
Does anyone see a realistic way out of this mess?
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u/NoDig3444 4d ago
The solution is extremely straightforward; just build more housing. Reform zoning laws, subsidize development, build public housing, whatever. Just build more. More supply will lower prices.
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u/kingjoey52a 4d ago
This is the answer. Every big city should have three high rise apartment buildings going up right now. Build baby, build.
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u/Nillows 4d ago
Right now, sellers outnumber buyers by 58%. The boomers are still refusing to lower their asking prices to reflect the actual amount of money people have to spend.
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u/wedgebert 3d ago
You also have to build the right kinds of houses in the right areas.
A new subdivision outside of a major city isn't going to help with housing prices for lower income families who work downtown
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u/R_V_Z 3d ago
Well, it can through and-on effects. Building a subdivision can attract the city-dwellers who are ready to move out of the city, freeing up room for those who wish/need to live in the city. This is a slow-burn solution of course, and doesn't help as immediately as building multi-unit buildings in the city.
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u/Fargason 3d ago
That is just scratching the surface. Boomers are the wealthiest generation is US history often having multiple homes and they are a massive voting bloc politicians cater to the most. So politicians will always enact stricter zoning laws and regulations so newer and affordable homes cannot be built to protect Boomer’s greatest assets.
Of course they don’t stop there either as they come after our income too with barriers of entry like excessive licensing and regulations they never had to deal with as they still hold onto these jobs well into their 80s. But don’t you dare touch Social Security as 89% of seniors want you to pay more payroll taxes to protect this transfer of wealth to the wealthiest generation.
https://www.aarp.org/social-security/survey-raising-taxes/
Go ahead and expect it to happen as our politicians are overwhelmingly 65 and over themselves. The gerontocracy is quite real and it has lead to generational theft. The payroll tax will have to increase by 2034 or Social Security payments will automatically be cut by 20%. A system where they started out paying into with 1% payroll taxes that is well into double digits now, and despite all their wealth they want us to sacrifice even more.
To fix this don’t just vote, but get very involved in primaries and vote out these retirement age politicians using the Senate and White House as a retirement home. Especially after Biden and McConnell this is getting ridiculous. Only then can we hope to dismantle this Ponzi scheme they created with younger politicians who know the pain of suffering through it.
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u/WingerRules 2d ago
It's not that straight forward.
No political party is going to do anything to actually lower the price of homes, it would be a political death sentence. Home owners are by far the largest voters and most people see their homes as investment vehicles instead of simple places to live. For most people it's their single largest asset. Try telling these people you're going to collapse the value of homes and investments. Additionally a tooooon of loans and banking is backed by the value of people's homes.
If properties are cheap the rich will just buy them up as there is no limitations on the number or size of properties any individual can buy. There are Fox News hosts who literally own like 1000 homes. There are a bunch of wealthy people in the US who own millions of acres each in land for their private homes.
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u/Jokerang 4d ago
That’s political suicide though - homeowners who don’t want the value of their homes to drop will vote for the other party in droves just to make it stop.
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u/Most-Afternoon7700 2d ago
South Korea is entering an era of housing oversupply and unsold apartments.
Building even more apartments is foolish. Have you ever thought about what things will look like 30 years from now? Do you really believe all those apartments will be redeveloped?
The days when property prices kept rising on the expectation of future reconstruction, following the old market cycles, are over.
Even today, many apartment complexes are already falling behind because residents can no longer afford the additional costs required for reconstruction. The future looks even bleaker as the population continues to shrink.
The newly built, state-of-the-art apartments in South Korea today could become liabilities 30 years from now.
Buying real estate with a lifetime of savings, or taking out a loan that takes a lifetime to repay, is foolish.
Neither the financial markets nor the real estate market can keep going up forever. An endless upward trend inevitably creates a bubble, and when that bubble bursts, it can send shockwaves through the entire market.
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u/NoDig3444 2d ago
South Korea has an oversupply of housing everywhere except Seoul. South Korean property prices are cratering everywhere except Seoul.
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u/HeloRising 1d ago
The hole in that idea is that different areas have a carrying capacity and you can't just shove more housing in and solve everything.
Local infrastructure, roads, availability of work, and public transit all play a factor in how many people you can fit in a given area and in a lot of places we're kind of at the maximum without literally ripping everything apart and starting from scratch.
That works fine in Sim City but you can't do that in a living city.
The costs also very quickly add up where you don't just need to pay for building new housing but you need to pay to expand the power, water, and sewer for the area so the local utilities can handle the influx of new people. You need to think about things like parking and public transit, businesses to support people and places to work.
It really isn't as simple as "just build more housing."
I have family that lives in a city in Southern California and they're doing the "just build housing" thing and it's turning into a disaster because they can't out-build the demand for luxury housing which means the new housing is prohibitively expensive and they've out-built the ability for local utilities to supply power and water which has led to serious problems with water shortages and brownouts.
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u/NoDig3444 1d ago
No, you can absolutely just shove more housing in. Infill development actually lowers demand for infrastructure, because it means that everything is closer together. Building houses next to jobs means people have to travel less. The electric grid and water supply have to be scaled no matter where you put the housing, it's easier to supply to city centers than to urban sprawl. Public transit lowers traffic demand. The SoCal brownouts are due to wildfires, not grid capacity issues.
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u/HeloRising 22h ago
Infill development actually lowers demand for infrastructure, because it means that everything is closer together.
More people means more utility use.
Building houses next to jobs means people have to travel less.
In theory, yes, but the kinds of jobs that pay what living in these places tends to cost means that you're probably going to be commuting anyways.
The electric grid and water supply have to be scaled no matter where you put the housing, it's easier to supply to city centers than to urban sprawl.
It really isn't. Having to rip up heavily used streets and re-plumb and refit power cables to whole areas is not easy or cheap to do.
The SoCal brownouts are due to wildfires, not grid capacity issues.
In this city, they're having localized power delivery issues because of the strain that's been put on the local grid system as a result of building masses of new housing.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
There's plenty of housing. Supply isn't the problem. The problem is big business hoarding the units, not even putting them on the market because line go up.
The solution is to decommodify.
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u/BobaLives01925 4d ago
Deeply incorrect, supply is half of the price equation
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
Google "artificial scarcity."
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u/BobaLives01925 4d ago
There’s nothing artificial about the scarcity. It’s just scarcity.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
Incorrect, there's millions of vacant units that aren't even on the market.
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u/SkiingAway 3d ago
In most hot housing markets the vacancy rates are about as low as they can practically be. (they can never be actual 0% because some % of units are always in the midst of tenant or ownership changovers, renovations, available for sale/lease, etc).
There are plenty of vacant vacation homes in places with basically zero jobs within commuting range, and plenty of vacant homes in declining areas where no one wants to live and there are no jobs to support you.
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u/BobaLives01925 4d ago
Yeah, and almost all of them are shitholes nobody wants to live in or in places nobody wants to move. Useless to solving a housing crisis.
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u/perplexedtortoise 4d ago
This isn't true at all.
A generic single family home in a boring suburb costing $2.5 million in the SF Bay Area but $500k elsewhere isn't due to some vague plot by big business, it's because California hasn't build enough homes for decades.
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u/apmspammer 4d ago
That is not supported by the data. Since 2008 the US population has grown but housing construction hasn't kept up.
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u/link3945 4d ago
Just to give an idea, we have had about 1.2 million housing starts per year. The lowest population growth we've had is about 1.8 million per year, frequently way higher.
Once you start digging into it, it's impossible to think that we have enough houses.
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u/tandlmosey 4d ago
There is a monumentally short supply of housing. Corporate ownership is a drop in the bucket. Look it up.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
I have looked it up, that's how I know. There is a shortage of houses ON THE MARKET but hoarding properties while line go up is the part of this no one talks about.
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u/tandlmosey 3d ago
They don't talk about it because it's not true. The data doesn't support in any way what you're claiming, as plenty of others in the thread have pointed out to you.
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u/slightlytangy 4d ago
The issue is supply. There simply are not enough single family homes for sale. Some of it is corporate investors. Some of it is landlords. Some of it is nimby idiots refusing to allow construction.
The real solution has to address the stock issue. There needs to be less focus on investor returns for new construction, and a public option for housing. This era is exposing america for what it has always been. 50 3rd world countries in a "were a western democracy!" Trenchcoat.
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u/hprather1 4d ago
>Some of it is nimby idiots refusing to allow construction.
This is the vast majority of the problem which also takes the form of stupid zoning laws. Investment properties are a very small share of the problem but assuredly contribute to the zoning issue in the same way that nimbys do i.e. they both don't want new housing built but not necessarily for the same reason.
Zoning issues are primarily local. Everyone needs to lobby their city hall to make that change.
Austin, TX has seen insanely rapid growth but home prices are leveling off or even falling simply because they are allowing homes to be built.
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1d ago edited 1d ago
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u/sunshine_is_hot 4d ago
Corporate investors and landlords are such a tiny part of the problem (if they are even a part of the problem) they don’t bear mentioning. Corporate investors don’t make money if the property sits vacant, they want their investments to return so they don’t sit on vacant homes. Landlords are literally providing housing to make their money, they aren’t allowing places to sit vacant voluntarily either.
The issue is 99% zoning laws and NIMBYs. Let builders build and the problem is gone. It’s incredibly simple.
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4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/sunshine_is_hot 4d ago
How do you think investors make money on vacant homes? Please, I’m curious to hear your reasoning.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
Line go up.
Renting is a major investment in time and resources. Not worth it when line go up.
https://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news/investors-hold-most-empty-houses
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u/sunshine_is_hot 3d ago
The link you posted does not support your claim. It says that the rate of home vacancies hasn’t changed over the years, that those homes are being brought to market and bought quickly, and says absolutely nothing about any of those investors profit margins or investment strategies.
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u/BobaLives01925 4d ago
Line doesn’t go up if they don’t make money.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
They sell the house later for twice what they paid for it without having to do any work in the meantime, silly.
Hoarding the house CAUSES the line to go up because of artificial scarcity.
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u/BobaLives01925 4d ago
That’s not how that works. Renting for a year doesn’t decrease value.
There is zero evidence for corporate owners hoarding and increasing prices. The problem is supply.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
I literally gave you evidence in that link you didn't read.
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u/BobaLives01925 4d ago
That’s article says it’s 3.6% of investor owned homes and the same rate it’s always been. Nobody could conclude that’s causing housing price increases unless they’re acting in bad faith
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u/hprather1 3d ago
The "evidence" you provided says very little about the location and absolutely nothing about the condition of those homes.
For all we know those homes are on the shithole side of some shithole town. Good luck convincing anyone to live in those.
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u/GhostReddit 3d ago
Municipalities aren't making it cheap or easy to build any housing. The only shot you have of getting anything permitted is a big development, many of the desirable neighborhoods built long ago can't be built today, and assuming you get approval permitting and connection costs can be upwards of 100k before you even dig a foundation.
It's an environment that absolutely does not support inexpensive new housing.
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u/nglyarch 4d ago
In the US, there are more housing units available than there are households. As of last year, around 9.9% more (source: US Census Bureau).
The real solution is to heavily tax non-primary residences until they are no longer attractive investment vehicles. Do what China did. De-financialize the market. Housing is for living in, not for investing or tax avoidance.
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u/Prasiatko 4d ago
Where are those houses relative to demand? An abundance of housing in Detroit does nothing to lowe peices in Oakland.
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u/nglyarch 4d ago
Move to Detroit.
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u/ILikeCommunism97 3d ago
Moving costs money, if you are already on the lower end of what you can afford, moving from California to Michigan is often not a realistic thing to do in terms of cost.
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u/GhostReddit 3d ago
Just raise all property taxes and provide a significant credit for a single owner occupied home. That's the simplest change on it that would affect a small minority of people.
Rentals can't all just change cost they still are subject to market forces even if expenses go up, they're all charging as much as they can get already.
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u/UnfoldedHeart 3d ago
The issue is supply. There simply are not enough single family homes for sale.
The issue is supply-and-demand. Nationwide, there's actually a surplus. The issue is that these available homes may be in places that you don't want to live.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
There's plenty of housing. Supply isn't the problem. The problem is big business hoarding the units, not even putting them on the market because line go up.
The solution is to decommodify.
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u/Beneficial_Lion_1312 3d ago
De-commodification of housing is probably the only actual solution to the problem, but elites allowing that to happen would likely open the flood-gates for other de-commodification to happen in other industry. Would never happen without revolution, but revolution cannot occur in modern day America.
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u/JKlerk 4d ago
I know you this isn't what people want to hear but large corporations own a very small percentage of 1-4 family homes. The overwhelming majority of 1-4 family rental properties are owned by individuals (ie, your neighbors).
Net profit for homebuilders is around 8% which is a historic high.
The problems with housing are multifold. For starters it's capital intensive and there has been a chronic supply shortage for every year for over a decade. Cheap land that is within a reasonable commuting time to job centers is scarce. High rise multifamily is expensive to build. Demand for housing in the US is GLOBAL. I'll say it again. Demand for housing is GLOBAL. Immigrants with skillsets in technology, IT, science etc, have, multiple income streams, and multi-generational, can afford to place huge down payments.
The bright side is that baby boomers are beginning to age out in mass but unless there's a global depression I don't think their supply will cause prices to plummet.
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u/dew2459 3d ago
It doesn't really even matter how expensive high-rise multifamily buildings are, they are illegal in almost all of Massachusetts, including in the bigger cities.
During the MBTA law fights, I noticed an article mention that Newton, an allegedly larger city that has both green line and commuter rail service, has a 2-story hight limit in almost all of the city.
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u/Sea-Chain7394 4d ago edited 3d ago
2 or 3 large corporations own every apartment complex in my city. Their stated goal is to earn returns above market rent. They collaborate and use pricing algorithms to constantly increase rent 10 to 20% each year
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u/JKlerk 3d ago
Apartments aren't 1-4 family homes. A 1-4 family is a 1-unit (ex, detached house, townhome, condo) 2-4 family (Duplex, Triplex, Quadruplex).
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u/Sea-Chain7394 3d ago
I suppose. But if you cannot afford the 1-4 family hime because you are stuck paying rent that increases 10-20% each year then it's kinda a moot point who owns them.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 4d ago edited 3d ago
Build more non-luxury housing (no it does not need to be single family homes. Get over that, Americans).
Housing starts went down in the last few years despite high demand.
Why? A big part is cost. Cost is high because:
- Construction labor shortage - over 200,000 construction positions are not filled. And we’re deporting people who could and would fill many of those positions. The shortage itself is a problem (because obviously labor is necessary to build) but the shortage also drives up construction labor costs.
- The cost of land anywhere reasonably near jobs has gone up. Americans became obsessed with single family homes in the last half century and built out the land surrounding cities. Now there is very little open land around cities and lot costs have gone way up.
- Material costs have gone up. lumber and other material costs went up during Covid, then decreased but not to previous costs. And Trump’s tariffs have raised costs of aluminum and steel further.
So, when people build, they build luxury, because luxury is also in demand but it’s also easier to make a profit when costs are so high.
Mainly we need to ease up zoning restrictions and build up and not expect single family homes for everyone. And we need to improve public transportation in areas we build up. And we need to give builders incentives to build more affordable housing - like either mandate x affordable units for y luxury units or just subsidize building affordable units. And stop deporting construction workers.
Edit: another very closely related issue is jobs.
Stupid red states need to develop their cities more so people aren’t desperately clustered around such a small number cities looking for jobs.
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u/kingjoey52a 4d ago
It doesn’t even need to be non-luxury. Build a shitload of luxury housing and people will move there from their “formerly but not really anymore” luxury housing, which will clear space for people to upgrade from their below luxury housing, and that chain continues down the stack.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 4d ago edited 4d ago
I would agree if the market wasn’t so desperate. Luxury housing takes longer to build and is usually fewer units in a given space.
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u/SkiingAway 3d ago
I agree with your 3 main points, I disagree with your concern about "luxury".
The vast majority of "luxury" units aren't - they're functionally almost the same as the cheapest thing you could build that meets code with some nicer finishes. (ex: stone counters, slightly better lighting, appliances that aren't quite the slumlord special, flooring that isn't the absolute cheapest linoleum, etc).
Because of your 3 points, what's happened is that those finishes wind up being a very small % of the overall cost of constructing a unit. So you wind up in a situation where building the unit with the absolute cheapest and shittiest everything would cost $250k/unit, and building it with nice finishes would cost $270k/unit.
It's just not worth the savings with how much less appealing the "cheap" unit is, and often how much worse the "cheap" unit's finishes hold up to age + wear/tear. If we could build the "base/cheap" unit at a third of the cost, then the luxury touches would matter to the overall cost. But saving <10% doesn't help anyone much and makes it attract far worse tenants.
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u/Comfortable_Fill9081 3d ago
I feel like what you said actually supports what I said about luxury units. Not sure which part you disagree on.
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u/I405CA 3d ago edited 3d ago
Revitalize declining metros that have good bones and potential for redevelopment.
One of the main hurdles for housing is land costs. The land will be cheaper in such places.
This would require a comprehensive initiative to provide incentives to move to and bring jobs to such places. The new schools will need to be above average and crime rates must remain below average.
This has two benefits: It improves places that need to be improved while reducing demand in the hotter metro markets.
You cannot build your way out of this in the high cost markets. New lower cost markets are needed.
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u/ManBearScientist 3d ago
Housing is completely solved. We know exactly what is needed to solve it: ending our system of zoning.
To put it simply, we don't build houses because in large part we've made it illegal to do so.
We require every single parcel of land to have its uses explicitly defined by local government, making it a political fight to every change that designation. This is stupid and wrong, and it makes it impossible to build housing at scale.
The solution is simple. Just don't do that. Have broader zoning categories that allow multiple uses for a given plot of land, with housing almost always being permitted.
And lower other restrictions at the same time.
If people are allowed to building housing, they'll build housing.
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u/baxterstate 3d ago
Yes. Get involved in your local politics and change zoning laws. For example, the average price of a home in Maine is abo$450. In North Carolina it’s about $350000. Why is it so much higher in a state where the cold winters put a huge strain on your budget that North Carolinians don’t have to deal with? It’s zoning. Most Maine towns insist on 1-2 acre zoning. No builder is going to build a starter home on a huge lot.
Ever notice that no builders are building large developments anymore like the ones they built after WW eleven?
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u/baxterstate 2d ago
Another solution would be to end all deductions for 1-3 family non owner occupied homes. No mortgage interest deduction, no deductions for repairs or improvements. That would remove the incentive to buy 1-3 family houses for investment and millions would quickly come back on the market. If the rental income alone doesn’t make a house a good investment, why is the IRS helping the investor?
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u/RCA2CE 2d ago
I don’t think there is a housing crisis
I think people have to adjust to what we have
There isn’t any doubt in my mind that the administration is failing economically, wildly so - I mean consumer prices came out this morning up over 6% and the market is not good… Trump is failing but houses are sort of flat
I think what people want vs what they can afford is s personal decision they have to make -
Affordable houses are out there, just not mansions in Malibu
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u/WingerRules 2d ago
But if we don't find a solution, we are heading toward a future where only the rich will ever be able to afford buying land or a house.
This is always the future for any country where private land exists where anyone can buy unlimited amounts of land and properties. Land within a country's borders is a limited resource that doesnt expand with market size or population increases. Eventually every country will run out of nice and usable land and the only people who will be able to purchase it will be the elites.
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u/Halberd96 1d ago
The one thing that I think keeps recurring in these discussions are that we have some really bad zoning laws and NIMBY boomers making things more difficult. I think the better question is are politicians even really trying and if not why? Are they afraid to lose the boomer vote?
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u/Tliish 1d ago
One solution would be to ban corporate ownership of SFH and to limit the numberr an individual can own and leave unoccupied, with an upper limit on total homeownership by an individual.
We commonly see limits on purchases of scarce commodities like toilet paper and baby formula..."limit 2 per customer"....in the name of fairness. Why not the same with such a critically important rresource?
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u/unfortunately2nd 4d ago
End homeownership as an investment viechle (bring back pensions).
End almost all zoning laws and adopt more flexible zoning.
Legalize single stair case multi units up to at least 5 stories.
End parking minimums.
Use existing lines to suburbs from major cities as nodes and build densely.
Allow live/work units for non disruptive industroes such as running a small hair salon out of your house.
Allow ADU units everywhere.
Stop giving endless tax breaks to vacant store fronts so they can't just sit and wait for a national big chain lease.
Expand transit and rapid bus transit.
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u/KR-67_Ifrit 3d ago
Not everyone (basically no one) wants to live in a communist style shit box where they have to share walls with a bunch of welfare rats.
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u/No-Championship-8038 3d ago
Calling poor people “welfare rats” is pretty disgusting. Prosperity gospel crap like this is why we have these problems.
It’s reminiscent of the racists that filled in their public pools with concrete when it looked like they might have to let black people use them. Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
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u/unfortunately2nd 3d ago
And I hate poor people is the reason we have high housing prices. If you were born in time for the 60s you would have spat on black people.
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u/benhereford 4d ago
The closest to a real, tangible solution that I've experienced is vanlife. Whenever I get sick of paying rent I just live in my converted van. Lots of conversations and things you have to get good at. It's a much harder lifestyle, yes. But it is one legitimate way to make your income belong to you again.
But nah, as far as "real" housing becoming reasonable and obtainable without bending over backwards financially... I don't think it will happen within my lifetime tbh. Maybe a nihilist viewpoint
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u/Black_XistenZ 2d ago
Vanlife is not a solution in the roughly half of the country which experiences harsh winters.
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u/Jawyp 4d ago
No, there really isn’t a good solution.
We know exactly what needs to be done (eliminate harmful restrictions on housing construction so we can build a lot more & at cheaper cost), which isn’t going to happen because most Americans own their own homes and don’t want their property values to decrease.
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u/luckygirl54 4d ago
In 10 years or less, when the baby boomer generation has passed, there will be such a glut of housing on the market that we will be worried about the entire economy tanking. Nearly 20% of USA population is in the boomer generation, 79% of them own a home. That's a big hit to the market.
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u/Sea-Chain7394 3d ago
And all these properties will be bought up by corporate investors or house flippers because they are the only ones who have the money to do so due to wage stagnation the rising cost of rent and the increasing cost of living making it nearly impossible for regular people to save enough to buy a home
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u/Seattleman1955 4d ago
You haven't stated the case accurately and nothing new is going on today that hasn't always been going on.
People live in places that they can afford and leave areas that they can't afford. There will never be a place where the average person can't afford to rent.
It has nothing to do with how creative or back breaking your job is.
I'm well off but I can't afford to live in Monaco, so I don't. I might be able to but I don't live in NYC. I can afford to live in Seattle but I'm originally from a small city in eastern NC.
If I found Seattle to be too expensive I could move to Kennewick, Washington or I could go back to eastern NC.
If I couldn't afford to buy a house then I would rent. Before the 40s, more people rented than bought so there is nothing "bad" about renting if that is better for your budget.
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u/SkiingAway 3d ago
If I found Seattle to be too expensive I could move to Kennewick, Washington or I could go back to eastern NC.
No, because the labor markets in those lower-cost places often do not have the jobs to support you moving there, or would leave you even worse off for having done so. Most workers do not work in sectors with widespread remote employment. That there are cheap homes available in a place you don't want to live and can't support yourself is not remotely helpful.
The general issue is that the areas where job growth has occurred/jobs have shifted to have generally not built housing at the same pace as they have added employment demand and population and thus the supply of housing has gotten ever tighter.
The only reasonably dignified solutions to this problem are either building more housing near enough to where the employment is to be useful, or somehow turning back the very long arc of history of jobs becoming increasingly concentrated in/near large cities. The former is obviously far easier to achieve.
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u/Seattleman1955 3d ago
No, if you work at the average tech job, you can afford to live there. If you work at Starbuck's, you can do that anywhere.
This is how it has worked forever. Manufacturing jobs left Detroit, people left Detroit. Rents are high in Manhattan, people live in NJ and commute or they have many roommates or some other adjustment.
Don't live in Malibu if you are a "working man".
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u/Gnome_Sane 3d ago
It's interesting that you didn't mention how difficult it is to build new homes, due to government regulations. Your main focus seems to be class warfare.
I'm willing to bet you live in a city run by Democrats, perhaps for decades now. Have you ever considered moving to a small town that is more affordable. Or voting for any other party?
You can buy a home for 150K to 250K in West Virginia that would sell for 1.5 million in LA... same home size, with a much bigger yard... And pursue art there.
Interestingly enough, this is basically what the 'Rich' are doing. They are fleeing the high tax, high cost living of Democrat run states and cities for lower cost and lower tax rural areas.
Until an actual change in the laws can occur - there is no other choice but to pay the 2500 a month to rent a crappy room in San Fran or 3500... or to leave and pay that much for a mortgage on a house in a rural area in the midwest or south. Sure there are a few exceptions in blue state rural areas too, if that is more important.
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u/Black_XistenZ 2d ago
The crux is that 'the rich' don't rely on their day job to sustain themselves. Someone who has to pay all his bills with the wages he earns from his actual job cannot just pack his coffers and move to Bumfuck, Nowhere.
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u/Gnome_Sane 2d ago
It's funny, people with no money move to LA or NY or Chicago to become big famous movie stars or big famous musicians with no money all the time...
Your description of someplace that isn't a 3000 a month studio apartment as 'Bumfuck' says it all, really.
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u/Black_XistenZ 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's a highly selective example since the movie and music industries are unusually strongly concentrated in specific cities. An aspiring actor basically has no other choice than to live in LA or a few other big cities.
The same is not true for an aspiring nurse or mechanic or engineer. For folks with "normie jobs", there's opportunity in medium-sized towns and smaller cities, too. Nonetheless, once these normies have established a career and become rooted in a specific place, they typically cannot just pack their coffers and move to a much more rural place at a later point in their work life just to avoid high housing costs, because that would almost surely be a step backwards career-wise.
The example of moving from LA to West Virginia makes no sense, career-wise, for the vast majority of folks with regular jobs.
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u/StedeBonnet1 4d ago
Yes, the realistic solution is supply. Supply is limited by regulations. In some areas up to 25% of the cost of a new house in in regulations. We are already seeing some prices come down as some peope self deport which opens up supply.
Housing is all about supply and demand. Increase supply prices come down
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u/bl1y 3d ago
If there's no one to sell to, how are the house flippers going to flip the houses?
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u/StedeBonnet1 3d ago
They aren't. If the house flippers can;t sell they lower the price even if they lose money
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
There's plenty of housing. Supply isn't the problem. The problem is big business hoarding the units, not even putting them on the market because line go up.
The solution is to decommodify.
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u/satyrday12 4d ago
Restore the progressive taxes that Reagan and every other republican since, has demolished. It's really that simple.
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u/hprather1 4d ago
No, it's really not that simple. This has nothing to do with lowering housing costs. The way to lower housing costs is to increase housing supply. The way to increase housing supply is to build more houses. If it is too difficult to build more houses then the cause of the difficulty needs to be remedied. Usually that cause is zoning laws and nimbyism.
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u/ImNotTheBossOfYou 4d ago
There's plenty of housing. Supply isn't the problem. The problem is big business hoarding the units, not even putting them on the market because line go up.
The solution is to decommodify.
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u/ManSkirtDude101 3d ago
There is absolutely a lack of supply for housing in the areas people actually want to live. Yes there is supply in the middle of nowhere where their aren't good jobs avaliable.
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u/hprather1 3d ago
The number you keep parroting is total vacant investor-owned housing which says nothing about the condition and location of those homes. If those homes are falling apart on the shithole side of some shithole town, then good luck getting people to live in them.
The solution, as supported by literally every serious economist and economic paper, is to build more housing. See Austin, TX as direct evidence of that fact.
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u/Sheradenin 4d ago
What for? To make the construction business less profitable and freeze new housing projects?
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u/Matt2_ASC 3d ago
Agreed. In my area builders are making careers out of upgrading old homes into second homes or vacation homes. If inequality was lower, it would mean that the wealth in lower classes could compete with the buying power of the 1% and we'd see more middle class homes being built.
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u/Sea-Chain7394 4d ago
Yes just pass a law making it illegal for large corporations or investment groups to own multiple homes or multiunit apartments. Problem solved. Bonus points for limiting house flipping. It's a very easy problem to solve if you just prioritize people over profit
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u/Initial_Savings3034 3d ago
Build assisted living and +55 multiunit properties, first.
Exempt capital gains once per family to sellers over 65 years of age.
Plenty of underutilized homes suitable for families house someone elderly that can't afford to live anywhere else.
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u/FunArtichoke6167 4d ago
Boomers need to start pushing daisies and the supply will increase bringing the values down. It’s a matter of time.
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u/HardlyDecent 4d ago
Actually quite the opposite. Populations are getting older almost everywhere, so Boomers might bite it, but Gen X is aging and hot on their heels. Boomers will leave their houses to the X's--the last home-owning generation, and there will be even less supply because old folk love owning homes and have the means to do it.
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u/Captain-i0 3d ago edited 3d ago
Boomers will leave their houses to the X's--the last home-owning generation
You are a bit off here. Gen - X is already a heavily home ownership generation. Almost 80% of Gen-X are already homeowners.
Also, while some of the younger Gen-Xers have Parents that were the oldest Boomers, Boomers are more so the parents for Millennials, not Gen - X. Most Gen-X had parents from the Greatest Generation (their words, not mine), Silent Generation or older.
So, it doesn't take away from the gist of your main point, many of these Boomer homes won't be going back on the market at an affordable price, but they will be going to their Millennial kids (which is another huge generation), not Gen-X.
Which is to say, you are correct that Boomers dying is, in no way, a solve for the housing crisis. It's just going to create more Millennials that will want to pull the ladder up behind them.
The real problem is the affordability of everything else needed to live. People are unwilling to part with their homes for a low price, because we are basically forced to use their rising values as vessels for retirement insurance as we age. Nobody that owns a home will ever support changes that will decrease the value of their home as long as this is the case, and rightfully so.
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u/FightSmartTrav 4d ago
The most obvious lingering solution is to block the ownership of private homes from major firms like 'Blackrock'... which can be done based on market cap, or some other metric to ensure that small landlords don't get screwed over. Structuring smaller LLCs to bypass these checks would also have to be made illegal. Then you give firms a 7-10 year timeline to liquidate their residential real estate holdings so it doesn't cause on massive shift in the market.
This frees up a lot of supply... if nothing else.
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u/unfortunately2nd 4d ago
Small investor make up the majority ownership. The exact number you are stating.
The real fact is that when yous turn something in to an investment viechle those who own gain real value from blocking future housing.
The entire thing is rooted in racism and hate towards poor people. They exclusionary zone and then block any public transportation to keep undesirables out.
You don't want homeless on your street? Legalize SROs so that people have last resort housing. Stop requiring car ownership to function. Stop requiring set backs or high lot to sq ft ratio. Allow people to build multi units next to SFHs.
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u/NoDig3444 4d ago
Major firms own about 3% of rental property in America and less than 1% of single family homes. That's not a lot of supply.
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u/hprather1 4d ago
This is the worst idea possible. Investment properties are a tiny share of total homes owned. The solution to a shortage is more supply. Everything else is a bandaid or directly harmful to lowering housing costs.
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u/Sheradenin 4d ago
Try capitalism without government interventions like "we are not going to allow new housing projects just for anybody".
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u/zayelion 4d ago
Real talk, there are a few things that will solve it.
Changing tax code so they are not seen as assets.
Government mandated build outs of high quality standardized dwellings at a large number.
Blocking the consolidation of building companies.
Mandating that shares be used to pay taxes and the government influence companies to increase wages.
Government purchase of building companies and it operate at a loss.
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u/ljwright58 4d ago
Yes, there is an easy solution, and President Trump is doing it. Deport all of the undocumented people. That does two things- it opens up a lot of units for Americans to rent, and it will lower the price of those units.
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