Rent’s too high! More rent control!
Stop building stuff that obstructs my view, I don’t care if its a new apartment complex!
There’s a reason for rentals being in demand.
“Hanna Brooks Olsen is a writer, small human, and a millennial. Her interests are politics, podcasts, Pac-12 football, feminism, and Oxford commas. She is curious to a fault”
Enough said.
Property owners, this includes rental property owners, are being squeezed from rising property appraisals, and taxes, which increases insurance costs, rapidly rising costs for repairs in all areas, and increasing numbers of non-paying renters that completely erase the increasingly small percentage of balance that equates to the costs vs expenses that allow rental property to succeed. The last five hers has seen more and more renters are just refusing to pay rent. The courts are over burdened with evictions. When the property owner has to wait for as long as four months to get an eviction processed legally, there is the beginning of a death spiral in the business cycle, that has to be overcome by increasing the rent of the other renters that are paying. Eventually the cycle is broken by property owners beginning to have ever more strict restrictions on who will be allowed to rent their properties. Then the claims of Racism begin... Going back to the beginning, it is the Governing Municipality that is the real problem, unchecked and unrealistic increases in property assessments, leading to increased property taxes, are one of the root causes of rent increases. The Politicians pushing for ever more budget dollars, are causing this cycle to get out of hand.
Soaring property taxes to feed the maw of public workers is a huge part of the problem.
No mention of the myriad escalating costs that a landlord must pay to support an inflated and growing local, state, and federal government.
The implication that landlords raise rent to be “mean” is amusing. A financially illiterate millenial, with no ability to ask “why are rents going up”
The blanket statement about LGBT folks in rural areas as the reason why fags have to live in places like San Francisco is also amusing. Questioning hedonism and inflated self worth has no place in this article.
What an economically illiterate article. The answer is to get the government out of the regulation and taxation business. Everything government has done for decades tends to reduce job creation and wages. Add on to that insane greenness, political correctness, mandatory this and that and its easier to take the jobs to China. Reverse that and people will go back to buying their own homes.
I knew that I would find something in the article like this: “Teaching has long been a career path with notoriously low wages,”.
There is this thing that regulates the prices of everything and it’s called “the law of supply and demand.” The more you make, the more you spend and if the market can’t afford your product or service, they won’t buy or rent it. Consequently, the price will float to the level that it can be afforded.
Our society can blame itself for the out of control price increases for everything. It’s due to a factor that came into place after the early 1960s.
It used to be that daddy worked and “brought home the bacon” and mom raised the children. Most families were single income and most only had one vehicle.
Then, later in the 60’s, women were “unchained” so to speak and threw off the burdensome yoke of being a parent and went to work because it was socially expected. Well, guess what...now the family had two incomes and could afford another car and all other types of goodies. Better than that, the kids could raise themselves...and we see how well that worked out.
Well, the market responded to the extra income by reacting to this amazing rise in purchasing power and the price of everything started to rise to the level of resistance. People howled and gnashed their teeth but still paid the higher prices for everything simply because they continued purchasing what was before them.
Now it’s reached a point that they expect the government to do something about housing and rental expenses and expect something to be done about it...never thinking the law of supply and demand ever existed. The fact is that you have to live your life with what you can afford and eventually prices will float to the level of acceptance.
I did the landlord thing back in the early 80’s, out of all my renters the only one I had to evict was a public school teacher. Some liberal givemedat.
Section 8 housing also plays a bigger role in inflating rent rates.
Here is a clear example of classic liberal “logic”. Urban rent is too expensive so craming more worker drones into the urban zone is the one solution offered. My cost of housing is my problem to solve, not some govco drone’s. Govco’s demand for a productive citizen’s hard earned cash is at the root most of our economic ills. So move on to solving that social injustice and leave me alone to provide for my family as I see fit.
She also writes for Bitch Magazine.
‘nuff said.
My daughter moved 1200 miles and found a house worth more than the one she couldn’t afford after the divorce and a job that pays well. Of course, she made many good decisions and is a RN who graduated in the top 2% of her class. The Obama economy has everyone in “Dust Bowl Okie” status....those who didn’t make career decisions that would pay the bills have no place to go.
The Government created an enormous property bubble which hasn’t deflated yet. Thank you Clinton and Deval Patrick.
They also created an enormous credit bubble to punish savers and hollow out the middle class.
That’s why it takes 10 years worth of income to buy a house, rather than two.
The market didn’t do this. Government did.
Rent control exacerbates the problem because it allows people to rent units they ordinarily could not afford. Instead of sharing a unit with someone else and splitting the cost, people take units all for themselves. That leads to a shortage of available rentals which in turn drives up prices.
Thomas Sowell has written extensively on this issue and and how it has the exact opposite effect of what is intended (in case you care to google his comments).
Once in a while, I cruise liberal forums to see what the topic du jour is. Often, there is a long thread about how they can’t afford to live in NYC or SF or Seattle or any far left area because the cost of living is too high. They lament that they are going to have to move to FL or TX or some other “redneck” place to get by. It’s always the fault of the VRWC for convoluted reasons. They never blame the decades of liberal governance for their plight.
The other thing I do is stay out of the slum rental business. Own good property and rent to the best people you can find, who can afford it. You're still going to have some "issues" now and then, but not NEARLY those you have owning low end housing.
I have to tell employees all the time, ‘just because you want to live in a nicer neighborhood, have a bigger TV or drive an expensive car is no justification for me to give you more money.’
‘You want more money,’ I tell them, ‘make yourself more valuable to the company.’
Some do, some don’t.
The worst advice "we" give (especially) young people is that if they're living paychecktopaycheck that they can borrow their way out of it - that includes over-buying on houses, kinda like the people on the house-buying shows on cable TV, and it also includes the MYTH that buying any house prematurely is helpful. That's actually a terrible mistake, despite the fact that it's socially acceptable and in fact expected.
"Oh, you should see Susie and Johnny's new house!"
Anyone out there lurking, hear the voice of experience:
Get your uh... stuff paid off.
Make more money. If you have to do something else that's legal to make more money, call it personal growth. Work more hours, tend a bar someplace, whatever works for you.
Spend less.
Got it all paid off?
Good. Now save some money, a significant amount, because you're about to need it...
Now go buy an unpretentious starter house.
Well, when you fools are paying $400,000+ for a 1200 sq ft 30 year old house I find it hard to show any sympathy.
Why let economics actually work, when we can CONTROL human nature, CONTROL economics, and CONTROL everyone's residence choices!!
(Hint to those who cannot handle Econ 101: Supply and demand... prices go up, demand goes down, prices go back down. If the rentals aren't renting at those rates, the owners will drop their prices. If the units ARE renting at those rates, then any third-party jackass who demands to insert themselves into the private agreement to control the prices that the parties have freely agreed to should be ignored and mocked and told to f*** off. They can only bring decay, a loss of freedom, and more government control.)