Root cause of housing unaffordability

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Been that way here for hundreds of years.

Noooow city populations are growing to the point that many more condos/apartments/townhomes are being built up everywhere.

I at least think that working people who are responsible with their money should be able to own some sort of home, even if it is a <1000sf condo. But even that is impossible for tons of working class people anymore, especially in buildings where the starting prices on the ground floor are $1-2M.

And even if people can’t afford to Buy a home, they should be able to rent one to live in.. but again, not anymore. Not without additional income sources. Second jobs, roommates, tenants/boarders/international students etc.

My brother told me that several people he knows that own houses won’t rent the whole house out to anyone because they believe only criminals can afford to pay the rent, so they rent out a portion of it to one family and a portion to another and have a relative live somewhere on the property to keep an eye on things. Crazy when landlords restrict rental supply because they believe rent prices are criminally high.

Unfortunately, residential planning in the U.S. has a flagrantly racist history. Much of suburbia as we know it today was developed during the Jim Crow era, when some white families would move away from the inner city, where much of a city's African-American residents lived (policies toward Hispanic and Asian communities varied by region).

There was also a policy called redlining, which restricted where blacks could live. Redlining ended when the Civil Rights and Fair Housing Acts were signed into law. Yet residents used more subtle ways to keep neighborhoods whites-only, such as homeowner's associations. Also, people were moving to fancier and more upscale suburbs so their kids could be in "good" school districts (good = predominantly white).

However, people value diversity now more than ever, and inner cities have become trendy, which has led to gentrification, which is a major cause of high home prices.

How about this? https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/4 ... htm#Page_7

1000sf is 93 square meters. I grew up with extended family (8 people) on 72m^2. My grandparents raised two children on 42m^2. No, they weren't working class, they were actually relatively privileged.
I'm in a part of the world where these things actually improved since the previous generation - which means I moved from 89m^2 to about 120m^2 and my brother could move from less than 40m^2 to around 80m^2. Both cases started as fresh marriages (in my case living together with a sister) and moved as families of 4.
Just so you can grasp urban East Europe.

With this, I agree. Regular people should be able to afford regular places to live.

My friend rented this kind of apartment in Bordeaux and it was actually quite comfortable - any problems could be resolved at once, with the landlady living next door. Of course if people do it because they believe rents are criminally high, that's a different problem.

My thoughts on the issue exactly.

It is not the fault of immigrants that housing, and in particular, social housing is in short supply. But immigrants driving up the demand for cheap housing only makes 'the market' drive prices upwards, not downwards.

Ok. Houses have been what Most people have lived in here for hundreds of years, but not All forever.

8 people in 72m^2 is ~almost some Hong Kong style living. Most people don't do that here. Some migrant workers do, some people who are used to cramped living conditions in their home countries do, and people who work in the resort town of Whistler live like sardines in a can IF they can get housing at all. (Some, like my friend, live in their car.)

My friend and his family, 5 people, lived in ~1000sf. That's considered very minimal space/person here. They're fortunate to all be relatively small people lol. Although there are ever more families of 3-5 residing in one floor of an older house these days, usually about 1200-1300sf, as 1/2 a house is the max people can afford on 2 incomes IF they can find a place available for rent at all.

Then there's how I live on the other end of the spectrum -> 2 of us in 3,200 sf. If it were up to me I'd add a boarder/tenant or two just for the $$, but, it's not up to me so this house will go underutilized probably for decades Unless such a crisis situation arises where my sister and her family has no choice but to move here. (but if she Has To move she doesn't Want to live here, so that would be out of absolute necessity vs. desire should it ever happen.) Although, there is a possibility I'll try to get one of my beach friends who Lives At The Beach out of the elements for a week or two this Winter if we end up having a cold snap where he's getting nerve damage in his hands again - he might come indoors for that, and I might be able to sell it to the home owner.

Houses were regular in countryside and small towns but not in cities - and even countryside households often included extended family members and/or hired help.

Maybe it is cultural - we have much less homeless people and much more people living in crowded conditions. Similar to East Asians - you just don't leave your relative without any shelter.

Still, prices here don't come close to what you picture, even when compared to typical earnings. I'm not sure what mechanisms are decisive. People here complain for prices only raising but finding something affordable within reach of public transport is still not that hard.

~200 years ago this entire continent was countryside, so, makes sense that cities started with houses first and are slowly evolving into denser home construction. Port cities likely have the densest populations and most condo/apartment towers in North America - although inland cities are built up with towers, too. As cities sprawl, suburban houses are being replaced with townhomes or condos etc. Probably a similar progression occurred in European cities when they were first founded, too.

Collectivist cultures vs. fend for yourself individualism. Definitely a cultural component. Many unhoused people here are mentally ill/drug addicted, but not all. Of the working class, often they don't have the option of a relatives home to live in here or they would. They have no relatives here Or their homes are tiny and can't accommodate them/have some other constraints.

Not much "affordable," anywhere here, let alone near transit. Even single bedrooms in shared accommodations in the suburbs are now being rented for $1400-1500/mo including utilities. You'd have to have an income of around $70-75k/year as a single person for that bedroom to be considered affordable rent at 1/3rd gross income max for housing costs. It's all absolutely crazy.

No, because they create denser urban housing which actually frees up space. The local inhabitants who had lived in those spaces previously move out to the suburbs, so they are not competing for urban rentals.

Moving out to the suburbs is a difficult thing for a lot of people in today's economic climate, as is buying a house at all. At least in the UK. But I have heard the same story from the US & Canada, too.

People in the USA are just whining. Housing is 40% more expensive in Canada.

Have a look at prices in Niagara Falls Canada vs Niagara Falls USA for a prime example. People live on opposite sides of the same waterfall, nothing spectacularly different about the North vs South, except for the price.

Gas and food cost more, too. Americans have a right to complain about healthcare costs & insurance, though.

Thanks for your support!

Just saw this on Facebook - this is what you can rent for $1300/mo in the West End of Vancouver (which is different part of the city from the West Side and very different from the city of West Vancouver, just so you don't get confused.)

Anyways, 1300 bucks:

Pretty sweet deal if your worldly possessions fit in an airline carry-on.

Last edited by goldfish21 on 26 Sep 2023, 9:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You left out "Flipping" and "Gentrification".  Both involve purchasing "distressed" real estate, refurbishing it from footing to chimney cap, and then putting it back on the market at high enough price to make a healthy profit, thus putting it out of financial reach of the kind of people who used to live there.

Eventually, what used to be affordable to working-class families becomes affordable only to people in the upper income brackets.

I agree, but it seems that statistically this is how it often pans out. (Though not always and it varies greatly by locations.) Below is an article on the topic, from the UK, and this is a quote:

https://www.theguardian.com/housing-net ... ing-crisis

But going back to the premise of the original article that started this thread, zoning laws that limit housing density are a huge issue. In many suburbs or even suburb-like areas within cities, only single-family homes are allowed to be built, and in some cases there are even rules that the people living in the house have to be related to each other. You can't even add a small house on the premises, if you have a big enough yard to accommodate one, that you could rent out, and usually not even if a relative were to live there. These are huge impediments to affordable housing. If instead of a single family house you could build a four-plex on that same property, you could house four families much more more affordably, and on less land.

Incidentally Houston doesn't have zoning in the way that many other cities do, but it still has rules. On one lot you can have a duplex or a house plus a garage apartment, but not a duplex plus a garage apartment, unless it's already like that and it's grandfathered in. (Not sure if it's true for all areas of Houston. Usually if you're outside the city limits you have a lot more options, but then you have to live far away.)

It might be funny if it wasn't so heartbreaking.