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Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

For instance, consider a simplified model where every family has two kids that live with them until they’re 18.

The ACA (Obamacare) extended coverage to age 26 for children because about half of young adults up to age 26 were living with their parents

Since WW2, we've torn down about a million SROs.* We have also largely zoned out of existence the ability to build new Missing Middle housing.

We have a dire shortage of a certain kind of housing: small, inexpensive housing near amenities. This is true nationwide.

* https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy#:~:tex....

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The "household size" in that article is trending down, which suggests that, if more young adults are living with their parents, it's counterbalanced by more people in other age groups living alone?

People are delaying marriage and iirc more people are foregoing it entirely. People are having children later and having fewer children and living longer, so there are more empty-nesters. Empty-nesters may be a couple or single adult whose spouse has died.

There has been a decline in households with four or more people and a rise in households with one to three people, but our housing stock tends to be geared towards nuclear families with a breadwinner father, homemaker mother and 2.5 children.

Last I checked, average new homes post-2000 were more than twice the size of new homes in the 1950s and held one less person on average. So you are seeing couples with one child buy four bedroom homes and turn the extra bedrooms into an office and a playroom or hobby space.

Meanwhile, the poorest of the poor are often unable to find housing at all. We have a lot of homeless people.

I am guessing you know as well as I do (based on your previous posts) that one of the prime drivers of homelessness is a combination of the credit bureau scam and the "3x rent" income requirement. More than building new facilities I believe these factors play a much larger role. Even today now that I'm far more stable and my credit is decent, I still run into these issues when I have to move. I might even be homeless in a few months, again, despite being fully capable of affording the rent for my area. I don't know how to fix this.

the "3x rent" income requirement.

This would be much less of an issue if there were more affordable units. It's extremely hard to find units below $500 in the US. If you could readily find units for $400-$600, many people who currently can't afford housing would be fine.

That's definitely a part of it, yeah. My place that currently costs 950 is increasing to 1230 in a few months, and I swear nothing about the unit has appreciated in value. My carpets, appliances, etc. have certainly not become more useful or cleaner in the past year. And the area around me which was once quiet and crime free now suffers from weekly gun violence and constant theft, thanks to... cultural changes that I'm not really allowed to talk about. I don't know that building more affordable housing would change things, and they definitely won't change them as fast as prices rise.

And I assume it's still the case that every adult on a lease needs to meet that 3x requirement, making roommates a less viable way to afford a place near jobs.

I’ve tried to rent out single family homes with rooms rented at the $500-$600 price point (boarding house) and was told “no flop houses, families only” by my local jurisdiction. When I told them I’d bulldoze and get zoned for a 4-plex, I was told my zoning request wouldn’t be approved. Sunbelt state, suburban area, older construction with no HOAs.

I’ve moved on to trying to buy an RV park or campground, or build one, and use tiny homes or Boxable for the structures. The purpose of a system is what it does, and it is not to get people into affordable housing. It is to protect property values and NIMBYs' desires, with a second order effect of disincentivizing density (even slight increases of it). Deeply disappointing for someone who works with the unhoused and is just trying to get them into housing that isn't a shelter or a tent behind the park.

Thank you for the work you are doing. I would love to hear more. If you ever wish to talk -- even just to vent -- do not hesitate to email me about this issue.

Highest praise. Your writings on HN and your mailing list were a contributor to my inspiration to work on this, and your perspective has been invaluable. I will reach out when time permits.

People act as if poverty is this unexplained phenomenon that one just can't get rid of, moments later they try to make it as expensive as possible to stay alive in a certain area.

Agreed. 2x rent is a significantly worse policy as it encourages landlords to allow folks to live closer to the edge.

It's the price itself that is the issue.

As a former landlord who had to evict someone and went through the long arduous eviction process, why shouldn’t landlords filter on ability to pay and history of being able to pay?

Don’t put the onus on the private sector. You want landlords to make it easier for people to rent? Either have the government have programs to guarantee rent or make it easier to evict people for non payment.

If my neighborhood is representative of the bigger picture, there are a whole lot of widows and empty-nesters living in 2000+ square feet homes. Out of the seven homes near me, two have been inhabited by widows for the last few years. Only two houses have more that two occupants. One of the widows finally sold a few months ago. The other I suspect is concerned that her adult son and grandchild might move back in someday. Otherwise, I can’t understand why she wants to live in a 2800 square feet house by herself. Maybe people just have a hard time moving on to the next stage of their lives until they are forced to.

I saw a discussion recently, I think on Reddit, where people talked about this. In many cases, if the house is paid for and they've lived there for years, it's cheaper and less hassle to stay than to sell and move elsewhere.

There's likely other factors.

How do you have inexpensive housing near desired amenities? The people that need affordable housing will always be outbid by people with more money.

Allow construction of undesirable housing, like SROs.

Boarding houses need to make a comeback.

They have, informally. There is a huge demographic of people in every major city who have never/rarely signed a lease, but simply sublet a room from an official lease-holder, often against the actual terms of the lease.

These people generally tend to file taxes as individual households, despite all sharing what is statistically a single unit of housing. I wonder how this plays with the data in the article.

I was thinking the same thing. So many young people share houses in places like the Bay Area, but it doesn’t seem to be included in these numbers.

Thats a really interesting thought. I would guess there're are a lot of untapped ideas from the early 20th / 19th century that deserve reevaluation / resurrection. Like drinking more. I'm experimenting with that one. I'll let everyone know how it turns out on substack when I'm done.

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