This is such a twisted framing of the issue. No one wants to "abolish property ownership". In fact housing proponents want the exact opposite – give everybody the opportunity to own a house rather than a select few large corporations and investors. Let me build my own house on a piece of land in or near the city, just like my grandparents did just a couple of generations ago. Remove years worth of excessive permits, reviews and other red tape. Remove restrictive zoning laws. Remove neighbors being able to veto my property because it would cast a shadow in their garden for 6 minutes a year.

And no, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" isn't an acceptable answer.

>And no, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" isn't an acceptable answer.

As someone who grew up in a small town, do you understand how condescending this is? People have homes there, have families there, work hard and live decent lives. Just because they live at a pace you're not accustomed to, doesn't make living there some kind of hellish existence. Many would say the same about a filthy, overcrowded, crime-ridden city, of which I've lived in several across the US.

I grew up in a very small town (under 5k pop) and did not find this condescending. There are very clear and obvious drawbacks to living there. It’s really not for everyone, evidenced by the fact that 80% of the US population lives in urban areas despite small towns being incredibly cheap.

It's not condescending for someone to imply "I live somewhere important, you live somewhere unimportant" ?

Phrased another way, if someone came in for an interview and said "I'm from Laketon, Indiana", do you think it would be appropriate for the interviewer to say "Oh, you're from the middle of nowhere." ? I don't think that would be appropriate at all.

You seem to want to get offended for no reason. If I forced everyone from your town to move to downtown New York would they be happy about it? Or could it be that different people have different lifestyle preferences?

I'm sure where you live is lovely, but I still don't want to move there myself.

Just because you don't want to live there, doesn't make them "middle of nowhere" is my point. That's an extremely common elitist attitude that I see among tech people who look down their noses at people in rural communities.

Sorry but with all due respect, "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere" is absolutely an acceptable answer. You're acting like you're entitled to live where ever you want, but the simple reality is that this is not possible.

You need to come to grips with that objective fact.

This is a pretty silly response. Are people entitled to live wherever they want? No. But the situation is very obviously not that black and white. We allow many things in society that people aren't entitled to, largely because we believe it will build a better society.

Am I entitled to own my investment properties? No.

Am I entitled to block neighbouring housing from being built? No.

But society allows both of these things because they ostensibly should result in a better society. Of course, they may not, and if they don't result in a better society, we should probably turn the dial back on these factors, but not get rid of them altogether.

So should anyone be entitled to live anywhere? No. But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)? Probably, if we think that will result in a better society. So we may need to turns some policy dials to ensure this will happen.

Why are you not entitled to own your investment properties?

> But should a middle-class person be able to build a life in places where there are opportunities for job growth (and like it or not, right now, that's the big cities)?

No. You are not entitled to access to specific jobs or a specific area.

What kind of worldview is this? We should sacrifice social and economic mobility for people's Zucchini gardens?

The world exists beyond San Francisco, you are not entitled to one specific city.

There's a giant gap between "you're entitled to live wherever you want" and "too bad, go live in the middle of nowhere."

My read is that the person you're responding to is in the middle of that gap; and your response frames them as being on one extreme edge and then says an acceptable answer is to go to the other extreme edge.

Why is it not possible? The only "objective fact" is that people in certain areas in this country have lobbied hard to make sure that no one else should be able to move in anywhere around them. These rules are all reversible.

It’s not possible because there is limited space. Someone loses, always. There is no version of reality where everyone who wants to live in San Francisco gets to.

You can disagree with how we divvy up SF but claiming you should get to live there is in direct contradiction with the idea that everyone should get to live there.

Someone, somehow, will get bumped. You’re just advocating for a system that would put you there at the expense of someone else.

You are acting like owning a home entitles you to dictate how other people get to live. It does not. Owning a home shouldn't allow you to dictate that someone cannot build a home near you. Unfortunately it does in some places, but this is fixable.

Thank you so much for this beautiful insight. I just purchased a 100 sqft plot of land in the Alaskan wilderness where I will hire 20 employees and start a manufacturing business... oh wait, that's ridiculous.

Your argument contributes nothing because it fails to address the real negative consequences of unaffordable housing. After a point (which we most certainly have crossed), it affects society in strongly negative ways.

I don't know what kind of society you want to live in, but I don't want any part of that.

What the heck is so wrong with the Midwest in your mind? Do you seriously think living in Ohio, a couple of hours from the Great Lakes, is equivalent to living on some remote parcel of land in rural Alaska?

You’re missing the forest for the trees.

No, he isn't. Being able to live in any one particular city is not an inherent right of humanity.

It's perfectly reasonable to be priced out of some areas of the world, there is nothing at all wrong with that as a general concept.

You’re also missing the forest for the trees because you’re not seeing the real issue. What you’re describing is really just the core concept of any market.

The issue is that we’re seriously restricting growth and innovation in favor of using housing as a financial investment. Yes, it’s necessary to have some degree of inequality and nobody is entitled to to live in any exact spot, but it’s gotten out of hand at this point, it’s hurting our societies, and it’s unsustainable.

Clearly it is ethically problematic for the people of San Francisco to squirt out babies and then 18 years later tell them to go fuck off, go live in Gary, Indiana.

Don't give anyone any ideas or they might discover that they can buy a house like this [1] that is walking distance to the commuter train, walking distance to the beach, and walking distance to the trails in a National Park [2] [3] [4]

[1] https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/8725-Maple-Ave-Gary-IN-46...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199213,-87.2571163,16z

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6199718,-87.2697873,16z

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/@41.6218829,-87.2348586,16z

No one is forcing you to live in the city you do now. I am probably in a similar income range yet live a <3 miles from a major city that is known for high housing market.

People have such high expectations of housing, they are pricing themselves out. I do live in a 60+ year old, 1400 sf house, but that doesn't bother me.

I empathize for you, I do, but nothing you've said here means you deserve to live in San Francisco and a) not somewhere else or b) more than anyone else.

You do not deserve to live in San Francisco. Sorry.

What's probably a bit more toxic about your attitude is the implied belief that you deserve "better" than everywhere else in the US, that San Francisco is "yours* and not anyone else's.

And not for nothing, but I do have children (two) and am entirely capable of empathizing with others.

>just let me build a house where somebody else already owns the property where I want to build that house.

How does that work out in your mind without abolishing the concept of property ownership? What happens when somebody wants to build their house where you already have yours?

I'm not talking about building in someone's front yard. If you sell me a piece of land that you own, and it is now legally mine, should I be able to build a house on it? That itself is practically impossible to do in 99% of cases in most major cities in the US. A city like San Francisco approves like 7-10 shovel-ready housing projects a year, and fewer actually get completed.

I agree that in SF it has gotten out of hand. But the concept that communities can establish rules for what you can build in those communities seems acceptable?

If I moved to a a suburb because I wanted a smaller scale, and my neighbor wanted to build an apartment building next door, I'd probably push back against that. It feels like what is happening in SF is some extension of that.. projects getting caught up in community board reviews that happen slowly and unpredictably, and are staffed by old-timer SF residents who want to keep the city small. Frustrating for sure, but hard to fault them for that, if that's why they moved there pre-tech boom?

I personally live in NYC and appreciate that you can build whatever you want here!

Link me to an example of an empty lot in San Francisco that you are trying to build a single family home on and can’t, please.

I think the core of the problem is that we're losing the middle class of housing.

Obviously the nicest areas of the country, with the best weather, most opportunities, low crime, elite schools, etc. are going to be expensive. But it's getting to the point where it's prohibitively expensive for a middle class family just to live in a place without high crime/drug addiction/homelessness, reasonably good schools, reasonable healthcare options, and some measure of community/walkability (forget about weather and jobs).

You can live cheaply if you're willing to sacrifice in some of those areas, but they are major sacrifices that will have a negative influence on quality-of-life and the future prospects of kids who grow up there.

It wasn't always like this. I had a neighbor when I lived in North Berkeley (a beautiful neighborhood that checks every box you could want) who told me he bought his house in the late 90s for 150k. Now it's probably worth 2 million or more. I realized that everyone who bought on that block around that time had almost a six figure annual income for most of their adult lives solely from the appreciation of their homes.

I'm sure there are good deals out there that can still be found, but we really do have a problem if a table stakes decent family life is only affordable by the top 10% (or less).

Part of the problem is the middle of housing was often in towns anchored by one or two factories or other local businesses. With businesses being hyper-centralized today due to the internet and technology decoupling business from land, employees are now located much more centrally (we'll see how remote work changes this). For example, Google has hundreds of thousands of employees in the Bay Area alone. That's crazy. In the past, this would have formed several towns all across the country (because Google would need such a footprint to be able to deliver services nationally).

Now that anyone can start a large company without barely any land investment, it's no wonder people are increasingly concentrating in small portions of the country, while large portions are incredibly cheap, and in some places, depreciating.

Housing values in and around Silicon Valley have gone up extraordinarily since I was young for reasons that were not easily predictable. It's not a good model for housing costs in the rest of the US.

I grew up in uninteresting towns in Monterey County and San Bernardino County and both could check off points of 'acceptable places to live' which are affordable to the middle classes. No one talks about them because no one cares.

And even now these places are starting to become unaffordable for the middle class. I had an unsuccessful search last autumn for homes in Watsonville and northern Monterey County under $550,000 due to bidding wars that often resulted in homes selling for considerably more than asking. Prices are now starting to drop and inventory is rising, but interest rates are considerably higher than last fall when I started my search.

There’s been an explosion in home prices in the California Central Valley since the pandemic started. In 2019 it was possible to buy a brand new house in Los Banos and Merced for $280,000 and $250,000, respectively. Today you need around $450,000 and $400,000, respectively, to purchase similar new homes. And it’s not just the cost of materials that led to the massive price hikes; the cost of pre-existing homes also boomed in these towns.

I grew up in Sacramento and now rent an apartment in Santa Cruz County. Sacramento, once known for affordable housing with easy access to Bay Area and Tahoe amenities, is no longer affordable for many people. There are massive homeless encampments that I see whenever I visit the area these days. The housing situation is getting out of hand, and while this may not be indicative of a national crisis, in California the crisis has spread outside of the coast.

I'm with you friend. Posters throw out lines like "property shouldn't be an investment" as though the idea that property has intrinsic value is something invented in the last 50 years or so, not something that has been true for millennia.

I've been told that "housing is a right" which, if conceded, still runs into your point - housing may be a right, housing in the most expensive and populated areas in the US is not a right and there's no way to make it one.

> I've been told that "housing is a right"

An easy reply to these same people is to ask if they think they have a right to wood, brick, concrete, sewer pipes, electrical wire, all the other materials that go into making a livable house, and, on top of that, if they think they're freely entitled to the labor required to construct a house out of these properties.

Every right requires infrastructure, investment, and labor to ensure. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness aren’t free.

Whether or not housing should be a right, rights that are expensive to provide but are nonetheless provided anyway are nothing new.

> Every right requires infrastructure, investment, and labor to ensure. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness aren’t free.

People had natural rights long before the concepts of infrastructure, investment, or labor were ever conceived.

> Whether or not housing should be a right, rights that are expensive to provide but are nonetheless provided anyway are nothing new.

My point wasn't about expense. It was about a perceived entitlement to resources and help outside oneself. Housing in itself is not a right as it depends on resources and labor that don't belong to you. Such resources and labor are not rights.

We all depend on labor and resources that don’t belong to us.

There’s no right to property, speech, or even life itself without institutions like the police, military, and courts. There’s no right to vote without a massive election bureaucracy. There’s no right to education without a school system.

Why are we given rights like the ones I mentioned, but not housing or healthcare or basic income? It’s simply because the we haven’t collectively decided that the state should provide them. But it could. There’s no fundamental difference between providing housing and providing police protection, roads, schools, parks, and elections.

You have a very odd definition of rights and their defense. Rights are something every person is born with. They don't originate from government instituions, resources, or labor. Rather these things, protect or enhance them. There is a right to speech because I have the ability to speak, not because government has the ability to defend it or to take it away. There is a right to vote because people are freely able to form relations and petition for their own interests. While there is a right to learn (i.e. seek and out obtain information), there is however no particular right to a school-based education, as one is not entitled to being taught by others.

Police protection exists because the state has a monopoly on violence. Even if the police were never present however, as in the case of very remote areas with small populations, one always has a right to self-defense.

Roads and schools are not rights. They're paid for by other people's money and built by the labor of others. Parks are pieces of land the government has almost always wrongfully taken by way of eminent domain.

Elections are a complicated case. Individuals have a right to vote, but state legislatures have wide berth to set the terms of voting within their respective jurisdictions. While I would say there is a right to vote, there isn't a right to an election on terms or rules one finds favorable for one's self.

You're just arbitrarily defining some things as rights, and others not. These things aren't etched into sacred tablets--they are decided collectively by a society and its government and are always evolving. There was no right to vote until enough people decided there should be one and made it so. Housing is no different.

No sacred tablets here. A right is an ability or activity one is able to purse without the intervention or interference of others. There were rights before government and society existed and if government and society collapsed tomorrow, you wouldn't lose your rights. It's a contradiction to says that society and government decide rights.

A right to vote is predicated on freedom of association among a nation's individual citizens. A person determines for himself whether he will or will not vote. It's not for society's sake that a vote is cast.

This is getting to only be about semantics. That’s your definition of ‘rights’ based on your specific set of political beliefs, but it doesn’t reflect common usage or what people are referring to when they call housing or healthcare a right. They mean that society, via the state, should provide those things to everyone.

And you absolutely would lose your right to safety without police or some other form of protection. The ‘right’ might exist in your own mind, but it won’t do anything to prevent someone else who doesn’t share that belief from killing you and taking all your stuff. Rights are only meaningful with power behind then.

> This is getting to only be about semantics. That’s your definition of ‘rights’ based on your specific set of political beliefs, but it doesn’t reflect common usage or what people are referring to when they call housing or healthcare a right. They mean that society, via the state, should provide those things to everyone.

Semantics matter. If we can't even agree on the meaning of our terms, then we're talking past each other. Political beliefs aren't necessary to define rights.

And I'm well aware of claimed "meaning" of rights. However, as I stated earlier, such a meaning is contradictory. If a provision must be received from others, then it's not a right. It is a privilege. What the state gives, it is able to take away. Housing that is provided, subsidized, or constructed by the state isn't a right as at any point in time as the state can withhold payments to, modify, take, or demolish such housing.

> And you absolutely would lose your right to safety without police or some other form of protection.

People defended themselves long before there were professional policeman. Additionally, police officers can steal from, maim, and kill people just the same. The badge doesn't inhibit them from choosing to violate the rights of individuals. I don't see how that disproves my point. Safety is product of exercising the right to defend or remove oneself from a dangerous situation. I don't need to seek permission or pay someone protection money to secure my safety.

> The ‘right’ might exist in your own mind, but it won’t do anything to prevent someone else who doesn’t share that belief from killing you and taking all your stuff. Rights are only meaningful with power behind then.

Nothing prevents the state from killing people and stealing their stuff too. Governments have done that before, and many still do it today. Every government is composed of people who are little better in a moral sense than the average individual.

However, If you truly think that power is what makes rights meaningful, then you contradict your earlier statement about housing being a right, even in the popular sense of the term. If power makes right, then no rights exist, as people are no different from resources. Resources don't have rights and the state has no obligation to resources.

Their reply is that the land beneath the house shouldn’t be available for private ownership.

If the land beneath the house isn't owned by anyone, then how does one build a house on it? A future homebuilder would have to take the land, or rent it from another owner to justify building upon it.

Your point would be more compelling if people weren't specifically blocking additional housing so their investment appreciates.

How about housing in the most expensive and populated ares in the US is a necessity? If there can't be housing available for all the workers in an area then there needs to be a change. Whether it be higher wages, changes in zoning, or public housing depends on the area, but doing nothing doesn't fix things. Having all the low paying workers commute 2 hours to work every day to make frappes and burgers for the rich locals is not a viable option.

There are no magic wands here. Property is a limited commodity, it can't be expanded to fit demand.

> then there needs to be a change

No there doesn't

> Having all the low paying workers commute 2 hours to work every day to make frappes and burgers for the rich locals is not a viable option.

Viable is in the mind of the beholder. Viable solutions include

- low income workers moving to more affordable areas, leaving the wealthy to make frappes and burgers with their Kurigs and air fryers

- low income workers continuing to commute feeling it is still the best option for them considering all factors

- wages raise in high-income areas to compensate baristas and chefs, allowing them to move closer to city centers.

All of these are 'viable' and none of them make housing a right or necessity.

> Property is a limited commodity, it can't be expanded to fit demand.

Explain to me why we can't build more housing?

Because it's not profitable to build entry level housing when you could build premium housing... unless you have government intervention.

> Here's a house in Indiana for $125K

Laketon, IN, population 606, had its post office closed in 2010 and, from a quick perusal of Google Maps, probably doesn't have a single traffic light. Doubt there's much public transit out that way. Only 30 miles to a town I might be able to get a job in, though...

Are you not able to work remotely? Or is that too much remote?

Combo electrical engineer and embedded firmware engineer, who spent the previous ten years in production test engineering...nah, my job is pretty hands-on. I went into a pretty empty building during most of 2020 and 2021 five days a week.

I mean, I've got a few skills that might be sharp enough to get me a remote job but I really like the hardware world.

Over satellite internet?

I've got a coworker who's looking into this and he seems to bounce around the idea of Rural New Mexico or Colorado, then another week he's got his eye on some 3K square foot house in Ohio for $125K or something like that, but just as rural. Every place he's looked at has fiber available.

There's a post office 5 miles away[0], where there are plenty of businesses that you could work at. Let's not be dramatic.

0. https://goo.gl/maps/y3dERcUkD7wMLzEW8

> Doubt there's much public transit out that way. Only 30 miles to a town I might be able to get a job in, though...

Lots of people in the SF area and lots of other big cities have commutes of 30 miles or more. And I'd bet the traffic on those commutes is a lot worse, so 30 miles in the Laketon area is likely equivalent to maybe 10 miles in SF.

I'd expect entertainment and cultural events are limited in Laketon, but it's a 100 mile drive to Indianapolis and 140 mile drive to Chicago. With all that you'd be saving on housing compared to SF weekend getaways to those cities should be affordable.

It's absurd to frame this as some sort of luxury consumption decision. Sure, that might be true for like beach front properties but we're talking about virtually every major city in the country.

People grow up and have social connections in these places. There are jobs there. There are political reasons for moving. But most importantly these are cities, not suburbs. It's just wildly ridiculous to disallow dense housing which would allow more residents and lower housing prices.

> seem to think that we should just abolish the concept of property ownership to accomplish this.

This is a funny comment given the article is about corporations converting massive swaths of housing in the united states into rental properties.

Just to hammer home the point: NYC has rent stabilization, which applies to about 50 percent of the rental stock. The rent can't go up more than a certain amount, one must renew with the tenant with few exceptions, etc. Now, not surprisingly these units are offered by real estate brokers who demand steep fees, and guess who gets first dibs, but brokers and their friends/families.

Most rentals in NYC no longer work with brokers, especially in the low-to-middle range.

On what basis do you say that?

The Fee rentals have all returned when the laws banning them were re-interpreted.

When you say low to middle range, do you include rent-stabilized units in moderate to hot neighborhoods?

On the basis of living in Manhattan and knowing a ton of people who have moved places over the last few years, including myself. Also, just go look at StreetEasy.

Abolish propery ownership? I’d settle for ”let the newcomers also build homes, the same way the previous generations did”.

Every single time I've posted allowing newcomers to build houses the same way their great-great-grandaddy built a shack I've gotten an army of people up in arms complaining they're afraid the lack of safety regulations will result in their town burning down.

Where I live zoning laws are decent and land cost next to nothing. But you still have to contend with the universal housing codes, which means you're absolutely fucked because grand-daddy built a house that is basically irreplaceable (you can't permit that anymore) that grandson can live in, but fuck you if you want a house like that for yourself because that's all you can afford to build.

People just want homes to live in, in areas where there are good jobs, and get pissed when entire blocks of SFR housing are turned into Airbnbs or investment properties. You walk down the street and every house has an STR permit on it.

It is really not that difficult to understand.

The current state of things are that most property rights are abolished. Why do all my neighbors get to decide if my property has 10 or 20 units on it?

The problem is market power. We want a free market in which supply and demand dictate price without manipulation.

But in any given region, there is a fixed supply of property that is slow to change to demand. And there is also a fixed demand- everyone needs a home. If one market participant buys up enough of it, they can choose to raise rents on that entire segment of the market. People need a place to live, and if their job, life, livelihoods are tied up in that specific area then leaving isn't a viable option.

The market participant literally is rent-seeking. They aren't improving these homes. They're raising prices by virtue of owning enough of them to be able to manipulate the market. They can charge more for the same service without providing anyone with more value.

Saying that anyone opposing this is some kind of communist against property ownership is a straw man argument. We just want to see a fair free market.

I'm not following - how do the cheap houses in Indian relate to the high prices in SF and abolishing property ownership?

> Go look at Parkersberg, OH.

I think you might be referring to Parkersburg, WV. It's right on the Ohio river, next to Ohio.

I think it is more like put regulation in place which makes owning housing as an investment untenable.

Picking nits, but Parkersburg is in West Virginia, not Ohio (source: born there).

Ah sorry about that! I was just picking a random spot in Ohio that was kinda nearish the Great Lakes. I guess I moved to Far East. Did you like it there?

We moved when I was about two weeks old, but a lot of my family is in that area (on both sides of the river). The area is struggling economically, but it has some historical and scenic charm.

I can’t live in Indiana because the entire state is racist. This should be obvious.

Edit: /s for those who need it