Income would have to jump 55% to make buying real estate ‘affordable'
October 13, 2023 10:28 PM Subscribe
What's the end game?
posted by krisjohn at 1:47 AM on October 14, 2023 [30 favorites]
Rich people: the world is ours!When you and everyone you know are living paycheque to paycheque, unable to afford anything beyond most of the necessities, with the only escape being death, it's going to be hard to convince everyone that being poor is due to bad choices and personal responsibility.
Historian: guys wait every time this happens-
Rich people: fuck poor people!
Historian: you guys remember when-
Rich people: We’re going to live forever!
*loud screech as Historian slowly drags a framed painting of Bastille Day into the room*
posted by krisjohn at 1:47 AM on October 14, 2023 [30 favorites]
Thing is, though, the moneyed classes don't have to convince everybody of that. Being able to convince the political classes is sufficient.
Because the thing about living paycheque to paycheque and being unable to afford anything beyond the bare necessities, if those, is that it makes thinking seriously about the big picture super hard. People under grinding stress really don't have the spoons for anything but a simple and fairly incoherent politics, largely resentment-driven, creating fertile ground for cynical exploitation by grifters who genuinely see themselves as better than the hoi polloi.
It pays to remember that the storming of the Bastille was not a spontaneous uprising by the oppressed. It was organized by politicians.
posted by flabdablet at 2:38 AM on October 14, 2023 [45 favorites]
Because the thing about living paycheque to paycheque and being unable to afford anything beyond the bare necessities, if those, is that it makes thinking seriously about the big picture super hard. People under grinding stress really don't have the spoons for anything but a simple and fairly incoherent politics, largely resentment-driven, creating fertile ground for cynical exploitation by grifters who genuinely see themselves as better than the hoi polloi.
It pays to remember that the storming of the Bastille was not a spontaneous uprising by the oppressed. It was organized by politicians.
posted by flabdablet at 2:38 AM on October 14, 2023 [45 favorites]
Interest rates are a factor, but prices should come down. My first mortgage was at 8.3%. I remember my parents refinancing at 13%. But housing prices were really different.
In Toronto prices have come down, but not a lot. That’s because we don’t have enough housing, but I also wonder at the amount held as investments by individuals or by firms.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:49 AM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
In Toronto prices have come down, but not a lot. That’s because we don’t have enough housing, but I also wonder at the amount held as investments by individuals or by firms.
posted by warriorqueen at 3:49 AM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mao has a solution for this problem.
Yes, private investment firms are skewing prices for homes.
Yes, rents are way out of line, again reference private investment firms.
posted by nofundy at 3:53 AM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mao has a solution for this problem.
Guh, whenever I see this it feels more like a meme than an understanding of what happened with Mao's actions against the landlords. The entire process Mao instituted was utterly disastrous in its effect. Sure, the landlords were all dead by the peasant's hands or forced into fleeing/re-education. But the state then supplanted the landlords, and the CCP at the time was barely less corrupt than the KMT that came before. For years, reports of wanton abuse, sexual coercion, exploitation and warlord-ism levied by the peasantry levied at the CCP Landlords were seen by the goons in power as nothing more than reactionary subversion. The purging of the landlords was a system designed not for the liberation of anyone, but rather step one in the full expansion of corrupted state power into the lives of the peasantry that fully enabled the Great Leap Forward to happen.
Sure, Mao upended the landlord system. But what followed was far, far from the liberated utopia that people hoped for. It was a con that ended in mass exploitation and death, and took decades to alleviate.
posted by Philipschall at 4:49 AM on October 14, 2023 [24 favorites]
Guh, whenever I see this it feels more like a meme than an understanding of what happened with Mao's actions against the landlords. The entire process Mao instituted was utterly disastrous in its effect. Sure, the landlords were all dead by the peasant's hands or forced into fleeing/re-education. But the state then supplanted the landlords, and the CCP at the time was barely less corrupt than the KMT that came before. For years, reports of wanton abuse, sexual coercion, exploitation and warlord-ism levied by the peasantry levied at the CCP Landlords were seen by the goons in power as nothing more than reactionary subversion. The purging of the landlords was a system designed not for the liberation of anyone, but rather step one in the full expansion of corrupted state power into the lives of the peasantry that fully enabled the Great Leap Forward to happen.
Sure, Mao upended the landlord system. But what followed was far, far from the liberated utopia that people hoped for. It was a con that ended in mass exploitation and death, and took decades to alleviate.
posted by Philipschall at 4:49 AM on October 14, 2023 [24 favorites]
Solution: Thruples for all
posted by eustatic at 5:54 AM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
posted by eustatic at 5:54 AM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
When things like the French Revolution happened, the police state didn't have the level of surveillance and militarization that we have now.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:00 AM on October 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:00 AM on October 14, 2023 [9 favorites]
ban landlords and also and relatedly ban homeowning.
as the result of a series of unlikely and extremely fortuitous events i somehow own a house, even though my family were basically lumpenproletarian, and, like, not in a good way. and i've come to realize that if i were someone who wasn't borderline suicidally unconcerned with my own class interests, i would be very tempted by the various perverse incentives that homeowners share.
for example: i look at news reports about rents potentially going down, and my first thought is a stupidly selfish one — "oh no! this might affect my property values!"
that thought is reprehensible and i immediately suppress it, but it's there. it's there and i have to spend effort to keep it from affecting my behavior.
and like one of the factors i now consider with regard to the ever-rising tide of fascism in the united states is that when american fascists get into positions of power they immediately do everything possible to juice the economy in the short term, without regard for long-term effects. which means that should america go the bad way in 2024, i'm likely going to end up doing something i've referred to as "catching the fascist knife," even though that metaphor doesn't exactly jibe with the original stock trader sense of "catching the knife." what's catching the fascist knife? catching the fascist knife means selling during that window of short-term economy enjuicification and then using the proceeds to get the hell out of the country.
selfish, selfish, selfish. but also i know there's homeowners out there, vastly more homeowners than are on my side, who are like "i support trump because he'll make my house worth more."
ban. homeowning.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:02 AM on October 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
as the result of a series of unlikely and extremely fortuitous events i somehow own a house, even though my family were basically lumpenproletarian, and, like, not in a good way. and i've come to realize that if i were someone who wasn't borderline suicidally unconcerned with my own class interests, i would be very tempted by the various perverse incentives that homeowners share.
for example: i look at news reports about rents potentially going down, and my first thought is a stupidly selfish one — "oh no! this might affect my property values!"
that thought is reprehensible and i immediately suppress it, but it's there. it's there and i have to spend effort to keep it from affecting my behavior.
and like one of the factors i now consider with regard to the ever-rising tide of fascism in the united states is that when american fascists get into positions of power they immediately do everything possible to juice the economy in the short term, without regard for long-term effects. which means that should america go the bad way in 2024, i'm likely going to end up doing something i've referred to as "catching the fascist knife," even though that metaphor doesn't exactly jibe with the original stock trader sense of "catching the knife." what's catching the fascist knife? catching the fascist knife means selling during that window of short-term economy enjuicification and then using the proceeds to get the hell out of the country.
selfish, selfish, selfish. but also i know there's homeowners out there, vastly more homeowners than are on my side, who are like "i support trump because he'll make my house worth more."
ban. homeowning.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:02 AM on October 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
Some years ago Mrs. Fedora and I did some back-of-the-envelope math to figure out how viable moving from Japan back to the US would be, and determined that solely due to the price of housing and healthcare, we would have to make more than twice as much as we do in Japan. Crucially, this doubled income wouldn't involve greater savings left over at the end of each month.
Turns out, maybe having any regulations at all on the housing and real estate market is Good, Actually
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:08 AM on October 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
Turns out, maybe having any regulations at all on the housing and real estate market is Good, Actually
posted by DoctorFedora at 7:08 AM on October 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
ban. homeowning.
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:02 AM on October 14 [+] [!]
That's truth in advertising, at least.
Around here, just like in many places, prices have stayed steady or risen, depending on the neighborhood. The volume of sales is way, way down, perhaps from all the people with 3% mortgages refusing to sell. Some new housing is being built, but not enough to change the overall supply/demand situation. The result is such a constrained market that prices stay high or rise, despite interest rates going up.
So a first time buyer, or someone whose income would have been comfortable with mortgages at 3%, is going to struggle when prices are just as high but not a mortgage is 7.5% or higher.
Personally I'd like to see the supply side problem be addressed by removing most if not all single family zoning and replacing it with ordinances that allow and incentivize infill development. We need lots and lots more housing units, at a wide variety of price-points, to alleviate the problems with both rental and sales markets.
(Separately, we're going to need to address the issue of large scale investment purchases, which are probably to the point of actively distorting markets in a lot of places.)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:16 AM on October 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by bombastic lowercase pronouncements at 6:02 AM on October 14 [+] [!]
That's truth in advertising, at least.
Around here, just like in many places, prices have stayed steady or risen, depending on the neighborhood. The volume of sales is way, way down, perhaps from all the people with 3% mortgages refusing to sell. Some new housing is being built, but not enough to change the overall supply/demand situation. The result is such a constrained market that prices stay high or rise, despite interest rates going up.
So a first time buyer, or someone whose income would have been comfortable with mortgages at 3%, is going to struggle when prices are just as high but not a mortgage is 7.5% or higher.
Personally I'd like to see the supply side problem be addressed by removing most if not all single family zoning and replacing it with ordinances that allow and incentivize infill development. We need lots and lots more housing units, at a wide variety of price-points, to alleviate the problems with both rental and sales markets.
(Separately, we're going to need to address the issue of large scale investment purchases, which are probably to the point of actively distorting markets in a lot of places.)
posted by Dip Flash at 7:16 AM on October 14, 2023 [4 favorites]
When things like the French Revolution happened, the police state didn't have the level of surveillance and militarization that we have now.
So, is this in favor or against? I swear, I can never tell around here.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:13 AM on October 14, 2023
So, is this in favor or against? I swear, I can never tell around here.
posted by 2N2222 at 8:13 AM on October 14, 2023
Banning homeowning is crazypants. Many people want a stable place to stay their whole lives and a chance to maintain a sense of place and comfort across generations. Not everyone relishes the idea of moving all over the place for work or the precarious “make it in the big city” lifestyle. If you ban homeowning, you’re basically telling everyone they are nomads who exist at the pleasure of the state.
Who does own the homes in this scenario? Is it part of a ban private property play?
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:54 AM on October 14, 2023 [14 favorites]
Who does own the homes in this scenario? Is it part of a ban private property play?
posted by caviar2d2 at 8:54 AM on October 14, 2023 [14 favorites]
I live in Vancouver, BC, and the amount of money that I would need to make to own a home here places it so far beyond the reach of any feasible reality that I can imagine.
it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
For me it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the housing market changing. There are so many factors that would need to change.
1. Housing is an asset. Ultra wealthy people and investment firms and real estate corporations buy them up because the value of homes keeps increasing. A house is something that sits in someone's investment portfolio. To me this is absolutely vile, this makes my blood boil. The amount of empty homes that live in my city is absolutely disgraceful. And I can't see this changing.
2. People believe that housing is not a human right. The amount of times I've heard people talk about how "entitled" people are for wanting to own a house or to even live in the city is so depressing. Like, rent in this city is impossible. Our living wage is calculated at $25 an hour, and that's a minimum, and our actual minimum wage is $16.75.
3. We want people to suffer. Any time additional housing is proposed the amount of people who crawl out of the woodwork to oppose it is unreal. They are extremely vocal about how these new developments will reduce their property values, make their neighbourhoods unsafe, all the usual garbage. And it works.
I try not to think too much about the housing market and the state of real estate in my city. I'm trying to be more positive about things but like, reading what I wrote above I can't inject any positivity into it, and that really sucks.
posted by Neronomius at 8:59 AM on October 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the end of capitalism.
For me it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to imagine the housing market changing. There are so many factors that would need to change.
1. Housing is an asset. Ultra wealthy people and investment firms and real estate corporations buy them up because the value of homes keeps increasing. A house is something that sits in someone's investment portfolio. To me this is absolutely vile, this makes my blood boil. The amount of empty homes that live in my city is absolutely disgraceful. And I can't see this changing.
2. People believe that housing is not a human right. The amount of times I've heard people talk about how "entitled" people are for wanting to own a house or to even live in the city is so depressing. Like, rent in this city is impossible. Our living wage is calculated at $25 an hour, and that's a minimum, and our actual minimum wage is $16.75.
3. We want people to suffer. Any time additional housing is proposed the amount of people who crawl out of the woodwork to oppose it is unreal. They are extremely vocal about how these new developments will reduce their property values, make their neighbourhoods unsafe, all the usual garbage. And it works.
I try not to think too much about the housing market and the state of real estate in my city. I'm trying to be more positive about things but like, reading what I wrote above I can't inject any positivity into it, and that really sucks.
posted by Neronomius at 8:59 AM on October 14, 2023 [15 favorites]
but also i know there's homeowners out there, vastly more homeowners than are on my side,
Are we assuming this based on vibes? I see statements very much to the contrary but none that support the claim.
posted by StarkRoads at 10:18 AM on October 14, 2023
Are we assuming this based on vibes? I see statements very much to the contrary but none that support the claim.
posted by StarkRoads at 10:18 AM on October 14, 2023
I'm getting a paywall. Everyone else sees the whole thing?
posted by Selena777 at 10:48 AM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Selena777 at 10:48 AM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Archive.org link
“it’s a 35% correction in price, or a 4% decline in [mortgage] rates, or a 55% growth in income—some combination of those."
It'll probably be a few years before #2 happens, at least.
posted by credulous at 11:21 AM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
“it’s a 35% correction in price, or a 4% decline in [mortgage] rates, or a 55% growth in income—some combination of those."
It'll probably be a few years before #2 happens, at least.
posted by credulous at 11:21 AM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
In general the answer is “make tenants who are renting more protected”, which has the dual effect of making houses cheaper (because houses are less effect income when let in a market where renters have strong rights) and allowing tennants to have assured housing.
This isn’t a problem only in the US, by the way. From France/Germany to Turkey, and especially in English speaking countries, housing has become as rare as hens teeth and as expensive as a goose that lays golden eggs. Why? Because housing is now capital, and a lot of politicians have become filthy rich via capital.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:00 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
This isn’t a problem only in the US, by the way. From France/Germany to Turkey, and especially in English speaking countries, housing has become as rare as hens teeth and as expensive as a goose that lays golden eggs. Why? Because housing is now capital, and a lot of politicians have become filthy rich via capital.
posted by The River Ivel at 12:00 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
the answer is “make tenants who are renting more protected”
You mention Germany as a place where housing costs are a problem, and I agree. Yet we have quite strong tenant protection laws. It seems to me that density / housing supply / ability to rapidly build is the better family of explanatory variables.
posted by daveliepmann at 12:19 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
You mention Germany as a place where housing costs are a problem, and I agree. Yet we have quite strong tenant protection laws. It seems to me that density / housing supply / ability to rapidly build is the better family of explanatory variables.
posted by daveliepmann at 12:19 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Never in a million years would I have imagined interest rates below 5%. Damn right I re-financed this little place I've lived forever.
Never in a million, billion years would I have imagined interest rates below 3%. Damn right I re-financed again this little place I've lived forever.
The only thing I have ever done right w/r/t dollars and dimes was spend seven hours signing my name at closing 30+ years ago. And in a different city it may not have happened as it did. A toss of the dice.
Had I gotten to Austin with a stable job two years earlier than I did, they'd have given me this place, pretty much, at least 20% less than I paid.
Had I gotten to Austin with a stable job two years later than I did I would not have been able to afford to own.
The reason there was a movie named "Slacker" is that people could actually afford to live here then. It's entertainment but also almost a documentary, a moment in time.
This town went absolutely insane during stay at home piece of the epidemic, the housing prices just shot through the roof(s), and you couldn't even look at a house, a house showing at 9AM had a line starting at 6AM, people cash in hand, pre-approved, willing to pay for your childrens college, blah blah blah. Housing prices has dropped a bit and mortgage rates have slowed things some but nowhere near enough to compensate for the "New! Improved!" mortgage rates. I absolutely have no idea how people can do what they must do to buy in this market.
My best friend here in town got caught, having sold his home just as things got totally, completely nuts, they sold without ink on a new mortgage at a sane price and got caught, they are now renting a house they cannot afford, he's pretty much in shock. I think that he and his wife are going to have to buy a couple or three garbage can condos, new paint and tile and sinks and window shades and rent them out, claw their way out of this nightmare one condo at a time. They've got the cash, he can get the lowest of the low mortgage rates via VA, both have unreal high credit scores. It won't be elegant nor fun but he's got the skillset and the drive.
~~~~~
Aside from signing my name for an entire afternoon in 1993, buying cars/trucks at a great price is the only thing I have ever done right w/r/t dollars and dimes. And buying vehicles right is a waiting game, in my experience -- know what you want, know that someone who does not know its value is going to sell it, know that I have to watch Craiglist like a hawk, have cash and pounce instantly when it shows up. Boots, jeans, hands a bit dirty, don't look like a guy with hundred dollar bills in your pocket. Have brand new hundred dollar bills in your pocket. And never, ever even dream of buying anything from a dealer. Ever.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:50 PM on October 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
Never in a million, billion years would I have imagined interest rates below 3%. Damn right I re-financed again this little place I've lived forever.
The only thing I have ever done right w/r/t dollars and dimes was spend seven hours signing my name at closing 30+ years ago. And in a different city it may not have happened as it did. A toss of the dice.
Had I gotten to Austin with a stable job two years earlier than I did, they'd have given me this place, pretty much, at least 20% less than I paid.
Had I gotten to Austin with a stable job two years later than I did I would not have been able to afford to own.
The reason there was a movie named "Slacker" is that people could actually afford to live here then. It's entertainment but also almost a documentary, a moment in time.
This town went absolutely insane during stay at home piece of the epidemic, the housing prices just shot through the roof(s), and you couldn't even look at a house, a house showing at 9AM had a line starting at 6AM, people cash in hand, pre-approved, willing to pay for your childrens college, blah blah blah. Housing prices has dropped a bit and mortgage rates have slowed things some but nowhere near enough to compensate for the "New! Improved!" mortgage rates. I absolutely have no idea how people can do what they must do to buy in this market.
My best friend here in town got caught, having sold his home just as things got totally, completely nuts, they sold without ink on a new mortgage at a sane price and got caught, they are now renting a house they cannot afford, he's pretty much in shock. I think that he and his wife are going to have to buy a couple or three garbage can condos, new paint and tile and sinks and window shades and rent them out, claw their way out of this nightmare one condo at a time. They've got the cash, he can get the lowest of the low mortgage rates via VA, both have unreal high credit scores. It won't be elegant nor fun but he's got the skillset and the drive.
~~~~~
Aside from signing my name for an entire afternoon in 1993, buying cars/trucks at a great price is the only thing I have ever done right w/r/t dollars and dimes. And buying vehicles right is a waiting game, in my experience -- know what you want, know that someone who does not know its value is going to sell it, know that I have to watch Craiglist like a hawk, have cash and pounce instantly when it shows up. Boots, jeans, hands a bit dirty, don't look like a guy with hundred dollar bills in your pocket. Have brand new hundred dollar bills in your pocket. And never, ever even dream of buying anything from a dealer. Ever.
posted by dancestoblue at 12:50 PM on October 14, 2023 [8 favorites]
Mao has a solution for this problem
as does every populist ideologue.
And the populist ideological solution is always wrong, because it never makes any attempt to address the problem in any way that's even remotely ethical.
The problem is easy to identify: too many people competing for too little living space. Finding ethical solutions is harder.
There is nothing ethical to be done on the too many people side. All that we can and should be doing about that issue is our best to keep a lid on how fast it gets worse, by slowing the population growth rate; and the only ethical way to do that is via voluntary reduction in the local birth rate.
One course of action popular with rightwing ideologues is attempting to control population growth by restricting immigration. This is predicated on the notion that the rest of the world is not in the same boat, which is blinkered and stupid, or that we are somehow better and more deserving of decent living conditions than the rest of the world, which if we're going that route I don't know why we'd even pretend that ethics matter to us.
The Left typically leaves the population question completely unaddressed. Exceptions have all involved self-serving totalitarians like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Mugabe who rose to power by appealing to leftist sentiment though none had a leftist bone in their own bodies. And just as with the self-serving totalitarians of the Right, their favoured response has involved mass killings. You can definitely stop people from worrying about how hard it is to find housing if you force them to live with the constant fear of being killed outright instead.
But we're considering ethical policy responses here, and given that no ethical way to reduce demand actually exists, the only way must involve increasing supply.
This really has to come down to action by governments, which need to be doing everything within their considerable powers to increase the supply of low cost yet desirable housing. And there is no simple, clear, top-down action plan for getting that done, because the appropriate ways to do it are all hyperlocal. Picking a few simple policy aims - like directly building more government-owned public housing or supporting housing co-ops, say - will work in a lot of places, but not all. The people who do know what is needed in any given locality are the people struggling to stay securely housed there. Policy design needs to be driven bottom-up by them and governments need to be bending over backwards to facilitate that.
Speaking as a person with leftist sentiments and no totalitarian impulse, it seems to me that wherever there's a conflict between the interests of the currently unhoused and those of the rentier class, the interests of the unhoused should automatically prevail without a moment's further consideration. Anybody who whines about modified housing policy bringing on a "loss of property value" has immediately lost all my sympathy.
I own my own home. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to buy it here in this pleasant inland rural village in 2001, back when the urban property price explosion ripple was still mostly spreading out along the coasts. I give zero shits about what I could sell it for because I have no intention of selling it; this is my home, not a fucking profit centre.
Ms flabdablet owns a couple of rental properties. She's making fuck-all off them, basically enough to cover council rates and property management; hopefully this is applying a little downward pressure to rental rates in nearby properties as well. Our daughter might move into one of them at some point.
How the fuck the land of the free and the home of the brave is going to address its worsening housing shortage I do not know. Vested interests have had a very nearly total lock on every aspect of the way the US organizes itself for centuries now and I see no sign of that weakening any time soon.
posted by flabdablet at 2:23 PM on October 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
as does every populist ideologue.
And the populist ideological solution is always wrong, because it never makes any attempt to address the problem in any way that's even remotely ethical.
The problem is easy to identify: too many people competing for too little living space. Finding ethical solutions is harder.
There is nothing ethical to be done on the too many people side. All that we can and should be doing about that issue is our best to keep a lid on how fast it gets worse, by slowing the population growth rate; and the only ethical way to do that is via voluntary reduction in the local birth rate.
One course of action popular with rightwing ideologues is attempting to control population growth by restricting immigration. This is predicated on the notion that the rest of the world is not in the same boat, which is blinkered and stupid, or that we are somehow better and more deserving of decent living conditions than the rest of the world, which if we're going that route I don't know why we'd even pretend that ethics matter to us.
The Left typically leaves the population question completely unaddressed. Exceptions have all involved self-serving totalitarians like Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Mugabe who rose to power by appealing to leftist sentiment though none had a leftist bone in their own bodies. And just as with the self-serving totalitarians of the Right, their favoured response has involved mass killings. You can definitely stop people from worrying about how hard it is to find housing if you force them to live with the constant fear of being killed outright instead.
But we're considering ethical policy responses here, and given that no ethical way to reduce demand actually exists, the only way must involve increasing supply.
This really has to come down to action by governments, which need to be doing everything within their considerable powers to increase the supply of low cost yet desirable housing. And there is no simple, clear, top-down action plan for getting that done, because the appropriate ways to do it are all hyperlocal. Picking a few simple policy aims - like directly building more government-owned public housing or supporting housing co-ops, say - will work in a lot of places, but not all. The people who do know what is needed in any given locality are the people struggling to stay securely housed there. Policy design needs to be driven bottom-up by them and governments need to be bending over backwards to facilitate that.
Speaking as a person with leftist sentiments and no totalitarian impulse, it seems to me that wherever there's a conflict between the interests of the currently unhoused and those of the rentier class, the interests of the unhoused should automatically prevail without a moment's further consideration. Anybody who whines about modified housing policy bringing on a "loss of property value" has immediately lost all my sympathy.
I own my own home. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to buy it here in this pleasant inland rural village in 2001, back when the urban property price explosion ripple was still mostly spreading out along the coasts. I give zero shits about what I could sell it for because I have no intention of selling it; this is my home, not a fucking profit centre.
Ms flabdablet owns a couple of rental properties. She's making fuck-all off them, basically enough to cover council rates and property management; hopefully this is applying a little downward pressure to rental rates in nearby properties as well. Our daughter might move into one of them at some point.
How the fuck the land of the free and the home of the brave is going to address its worsening housing shortage I do not know. Vested interests have had a very nearly total lock on every aspect of the way the US organizes itself for centuries now and I see no sign of that weakening any time soon.
posted by flabdablet at 2:23 PM on October 14, 2023 [5 favorites]
If you ban homeowning, you’re basically telling everyone they are nomads who exist at the pleasure of the state.
I don't think I adopt the underlying proposed policy, but, "if you don't own a home, you're doomed to be a rootless nomad" is an odd criticism to make, pure American suburban provincialism. Stable public housing is, in fact, possible. Even in the private market, strong, well-enforced rental protections can keep families in place for decades. Around here there are ancient Chinese immigrant couples who've been living in their same rent-stabilized apartments since the 1980s. Widespread homeownership is but one way of organizing society; don't kid yourself otherwise. Our current system is so unethical and oppressive that it is incumbent upon us to consider all alternatives (short of murdering landlords en masse).
posted by praemunire at 3:11 PM on October 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
I don't think I adopt the underlying proposed policy, but, "if you don't own a home, you're doomed to be a rootless nomad" is an odd criticism to make, pure American suburban provincialism. Stable public housing is, in fact, possible. Even in the private market, strong, well-enforced rental protections can keep families in place for decades. Around here there are ancient Chinese immigrant couples who've been living in their same rent-stabilized apartments since the 1980s. Widespread homeownership is but one way of organizing society; don't kid yourself otherwise. Our current system is so unethical and oppressive that it is incumbent upon us to consider all alternatives (short of murdering landlords en masse).
posted by praemunire at 3:11 PM on October 14, 2023 [2 favorites]
gure out how viable moving from Japan back to the US would be, and determined that solely due to the price of housing and healthcare, we would have to make more than twice as much as we do in Japan.
Japan actually has loser local regulations than the US does, so it is able to meet demand.
Konichi Value
"The difference in zoning laws between Japan and the US have led to a massive housing crunch in US cities while Tokyo's newly built housing market is thriving. America’s largest city, New York started construction on just under 30,000 new housing units in 2020 while Tokyo started constructing 130,000 units"
Per this article that is an opinion piece, Japan defines zoning at the national level whereas in the US it's determined at the city and then often by-parcel level.
posted by The_Vegetables at 5:30 PM on October 14, 2023
Japan actually has loser local regulations than the US does, so it is able to meet demand.
Konichi Value
"The difference in zoning laws between Japan and the US have led to a massive housing crunch in US cities while Tokyo's newly built housing market is thriving. America’s largest city, New York started construction on just under 30,000 new housing units in 2020 while Tokyo started constructing 130,000 units"
Per this article that is an opinion piece, Japan defines zoning at the national level whereas in the US it's determined at the city and then often by-parcel level.
posted by The_Vegetables at 5:30 PM on October 14, 2023
Finding a way to disincentivize stuff like Blackrock's Invitation Homes operation would be a good start, without needing to worry about abolishing title to real property off the line.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:48 PM on October 14, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:48 PM on October 14, 2023
The population of Japan peaked in 2010 and is currently in slow decline; the US has grown by 28 million people - more than the entire population of Australia - since 2010.
I'm not at all sure that differences in approaches to zoning are necessarily the determining factor in Tokyo's relative lack of housing crunch. Demand in Japan is way lower.
posted by flabdablet at 6:06 PM on October 14, 2023
I'm not at all sure that differences in approaches to zoning are necessarily the determining factor in Tokyo's relative lack of housing crunch. Demand in Japan is way lower.
posted by flabdablet at 6:06 PM on October 14, 2023
(Make that Blackstone; public now.)
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:21 PM on October 14, 2023
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:21 PM on October 14, 2023
Mao has a solution for this problem.
You might get more homes for people to live in, but you'll run out of burial sites with the millions killed along the way.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:08 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
You might get more homes for people to live in, but you'll run out of burial sites with the millions killed along the way.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 7:08 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Throughout this thread I was wondering, when we talk about homeownership, how many people actually own their homes free and clear? Luckily that information is available, and in the US at least only about 23% of households really own their homes; 42% have mortgages, 35% are renters. (That low level of ownership appears to be related to the length of mortgages in the US.)
posted by mittens at 8:06 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by mittens at 8:06 PM on October 14, 2023 [1 favorite]
Homeowners in the US also appear to move around quite a bit - owning outright may not be a goal for everyone in the home they’re currently paying towards.
posted by Selena777 at 10:52 PM on October 14, 2023
posted by Selena777 at 10:52 PM on October 14, 2023
The only mao that should be mentioned in these threads is lmao
Because they are one million percent not going from posting on metafilter to doing red terror shit
posted by StarkRoads at 11:25 PM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Because they are one million percent not going from posting on metafilter to doing red terror shit
posted by StarkRoads at 11:25 PM on October 14, 2023 [3 favorites]
Mao has a solution for this problem.
Always amazes me when Euro-American leftists blithely say such historically clueless things as this. You and your family go first. Maybe move to Venezuela and report back. Or maybe you can convince a majority of Americans to "ban home ownership". Yeah that will work. Lol whut?
What next, forcibly "reduce" the population size so demand goes down? To be fine with the level of lethal society-wide violence that is necessarily implied by suggestions like this is symptomatic of fashionable nihilism or utter historical ignorance or both. And it tends to spout from the mouths of the privileged who wouldn't likely survive the revolution they're gleefully imagining.
posted by spitbull at 2:33 AM on October 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
Always amazes me when Euro-American leftists blithely say such historically clueless things as this. You and your family go first. Maybe move to Venezuela and report back. Or maybe you can convince a majority of Americans to "ban home ownership". Yeah that will work. Lol whut?
What next, forcibly "reduce" the population size so demand goes down? To be fine with the level of lethal society-wide violence that is necessarily implied by suggestions like this is symptomatic of fashionable nihilism or utter historical ignorance or both. And it tends to spout from the mouths of the privileged who wouldn't likely survive the revolution they're gleefully imagining.
posted by spitbull at 2:33 AM on October 15, 2023 [2 favorites]
I own my own home. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to buy it here in this pleasant inland rural village in 2001, back when the urban property price explosion ripple was still mostly spreading out along the coasts. I give zero shits about what I could sell it for because I have no intention of selling it; this is my home, not a fucking profit centre.
QFT.
I don't see my home as an investment; it's my safe space, where I plan to age in place, and I don't care about property values.
posted by Kitteh at 6:15 AM on October 15, 2023
QFT.
I don't see my home as an investment; it's my safe space, where I plan to age in place, and I don't care about property values.
posted by Kitteh at 6:15 AM on October 15, 2023
Mao has a solution for this problem.
Every suburban home's big gas barbecue grill shall be converted into a smelter!
posted by mittens at 7:13 AM on October 15, 2023
Every suburban home's big gas barbecue grill shall be converted into a smelter!
posted by mittens at 7:13 AM on October 15, 2023
The population of Japan peaked in 2010 and is currently in slow decline; the US has grown by 28 million people - more than the entire population of Australia - since 2010.
I'm not at all sure that differences in approaches to zoning are necessarily the determining factor in Tokyo's relative lack of housing crunch. Demand in Japan is way lower.
You can't really gauge demand across an entire country - NYC population grew by about 1m in the past 30 years, so one of the most desirable places to live in the US has absorbed 1m/28m in growth.
Compared to Toyko, which has grown by close to 2m people since 2000, which if you say is in a declining population environment.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on October 16, 2023
I'm not at all sure that differences in approaches to zoning are necessarily the determining factor in Tokyo's relative lack of housing crunch. Demand in Japan is way lower.
You can't really gauge demand across an entire country - NYC population grew by about 1m in the past 30 years, so one of the most desirable places to live in the US has absorbed 1m/28m in growth.
Compared to Toyko, which has grown by close to 2m people since 2000, which if you say is in a declining population environment.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:54 AM on October 16, 2023
Neronomius: Any time additional housing is proposed the amount of people who crawl out of the woodwork to oppose it is unreal. They are extremely vocal about how these new developments will reduce their property values, make their neighbourhoods unsafe, all the usual garbage. And it works.
As Ginger Gosnell-Myers puts it, it's easier to elect a pope than to approve a small rental building in the city of Vancouver.
I'm also in Vancouver. I'm pretty active with an informal pro-housing group (centered around a Discord server) which we're calling the Vancouver Area Neighbours Association. Basically we're aiming to counterbalance opponents of housing.
There's a lot of "small is beautiful" thinking here. The result is that Vancouver is more and more exclusive and expensive, like a country club. Prices and asking rents have to be unbearably high (not just painfully high) to keep people out, which also forces younger people to give up and leave.
What it boils down to is, we have a mismatch between housing and jobs. There's lots of people who want to live and work here, and there's other people who want to build housing for them. But we make it really difficult to get approval to build housing, and we also impose a lot of development charges to keep property taxes low.
In other words, we're shooting ourselves in the foot, and we should stop. A striking example: there's an old two-storey rental building in Kitsilano that's now illegal to replace with a new building of exactly the same size. Literally five minutes down the street, the Senakw project is building 59-storey rental high-rises on a small parcel of Squamish reserve land (not subject to the city's extremely restrictive zoning). Housing is scarce and prohibitively expensive because we don't let people build it.
I think we're seeing some progress on the political side. In the last municipal election, Colleen Hardwick, the mayoral candidate who appealed to housing opponents, only got 10% of the vote. (I ran for city council; I didn't get elected, but I got more votes than Hardwick or any of her candidates.) David Eby and the BC government have been pushing hard for more housing, and are planning to bring in province-wide legislation this fall. And the new federal housing minister, Sean Fraser, has been energetically negotiating with municipalities to get them to allow more housing; there's a National Housing Accord proposal that they can draw on for more ideas, e.g. the recent removal of GST/HST from new rental housing.
I think I'm more optimistic than you are. Auckland made it easier to build infill housing in 2016, and six years later there was noticeable downward pressure on rents.
How more housing brings down rents: prices and asking rents have to rise about 2% to force 1% of people to give up and leave. Equivalently, if we had 1% more housing than we actually do today, rents would be about 2% lower. That is, the people who would move here are people who can’t afford to live here now, but who would (just) be able to afford rents which are 2% lower than current asking rents.
posted by russilwvong at 12:21 PM on October 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
As Ginger Gosnell-Myers puts it, it's easier to elect a pope than to approve a small rental building in the city of Vancouver.
I'm also in Vancouver. I'm pretty active with an informal pro-housing group (centered around a Discord server) which we're calling the Vancouver Area Neighbours Association. Basically we're aiming to counterbalance opponents of housing.
There's a lot of "small is beautiful" thinking here. The result is that Vancouver is more and more exclusive and expensive, like a country club. Prices and asking rents have to be unbearably high (not just painfully high) to keep people out, which also forces younger people to give up and leave.
What it boils down to is, we have a mismatch between housing and jobs. There's lots of people who want to live and work here, and there's other people who want to build housing for them. But we make it really difficult to get approval to build housing, and we also impose a lot of development charges to keep property taxes low.
In other words, we're shooting ourselves in the foot, and we should stop. A striking example: there's an old two-storey rental building in Kitsilano that's now illegal to replace with a new building of exactly the same size. Literally five minutes down the street, the Senakw project is building 59-storey rental high-rises on a small parcel of Squamish reserve land (not subject to the city's extremely restrictive zoning). Housing is scarce and prohibitively expensive because we don't let people build it.
I think we're seeing some progress on the political side. In the last municipal election, Colleen Hardwick, the mayoral candidate who appealed to housing opponents, only got 10% of the vote. (I ran for city council; I didn't get elected, but I got more votes than Hardwick or any of her candidates.) David Eby and the BC government have been pushing hard for more housing, and are planning to bring in province-wide legislation this fall. And the new federal housing minister, Sean Fraser, has been energetically negotiating with municipalities to get them to allow more housing; there's a National Housing Accord proposal that they can draw on for more ideas, e.g. the recent removal of GST/HST from new rental housing.
I think I'm more optimistic than you are. Auckland made it easier to build infill housing in 2016, and six years later there was noticeable downward pressure on rents.
How more housing brings down rents: prices and asking rents have to rise about 2% to force 1% of people to give up and leave. Equivalently, if we had 1% more housing than we actually do today, rents would be about 2% lower. That is, the people who would move here are people who can’t afford to live here now, but who would (just) be able to afford rents which are 2% lower than current asking rents.
posted by russilwvong at 12:21 PM on October 16, 2023 [1 favorite]
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Locally to me the 'affordable level' is for four full time workers in their 30s, to try and buy a two bed house with a 20% down payment, that they somehow saved up whilst renting for years (and paying more in rent than someone else's mortgage, but apparently weren't earning enough for the bank to give them a mortgage), up to that point?
Or the affordable style of 'back in my grandparents day' when as the sole earner in his late 20s, in a pretty regular engineering job (his wife was home raising their two kids), they could afford to buy a four bed house in the suburbs with a massive garden, with no other family financial support?
posted by many-things at 11:11 PM on October 13, 2023 [8 favorites]