1) Inflation hedge 2) Mortgage= Forced savings plan. Lots of HNers are good with money, but it turns out for the general pop this really is a good savings vehicle (provided you don’t increase your debt via refinancing). 3) Sweat equity- you can invest labor into your home, often in a somewhat enjoyable way. 4) You “should” save money over renting in most scenarios that don’t involve changing households often, as you get the recapture the value a landlord would have to charge to cover vacancies, management, minor repairs (sweat equity), and profit margin. Obviously the real world might be distorted, but the theory holds in many markets still.

So really, you can have both, just with a slightly different lens and set of expectations.

The problem is even in that situation, the money of the home owner and apartment house owner speaks more loudly than the interests of the apartment dwellers.

Then the land owners can push through whatever price-exploding rules they want as long as they can maintain that 51% by promising the Judas tenants that their rents will stay the same.

Furthermore, many renters believe that if more housing is built it will only be luxury housing that they couldn't afford anyway. Sure basic economics tells us that increasing supply ought to drive down prices for everyone, but at the individual level it's tough for people to make the connection.

Most people who moved into a neighborhood because they liked it don't want it to change. Enjoying where you live gets you labelled as a NIMBY though. It's easier to dismiss people if you give them a sweet nickname I guess.

> Sure basic economics tells us that increasing supply ought to drive down prices for everyone, but at the individual level it's tough for people to make the connection.

It should be telling that the "housing crisis" only exists in the most desirable places to live. I don't believe there is a practical amount of supply that can be built to satisfy the demand for housing in these places. The supply of upper middle class people who want to live in SV, Manhattan or San Diego is more than enough to make sure the poor can never afford it. In fact, the only people I ever see overly concerned with it are the middle class who are just on the cusp of affordability.

There's no housing crisis in Blythe.

Well, the question is how many of the host of worries US voters express (fear of XYZ evil-doers) are effectively just devices conveniently maintained and manipulated by media, consults and other moneyed interests.

Basic economics tells us that more supply lowers prices if everything else remains the same. Which it won't if the area becomes more popular.

"The assumption behind a demand curve or a supply curve is that no relevant economic factors, other than the product’s price, are changing. Economists call this assumption ceteris paribus, a Latin phrase meaning 'other things being equal'. If all else is not held equal, then the laws of supply and demand will not necessarily hold."

https://www.khanacademy.org/economics-finance-domain/microec...

And yes, of course, poor folks deserve to have homes to. But there was a period of several years where it was a nightmare to live where I was. The police were constantly present, one couldn't walk up to one's own front door without being accosted. It was terrible.

Most of the modern world was built on the of ROI, industry and investing in the future to better one's life and family. I don't see what correlation it has to low income housing or anything else. Housing will always be a thing of value which people with invest and trade in.

As long as there's people who want it there will people willing to build it. They can get a valuable return, even if it's a modest one, but making those buildings. The interest isn't the problem.

When you artificially constrain supply and massively increase cost/risk of those investments then the only buildings that get built will be expensive ones where the margins are higher. While simultaneously reducing construction and related jobs, reduce utility of a limited supply of land, significantly increasing the cost of living for people of lesser means who still need to work where the jobs are, create urban ghettos by only allowing gov to the feasible creator of low income housing in large centralized areas. It's not rocket science.

The problem with housing is that efficient use of one of the inputs (land) is illegal. Fix this and housing will be available at a variety of price points, just like cars are.

i cant tell if this is satire or if you actually agree with it

People always say "oh well if your neighbor did X you'd want zoning too". I've lived in those kinds of places and I mind the end-game of escalating lower class trashiness a lot less than I mind the endgame of upper middle class conformity. Bring on the fireworks, the ATVs, the loud music in languages I don't even speak and the drunken arguments.

I agree zoning is the wrong way to address this. What's needed is a responsive police force that will address noise complaints. Unfortunately police in areas where these things tend to be a problem have more important things to attend to most of the time.

it seems like people should be buying better harnesses

that's life

That said, his point is totally valid. When you say "affordable" most upper middle class people hear "poor people".

Just wanted to point out that Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel is a character from The Simpsons who satirizes the type of person that people generally refer to as "hillbilly".

When I grew up, we lived in an unincorporated area with minimal noise and other ordinances. A new neighbor moves in next store and basically spends 20-40 hours a week shooting at a bell and fixed targets from 7AM-?. They would use everything from .22s ("ding, ding, ..., ding") to various pistols, AK-47/SKS rifles, to hunting rifles daily. After church on Sunday most summers consisted of watermelon demolition via shotgun. My mom worked nights, and it made her life miserable.

Fast forward to my recent past. I live in a city, in a mixed neighborhood of 1-4 family houses. Some asshole decides to illegally convert his 2-family flat into a 10 unit SRO. So now we're stuck with people who are willing to live in that kind of situation (ie. mostly drug addicts and drunks) hanging around yucking it up all night. We were only able to shut it down when the slumlord guy decided to illegally convert the front porches into two more units, and when cited by the code officer chose to assault him.

I get the pushback to zoning, but it exists because of substantial minority of the population are assholes. My dad ran subsidized housing programs for years and built personal relationships with many of the stakeholders that I got to be a small part of -- the narrative on HN is that poor people are fighting zoning, the reality is that poor people are often the biggest advocates for it, but are denied due process. Nobody wants to live around slumlord apartments, or have industrial activity in their backyard -- but the most vulnerable people have the worst ability to secure representation and demand attention.

I have a lot of difficulty falling asleep (exacerbated by even the most comfortable of earplugs), and a decent amount of difficulty staying asleep once I do. It is absolutely not unreasonable to expect that people adhere to low noise levels at night. If you want to stay in a place where people are exploding things outside your house, knock yourself out. You are certainly in the minority.

We would be completely unable to survive in the world that you so casually dismiss.

I would encourage you to be very careful in choosing the kind of world that would be turned into your own personal hell.

Err, right, that's pretty much what I said in my post. Please don't run to legislators and banning HOAs.

Or your could tell your partner to stick earplugs in the baby's ears and see what happens...

I would even say that the alternatives have the same issue.

Politician C: I will make sure that housing remains affordable.

Politician D: I will make sure that your housing investment does grow.

But C is (loosely) the negation of B and D is (loosely) the negation of A. While there are other choices, the likely ones people vote are are the first group (A, B) verses the second group (C, D), normally with the options appearing in their nicer forms.

In short, affordable housing and having homes be worthwhile investments are at odds with each other in most issues.

Of course, those who wish to become homeowners also want those traits the moment they sign on the dotted line. Often, if you're purchasing a (first) home, it's for stability. Steady or increasing home value provides stability. Decreasing home value only causes instability (for example, should your mortgage go underwater you will lose that home).

How did you arrive at that conclusion? I'm no expert in that field, but an underwater mortgage really means a decrease in mobility for a mortgage borrower (example: if they want to sell their home and relocate, then their sale proceeds will not cover their full liability). It should have no bearing on the ongoing affordability of that mortgage which is the primary cause of a mortgage borrower losing a home. What am I missing?

What happened during the crash was people bought homes they couldn't afford on "teaser rates" and assumed they could keep refinancing using the existing equity from the appreciating value as a way of getting a conforming mortgage at a better rate, or taking the equity out as a loan. When this didn't happen, they walked away from the home.

Many of these people who "lost their homes" didn't really lose anything! They were living in a house above their means, that they often bought with no money down, paying interest-only, or a "teaser" rate (sometimes with negative amortization!). Then when the house went underwater, they walked away, not owing a penny. _Then_ they declared: "woe is me--I lost my home!" when in reality they got a sweet deal.

Many even lived mortgage free for the year or two it took the bank to foreclose. Congress forgave the income tax on forgiven debt (normally taxable) and nobody was made to pay income tax on the imputed income of living rent/mortgage free while waiting for the bank to kick them out.

There were some people who definitely behaved the way you described, but many if not most experienced true suffering in a way that deserves compassion.

I recall thinking, “would a president ever say such a thing about a gallon of milk? Or a loaf of bread?”

They could get both sides votes, increase the price of houses and claim to do something for affordability without actually attacking the problem of supply and demand.

That doesn't have to be true. The old story is that existing areas go from rural to middle to urban, rising in price. Everyone keeps moving further out, so there are always new houses. This story depends on constant urbanization and population growth in all wealth levels. "All wealth levels" is the important part, there has to be a year-by-year increase in the number of rich people so that the acres of expensive land bought by rich people can also increase. This will fail if population growth or social mobility fails, and from what I've heard both are in the process of shutting down.

The problem is you run out of rings. The three hour commute ring is unsustainable, unlivable and the trend-setters try to move into the center again, city size reaches a maximum and quickly thrown-up roads and bridges start to decay.

But this is the model the US set up and now it has painted itself into a corner in this fashion and many others.