Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I hope you are aware that people exist who can't afford home ownership, and rental is their only option. If nobody owns a rental house for them to occupy, they have no chance of living in a house whatsoever.
Can't afford or simply don't want the trouble that comes with it
Oh sure, like myself. I hate the idea of ownership. Ties you down and comes with a ton of extra bills and upkeep... I prefer the flexibility and ability to f-off if something bothers me at any given time. But that's not the point the OP tried to make, so I didn't even want to bring that argument :-)
I hope you realize that they only can't afford housing because land lords create artificial scarcity.
There's more empty units in this country than unhoused people.
Basic Supply and Demand says people ought to be paying people to take houses off their hands because they're an oversupplied product.
Rent collectors are literally the only reason housing is unaffordable to so many right now.
Housing is unaffordable because someone has to pay the construction.
Check out this breakdown of a fairly low-end cost estimate: https://www.bankrate.com/real-estate/cost-to-build-house/#financing
Excluding land, you're looking at about 135k USD. Land, whatever. Labor estimate is 30-50% according to the article, so let's say around 190k (using ~40% and some rounding).
And that gives you a bare-bone structure without a lick of paint, furniture, carpets, curtains or any other interior (and exterior) decoration.
So even if you do everything by yourself on a gifted piece of land, I hope you can somehow understand that there are people out there who simply don't have and/or qualify for a loan of >130k USD.
TL;DR: Rent collectors are ~~literally~~ far from the only reason housing is unaffordable to so many right now.
Love how ya just skipped right over the whole part where there's more empty units than there are unhoused people to fill them.
You literally just completely ignored the actual substance of what the landlords are doing that makes housing unattainable in an oversupplied market.
Building entirely new houses is a luxury for people who've lucked out big, we're talking about the supply of housing that already exists, which in numbers alone, should be providing an all time low of prices adjusted for inflation.
The "shortage" is an invented crisis to not acknowledge that we'd have no problems if we took a closer look at how much those landlord parasites actually need that fifth unit they also don't live in.