They're buying up all the affordable rental houses and increasing the rent, they're buying up the mobile home parks that are some of the "few remaining sources of affordable housing," and pretty soon here it seems they'll be buying themselves a trip to the guillotine. I'm honestly not sure how else this goes and hope I'm wrong but this is surely unsustainable. Stein's law says if something cannot continue forever it will stop.
"Not long ago, Kansas would have responded to the current situation by making the bastards pay. This would have been a political certainty, as predictable as what happens when you touch a match to a puddle of gasoline. When business screwed the farmers and the workers – when it implemented monopoly strategies invasive beyond the Populists' furthest imaginings – when it ripped off shareholders and casually tossed thousands out of work – you could be damned sure about what would follow. Not these days. Out here the gravity of discontent pulls in only one direction: to the right, to the right, further to the right. Strip today's Kansans of their job security, and they head out to become registered Republicans. Push them off their land, and next thing you know they're protesting in front of abortion clinics. Squander their life savings on manicures for the CEO, and there's a good chance they'll join the John Birch Society. But ask them about the remedies their ancestors proposed (unions, antitrust, public ownership), and you might as well be referring to the days when knighthood was in flower."
— Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? (2004), pp. 67–68
> I think the proper term here would be feudalism.
But that's not the proper term?
>Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, and cultural customs that flourished in Medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries.
Unless you think removing affordable housing would bring back "the combination of the legal, economic, military, and cultural customs that flourished in Medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries", the "proper term" isn't really "feudalism".
Well, if you're going to scold someone for not using the correct term, it would be polite to explain why the term is not correct, without summoning several wikipedia links and just saying "see, it all writes here if you take the time to read it all".
I don't see the issue is with that, especially when the mistake being made is overgeneralizing a specific term. Suppose we were talking about jury trials, and someone said "I believe the correct term for it is common law". That's wrong, because even though many common law systems have jury trials, common law deals with a lot more than just jury trials. It's also very expansive, with a lot of topics to cover, so you can't reasonably give a summary as a comment. In this case I feel it's totally fine to scold them with a quick summary with why they're wrong (ie. "common law refers to a specific type of legal system used in certain countries, not just jury trials"), without having to write an exposition about every feature of common law.
The issue I see is that feudalism, when it comes to land ownership, is very similar to the hypothesized scenario - in my opinion enough to warrant that tongue-in-cheek comment you replied to. You felt the need to point out that feudalism technically is not just that, without any explanation on what that difference is, or why is it meaningful to the discussion at hand. Yet you expect me to read random sources that you yourself didn't read, in order to somehow figure out your point.
I'm sorry for being harsh, but you didn't contribute anything to the discussion, you were just being condescending. If you had been condescending, but brought something meaningful to the discussion, I wouldn't say a word to you. I promise.
But in this case the residents already "own nothing"? The only difference here is that they're renting from a new owner, which decided to raise the rent.
> Arguable all housing investment should go into new housing, not competing
why can't it go into new housing via a chain of financial transactions, rather than directly? In other words, it doesn't matter what the "new" money is invested in - as long as new construction rate is keeping up.
So if it's not, then where's the problem? Why isn't that root cause being addressed, instead of trying to mandate how investors want to invest?
Because new housing is typically more expensive than old. And banks usually don't wanna finance you. So you are doubly out of luck and on top of that compete with property investors.
Also that would incentivise investors to build up as that improves their profit margin if it's rentals.
Hoping my sarcasm detector is misfiring here, I still want to engage with this comment.
Can you explain to me how zoning law does anything to change the reality that poor people are being outbid by large corporations when attempting to buy their homes? If the land were zoned for anything, how would this change the fundamental truth that a large corporation with access to capital can outbid poor people whose largest assets are the homes that are being taken away from them? If there were more competition in the mobile home market, okay cool, now the people trying to buy their land are fighting against even more corporations? Really hoping this was supposed to be a funny and I'm not getting it.
When the supply of houses is limited, but the number of bidders is increasing, the price can only do one thing; rapidly increase to meet the new equilibrium.
I am not talking about more competition in the buyers side, I am talking about more competition in the building and selling side. If supply increases to match or outstrip the new demand, the prices of homes, mobile and otherwise, will fall.
Clearly, selling homes is profitable because home prices are so high. So why are new homes not being built? The answer is because zoning laws in our current vetocracy explicitly prevent the construction of new housing under a variety of pretexts. We have been under-building for 10 years now and it's time to pay the piper.
How about the fact home prices are inflated to the point where you must take out a loan?
The ubiquity of the mortgage seems like it's more an enabler of corporatized property buying by turning homes into a financial vehicle.
You can blame zoning all you want, but really all zoning is is trying to ensure you don't end up with something massively disruptive to the surrounding area popping up without getting due attention paid to it. Furthermore, the big push for "high density housing" doesn't do squat to make ownable housing more accessible.
Face it. It's the incestuous relationship with the financial sector. Cut that, and you're at least not continuing to do the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different result.
The loan/mortgage is a trap if you ask me (I actually agree with you both).
The real question I've been asking myself lately is "why do you need to take out a mortgage to buy a house if you (after x years of saving) can buy it cash". There is a big problem or lack of generational help. Like it should be trivial, just live with family/parents till you've saved up to buy your own, or we should be promoting and encouraging the transfer of housing to children from parents.
E.g. Get rid of inheritance tax and maybe even make it illegal for estates to sell property to pay off debts if there are children that it could be given to.
> illegal for estates to sell property to pay off debts
that would be bad for lenders - because it incentivizes holding the debt till you die, then get it cleared for free. No lender will lend to you if that's gonna happen.
Permits are the highest they've been in the past 5 years. This is almost certainly supply chain and labor effects and we will feel them for years to come. Here's a link to the Census Building Permits survey: https://www.census.gov/construction/bps/
Note that "starts" of new buildings is close to permits, but completions are flat. There either isn't enough materials to finish these projects or there's a labor shortage to complete these projects.
edit: not agreeing with your supply and demand argument tho there's lots of reasons people can't build in certain areas (where people want to live), but house prices are going up across the board, there really is an effort by the owner class to buy everything up and flip it to rental.
With a much smaller population, we used to frequently see 2m+ monthly starts. We haven't been close in coming up on 20 years. Yet the US population is higher than it has ever been.
Mobile home zoning is also now almost impossible to get, so supply is constrained which jacks up the price of the existing parks. There is basically zero chance of being able to buy land and start a park from scratch.
No, but making it a "right" or "public utility" forces the government (which can, albeit non-magically, conjure up fresh supply) to conjure up fresh supply.
Flint, Michigan is a "pretty poor" city in Michigan (personally, I don't know how poor it actually is, it might be a "normal" town). The city was trying to save on the cost of providing water. They decided to switch from (I think) buying water from Detroit to pumping from one of the Great Lakes. This decision is pretty benign. Except somewhere in there, the chemical are up of the water changed, so years of building up inside the pipes cleared up, exposing lead in the pipes, poisoning the residents... Except water treatment processes failed to detect amd clean the water, so it lasted for years. It made national headlines so much so that my church (in Texas) was raising money and sending it up there. Plenty of people got fired, people got sewed, politicians said grand things. Oh, right, and poor (black) people got screwed over.
TL;DR, "Flint, Michigan" is the short way of saying "the government could screw you over by poisoning your water"
Kinda. Social housing should strive to compete with private housing. Gov has long term investment incentive plus they control the demand (interest rates) AND supply (permits).
1. you realize that in many parts of the US, they're not actually public utilities? PG&E is privately owned, for instance is a publicly traded for profit company.
2. Water and electricity are public utilities because they're a natural monopoly. It doesn't make sense for 3 different water/electricity companies to lay 3 sets of pipes/wires to serve one city, so we let one company do it. Needless to say, the same does not apply to shelter.
Edit. I would like to provide more information but it is such a complicated and broad topic that I could do it justice but I recommend looking into it. Just the various tariff schedules are interesting to read.
My water is provided by the city, providing the bare minimum effort that is legal. I don't want my house to be the bare minimum, too. I want a beautiful house that has room for my family to grow. I want a park near by, good restaurants, and good schools. My house costs more than other houses within 50 miles because I want a nice house - I don't want a government sponsored house
A town close to me has tons of land, excellent fiber Internet, hardly any zoning restrictions and all the property is increasing drastically in price. No new factories or businesses either.
I believe that many jobs in the would could cease to exist, and the world would still function the same, if not better.
An example that comes to mind are the "rent brokers" in my city - all they do is post rent ads to a local ebay-like website, answer the phones and write contracts (of questionable legal authority). Other than that, they are completely useless - they provide no useful information, and often lie just to get you to sign. And they take the first rent as payment.
I still have no idea why so many people choose to work with them.
> I still have no idea why so many people choose to work with them.
A good one is worth every penny of that month of rent.
Having to advertise, and then deal with the current tenant+prospective tenant tours and scheduling is very much worth it just on it's own. Add in screening/background checks/credit checks and such and it's substantial. A good listing agent will also be up to speed on local laws and assist on that front as well letting you know of any recent changes.
For me, it saves a bunch of time, and doesn't disrupt my dayjob.
I still do most of my own maintenance and such, but the marketing and finding new tenants really is the worst part (other than a horrible tenant!) of the landlording experience. If I ever retire I'd likely do it myself to save the cash.
As usual in such middle-men "industries" with no barrier of entry it attracts a lot of grifters and least-effort individuals so it's kind of a pain to find someone reliable.
Every reference to that headline should be followed up with a follow up comment from that thread:
> The coding used by this survey is a joke. If 40% of an occupation says they work outdoors that's below 50% so it's bucketed into the work from home category on that criterion. I think if even 20% of a job is saying they work outdoors that's pretty strong evidence you're missing some information about what the other 80% are doing in their job that prevents it from being a work from home job. The net result of their setup is obviously a vast overestimate so take the 37% number with a grain of salt.
That's great! And for people who read hacker news and can get a well paying job it's certainly an added benefit to an already great situation. Even for those in a not great situation working from home makes things easier. But the other 63% - a majority - are working in jobs that can't be remote. And if I had to guess, those 63% are the ones more likely to live in a mobile home or trailer park, which is what the linked article is about.
My assertion in my previous post and again now is for people who can't work remote and don't have a high paying job there's a limit to how far they can in practice move from their job.
You’re right. But when 37% of the workforce can move out of the city, that means there’s more housing available for the 63%. I think that’s what’s happening when people moving out of cities lately!
Feels like the "gotta keep the wheels of capitalism turning" has lead to this. Maybe this is yet another kooky theory like the others I see here, but: government "printing" money to keep the economy running means corporations have so much cash but nowhere to invest, as well as lack of regulations ("Hey Senator, how's your reelection campaign going? Oh you need a few million dollars to give to the media companies to buy campaign ads? Let's go for a game of golf and we can talk, my private plane will pick you up.") that they've gone predatory...
I thought it was interesting/unfortunate that the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in this dynamic was limited to a single sentence at the bottom of the article.
Who are all these investors, and is there a limit to the umber of people that can afford their product? I hear they buy real estate, then don't use it because it's
'just a place to stash money', or 'they'll make money on the appreciation'
and it just seems like there's a limited group of people buying things that can no longer be used as things because they're 'held money'. They won't be worth quite so much if there's nobody that can afford them. Then what will the investors spend their money on?
