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Comment by rogerdickey | Hacker News Reader

It's not "rents for the rich" it's "rents for higher priced apartments" and it's basic supply & demand. This headline stokes unnecessary class conflict. WaPo should be ashamed.

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I thought it was a well known problem that in the US class disparity (i.e. the gap between middle class and upper class) is increasing. The middle class is evaporating, becoming very rich or borderline poverty. Am I confused? WaPo isn't really saying anything new or controversial.

It's more like the middle class is bifurcating between upperish middle class and lower-middle class. In-demand tech workers, doctors, high-level admins/managers, etc. are getting higher and higher wages while other professions that used to be middle class as starting to stagnate and fall behind such as low-level office workers, journalists, teachers, mid-to-low level managers, etc. I wouldn't consider either group to really be upper class, but I guess there's always going to be differences in how people are sorted into those categories.

I think the issue is that the article is inflammatory click-bait because it makes it seems like rich people are getting a break while poor people are getting shafted. It's not until you've read through most the entire article that they finally get to the point, which is that 'rich' people are buying houses in the suburbs/exurbs now that they can work remotely. Unsurprisingly this means prices are spiking in those areas while rent for high-end apartments are shrinking as demand dries up. So rich people aren't really catching a break so much as exiting the rental market in major cities and redirecting their spending to the suburban housing market.

> I think the issue is that the article is inflammatory click-bait because it makes it seems like rich people are getting a break while poor people are getting shafted.

Why? Do you seriously think that is untrue? Go talk to some poor people. Hell, just talk to someone who is 18-29: there is a 52% chance they are stuck living with their parents[1]. We're definitely getting shafted over here.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...

It's just supply and demand. The rich are leaving the cities for suburbs, so more of the higher end apartments are available. Which will lower those rents because there is low demand and high supply.

Meanwhile, there is a moratorium on evictions so cheaper apartments are not becoming available at a natural rate. So you have high demand and low supply, which will drive prices up.

Of course there are many other factors in play too. Such as zoning issues preventing new building, NIMBY preventing affordable housing being built, environmental restrictions preventing building in certain areas, etc. Plus the fact that developers will make much more money building luxury apartments than they will make building low income housing. Sometimes governments will offer tax rebates to builder of low income housing, but this then upsets a lot of the same people who want the low income housing to be built so it goes on and on.

> Meanwhile, there is a moratorium on evictions so cheaper apartments are not becoming available at a natural rate.

If there weren't a moratorium, then there would be a surge of homelessness. Is that somehow better?

The amount of available high-end apartments never mattered to the people who couldn't afford them. Where the rich people move has literally zero effect on that.

The fact that rich people are leaving "high-end" apartments vacant should demand that rent go down in those apartments. That's what would be happening if supply and demand actually had an effect. Instead, even with significantly fewer tenants, landlords are still able to charge obscene rates for their "high-end" apartments, leaving no supply for the growing population of poor.

So what part of this is inflammatory click-bait? The rich are getting a break (more housing opportunities at lower cost) while the poor are getting shafted (fewer housing opportunities at higher cost).

This isn't just about zoning and NIMBYism. The housing exists, and so do the people who can't afford it. Landlords are simply demanding a higher return than the poor can afford, without a care in the world about homelessness, just as every socialist in history predicted. This is a system of greed, and we desperately need it to change.

Who is renting higher priced apartments if not the rich?

Aren't most rich people living in their own houses? I'd imagine most higher priced apartment renters are middle class.

I think these days high priced apartments are only affordable by the wealthy, unless people are grouping together with multiple roommates, at which point it means they can't actually afford the apartment, so is it really middle class anymore?

If 4 22 year olds making 50k each share a $3,000 4bd 2ba rental "for the rich" I'd say they're middle class and can afford it.

4bd 2ba for $3k ain't happening in SF ;-)

Most places aren't SF

No, quite a lot of the rich live in rental property, at least part of the time. There are disadvantages to owning, even if you can afford it, and not everywhere you want to live may be for sale.

Across the street from me in a similar building to mine with condos instead of rentals, a studio goes for 1M.

Unless I'm set on living in NYC for the rest of my life I'm not buying real estate here.

I imagine most people apply the same logic

If higher priced apartments lower in price, doesn't that make it more affordable for more people? Isn't that a good thing?

It's better not to fulminate. If the market restricts access to housing for working class people, we can't just wave our hands and say "oh, well, markets". Chicago doesn't have rent control. The implication of the story is that the market is failing in Chicago, and that's a problem, whether or not it's the product of top-down policy or bottom-up market dynamics.

How is it the "market restricting access" if the rents went up because of the eviction moratorium? If that's the reason, then what you said is true in a trivial literal sense, but that's blaming the consequence (market pricing) instead of the real cause (government policy).

Likewise, if housing supply is restricted due to regulations, that's not the "market failing" - that's government policy guaranteeing that rents will be high for poor people.

The only way to make rents cheaper for all poor people is to incentivize massive construction of new apartments, or at least clear all regulatory hurdles to doing so and simply let the market do the rest for you. Flood the market with supply. The more supply, the cheaper rents will be, since demand is mostly stable.

Just doing what WaPo does best

right, and anyway the rich collect rent.

Those clicks won't click themselves!

There's nothing natural about housing markets. Across the developed world bougie homeowners have been using zoning regulations to restrict supply with immensely lucrative results. I would also like to see you tell someone experiencing housing precarity that these conversations are unnecessary, to their face.

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