We underbuilt housing for 30 years leading to the pandemic. This is the result of that.
New housing units per new person. Dashed line at median. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1cYTJ
New housing units per new person. Dashed line at median. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1cYTJ
My parents happened to buy their house in an area that wasnt super desirable and continued to not be super desirable. If they had just invested their down payment in the S&P it would be worth twice what the house is. But as it is, investors seem convinced real estate is a great investment because governments refuse to let people build so prices continue to skyrocket.
In Japan the value of a building reaches $0 after 30 years because they rebuild everything. A building is an inherently depreciating asset, yet my tenement in Boston build in the 1880's continues to go up in value because they cant build shit.
You cannot force people to think that the value of a building is zero just because you want it to be. We have seen new homes further out command very high prices here in the US because of culture and there are a lot that desire the fit and finish of a new home but for the most part the old homes are still desirable and livable. Eventually old homes are rebuilt or remodeled and if they sell at the lowest point (like after a fire) will be sold for land value.
You could probably house 10 times as much people on the same land if you bought 6 storey apartment blocks.
Land is finite, but upzoning it still reduces the cost of a square meter of floor space.
I agree with you that the value of real estate is : building + land.
While the building deprecates, the value of the land is going up. But this can at least be dampened by upzoning and by taxing land value.
Citation needed.
(There is a problem with Prop 13 in California, where old people stay in houses that are way to big for them, removing supply from the marktet. But that's not the "empty apartments" you're referring to)
Others take different approaches. Some are of the view that a unit is not empty so long as it is listed as someone's "primary residence", irrespective of whether they actually sleep there.
That approach will surely encourage the hoarders and wreckers to build more housing.
https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2014-03/documents/lo...
To go further, there are plenty of article around the subject on https://www.strongtowns.org/
Lots of nearby homes are 70+ years old, so it's not like it's just that it's new construction and hasn't encountered maintenance costs yet.
And only one person so far in 150 comments has dared to suggest that the demand side of the equation ought to be dealt with. The political narrative is overwhelmingly powerful and even here crimestop[1] is readily observable.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/725596-crimestop-means-the-...
And also "modular home", which is the middle ground between manufactured and conventional.
"Four states accounted for more than half of the nation’s homeless population" (California, New York, Florida and Washington) https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/states-with...
Not much of a surprise that there are more homeless where a person is more likely to survive winters and summers without shelter.
Excluding people who choose not to sink money into housing, if we consider the demographic where homelessness is not a choice (e.g. mental illness, drug addiction, poverty), what do CA, NY, FL, and WA offer that favours homelessness?
Some factors could be: favourable climate, large cities with more "survival opportunities", food banks, injection sites, and other social services.
Oregon scores high as well.
>" These are the 10 states with the most homeless people, according to the Annual Homeless Assessment Report:
California (171,521)
New York (74,178)
Florida (25,959)
Washington (25,211)
Texas (24,432)
Oregon (17,959)
Massachusetts (15,507)
Arizona (13,553)
Pennsylvania (12,691)
Georgia (10,689)New York City doesn't have a favorable climate.
I think you've reversed cause and effect. The cities with high homeless populations tend to have, indeed need, more services for the homeless.
I agree and I understand that it is complex. People may have ties to a city and in a tough economy may not have means and/or opportunities for work elsewhere. Shelters may close or be unable to take more people. But cities also draw people from the surrounding population.
About NYC... the climate isn't comparable to others in this list --
https://usafacts.org/articles/which-cities-in-the-us-have-th...
-- but NYC isn't as harsh as Minneapolis, for example.
Yes, cities draw people from the surrounding population, but the question is whether they draw homeless people from the surrounding population. Which surrounding areas do you think all the NYC homeless are coming from?
> NYC isn't as harsh as Minneapolis, for example.
So? Minneapolis is colder than most cities in the United States.
There was a study once that said most of Seattle’s homeless were local, but it was self reported and they all reported having been born and raised in pioneer square, so something was off there. I wouldn’t put much faith I those studies.
I know nothing about how it works on the east coast though.
None of this is new. The trope of a hobo jumping a train to San Francisco is as old as movies are. Seattle has always been a destination for those without means looking to survive. The original skid row was in Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, or Spokane depending on who you ask, and that goes back to the late 19th century.
Seattle does not want to be a homeless magnet, but it always has been, and the city is too progressive to cut off its generous social services, and can’t discriminate with them, and they can’t do anything about the weather anyways, so what the heck else can they do?
It has a lot to do with economic conditions: a well funded city (comparatively), plenty of things to steal, and a reluctant acceptance of property crime are all important in making freattle a destination, the same with the other west coast American and Canadian cities.
I've watched my 2 local communities go through this right now. House 10y ago was under 100k. Now is bought by rental firm, and only rented at $2000/mo
And it's also more terrible, that things like the student loan crisis also hits credit, therefore also affecting home ownership. And regardless of paying rental stabily for 5y doesn't matter to a bank and mortgage.
The boomers and older never had to deal with "credit". They did have to prove income. Now, we suffer under 10x worse.
There's so many problems, and they're all tightly intertwined. The result is that simple supply isn't the only fix. Punishing companies for making homes into rentals with exponentiating taxes would help. Requiring banks to accept proof of rental as proof of payment burden would also help. So would reducing/eliminating zoning.
But none of these are palatable to 'The American People' (aka the rich).
Ready Player One talked about 'The Stacks'. And more and more, that seems like what our country is turning towards with our decline.
What do you mean? They had to take out mortgages just the same. And for example in the 70s the mortgage interest was sometimes over 10%