
How did we create a society where we can’t afford to live in our own country? - wslh
http://blogs.harvard.edu/philg/2017/10/24/how-did-we-create-a-society-where-we-cant-afford-to-live-in-our-own-country/
======
exabrial
"affordable housing without a government subsidy is becoming extinct."

Was recently in LA, had a very excited Uber driver tell he just bought a house
near Topeka, KS and it was 4 bed, 3 bath, unfinished basement, 2 car garage
for $95k, on a 3/4 acre. He was extremely excited about moving. That's a
massive house. There is plenty of cheap housing elsewhere in the USA, you have
to be willing relocate.

The title should be "How did relatively small areas in California in the grand
scheme of the USA make housing so expensive most people can't live there?"

~~~
justboxing
> Topeka, KS.

Almost all the jobs I see in Topeka are in retail "Sales Associates" =
glorified title for minimum wage jobs.
[https://www.google.com/search?q=Topeka,+KS+jobs&oq=Topeka,+K...](https://www.google.com/search?q=Topeka,+KS+jobs&oq=Topeka,+KS+jobs)

How does this cabbie intend to make a good wage so he can continue to live in
his huge house? Or does he not care, since he bought a HUGE house for $ 95K --
assuming it was all cash. If not, he has a mortgage to pay like everyone else,
once a month.

~~~
charcoal23
Topeka is the capital of Kansas. There are jobs with the state government and
jobs in businesses connected with the state government. It's also a city of
125,000 people with the usual mix of jobs. Not extremely vibrant economically
but not particularly depressed either. Just an ordinary small Midwestern city.

Lawrence is the home of the University of Kansas, and is only 30 minutes down
the road from Topeka. Quite a few opportunities there, including startups.
Kansas City is about 40 minutes away down the turnpike with the opportunities
of a 2+ million metro area.

No, he's not going to make the sort of money you do in California, but he's
not moving to some economic wasteland either. He won't have too much trouble
pulling in 50-70,000 in some white collar job and, considering the cost of
living, he'll be quite comfortable. Probably more comfortable than a 100k job
in SF or LA.

~~~
diogenescynic
>He won't have too much trouble pulling in 50-70,000 in some white collar job
and, considering the cost of living, he'll be quite comfortable. Probably more
comfortable than a 100k job in SF or LA.

This was an Uber driver... you think Uber drivers are making 100k? You really
think an Uber driver is gonna find a 50-70k white collar job in Kansas?

~~~
charcoal23
The Uber driver will not always be an Uber driver. And probably has something
already lined up if he's paying for his new house via a mortgage. The
reference to a 100k job was making a comparison between the quality of life in
different parts of the country, and not an assumption the Uber driver was
actually making 100k.

~~~
diogenescynic
Can’t tell if you’re trolling but you’re making some seriously unfounded
assumptions based on zero information because it fits the outcome you want. I
could just as easily make different assumptions to end up with different
results.

~~~
charcoal23
I have no idea what prompted this reaction or an accusation of trolling.

------
nickgrosvenor
Something that is never brought up, the lack of recessing property values for
property tax purposes.

It really punishes new young families.

example. say an old couple lives in a home presently valued at 2.5 million
dollars in California, say they bought the home for 75,000 in the 1970's. So
they pay about 750 bucks a year in property tax.

New family, buys the exact same home today, owes 25,000 in property tax a
year. Over 2k a month just in property tax that doesn't exist for the older
home owners that have been grandfathered into to low property taxes on a house
whose value hasn't been reassessed for years.

Why isn't this talked about more?

New families get killed by this.

~~~
vadym909
ofcourse it is talked about, but is a losing proposition as most homeowners
wouldn't stand for it. Renters don't make up enough to oppose it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_(197...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_13_\(1978\)#Effect_on_public_schools)

In some cases this keeps rent low as homeowners with 2 houses paying low
property taxes can afford to charge lower rents.

~~~
dba7dba
It however has the unintended consequences of making housing unaffordable for
their CHILDREN when they grow up and have their own families.

But I don't think many house owners stop and think about that when trying to
avoid that property tax.

~~~
hiram112
Not 'their' children. It appears you can pass the home to a child or
grandchild and the home is not reappraised at the actual market value.

So now you've just created a new aristocracy based on hereditary privilege.

~~~
DrScump
Rent control can be similarly inherited, as demonstrated by a court case in SF
last year.

~~~
ajr0
I am interested in this case, can you share the details?

------
dannyw
Just like student loans created the monster of exponentially rising college
tutiton, it seems reasonable to suspect housing subsidies as a big cause of
unaffordable housing (in addition to perhaps zoning laws).

~~~
freedomben
Agreed. Also not helped by sustained low interest rates.

~~~
crashedsnow
It's confusing that it seems like more than 1% of the population in a given
area are buying houses that demand you're in the 1% of income to be able to
afford; until you realize there are no restrictions (or easily circumvented
ones) on foreign ownership. There are LOTS of wealthy people in the world.

------
jokoon
Nobody is going to like what I am going to write, but I have the opinion that
homeless people are generally happier in modern developed country when you
compare to other countries.

As long as there are minimum efforts done to take care of the poorest, meaning
charities and a minimum of a justice system, things are relatively good
enough.

I think the debate rather belongs to why do we constantly need to use carrots
to run a society? As long as society has rules that are in agreement with our
natural instincts, meaning self preservation, things will be easily managed,
but not easy for everyone.

When we will understand that "go get that income by yourself, joe!" cannot
always function properly, maybe things will change a little. I have never
understood the undying belief that "work is necessary for society to
function". It is not. Humans have constantly worked to avoid human labor, but
for some weird reason, people still want to work and mooching has a bad
reputation.

We are just approaching a weird, dystopian future where food is everywhere,
but for some reason humans cannot agree to find a relevant system to feed and
shelter everyone properly. Capitalism is not the problem, it is just that
nobody can agree on helping each other, and I sense that everyone is afraid of
letting government be more gentle because it would somehow resemble communism
or socialism.

Go figure.

~~~
gnulinux
I agree with everything you said except the last bit. I wonder if you actually
made some research about your own words and ideas. For example:

> When we will understand that "go get that income by yourself, joe!" cannot
> always function properly, maybe things will change a little. I have never
> understood the undying belief that "work is necessary for society to
> function". It is not. Humans have constantly worked to avoid human labor,
> but for some weird reason, people still want to work and mooching has a bad
> reputation.

Believe it or not, this is one of the core arguments of Marx. I wonder what
was your reasoning to conclude "Capitalism is not the problem". I'm very
interested to discuss this.

I think talking about "capitalism" and "communism" is the worst thing we can
do at this point, since these words are extremely politicized and they have no
meaning at all. Like, today "communism" refers specifically to USSR's Ideology
(state capitalism, centrally planned anti-consumerist economy etc...), a
Stalin and post-Stalin form of Marxism-Leninism, which has pretty much
_nothing_ to do with Marx's original ideas. Anyway, we should start talking
about concrete things, like private property. And, it seems to me that, one
logical conclusion of your reasoning is that private property is at least a
problematic concept for our society.

~~~
kiliantics
Thank you. Everyone seems to think they know what they're talking about but
there is so much disinformation about the concepts of capitalism and
socialism.

The problem is absolutely capitalism. That system is what causes people to
behave the way they do. "Human nature" is a product of our environment more
than it is any kind of inherent and unchanging thing. Otherwise humans could
not have survived and evolved to changes in surrounding nature as they did.

And the solution is certainly not Soviet style state socialism. But there are
so many other options. I'm most interested by the attempts at a new social
order that were made in revolutionary Catalonia and other places. Similar
attempts are being made right now in Syrian Kurdistan - aka Rojava - where
they are doing remarkably well despite the ongoing crisis. They call it
democratic confederalism.

~~~
gnulinux
Hey! Your comment cheered me up! I certainly agree that capitalism is the
problem but whatever USSR did is not a solution. In fact, USSR had so many
things wrong, I can easily say capitalism is preferable to bastardized,
authoritarian state capitalism that is Marxism-Leninism. Democratic
confedaralism (ideas of Bookchin, Ocalan etc...) are refreshing and we should
definitely read them, but I do not think they solve the fundamental problem.
As a Marxist, I believe fundamental problem is capital, and without the
people, _voluntarily_ (not dictated by bunch of 'revolutionaries' i.e.
opportunists) rejecting their business owners to exploit them, nothing
fundamental will be solved. And then, it should be ensured that the very
conditions that created capital cannot be produced again.

I wish more hackers read sociology, but unfortunately it is quite common among
us to think sociology as an unimportant pseudoscience, without understanding
any of it. When I discuss these issues with my friends, they quickly choose
"but then Stalin killed XYZ million people" as their argument. He sure did,
but that doesn't mean our world cannot be improved. And implications of this
train of thought to our job (programming) are obvious too. Even though most
programmers are rich, doesn't mean they're not exploited. Most programmers are
forced by their companies to use certain softwares that surveil and spy on
them. Some companies force their workers not to read GPL'd code _even in their
free time_. Why do we accept this?

~~~
kiliantics
I couldn't agree more. It would be great if people working in software would
gain some collective consciousness and start organising. They are such a
valuable part of the economy right now that any demands they make could really
have a good chance of changing things.

------
jaggederest
It's related to Balmol's Cost Disease [1]. Everything that is not technology
is increasing in price relative to what employing those people in a high-
productivity-multiplier industry would, and of course physical real estate is
the ultimate in non-substitutable, non-automatable goods.

This is the same reason that education, healthcare, and other human services
are eating more and more of the GDP: anything that can't be automated becomes
dramatically more expensive by comparison with things like industrial
automation and information technology.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol%27s_cost_disease)

~~~
dredmorbius
No.

BCD applies to _costs of production_ in which a given factor (typically
labour) hasn't had its productivity increased, but _because it competes for
other employment_ , the price paid for it _if any of the resulting good is to
be provided_ must keep pace.

The interesting part is what BCD _doesn 't_ describe, which is the _amount_ of
the good provided. The canonical case is the string quartet: you need four
performers, no matter how much technology you've got. _But:_ the total demand
for string quartets need not remain constant. Tastes could change favouring
other forms of music, recordings or broadcasts can increase the productivity
of the four essential players, etc.

(The evolution of popular music from self-provisioned to big band to amplified
orchestra to amplified three- or four-piece rock groups, to synthesizer, to
disco, rap, house/hip-hop, and now extensive one-person sampling acts, is one
example of the type of shifts that can occur.)

The "factors of production" in housing are raw materials, housing, and _land_.
Land itself is the original rent-seeking good, for various reasons that ...
modern economics fails to explain very well. My argument is that land is a
network of control points (owning land gives you control in the right to
exclude others), and with varying access costs to other useful capabilities
(manufacture, employment, trade, education, entertainment, ag, etc.). The
characteristic of economic rents _is that the prices they command rise to
include part, or all, of the consumer surplus._ This contrasts with
commodities and labour in which prices generally _fall_ to costs. That paired
relation is David Ricardo's famous two observations: the Iron Law of Wages,
and the Law of Rent.

(This is why I see _both_ a rent tax _and_ some mix of UBI / employer of last
resort _with_ a living wage guarantee as a probably necessary economic
policy.)

So, thanks for the opportunity to play with some economic concepts, but
Baumol's got nothing to do with this. Your men are Ricardo and George.

------
cies
> How did we[1] create a society where we[2] can’t afford to live in our own
> country?

[1] TPTB a.k.a. the 0.1%, a.k.a. the majority of the owners of the majority of
private property.

[2] The people that have to work to sustain their livelihood, or are not even
that fortunate (jobless, impaired, etc.).

Interesting how the article compares the US of today with the situation in the
year 1900. The country as a whole has become sooooo much more wealthy in that
period, but still is not able to take care of it's population's basic needs.
And it seems to be getting worse.

But it's a democracy, so the 99.9% should have the power to fix this, right?
Well...

"If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal" \-- Emma Goldman

~~~
pandemi
Voting has the possibility of changing zoning laws. For some reason it's just
not happening. If these few areas in California and North-East had similar
density to cities in other countries it would help a lot.

~~~
cies
This issue is much bigger then zoning. It's about redistribution of wealth.
Currently there is very little of this happening, yet is it constantly
mentioned and threatened to be reduced even further.

Concentration of wealth in the hands of few: this is actually being promoted
by all administrations the US has seen in the last decades. If only 80% of the
insane military budget could be used to house, feed, cloth and educate EVERY
citizen...

~~~
bocklund
The problem is that _everyone_ is trying to concentrate their wealth and that
only the wealthy have the means to achieve it.

~~~
cies
> The problem is that everyone is trying to concentrate their wealth

Here you see people as individuals.

> and that only the wealthy have the means to achieve it.

And here you distinguish classes.

I think this is a class issue, with at the top level: the "wealthy to the
extend that you do not have to work to survive" at one side, and the "rest of
us" on the other side.

Concentrating wealth to the extend that you can scrape by is a joke. This is
called scraping by.

I saw this quote once and had to laugh:

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as
an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

[https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck)

I had to think if it when reading your comment :)

------
Areading314
This article is trash and I'm stunned that it would be hosted on a harvard.edu
domain. Whoever posted this should be ashamed of themselves.

Fallacies, lies, and generally ignorant opinions include * Pretending the US
was a more market-oriented economy in the past (which is not true)

* Comparing the housing situation 100 years ago to that of today. There are many reason why america in 1917 is very different than the america of 2017

* Literally cites a Wall Street Oasis forum post as a source on why we should not subsidize housing for the poor

* Income inequality is (obviously) a huge component of housing not being affordable (especially in urban centers) and this is dismissed using an obvious straw man argument.

One of the biggest housing subsidies is the mortgage interest deduction which
is almost entirely captured by wealthy homeowners and financial institutions.
It also definitely pushes up housing prices. If the author of this post had
any knowledge of the housing market they would have brought this up.

~~~
Consultant32452
Income inequality is exacerbated by low income housing programs. If wages in
NYC are so low that people can't afford to live there, then those people
should leave. If we must have a government program, then let's create one that
helps people relocate to greener pastures. By decreasing labor supply, wages
will rise until incomes and housing prices are in parity. Low income housing
programs do the opposite, they artificially increase the labor pool of people
who can accept lower wages which of course applies downward pressure on wages.

>mortgage interest deduction

I agree we should get rid of that.

~~~
pjc50
"Remove all the poor people" is a policy that's been tried before with
considerable social costs; it breaks up communities and tends to move people
to places that are cheaper because they are worse. The city _is_ the greener
pasture - that's where the jobs are.

Low income housing does tend to act as a subsidy for landlords and low pay
employers. Perhaps we could shortcut the misery of a whole bunch of people
having to move and just raise wages directly, e.g. via a rise in the minimum
wage?

Tying minimum wage to some function of house price and interest rates would be
_amazing_.

~~~
cdoxsey
A minimum wage is not direct. It's payed via an employer who also has the
option of choosing not to hire someone or paying under the table.

The minimum wage is always 0, so this policy will likely lead to more misery.

~~~
pjc50
> choosing not to hire someone

.. which is also an option in the "drive out the poor people" scenario, no?
Also, have we given up on the idea of making businesses try to obey the law?

------
the_watcher
> Can we blame income inequality? Supposedly it was higher 100 years ago and
> poor people were able to afford crummy houses back then.

Zoning is a huge factor here - many of the "crummy" dwellings 100 years ago
were in buildings/conditions that would today be illegal. Whether that's a
good or bad thing (and what to do about it) is a separate question, but it
shouldn't be ignored.

~~~
Bartweiss
My "favorite" statistic about this is that Somerville, MA has 80,000
inhabitants, but only 22 legal-today residential buildings.

To be sure, a lot of Somerville is steep-staired, not-handicapped-accessible,
and so on. But the most punishing regulations are also the silliest: high
floorspace-to-inhabitant ratios, mandatory closets in bedrooms, punitive
frontage and lawn space requirements.

At a certain point this doesn't look like a mystery: redeveloping in cities is
inherently expensive, and conforming to elaborate regulations means only
luxury housing (or sometimes, no housing at all) can turn a profit.

------
pixl97
By not allowing a housing collapse to occur when it should have.

~~~
opportune
What was done to prevent a housing collapse? I am under the impression the
government focused on preventing a banking institution collapse, which is
different. That money was given to offset the liabilities _caused_ by the
housing collapse. If Bob was foreclosed, he was foreclosed because he didn't
make his payments, at which point his house was put on the market. The banks
collapsing wouldn't put more houses on the market than before, it would just
mean that a different financial holding company would be selling the houses.
So to prevent a housing collapse the government would have to make it easier
for Bob to make his payments, but as far as I know the government didn't do
that.

Or perhaps you are talking about something other than the bailout like
interest rates, in which case I would still be curious what you think would
have caused the collapse

~~~
derefr
My understanding: the government themselves bought a large portion of the
housing CDOs (i.e. people's mortgages) from the banks during the credit
freeze, to both give the banks money, and give the CDOs a value to get them
trading again.

If the government had _not_ done that, and had instead just given the banks
money, the banks would have had the breathing room to sell their CDOs off for
pennies on the dollar, devaluing the mortgages and thus the properties
themselves.

~~~
opportune
I think I get it. For some reason I thought CDOs were kind of like bonds or
annuities based on the mortgage payments, but I didn't realize that if you
bought a CDO from someone you were also buying the underlying assets. So in
the first scenario I thought banks were on the hook for reimbursing mortgage
payments to the CDO holders, but in actuality whoever held the CDO was the one
getting screwed.

However, even if banks were forced to sell off their CDOs, I don't quite see
how that devalues the properties. Selling a CDO for a lower rate than before
might simply suggest a reduced rate of people making their mortgage payments.
For example if I have given Bob a mortgage on a house worth $100, expect to
make $10 from interest, and think Bob has a 10% chance of defaulting, wouldn't
the value of the CDO be roughly $109 (ignoring that the amount of time into
the mortgage at which he defaults affects the price), because even if Bob does
default, I still own the $100 house? And then let's say I run into liquidity
trouble and need to sell this CDO for $101 (over $100 because my own liquidity
problems don't necessarily affect Bob's), that doesn't seem to affect the
value of Bob's mortgage at all.

Was the problem that the only institutions that could actually buy CDOs were
banks themselves? So then if they were all illiquid, there was nobody who
could even buy that many assets at once.

~~~
sokoloff
If trillions of CDOs were to hit the market all at once because of a
concentration of defaults, Bob's house isn't likely to be worth $100 anymore.
Depending on how much the CDO Jenga tower inflated the value, it might not
even be readily sellable at $50.

Why? Because it will be competing for buyers with Charlie's, Dave's, Eve's,
Frank's, George's, Henrietta's, Irma's, Julie's, etc houses that are all also
for sale after their defaults and those remaining standing with cash or liquid
credit will be able to be choosy and drive a hard bargain especially if
they're not going to personally occupy the property (as then they are largely
indifferent among the competing housing stock).

------
badmin_
I only skimmed the article, but would creating something similar to the
homestead act, but with regards to low population residential areas be a
workable solution? Population dispersal seems like an interesting topic.

~~~
twobyfour
The homestead act worked at the time because family farming was a route to
economic stability and even success in the economy of the time. Today it's a
route to deep poverty.

The route to success today (for all but the few fortunate and motivated
entrepreneurs) is to participate in a thriving economic engine - and those
engines and the jobs that provide opportunity to do anything other than scrape
by while accumulating credit card debt - are concentrated in certain cities.
Which in turn is why people are flocking to those cities and housing prices
are skyrocketing.

Businesses in turn gravitate to those cities because that's where the smart
ambitious employees are concentrating themselves, and it's easier to hire
capable employees in areas where they're densely concentrated than to try to
attract them to a lightly populated area where you're the only opportunity, or
to tease out the few people stuck in that area for family reasons from the
rest who simply lack the skills or ambition to do the jobs that people are
moving to the cities to seek.

------
arca_vorago
Number one root cause: The (non)Federal Reserve system.

The big things as a result of it are what caused it. Debt is inversely
proportional to freedom, and the wealthy have gobbled up so much of what
allowed us to prosper in the first place.

People that always go on about taxes or the budget deficit etc need to realize
the fed is a root causal issue here.

Also, two more points. I think the fed is unconstitutional, and I think
Hammurabi had it right that such a system requires regular debt jubilees.

------
dangjc
I'm not generally anti regulation, but for housing it's ridiculous. New
housing should be granted by-right permission. NIMBY's have a major empathy
gap and should not have a veto.

------
gaius
Country? No the country is fine, the problem is that so many want to live in
hotspots. In the U.K. Central London is super expensive but there is plenty of
cheap property in the North.

~~~
ictoan
What is the problem with people want to live in hot spots? Cities are where
you can have diverse communities, walk around, and be able to interact with
people outside of your immediate family. The problem with the country is it is
extremely car and gas dependent. The auto industry and oil companies have
screwed up public transportation. People who live in smaller cities out in the
Midwest are disconnected. They can only going to movie theaters, the mall and
fast food restaurants. Everything else is super far away. How do I know this?
Because I grew up in the Midwest. It is tremendously boring and once you
realize your life is much more than shopping malls, that's when you want to
move into cities.

~~~
gaius
_What is the problem with people want to live in hot spots?_

Because hotspots need to be fairly small for the reasons you say, and the
demand for that space exceeds the supply.

------
vfulco
Inflate away the debt, let the financiers figure out another way to ensure
lifetime financial slavery.

~~~
rainbowmverse
The government in the US tried this. Wages didn't keep up. The predictable
result: a stagnant, demand-starved economy where no one can buy anything
without taking on more debt.

------
eximius
It's very curious that we are so focused on housing because it's a problem in
relatively few areas driven by demand surging because of increased job
centralization. It isn't surprising and it's hard to fix because it's
complicated to incentivise lower density cities.

But what about food and clothes? What about books? For all our wealth,
everything in the US is dozens of times more expensive than in some poorer
countries. Can we develop a society that produces these products at a
similarly low cost while sustaining our lower classes in other industries
(since the ultimate floor for costs of goods in the US is the cost of paying
laborers 'living' wages)?

~~~
soneca
Not sure if you are talking about cost of production or price of the products,
but comparing to Brazil, clothes, books and electronics are usually cheaper to
buy in USA.

~~~
eximius
Hm, maybe I should have considered for a little longer that my experience in
China may be hugely different than other nations.

------
chrisbennet
At least in some places, the root cause of high housing prices is their
proximity to work. In those cases, why not address the root cause?

Example: If you wanted to start a business that would consume more city
resources than city infrastructure could support, say
sewage/water/parking/etc, the city would deny a permit to build.

Why not restrict the number/size of businesses in a location based on how many
people/workers could reasonably afford to live there?

~~~
averagewall
Solutions are the easy part. Getting people to agree with it when it hurts
their financial interests is the hard part. The same NIMBYs that are keeping
prices high in those areas with strict zoning rules would also never allow any
such changes that will reduce prices. They depend on too many jobs and not
enough houses.

~~~
chrisbennet
Restricting further businesses wouldn't decrease their property values so it
might be a lot more palatable.

------
zgramana
I’m surprised that the article and the discussion here don’t assess the impact
the booming short-term rental market has on keeping otherwise available
inventory off the residential market. Many cities have a lot of empty
dwellings on any given day, yet seemingly face a scarcity of inventory.

------
wheresmyusern
i have been looking into buying land and building a house on it -- ive been
reading and researching intensely for a while now and i am simply astonished
at how affordable it is to have your own land and a house, all while being
well within commuting distance of the city. the thing about owning land is
that instead of paying for your landlords luxury car and his wifes boob
implants, you only have to pay property tax. if you make other simple efforts
to reduce your expenses, you can bring your total operating costs down to
insanely low levels without sacrificing any quality of life. i feel like this
is some kind of conspiracy -- i have no idea why people seem to be oblivious
to the wonders of cost reduction. it takes monumental effort to increase your
income but its pretty much trivial to reduce your expenses which accomplishes
_the exact same outcome_. rent is currently 80% of my expenses and there is
nothing i can do to change that, except buy land. even if i lived in a super
crummy part of town (i dont want to do that) it would still cost a fortune
compared to property tax for land and a modest house (modest but still a
thousand times better than most apartments).

~~~
sokoloff
> you only have to pay property tax

You have maintenance/depreciation and insurance expenses, and have the
opportunity cost of whatever capital you have tied up in the property.

I think home ownership is a great choice for many and I own slightly more than
50% of the house we live in [the bank owns the rest right now]. But there are
very real costs to ownership and they don't stop at property tax IME.

~~~
wheresmyusern
besides tax, what are ongoing costs composed of? i think that you will find
that a house can be made in such a way that besides tax, there isnt much cost.
and you dont have to have insurance to own a house, people think that because
lenders force you to buy insurance. and, once again, if the house is designed
properly, there isnt any need to buy insurance for it. and bringing up
depreciation and op cost makes absolutely no sense.

~~~
RankingMember
"if the house is designed properly, there isnt any need to buy insurance for
it"

What happens when a hurricane rolls through and rips off your roof or there's
a fire?

~~~
ZenoArrow
1\. Don't build expensive houses in regions that are known to frequently get
high powered hurricanes.

2\. Don't build homes out of flammable material.

3\. Use the money you would've spent insuring a house on repairing it.

~~~
notfromhere
Good luck building a home that's impervious to every disaster possible.

~~~
ZenoArrow
You don't need to take care of every eventuality, just the ones that are most
likely to occur where the house was being built. For example, if you were
building a house in Japan making provisions to mitigate against earthquake
damage would be wise, but making the same provisions in the UK would be a
waste of time/money.

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whipoodle
I think I’ll probably be ok, mostly because I won’t have children. I don’t
understand how people do that these days, unless they have a lot of help from
the grandparents. Suddenly you need a bigger house _and_ it needs to be in a
good school district, or pay out the ass for private schools. And then it all
just gets worse from there.

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jrumbut
We raised our standards of what constituted housing not out of an overflow of
love for our fellow human beings, but because we got tired of cholera
outbreaks.

Pack people together again, relax the code on plumbing, watch the people who
make our salads pick up some still very dangerous and painful diseases.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
It is possible to have high density and good plumbing and waste management.

~~~
jrumbut
Look at the article, he's talking about what changed from 100 years ago. I'm
talking about why it changed.

~~~
sokoloff
The "what changed in housing" part of the article is against a reference of
the 1950s. The last cholera outbreak in the US was in 1911.

