856
'Renters Are Struggling': Economists Back Tenant-Led Push for Federal Rent Control
(www.commondreams.org)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2023
856 points (100.0% liked)
News
23634 readers
2637 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
Eh, I mean there is a record number of vacant homes at the moment. The investor class owns a fuck load of housing that could be actually be used to ya know, house people. I'd bet If a large tax was placed on 2nd homes /income property, there'd be no supply shortage. So many people bought homes for AirBNB, and rent seeking in the last decade that in years past would be being bought by families. I know in my town they've been putting up high rise after high rise. Rent still goes up because of (imo) artificial scarcity. Landlords are using software to fix price on rent, banks intentionally trickle out foreclosures to not flood the market, companies with vacant units are not allowed to drop price of rent and keep pricing high because of financing agreements made when the building was built. Most of the luxury apartments that have been built are maybe 30% full. No one wants to live in a duplex/ triplex /multiplex. People want houses, and there are none because companies like Blackstone backed Invitation homes and Chinese companies/ citizens buy them all to rent seek.
The ripple effect from these rate hikes might help drop rents because a lot of commercial loans are ARMs, and when that rate adjusts, landlords are going to feel pain, but they may just pass it on to their tenants and make housing affordability even worse. We've allowed too many people to commodify what was once viewed as a necessity, and the single family home is now an investment vehicle for big business.
The real estate market as a whole feels like a giant game of hot potato at the moment. Something has got to give. The America of today is so much worse than the one I grew up in as a result of all the BS we've allowed the investor class to do. It needs to get reigned in somehow because imo the American dream is dead as a result.
We're currently close to the record for all time lowest vacancy rates. We're at 6.3%. The highest (over the past 70 years) was in 2009, at 11.1%. It got down as far as 5% a few times. I downloaded the raw data and it says the average is 7.28%
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RRVRUSQ156N
There's a popular image of a bunch of Scrooge McDucks sitting on giant inventories of housing but the evidence doesn't support that. Someone saying, "I saw a bunch of empty houses." is exactly as logical an argument as a climate denier saying, "It's been cold all week." That's just an anecdote.
The data is very clear on the matter. We don't have enough housing.
A vacant home doesn’t mean affordable or accessible. Single family homes are stupidly inefficient and expensive or in middle of nowhere. Dense cities are the only solution.