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Comment by treis | Hacker News Reader

>There is no affordable housing or transportation in 95% of the North American land area

This just isn't true. The majority of the US has cheap housing. The person who wrote the article lives in Pheonix where you can get houses for 200k or under. Like this perfectly good 3 bed 2 br for 200k:

https://www.redfin.com/AZ/Phoenix/8520-W-Palm-Ln-85037/unit-...

Housing costs are out of control in a handful of places in the US. In the rest of them it's as cheap as ever. Or even cheaper given the very low interest rates.

It can be stupid cheap to live in the US. Rent a room for $4-500, buy a late model Toyota for $5k, and eat like a poor person. It's pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty.

The big pitfall is health. If you're sick then yeah you're pretty screwed. But outside of that as long as you avoid unplanned kids, jail, and drugs it's pretty smooth sailing

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I signed up just to respond to you because I live in Phoenix and there is no affordable housing here in a desirable neighborhood. There are no single family homes under 200K in Phoenix. A decent started sized home will cost you almost 300K and good luck finding one. That example you gave is a home that is in an area you wouldn't want to send your kids to the schools, walk around at night, and crime has been rampant in Maryvale since the 1990s and has been getting worse. There is a reason its priced like that. On a side note the home's yard is very small and is near Desert SkyMall which has had multiple shooting and deaths over the last few years. Just google desert sky mall shootings.

The author of the submitted article spent multiple paragraphs describing how it is not pretty easy to accumulate enough money to break the cycle of poverty, so if you want to maybe write a long form explaining how to effectively and realistically do so for people in this situation, that’d be great.

The author spent multiple paragraphs giving excuses why it's hard. The way out doesn't take that long to explain. Say we have someone netting 2k a month or 24k a year:

For a month:

Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100

So we have $1,000 left over and have to deal with transportation. Our target is something like this 2009 Toyota Matrix with 100k miles for $3,900:

https://phoenix.craigslist.org/wvl/cto/d/peoria-2009-toyota-...

If we have $3,900 in the bank great. If not, life is going to suck for the next ~6 months while we save every penny and rely on the bus until we have the cash to afford it. Once we have it then we will have reliable transportation and can budget about $500 a month for car expenses including replacing this one when it breaks down. Leaving us:

Room - $500 Food - $200 Health Insurance - $0 w/ Obamacare subsidies Other Necessities - $200 Entertainment - $100 Car- $500

For a total of $1,500. $500 left over to accumulate some savings and/or pay for stuff we missed.

Next goal would be to use one of the many down payment assistance programs (https://www.arizonadownpaymentassistance.com/down-payment-pr...) to buy a home like the one I linked to. Then we rent out a room or two for ~$500 reducing our housing expenses while building equity.

As long as we don't get sick, don't have a kid, and don't start doing drugs we're going to be sitting pretty nice after a few years.

500 for car expenses a month? Seems crazy to put away 6k a year to maintain a car that is under 4k. If you need to spend 500 a month to keep the car on the road you need to get a different car.

A good used Toyota or Mazda or Honda will run for YEARS and huge mileages with only basic maintenance - like one oil change and new windscreen wipers every year levels of maintenance. Nothing breaks. These sorts of used civics or corollas etc that are maybe 5 -8 years old can be had for £3-6k or less (in UK at least). I've owned several over the past decade or two and they never have anything major wrong with them in terms of mechanical breakdowns. I have only got rid of them when I have "upgraded".

Running costs are negligible beyond the cost of fuel. Insurance is usually low as they are cheap to repair with plentiful parts etc. I pay about £300/year for my 2011 Toyota a(nd that was a year after a claim to replacing the catalytic converter that someone stole). Beyond that I estimate about another £250 a year for basic servicing, MOT (UK annual roadworthiness checks) and replacing consumables like bulbs or the odd tyre.

It’s hard to find any decent car for under $3500 in many parts of the US, which is a lot to save while paying rent and taking the bus. Those cars you’re mentioning are popular, especially right now and that drives the price up. Then you have liability insurance and to get the minimum with bad or no credit it’s usually around $100/mo. But yes $500/month on car expenses is too much.

Most of the US is rural with no housing, therefore no affordable housing by definition. In most small towns you're even more car-dependent than in a city, and there are no jobs.

As I think about it, if we define affordable as "costing under $500/mo all-in" (since that would be a little over a third of one month's work at minimum wage), it would surprise me if even 1 in 20 homes met that criteria.

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