I think everyone's realizing that the solution to various housing crisis is to build more homes for all income levels. Artificially manipulating prices via rent control mechanisms; or only building homes for a specific income level doesn't work.
Markets don’t restrict themselves based on the income level of buyers. As long as there are more people who want to come to California than there are houses, all house prices will increase. You can build a cheap home, but unless you means test buyers, it could be purchased by Bill Gates and rented out for twice the mortgage rate.
"I think everyone's realizing that the solution to various housing crisis is to build more homes for all income levels."
Of course this is correct. However, it is also correct that many, many of these are badly mischaracterized as "crises".
It is not a crisis that you cannot afford to live in Aspen.
It is not a crisis that you cannot afford an apartment in the very specific neighborhood in the very specific borough of New York City that you prefer.
It is not a crisis that you cannot afford to buy a house, with a yard, in Marin County.
> It is not a crisis that you cannot afford to live in Aspen
It is a crisis if you work in Aspen and can not afford to live in Aspen.
> It is not a crisis that you cannot afford an apartment in the very specific neighborhood in the very specific borough of New York City that you prefer.
It is a crisis to work in NYC and are not be able to afford to live in NYC, which is real situation that actually exists for many people today.
I understand there are a tiny few percent of people who's issues are 'badly mischaracterized as crises'. But the vast majority of the crisis is correctly characterized. We have a major urban housing problem. We should not dismiss it with a "let them eat cake" attitude.
No, it's not. It's very inconvenient, certainly. Further, it is completely incompatible with many very fashionable life scripts.
However it is trivially solved in any number of different ways (relocation, downsizing, commuting, etc.) and is therefore not a crisis.
A starter home in a downscale neighborhood and a second job were, at one time, life scripts that were enthusiastically embraced as the necessary rungs on the ladder into the middle class. It is hard to believe that a generation later these actions are "unthinkable" and evidence of a "crisis".
Luxury ski resort cities aside, there are cities where a teacher at a public school downtown, who is a civil servant serving the community, cannot live in the very community they serve. That is problematic. It is not particularly healthy to have major service workers forced out of the communities they serve.
Your ignorance within the space shows with some of your suggested 'solutions.' You do realize some people are too poor to move, right? You do realize some cities were designed around cars and lack decent public transit, right? And downsizing? The people who are affected by housing crises spend their months in shelters and being evicted from apartments.
Your lack of care for fellow members of your community aside, you could at least recommend equally outlandish solutions that align more with your view of the people affected like, 'just give the serfs a shack and stop the whining.'
"Your ignorance within the space shows with some of your suggested 'solutions.'"
When I was growing up in a poor, semi-rural community in Colorado, my father drove a four hour round-trip every day to his job in Denver. I know of other people in my peer generation (late generation x) whose parents made similar decisions and sacrifices (second jobs, starter homes, relocation) that are now considered unthinkable and evidence of a crisis.
And I agree that for your father, while it was a sacrifice, it was not a crises. However, it is more than a major inconvenience if one 1) does not own a car, 2) was born within the city of discussion, 3) has literally no free time or free capital to spend 'finding a better job in a better COL area.'
I agree two software engineers in the bay area who want to raise their child in a single family home in the peninsula, but can't shell out the millions necessary to do so don't quite fit the bill for those affected by a housing crises. In fact, that scenario allows for all of the solutions suggested above (relocate, commute, etc).
The crises is that in a large number of American cities poor and minority populations were left in the urban core while wealthier families moved out into the suburbs. Several generations later, wealthy families now want to flight back to the urban cores, while plenty still occupy the suburbs. This leaves almost no area for the poor people to go. That sounds like a crises to me - and I am thankful I never have to be personally afflicted by it, but I do no good whatsoever making absolutist claims about how poor people just need to work harder. You are being ignorant of the single mother of two raising her children, the father isn't paying child support, and 80% of her ~$700 income (all welfare) goes to rent - and pretending these highly complex, largely ignored cases are not massively present in those afflicted by poverty, that is wrong. The above scenario is not an exception, but largely par-the-course.
Yes, and these highly paid employees displace lower-income people. It's not low-income housing that's needed; it's new housing for highly-paid employees so they don't outbid low-income people.
It is actually a crisis in Aspen. The City Council had to buy land to build housing for teachers, after realizing that high housing costs were hurting teacher recruitment. "The board's approval comes when it is looking for more ways to house teachers and staff in an area known for its exorbitant living costs. "
Ignoring 'crisis', not being able to 'afford' to live in many – most – 'attractive' places is a widespread systemic problem due to concentrated political power that significantly limits the supply of housing in 'attractive' places.
I disagree. The housing crisis is caused by economic inequality concentrating capital to a handful of cities. Housing costs rise because that's where the money/power/jobs are. Instead of slapping a bandaid on it by increasing housing(which would just lead to further capital concentration and political polarization), we need to address capital concentration.
edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain why? Was something that I said inaccurate?
You're being downvoted because your comment doesn't make any sense. To elaborate:
> The housing crisis is caused by economic inequality concentrating capital to a handful of cities
This is a pretty bizarre claim, since by definition a city's housing crisis is a local affair, so what does it have to do with capital being concentrated in a 'handful' of cities? But assuming your claim is that wealth in a city ---> housing shortage, then you need to explain how you make that connection.
> Housing costs rise because that's where the money/power/jobs are
What does this mean? If you mean that you need money to build housing, then shouldn't capital concentration to a city mean more housing? If you mean that wealthy or powerful people benefit from less housing, show your work. If you're trying to demonstrate the above connection between wealth and housing shortage, there are a plethora of cities with high wealth and no housing shortages (Singapore, Chicago, Budapest, Seoul...)
Also, aren't housing costs driven by the same forces that drive the cost of anything else? Namely, supply and demand?
> Instead of slapping a bandaid on it by increasing housing
If the definition of the housing crisis is 'not enough housing for the people who need homes' then why would "increasing housing" - the literal solution to the crisis - be considered slapping on a bandaid?
> which would just lead to further capital concentration and political polarization
Again, this makes no sense. If more houses means more wealth concentration, then shouldn't the wealthy want to build more houses? But in your previous comment, you made it sound like the wealthy don't want to build more houses.
> we need to address capital concentration
This is a altogether different point that you are welcome to argue on your own time but it really has nothing to do with housing shortages unless you want to expound upon the above a little more clearly.
The amount of money a household can spend on a mortgage increases drastically as income increases. Because, for the most part, the costs of raising a family doesn't have to increase in proportion to income.
What this means is that a family making $100k/yr can spend dramatically more than one making $50k/yr, and making $200k can spend more on housing their the other two families make in a year.
In most cities, this plays out by having islands of expensive neighborhoods in desirable areas. And housing decreases proportional to desirability as you get out. The problem in some cities in California is that there are so many extremely wealthy families, that the island of desirability has become so large that there are no affordable housing anywhere close to where the good jobs are, so lower income people are forced to commute for longer and longer.
Most other cities do not have the same numbers of extremely wealthy people. But in every city where a large number of disproportionately wealthy people move in, a housing crisis seems to follow.
It used to be, living closer to the city meant a compromise in some other area. Maybe you lived in an apartment and took the bus everywhere because you couldn't afford to have a house and a car in the neighborhood you want to be in. But now, people can afford to have a single family home with a garage in areas that really should be limited to large apartments.
I most definitely agree with your last paragraph. Living in the urban core of a city should entail complete reliance on taxis, public transit, mopeds, and bicycles. Those in my city who are living downtown, yet willing and able to shell out $300+/month in parking fees shows there is room for more housing instead of parking spots.
Capital concentration is the whole point of cities. The only economically equal and balanced settlement pattern is everyone getting a small farm.
The problem we’re trying to solve here is that people are artificially denied access to the (jobs, infrastructure, culture) benefits of concentrated capital.
If you think we shouldn’t have cities, that’s one thing. If you think they should be reserved exclusively for the people who already live in them, that’s quite another, and you’re simply creating a new form of structural inequality based on birthplace (even within the US).
Yes. So, you are saying there is a big demand for housing in the city close to jobs? True dat.
Econ 101 tells us the way to meet that demand without increasing prices is to increase supply. That part hasn’t been done. No amount of “housing denial” and rent control will change it.
The reason you are downvoted, is because there's one part you're extremely wrong about: Increasing housing is not a "band aid". It's the lack of supply of housing which is the ENTIRE cause of the housing crisis. Any solution to the housing crisis MUST in some way increase the housing supply, or at least decrease housing demand (say by getting rid of jobs).
Even without lots of rich people/capital concentration, you would still have the same problem (housing prices wouldn't be as high), but the percentage of people able to afford a house would remain the same.
Supply/Demand is the problem -> Supply is not allowed to increase to meet demand and at the same time we're encouraging all kinds of demand by increasing the number of companies and jobs in CA. It's like playing musical chairs with 1000 people and only 5 chairs. No matter how you split up those chairs, there's gonna be a lot of unhappy people.
