Hacker News Reader

Comment by bilbo0s | Hacker News Reader

That's always the case to be fair.

It's a relatively new phenomenon, which is why this is news. In years (decades?) past, suburbs were popular in large part because the middle class could afford to buy homes and there was little reason to rent. Today, the situation is different; wages haven't scaled with housing costs and folks can't afford to buy even in the suburbs.

Property ownership among wage and salary earners is a relatively new phenomenon.

On what timescale?

Less than half of the US owned their own homes before the 1940's, after which more than 65% of people owned their own homes.

If we go back past the 1900's, the only workers that consistently owned their own property were farmers. Mortgages didn't become a thing until after the 1860's, and it wasn't until the 1890's that they became common. Before mortgages, workers did not have the lump sum of money required to purchase a home.

I've heard that houses in Paris have been impossible to buy for decades now, maybe US cities are becoming old and "grand" in the same sense.

I hope not.

I lived in Paris a few times in my formative years. It's so bad there that, believe it or not, there were homeless who had jobs. Literally. homeless who had to go to work.

It was insane from the perspective of a young American.

EDIT: Changed some slang words to American english.

Is SDF a French acronym for homeless? Kind of confusing for this site.

Yes

SDF = sans domicile fixe. French for homeless.

People living on the street or out of their vehicles in the US work, too. Exact numbers are hard to get, though.

https://www.npr.org/2018/09/30/652572292/working-while-homel...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/28/nomadland-amazon-rv-workforc...

I was just there visiting and there appeared to be plenty of units available that looked much more affordable than NYC

And in addition, after the collapse of the Great Bubble, REITs bought up large swaths of foreclosures. Now the landlord is less likely to be A small investor than a large holding company with a portfolio of many thousands of units.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com