Most of you probably know the memes about homes not being affordable to younger generations. It is true, that they are, at least, less affordable as illustrated by Figure 4-1. The reasons for that however aren’t evil Landlords, who want to leech as much as possible. It is more a combination of several factors:
Years of Bad Politics™️ has led to too few houses being built and now there is a shortage. As any highschooler, after paying attention in economics for 30min, can tell you: low supply + high demand = bad for consumers
Following that, most young people want to live in big cities, preferably the few biggest ones. That puts additional strain on these local markets.
Another big contributor to this problem is that Homeowners want to keep the value of their homes up. Anyone wants their assets to rise in value. But since they are the ones who vote in local elections, they vote to keep houses expensive. That means weird zoning, no new Homes etc.
In defense of renting
Renting apartments or even Houses is a good concept. I pay some entity to keep my housing repaired, up to code etc. As a consequence I don’t risk most of my net-worth being deleted by a storm or similar. Renting is more expensive than owning on average, but renters have none of the risk that owning implies.
I personally like fixing and modifying stuff. That includes Computers furniture and Houses. However I also know a lot of people who don’t. They don’t trust themselves to drill a hole in a wall. For those people shifting the responsibility of fixing smaller things to a landlord can be beneficial.
It also frees people up to move around, when their job/life requires it.
Solutions
Build more houses.
Its that simple. Cities need to rezone and remove houses in favor of multi-family buildings or even skyscrapers. Houses in a city make no sense. You want to be in a city to have a lot of people in a small area. Why would you spread out everyone in suburban wastelands.
If you want a house yourself, go to rural areas. I know you nerds are spending your entire social life on the Internet. It’s probably way cheaper to get a fiber connection into the middle of nowhere than paying for city houses. “Mimimi, but there are no queer communities” Then start one. Imagine how powerful all you queer furries will be if you take your tech jobs remote and save like 70% of your housing expenses. Just don’t spend the extra cash on more porn.
I know that when I’m done with my degrees I’ll be building my lair where no ethics boards will find me. My machines will be efficient and my fungi growing fast.
If I have convinced you to embrace the hermit life, come join me. I am always in need of more minions.
I mean, they can only do that, because people are willing to pay that. Just increase the supply and prices should go down. If they artificially keep them high, government should step in.
You could make the same argument about medical care in the US. Shelter is a survival need. You can’t just go without it if it’s too expensive. So (like medical care) it makes no sense for there to be no public option to exert downward pressure on the market. Really it makes no sense for so much of the stock to be in a market at all, but at the very least there should be a viable public option. (Public housing stock in the US is incredibly insufficient and there are decade-longs waitlists for housing vouchers.)
However, a large number of policymakers in this country (and probably most countries) are landlords and very few are renters. Expecting a class to act against their own interests because it’s the right thing to do is naive.
I mean, if you had a bunch more hospitals, probably. But that requires a lot more doctors etc.
In a way it’s already proving my point. By having cheaper in-network doctors the price goes down if you are able to choose.
The problem is, that healthcare is often an emergency thereby creating an inelastic market by removing that choice.
That doesn’t mean that the American health care system isn’t also super weird for other reasons tho.