Posted on 07/30/2015 1:38:10 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
In urban centers around the country, rental prices are soaring. Cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and New York City routinely report double-digit increases that make it nearly impossible for residents to make ends meet.
But it’s not just dwellers of those metropolitan areas who are having a hard time paying the rent. According to a report out this week from the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, more than half of renters in America are considered to be financially burdened by their rent, meaning that they spend more than 30 percent of their income just on where they live. High rents have become a national crisis.
And yet, when I write about poverty and debt on the Internet, there’s always someone—in the comments, on Twitter, or even in person—who will suggest that the issue isn’t so much a system that makes it hard to get ahead, but rather, the result of poor decision-making. The simplest solution, they will propose, is that people who are in financial turmoil “just move somewhere cheaper.”
That is terrible advice.
To address the cycle of poverty, we have to address increases in rent itself, not just where people choose to live. To suggest that the solution to the rent crisis is for everyone who’s being priced out is to “just move” is to derail a much bigger conversation about why people live in poverty and what can be done.
High rents are a national, not just an urban problem....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailydot.com ...
Yes. And it also removes a whole sector of otherwise viable housing from the market of normal people who can pay rent on their own. Nobody in their right mind would live in a complex of Section 8 people if they had somewhere else.
This statement is false, and if it ever was true it was a long time ago. Ms. Hanna is just parroting her leftist roots.
Entry level teaching for those fresh out of school *may* be low paying, especially in small town USA, but that is no longer true in any urban area, nor most suburbs.
Bilingual teachers, math and science teachers can pretty much choose their jobs and their signing bonuses, at almost any urban district in the US.
Keep in mind that such criticism of teaching ignores the fact that most teaching jobs are unionized, which means the wages of all non-management types are collectively bargained. The entry level teachers are poorer because the older teachers (who become the union leaders) give away any earning potential in return for lavish salaries and pensions for the “survivors” with long tenure. Especially the union leaders!
It's a canard and a lie by Ms. Hanna.
Then again, I wonder what being a writer, a small (curious) human and a millennial pays ...
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.
Really? This was common place in the USA until FDR and then LBJ put the nails in the coffin on family interdependence. The family as a whole enjoyed a higher standard of living by pooling resources. Kids had adults living in the home 24/7 to guide them. It helped young as well as old and those in between. Often the home was paid for as well. USA was not a third world nation or anywhere near it either we were the leader in the industrial world. Granted some in the family eventually moved away etc but they were often in a much better position to do so not working entry level jobs but had established their skills to obtain better wages to support themselves.
When FDR replaced family including the households father with government dependence our national woes and down spiral began a rapid decline. It also put mothers into poverty and often no adults in the home while single parent mothers had to work. NO actually gubermunt replaced what worked throughout mans history with government programs. Colleges and universities helped add to the fire by making family look like a non necessity.
Can’t afford to rent? Buy a house where you will have REAL expenses. The gubmint will give you the money. sarc.
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 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 think there is far too much desire to own things just for the sake of owning things whether or not one has any real use for them. Most people I know have a mountain of stuff that they never use and the mini warehouse craze is mainly the result of people buying things they did not ever need, “storage wars” on TV developed out of this. People often rent storage buildings to store things they should have given away. I am trying to reduce my own mountain of useless stuff.
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.
I read somewhere that rent control also means if any new housing stock is made, it is built for the wealthy to whom rent control is meaningless, like millions-of-dollars worth per unit.
So you get no new units under rent control, restricting supply, and new units are created to guarantee a profit by catering to the wealthy, limiting or reducing supply for those who make less.
Nothing destroys house stock more effectively than rent control, except aerial bombardment, or arson.
What is it with liberals and Oxford commas? There must have been a show about them on PBS.
I guess it’s just ivy league elitism without saying I went to Yale or Harvard....she probably thought it was a cute way to imply she had an appropriate education.
In my high school English classes we were taught to use that type of comma, but I’ve noticed that its use certainly has trailed off as time goes by.
neurotic, pathetic, self-absorbed little...twit.
Yes, certainly. She also is a rather unpersuasive writer. She does have the ability to pull together seemingly related facts and statistics, but for what purpose?
She just cites a big problem (she sees), throws out some statistics about the professions Democrats always run to (teachers, police, etc.), throw in some LGBT and leaves the reader with no big proven conclusion, no answer (even the ‘more government housing’ meme).
It was like reading down a rabbit hole with no rabbit in it.
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.
And you don’t raise rents simply because the demand for rentals is higher than it was in 2006?
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