Simmons, a queer Black woman and labor organizer from Houston, watched her Democratic state representative break with her party and vote in favor of three Republican-led bills limiting rights for transgender teens and children. All of them became law.
C’mon 😹. Sorry about this… 4 people rescued several people who apparently beached themselves. Fortunately they all survived and happily swam into the open ocean.
Once upon a time you could entice youngsters to the countryside with promises of low cost of living, but then rural housing got super fucking expensive super fucking fast during the covid years. Like sure, maybe rural housing is still cheaper than suburban/urban housing (although this is HIGHLY location-specific), but gone are the days where you could buy a pretty nice house (or an iffy house on a sizable chunk of land) for less than the down payment on a house in a “desirable” area. You might be able to convince a middle-class 30- or 40-something American to live in the middle of nowhere in exchange for a good house they’re able to pay for in cash with change to spare (and with it the opportunity to retire a decade or so early). But once rural housing started needing mortgages to afford and buyers still had to deal with crap like bidding wars and sparse inventory, where’s the draw? At least in my state (Washington) rural housing inventory is finally going up and prices are starting to come down (although monthly payments are still at near-record highs if you need a mortgage), but it’s going to either be many years of incremental decline or a very sharp, very painful crash to return rural housing affordability to how it was.
It was actually part of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. He and repubes attacked her for saying that we should attract and keep the talent from all around the world. Now he shamelessly stole the same idea, all the mainstream media are running wild with headlines like “Trump strikes a moderate tone on immigration” - completely absolving his administration’s atrocities related to immigration. Only for him to walk it all back within 24 hours.
Anyone thinks these racist repubes will do anything better for immigrants - let it be legal or illegal, high skilled or low skilled - is completely delusional. The whole reason immigration is in shambles and border is being overrun is republicans policies over past 2 decades.
The whole reason immigration is in shambles and border is being overrun is republicans policies over past 2 decades.
I thought it was America’s full heroin like addiction to cheap migrant labor. Let’s be real Republicans and Democrats know that the US economy will grind to a hault if ppl stopped crossing the border. The fact congress won’t make work visas for farm laborers less convoluted and backwards is on purpose. You can’t have things like labor laws stopping that 11 year Mexican kid picking strawberries for $2 an hour
Yup. Immigration authorities know they can pick random farms in certain regions and round up the entire workforce as working without a visa. Enforcing this would grind agriculture to a halt in many states.
Nobody actually wants that, including the farm owners who tend to vote Trump and complain about the “illegals” working for them. So they do a few raids now and then to look like they’re doing something. Meanwhile, the workers aren’t allowed to take water breaks in humid >90F weather.
What a terrible article. The solution is throwing more subsidies? Of course it’s not! The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties. It really is that easy.
that will make it easier for people to buy, and even harder to rent. Ie. that will worsen the problem.
EDIT: it’s apparent that Lemmy users don’t understand why someone would actively want to rent, and think everyone wants to buy. This makes the entire topic very difficult to discuss.
Wait a second. You think that if large-scale landlords have to sell property, that will magically make it harder for other people to buy it? Now now. You can do better.
There’s very few cases where renting is the best option, and for that group they usually are well off enough to have options.
Society is concerned with folks who can’t afford to buy a home right now, even with the mortgage price being less than the cost to rent in some cases. That group has no other options, and because that group is expanding at the moment, its increasingly likely to be affected either personally or via those in your community.
I was having trouble understanding what you meant because you didn’t think about the obvious implications of millions of properties being unloaded in a short time.
If the number of landlords drastically increases, which would happen when you have mass property sales, then there’s more competition, and rent goes down.
Or, depending on your setup, the government seizes some of the properties that people refuse to sell, and turns them into public housing. This also drives rent down.
So then, what happens? Oh yeah, both buyers and renters win. Was that clear enough? Perhaps I should write in all caps.
The point is that it doesn’t solve the problem. The problem is one, we don’t have enough housing supply, and two, the housing supply is largely controlled by parasites (big and small) who profit off their ownership.
Getting rid of landlords solves half the problem but you still have a large group of people who cannot afford to buy homes. You might think that’s good because housing prices will crash but who’s going to build homes when no one can afford to buy them?
I’m not saying I have all the answers but I know for sure that getting rid of landlords is not a silver bullet solution.
Well mortgages and rent costs are pretty close these days aren’t they? Its the down payment and closing costs that price people out of buying a home then? Why not take away the down payment requirements so that renters could participate in the buying market. Maybe there can be deals where someone sells you there home for 1-2 years for 50% market rate but they have to give the house back at the end of the term?
I think the point being made is that this landlord stuff almost rarely works out well these days so why not change?
What do you think drives the price of rentals? Not being able to afford to buy keeps people stuck in rental living where they can be price gouged. If the price of houses drops due to an oversupply, more renters will buy, which reduces demand for rentals, which will drive down the price of rent making it more affordable to rent.
Landlords hording property reduces the supply to people who want to buy. This shortage reduces the supply:demand ratio, which drives prices higher. Higher house prices informs the price of rent which is controlled by the people creating the shortage.
People aren’t suggesting to abolish investment property, they are simply saying we should remove the abuse investment.
The entry cost of the housing market is a greater driver of rent than vacant rental properties. The laws even encourage property owners to leave a property empty than lower the rent.
I’m down with anything. The point is that your rent is not high because Bob has two houses. It’s because the real estate speculators own five thousand.
To be fair, everyone doesnt want to own housing all rhe time (say you study somewhere for a year for example, you might want to rent. Or when you try out anew city) so some landlording is needed. We don’t need landlords having lots of homes though.
Landlording should never be done for profit. Socialize the fuck out of it. My water, electricity and healthcare is socialized, why do parasites profit off my home?
Profit, profit, I’d say reasonable profit and mandatory standards.
For example, when I lived in sweden I knew a landlord, he was stopping because you beeded around 50 appartments (might be inflated from his side, but in many countries you can live off of 2 so …) to make a decent salary.
In sweden you cant rent out a shitty appartment, you cant set the rent as you like it, and youre taxed etc. etc.
I mean it should be like a normal job, not granting you robber rights.
I mean I agree with the notion that corporations shouldn’t be buying up entire neighborhoods, but at the same time if a corporation is building neighborhoods then I think it’s fine if they own them. We need more units ultimately
That’s stupid. If a company is buying up already existing units to manipulate prices then there’s clearly an issue with that, but if a company is buildings new units to sell or rent, then where’s the problem? They’re literally introducing new units to the market. God, people on Lemmy are so brain dead.
There’s nothing wrong with the concept of renting. It only becomes a problem when companies are manipulating the market or price gouging. If companies are renting out units are peak market rate, then the issue there’s way more demand than supply. The solution is fairly easy, build more units to flood the market and bring down the prices. It’s a tried and true method. Want to see in action? Look at how Texas managed to get all of its major cities to have a big decrease in their average rents compared to last year:
Austin managed to slash rent prices by 9.3%, San Antonio by 8.2%, Dallas by 3.7%, Houston by 3.2%. It’s not just Texas, Nashville managed to slash prices by 8.3%, Atlanta by 5.2%, Baltimore by 5.5%, and the list goes on and on. What’s the thing common with all these cities? They build more units. They flood the market with so many units that landlords have no choice but to bring rent prices down.
It’s not just rents, housing prices are also down in places that build more:
Home prices went down by 11.2% in Miami, Denver by 6.3%, Seattle by 5.5%, Kansas city by 4.9%, and the list goes on and on.
Want cheaper rents and houses? BUILD MORE HOUSES. Can’t do that? Update the outdated zoning laws to allow for multifamily buildings, mixed zoning properties, and higher density. This is the path forward.
These articles are speculative on the cause. I don’t see any data on the supply increases.
Some of these cities, didn’t increase supply. For example San Francisco saw similar decreases it they offer to exploration there.
The rents decreases are year over year but are flat over a two or three period of time, it’s just as likely the rent increases were a bubble that popped and not because of some unspecified change in supply.
I mean every city is different. In the case of San Francisco, it could be that city is shrinking and that is driving down prices. However, in the case of the Texan cities, which are all growing, the decrease in rents is indeed due to flooding the market with new housing units:
Though the price housing has gone up considerably which is slowing down construction, which might bring up the rents again. However, this still shows that building new housing units in mass does bring down prices.
I feel that you missed one basic aspect of economics. Competition is one reason prices might go up. There are other reasons, which are relevant here. Monopolies, collusion, price fixing, goods that people can’t live without, speculation, those are also reasons that prices go up.
In the housing market, it’s not fair, it’s not free, this isn’t a basic supply and demand situation.
Non-profit / below market housing is crucial. Without it, the people who actually keep cities functioning and interesting, service workers, artists, etc get pushed out.
I have a career that enables me to pay a lot of money for housing but I don’t want to live in a neighbourhood that only consists of people like me, cause I’m boring as fuck. I also don’t want to be part of the reason those people get displaced.
The solution is making it illegal to own more than a few properties
This problem does not have a single solution. Get rid of landlords and you’re still left with a large group of people fighting over a limited supply. Better zoning laws, removal of parking minimums, better transit + micro-mobility infrastructure, and more below market not-for-profit housing.
It’s not a simple problem, even if the motives that created the problem are.
I think we agree, with the caveat that you need to be careful when stating a position like yours, because it’s often used as an excuse to do nothing at all.
In typical Republican fashion, they apply the rules they like and try to burn down the rules they don’t. After all taxpayer money for corporate America and private, Christian education good, money going to “the poors” bad.
Imagine if we replaced the powers that be with marketing execs.
What stance should we have on an issue? We did a survey and determined it. Turns out 51% of people want X so we did X. Oh and tons of tourists and immigrants are flowing in now because we figured out what people wanted and gave it to them.
It would be an interesting experiment. Put the people running marketing for say McDonald’s in power for a year. See what simply giving people what they have made clear that they want would result in.
There’s an X factor though. Which is, what will actually gain/lose votes. Also known as priority/secondary issues. They may decide 80% want A, but those 80% won’t make decisions based on A.
To look at it from a marketing exec perspective, they made Blade Runner 2049. It was made due to strong nostalgia, it was extremely well received, and it bombed.
Bud Light dropped from being the top selling beer because a minority of people stopped buying it without as many new customers.
McDonald’s has such a strong brand that they keep increasing their prices without losing too many customers.
Right they won’t be perfect but I still think it would be worth a try. Approach government policy like a business would. What will attract people to the area that would make them pay taxes.
What would be so bad about government trying to give people what they want when they want it? People want clean water, so give them clean water. People don’t want to spend a lot on housing so build more housing. Just treat government services as a value added.
I would much rather that compared to what we have now where some failure lawyer just decides what people need. And if you look at social issues I am completely right. If someone say at the marketing department at Walmart started bashing trans people they would be fired within minutes.
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