Rent

[Astro Cat]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?” I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult. Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable? What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

[Harbal]

I’m a millennial,

If it's any consolation, being financially secure isn't adequate compensation for being old.

[Iwannaplato]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?” I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult. Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable? What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

Rent should be like patents. You came up with something. You get to earn money off it for some period of time, then it shifts into the public domain. Rent is a core monstrosity in modern society. And I don't know where you are in the world, but financial institutions are buying up houses and property in larger than ever numbers. The days of reasonable rent, likely long gone already, are going to be longer gone.

You're a sharecropper.

No, it's more like you live in a factory apartment and must buy from the factory store.

Or it's like we are all sex-trafficked, though in your case physicist trafficked, and you have this huge debt to work off, forever.

How dare you complain. Haven't you heard of economic original sin - needing somewhere to live.?

[Sculptor]

The economy is going to implode.
Rail workers have been staging one day strikes.
Due to inflation they have had a decrease in wages for the last 12 years. At no point have their earnings even matched inflation. Now they face 9-10% inflation and were offered 4.5%
At the same time for the entire period of "austerity" billionaires have tripled. The share index has increased by 73% since the start of the pandemic and in particular the Rail "owners" have looted public funds to award themselves 30-40% salary increases whilst pulling out £800 million to hand out to share holders, who frankly have not done any thing to earn that cash.
The government says that the rail workers are "holding the country to ransom". But who is really doing that?
They are also blaming the strikers for the inflation that was already in the system before the strikes.

The only place where money is increasing is off-shore accounts, and rent collectors.

When you squeeze the bottom people lower demand and growth is snuffed out. Where will this end?

[Impenitent]

where it always ends

war

-Imp

[vegetariantaxidermy]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?” I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult. Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable? What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

I don't know what Americans are moaning about. Houses are so cheap there that I'm suprised EVERYONE doesn't live in their own gorgeous mansion Here, pretty much everywhere is in the California or New York 'unaffordability' zone. Fuck knows why. What a hole this is. An average rent here for a very average place is $600-$750 per week. We also have among the highest food prices in the world. Most of our produce gets sent overseas where people pay a lot less for it than we have to pay here. Wages haven't gone up in real terms in decades--in fact they have gone down considerably.

[Astro Cat]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?” I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult. Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable? What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

I don't know what Americans are moaning about. Houses are so cheap there that I'm suprised EVERYONE doesn't live in their own gorgeous mansion Here, pretty much everywhere is in the California or New York 'unaffordability' zone. Fuck knows why. What a hole this is. An average rent here for a very average place is $600-$750 per week. We also have among the highest food prices in the world. Most of our produce gets sent overseas where people pay a lot less for it than we have to pay here. Wages haven't gone up in real terms in decades--in fact they have gone down considerably.

Oh yikes, that sounds horrible How are people getting by? Can I ask which country?

[Age]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?”

There is absolutely no point at all.

This is just the result of greed and selfishness, and until 'you', adult human beings, stop increasingly becoming more and more greedy and selfish, then what is happening will only continue to get worse. That is, until breaking point is reached.

I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

But you do not need to do those things to survive, in the first place. You just do those things because you are greedy and selfish.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult.

Home ownership seems like a pretty far off dream, to all those who first start out working and relatively have no money.

Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable?

It just collapses

What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Again, there is no point at all.

This, again, is just the result of being greedy and selfish creatures.

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

This race stops when you adult human beings just stop being greedy and selfish, and what also ends is most stress, pollution, and wrong doing.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

[FlashDangerpants]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?” I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult. Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable? What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

Sounds like you have an infestation of NIMBYs who won't allow housing supply to meet demand thus, forcing prices up. These naughty imps strike in many ways.

My home town is London for instance and we have this 70 year old program designed to protect the scenic British countryside called a Green Belt. the idea being a hard divide between urban and country rather than some nasty American sprawl. A lovely idea but we have this costly city surrounded by near worthless land that you can only build certain non-urban types of stuff on, meaning the city is beseiged by a very small quantity of forest, a moderate amount of farmland, and an insane number of pony paddocks and golf courses. Some of that just can't be the intended outcome.

I don't know where in the US you are, but the zoning is so tight and local incomes so high that you couldn't write that post from San Francisco where $300 only matters if it is per day. And you wouldn't write that from Houston TX or Carlsbad CA because you can probably afford a decent spot in either place due to less market interference.

[vegetariantaxidermy]

My rent is going up $300, and I’m hearing similar stories all over the place. I recently got a raise at work and now I’ll effectively have even less money than before the raise. It’s hard not to think “what’s the point?” I’m already working a night job while doing full time grad school to survive in the first place.

I’m a millennial, home ownership is a pretty far off dream for me; but renting is seeming to become just as difficult. Rent seems to be increasing faster than wages are. What’s going to happen when this becomes unsustainable? What’s the point of earning wage increases if other necessities rush in and suck it all up?

Reminds me of the Red Queen: run as fast as you can to stay in the same place. It really makes just trying to exist truly feel like a rat race.

(Vent over, but I could perhaps have something more useful to say when I work tonight. Typing from a tiny screen while trying not to cry myself to sleep — ok, hyperbole, but you get me)

Sounds like you have an infestation of NIMBYs who won't allow housing supply to meet demand thus, forcing prices up. These naughty imps strike in many ways.

My home town is London for instance and we have this 70 year old program designed to protect the scenic British countryside called a Green Belt. the idea being a hard divide between urban and country rather than some nasty American sprawl. A lovely idea but we have this costly city surrounded by near worthless land that you can only build certain non-urban types of stuff on, meaning the city is beseiged by a very small quantity of forest, a moderate amount of farmland, and an insane number of pony paddocks and golf courses. Some of that just can't be the intended outcome.

I don't know where in the US you are, but the zoning is so tight and local incomes so high that you couldn't write that post from San Francisco where $300 only matters if it is per day. And you wouldn't write that from Houston TX or Carlsbad CA because you can probably afford a decent spot in either place due to less market interference.

I loathe that term 'nimby'. Actually the whole planet is 'our backyard'. Horrible sardine-can housing with no gardens, nowhere to go outside, no trees, and built on the few remaining green spaces are very bad for the environment and mental health and serve only to put money in the pockets of sociopathic property developers. We've been fed this 'massive housing shortage' crap for a few years now. It's all bullshit of course. House prices are plummeting at the moment. The only 'homeless people' I've seen are 'faux homeless' because hopping from motel to motel is the only way to get cheap social housing.

[FlashDangerpants]

I loathe that term 'nimby'. Actually the whole planet is 'our backyard'. Horrible sardine-can housing with no gardens, nowhere to go outside, no trees, and built on the few remaining green spaces are very bad for the environment and mental health and serve only to put money in the pockets of sociopathic property developers.

Agreed. There isn't only one consideration, we shouldn't build cheap substandard housing, we should eradicate species with urban sprawl, or even pave paradise for the sake of a parking lot oooh oooh ooh do wop wop dop.

But that is to say that we still ought to value some stuff ahead of the chepaness of housing

We've been fed this 'massive housing shortage' crap for a few years now. It's all bullshit of course. House prices are plummeting at the moment. The only 'homeless people' I've seen are 'faux homeless' because hopping from motel to motel is the only way to get cheap social housing.

When supply is much lower than demand, the result wouldn't be lots of homeless people sleeping under bridges - the causes of that phenomonon aren't house prices. What you do get is 30 year old with reasonable jobs who can't afford to move out of mum's house. You families with a child who aren't sure about having a second any time soon because they can't afford a place with more space for kids to run around in.


Supply and demand sets the price for almost every tradeable commodity and accomodation is included in that rule. The fix for high house prices is more housing in the regions where people want to live. After that you can argue about how to address the issue.

• Complete deregulation would increase supply, but at the costs to the environment and to city planning and quality of life that you have indicated you aren't willing to pay, and only shacks would get built by people like Henry.

• Reduced regulation would end something they have a lot of in America called single family zoning, which presumably is the rule that makes all their suburbs so incredibly bland. In the UK we could drop some planning regulations too but it would be more useful the change how the fees are paid (central government steal from local govt in this case). The former is the only one that ever gets discussed because it is popular with Tories, the latter has no specific appeal for left or right wing so is ignored.

• A Georgist Land Value Tax is the FDP approved neolib solution. It heavily influences land owners to do something economically useful with empty plots of land, many of which are left as they are simply because their current purpose is to serve as loan collateral.

• Or you can deal with it the socialist way and have the state build loads of new appartments.

Any of those options would result in the Cat lady being able to afford her rent more easily - but only in about 10 to 15 years when they've had some effect on supply. So Astro Cat is actually SOL but the next generation would benefit.

[henry quirk]

only shacks would get built by people like Henry

Why?

[vegetariantaxidermy]

I loathe that term 'nimby'. Actually the whole planet is 'our backyard'. Horrible sardine-can housing with no gardens, nowhere to go outside, no trees, and built on the few remaining green spaces are very bad for the environment and mental health and serve only to put money in the pockets of sociopathic property developers.

Agreed. There isn't only one consideration, we shouldn't build cheap substandard housing, we should eradicate species with urban sprawl, or even pave paradise for the sake of a parking lot oooh oooh ooh do wop wop dop.

But that is to say that we still ought to value some stuff ahead of the chepaness of housing

We've been fed this 'massive housing shortage' crap for a few years now. It's all bullshit of course. House prices are plummeting at the moment. The only 'homeless people' I've seen are 'faux homeless' because hopping from motel to motel is the only way to get cheap social housing.

When supply is much lower than demand, the result wouldn't be lots of homeless people sleeping under bridges - the causes of that phenomonon aren't house prices. What you do get is 30 year old with reasonable jobs who can't afford to move out of mum's house. You families with a child who aren't sure about having a second any time soon because they can't afford a place with more space for kids to run around in.


Supply and demand sets the price for almost every tradeable commodity and accomodation is included in that rule. The fix for high house prices is more housing in the regions where people want to live. After that you can argue about how to address the issue.

• Complete deregulation would increase supply, but at the costs to the environment and to city planning and quality of life that you have indicated you aren't willing to pay, and only shacks would get built by people like Henry.

• Reduced regulation would end something they have a lot of in America called single family zoning, which presumably is the rule that makes all their suburbs so incredibly bland. In the UK we could drop some planning regulations too but it would be more useful the change how the fees are paid (central government steal from local govt in this case). The former is the only one that ever gets discussed because it is popular with Tories, the latter has no specific appeal for left or right wing so is ignored.

• A Georgist Land Value Tax is the FDP approved neolib solution. It heavily influences land owners to do something economically useful with empty plots of land, many of which are left as they are simply because their current purpose is to serve as loan collateral.

• Or you can deal with it the socialist way and have the state build loads of new appartments.

Any of those options would result in the Cat lady being able to afford her rent more easily - but only in about 10 to 15 years when they've had some effect on supply. So Astro Cat is actually SOL but the next generation would benefit.

There is no 'housing shortage' here. The country is being destroyed for a lie. There was a small window of time recently when people went berserk trying to buy a house due to low interest rates. The only thing is that hardly anyone wanted to sell at that time, so there was very little on the market. The result? Sky-rocketing house prices and a 'seller's market'.
How can there be a 'shortage' when many individuals own 70+ houses? A lot of them don't even live here. They bought the properties as a form of money laundering. It's arseholes like that who first-home-buyers have had to compete with.
Well the low interest rates didn't last, buyers stopped looking, people started wanting to sell again, and voila! The bottom fell out of the housing market. What a surprise. Shame for those who bought during the short-lived boom and now have negative equity.
The govt. is just pandering to the massive construction industry. It's swallowing up all the green spaces for its horrible sardine can housing, where acres and acres of identical houses without trees or a single square inch of grass to use up the 'valuable time' of all the 'busy busy' individuals who are stupid enough to buy these shit-boxes that probably won't even last a decade, have air conditioning units roaring away all summer (how very 'green') because there are no trees or micro-environments to moderate temperatures. Gorgeous old villas and bungalows are being demolished wholesale with ten shit-boxes a piece going up in their place. There is never any attempt to preserve trees (can't have them taking up valuable land where an extra shit-box could be built).
So. A fake 'housing shortage' and the 'solution'? Bring in thousands of sub-standard builders and construction workers to build shit-boxes and make the population bigger, when we allegedly don't have 'anywhere near enough houses' to house them. And so it goes on....

[reasonvemotion]

I bought a quarter an acre about 10 years ago for $146,000.

Today median property prices over the last year range from $1,200,000 for houses to $627,500 for units.

Today this (regional) size block is asking between $500,000-$650,000 and people are paying this.