[pochekailov]

Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters.

Even in the cities where the renter population is bigger than the homeowners, such as in Seattle, half of the votes come from people of > 65 years old (all of whom are homeowners, likely more than one home). Young people simply won't vote at all.

There is very little incentives for the young people to vote. Even if you cancel all the regulations right now and allow for unlimited constructions in the cities like Seattle, SF of NY, one will need about 10 years or longer to build enough apartments for the price to go back to affordable (which is 2-3 years salary of an average worker in the area). So the after-next generation will profit from the effort of the current renter generation.

Nevertheless, I think young generation needs to engage in the politics with the uncompromised goal to crush the housing price, to prevent the economic collapse of the "rich" world and prevent entire Earth from sliding into the dictatorship. Such is life.

[infl8ed]

Although I don't disagree with you, I will just mention that housing affordability is also a problem in Australia where voting is mandatory

[Aunche]

I don't think mandating voting really helps that much. At best, you'll get people to vote for the candidate with the (D) or (R) next to their name. What we need is for people to be more informed. Fewer than 20% of people can name their state legislatures, let alone their stances.

https://hub.jhu.edu/2018/12/14/americans-dont-understand-sta...

[TremendousJudge]

Mandatory voting doesn't fix all the problems, but it's better than the alternative. Instead of campaigns focusing on "go vote" you get campaigns focusing on the actual voting.

[seydor]

I often watch architecture videos with houses from australia. Lots of properties built more or less to look like contemporary style stock photography. No wonder your houses are expensive, they are built for luxury investment

[strikelaserclaw]

how do you think politicians make money? They usually own assets.

[nradov]

In the US some politicians make money by using their knowledge of upcoming legislation to trade stocks.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/23/nancy-and-paul-pelosi-are-trad...

[missedthecue]

What kind of insider knowledge did Pelosi have that would incline her to throw money into Roblox?

[VonGuard]

While I completely agree that Pelosi does this with insider knowledge, she and her husband also seem to be investing based on the hype they hear from people around them. Why else would the Pelosi's have taken such a bath on Roblox?! They had to have known shit is going bad over there, but they lost a LOT of money on that one...

So yeah, they do insider trading, but they are sometimes also the dupes in these deals. Look at their history. They make money, yes, but they lose a lot to stupid investments too, ones they obviously made because some Steve-Jobs-wannabe got a meeting with them and fired their reality distortion ray.

[wldcordeiro]

One thing that's missed in the renter vs homeowner thing is that the rules of election systems favors the homeowner too. Renters move more and will need to register to vote over again and the added inconvenience will stop plenty from even bothering.

[dionidium]

A commonsense way to describe what you just said is that homeowners are more stable and stationary and therefore more invested in the long-term future of their communities than renters are, which is an argument that urbanists laugh at, but one that seems very clearly to be true.

I think people basically know this, if they're allowed to be honest with themselves. Nobody who ever lived in a college dorm and then spent a "magical year" in NYC and then bought a house in a suburb thinks they were just as invested in those first two places as they are in the third.

[bcherry]

Even if this is true, those communities always have the class of people moving through and that class deserves a vote, even if the individuals within it are changing. For instance, take a university town with population of 100k, 25k of whom are students. The students themselves come and go, lasting about 4 years each, but it still makes sense that 25% of the vote each election should go to the student community overall. This doesn't happen for a variety of reasons, but some of them are the sorts of artificial barriers like voter registration that depress the vote of these sorts of communities.

[cheriot]

As long as people can't afford to buy they're "less invested" so no reason to address housing affordability... In the modern housing market that's a self fulfilling prophecy.

How about that principle of one person, one vote.

[dionidium]

> How about that principle of one person, one vote.

Reality, in my view, is absolutely chock-full of contradictions. I believe in the principle of one person, one vote; and I believe that what I said above happens also to be true. The dialectic doesn't care that we might wish things were simpler or more straightforward.

[cheriot]

In a world with stable rents, renters also become long term residents and invested in the community. If someone’s only “invested” financially I doubt that they have the community’s interests at heart.

[dionidium]

There will always be transients, students, travelers, and so on. In a world where most people rent and renters are indistinguishable from owners, renting will cease to be a signal that those people are present, but they won't disappear. They'll just be harder to identify.

[kixiQu]

I will note that Washington state makes this very straightforward; universal mail-in voting with real easy registration has definitely led to me, a disorganized young person, voting when I wouldn't have otherwise.

[danielrpa]

If you are free and able to vote but won't do it, it's hard for me to feel too much pity for your situation.

I started voting when I was 16 (my birth country allows that) and voted on every single election until I immigrated to the US - and then voted on every US election since becoming a citizen.

[lambertsimnel]

Some people find it difficult to vote, for reasons I suspect disproportionately affect renters. Where people must be registered with their home address in order to vote, renters are at more risk of being unregistered at election time, because they move home more frequently. People experiencing economic hardship (who are more likely to be renters) are less likely to make time for voting (especially if polling stations are congested or at inconvenient locations) or for prompt electoral registration.

[alistairSH]

Not sure why you're being downvoted. Whether it's intentional or not, voting in the US is not always easy for several reasons...

1 - No national election day holiday, so wage-earners often have to forgo income to vote.

2 - Long lines, too few voting stations, exacerbate point 1

3 - Inconsistent voting laws as you cross municipal boundaries (mostly state to state).

3b - particularly WRT mail-in/absentee ballots.

4 - constant undermining of the voting system as a whole by the GOP. This has really ramped up in the last ~8 years, but it's been there much longer.

The first 3 are more likely to impact poorer citizens, who are also more likely to rent their homes.

We'd do well as a country to allow nationwide mail-in voting.

[doliveira]

Election day not being a holiday in the USA is weird

[lesuorac]

I dunno, having election day be a holiday seems like a poor solution as plenty of people do work holidays and probably the same people who have trouble finding time to vote.

Mostly, I don't think we should be encouraging a ton of people to all show up at the same place at the same time. That's just asking for long lines and other issues.

I think it'd be much better to just drag voting out of the course of a month and actually encourage people to not show up on election day. Or to just vote by mail more, I haven't been a poll since I was a child (and back then we had levers!) but from what I hear now half the time you're just filling out a mail ballet in person now.

[doliveira]

> plenty of people do work holidays and probably the same people who have trouble finding time to vote

It's a country with 300 million people, there's plenty of people for anything. I'd wager that in percentual terms, the absolute majority would benefit from an election day holiday.

[dghughes]

It isn't in Canada either mostly I'd say because there's no set date. The government can lose a confidence vote and an election can be called at anytime (a date set in the future not immediate). But we do get a paid hour or two off work to go vote that's law.

[alistairSH]

The US has a mix of dates. All elections are effectively at the state or local level. Primaries are all over the calendar. General elections for President are all on the same Tuesday in November.

So, a national holiday really only makes sense for those presidential election years. Or, we could declare "first Tuesday after first Monday in Nov" as an annual holiday, and many states would likely line up their fall elections on that date. Primaries would still be a mess, but they always will, as they're not always open elections anyways (some states require party membership or declared party affiliation to vote in primaries).

[Spivak]

Not being able to vote electronically is also really weird since ballots are only paper at the edge. Yes there are downsides, just like when you mail-in you give up non-repudiation, but the fact that it's not even an option is crazy. I personally would be more than happy to give up my personal ability to vote anonymously if I meant I could just sign up for a vote.gov account at the BMV, login, vote and be done with it.

[Loughla]

I absolutely do not want electronic voting. I legitimately believe that system would be kept behind a black box, and would be far too likely and liable to be cheated and gamed. At least with a huge stack of paper that is stored for an approved number of years there is an option for independent verification.

[rjbwork]

No it's not. From the start the US was intended to be oligarchical - hence the franchise originally only being extended to white landowning males. There has always been a strain of politics dedicated to keeping barriers up to enfranchisement.

[coryrc]

Then why does Washington state also have low voter participation?

Nine of that applies to a Democratic-run state with mail-in-only voting.

[buildsjets]

I have anecdotally heard from some Republicans in Washington that they do not bother to vote, especially in non-presidential election years, as they feel that a Democrat will win the election anyway.

This is visible in county-level voting rates. The counties east of the Cascade mountains tend to be more conservative than the counties west of the Cascades, or areas surrounding metros like Spokane, and they also tend to have lower voter participation rates.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2018/10/15/where-peo...

[lesuorac]

[Citation needed]

From what I see WA had a turnout of 75% compared to USA's 66%.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1h_2pR1pq8s_I5buZ5agX...

[coryrc]

You're cherry-picking the most interesting election of the last five years. The recent primary was ~38% turnout.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/which-wa-...

[jimbob45]

1 - No national election day holiday, so wage-earners often have to forgo income to vote.

PSA: You can register as a poll worker and work election day to guarantee you have time to vote. There's a high chance that your work will give you the time off to go work as a poll worker without it eating into your PTO (and you get paid to boot!).

[PuppyTailWags]

> There's a high chance that your work will give you the time off to go work as a poll worker without it eating into your PTO (and you get paid to boot!).

As an ex-linecook, LOL, there are too many assumptions baked in here to be in the realm of reality for working class jobs

[Loughla]

Holy cow, not even a little bit. This is so, so middle- to upper-middle income centered it's not even funny.

1st you are assuming people have one employer to worry about, not multiple.

2nd you are assuming people have a set schedule daily or weekly.

3rd you are assuming people have PTO.

4th you are assuming the employer will give any amount of shit about volunteerism.

5th you are assuming they won't be given a point or docked for missing a shift.

[valarauko]

I'm curious as to what the solution in this case is then. If election days were holidays, wouldn't the same people still have the same issues with employers? Do shift workers not work on holidays?

[mikkergp]

I was curious on the data on this. I mean difficulty voting certainly is a major narrative and passes the smell test but the survey in this article suggests 3/4’s of non voters say it is easy to vote:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/561886-whos-not-voting-...

This is however contrasted by the confusing bit that not being registered was the biggest reason people didn’t vote, above apathy and political disengagement.

[ghaff]

> not being registered was the biggest reason people didn’t vote, above apathy and political disengagement.

And it seems likely they didn't make the (often minimal) effort to get registered because of apathy or political disengagement.

[Loughla]

Let's have this thought experiment played out.

What did it look like for you to get registered to vote?

[ghaff]

Well, I get a form every year from my town to confirm my particulars. I sign it and send it back. I guess if I weren't registered I'd go down to the town hall and do so. If I couldn't for some reason, I assume I could call the town clerk, and they'd send me a form in the mail. When I go into Cambridge around election time, I frequently see various tables set up to register people.

Obviously registering (and voting) is harder for some people than others but registering to vote is not, in general, an arduous process.

[pochekailov]

We probably need some service (an app or a site) that gives clear instructions on how, where and when to register.

Yes, it is harder for renters, but it is designed to be harder. This is to prevent renters from having political power and making homeowner's houses more expensive. One more reason to fight, from my point of view.

[choko]

We have all that and more. There are even groups that seek people out to teach them to vote. When you file a change of address with the post office, they send you a packet with all kinds of moving resources including how to re-register. In addition, a really quick Google search gives you all you need to know to register and vote. I don't understand why some people pretend the process is difficult. If people still aren't voting it's due to lack of interest, not because it's confusing or difficult.

[dwater]

55% of Americans have hourly jobs, most of which do not control their hours. There are many polling places, particularly in underserved communities, where it can take multiple hours to get to vote. Elections are nearly always held on workdays. So if you are a single parent working an hourly wage job from 8am to 6pm and the polls close at 7pm, would you vote? The voting process is difficult in America for some people and easy for others.

[powerhour]

Unfortunately even states with all-mail voting don't see a large increase in turnout. For example, WA state has had all-mail voting since 2011 and here's the numbers: https://www.sos.wa.gov/elections/voter-participation.aspx

[choko]

The vast majority of states have no excuse absentee voting and/or early in-person voting options. In addition, employees are legally required to allow time off to vote, though in the overwhelming majority of states, the early voting options make this unnecessary.

https://www.vote.org/early-voting-calendar/

If people want to participate, they have many options.

I've found that if you need to argue edge cases (single parent, hourly schedule that almost completely overlaps poll hours, no absentee, no early voting or mail-in, and an employer that violates law) as you have in your post, you do not have a compelling argument.

[AlexandrB]

I don't get why there's a "process" at all. In Canada, when I change my address with the CRA (our version of the IRS), my voter registration gets updated automatically. Why is there a separate step in the US? I've also voted when my CRA address was out-of-date at the time, and this was fine too as long as I brought government-issued ID or a recent bill sent to my new address.

[choko]

Like most things in the USA, voting is a local matter, not federal. It would be prohibitive for the post office to manage this across 50 states with differing rules.

States in the US have more atonomy than states in most of the rest of the world. So much so that it often doesn't make sense to compare national US figures to national figures in other nations - education being a good example - https://learn.uvm.edu/blog/blog-education/vermont-eighth-gra...

But the same applies to voting. The federalist system under which the US operates allows communities and localities the flexibility to operate in a manner consistent with local needs and values.

[Retric]

It is unreasonably difficult. There is no reason you should need to jump through any extra hoops beyond a change of address.

[choko]

Why stop there? Perhaps government employees should go door to door and record my vote for me. Sending something in the mail is unreasonably difficult.

[lambertsimnel]

You're probably correct in many (or even most) cases, but I still believe that it's too difficult for some people, for two reasons:

1) Some people are under more stress than others, and are less able to summon the effort to vote. Admittedly, this does also include people in rather different circumstances, such as elderly homeowners who become unwell at election time (especially after the postal vote deadline).

2) Voting arrangements aren't uniform between countries (or even within one country), and travelling some distance to a polling station and then queuing to vote is a burden some voters might experience much more than others.

[choko]

The vast majority of states offer a multitude of early voting or absentee/mail in voting options. As far as uniform regulations between counties, who cares? Each person is only supposed to vote once, and in a single county. Learn your local regulations (easy as this is well documented) and follow them.

Further, you won't ever come up with a system that is 100% inclusive, secure, reliable, and economical. That should never be the goal since it's not achievable or necessary. Covering 99% of cases is good enough.

[woofyman]

There’s early voting.

[francisofascii]

Well, you can't vote where you don't live. The large problem is the lack of appropriate land taxes in high cost municipalities. And you can't vote to change that until you live there, and once you live there, you are much less incentivized to vote against your self interests.

[nradov]

Most of the laws regarding property taxes are set at the state level, not the municipal level. In California, a voter in Modesto can influence tax rates in San Francisco. Local votes only control minor things like special additional school district assessments.

[lotsofpulp]

That is a California specific phenomenon due to various caps they put at state level on the rate at which property taxes can be increased

[nradov]

Even in other states which lack property tax caps, the basic framework within which tax rates are set is controlled at the state level. For example, some economists have proposed replacing property taxes with land value taxes but it would be impossible for a single city to do so without enabling state legislation.

[lotsofpulp]

Interesting. I assumed counties/cities are relatively free to set property tax rates according to their budget, and the city needing to compete with other cities is what keeps them relatively in line.

[TuringNYC]

That may be how things work in California, but it definitely does not work like that everywhere in the US. For example, here in NJ, property taxes are partly set by the state, but the schools portion is set my the county and township.

[Kon-Peki]

Yeah, here in IL property tax is 100% local (state law sets limits and requirements only). And everything is an independent government body with taxing authority.

The city collects its taxes, the school district collects its taxes, the library collects its taxes, fire district, road department, forest preserve, etc. None of them can tell the other to do anything - they are all independent with independent funding. The county has its own taxes, but also has the function of actually providing the payment, billing and distribution services. So you only have to make a single payment.

By the way, property taxes in Florida work nearly the same as California and they don't have any problem building lots of housing.

[namlem]

That's not true in most states, that's a California thing. Property taxes usually are set at the local level.

[lkbm]

> If you are free and able to vote but won't do it, it's hard for me to feel too much pity for your situation.

What if I vote, but people with interests aligned with mine tend not to? What if those people not voting are acting as rationally as the people who vote frequently?

Consider these two groups, who get the same number of votes, live under the government for the same amount of time, but rationally have different incentives to vote:

Home-owner:

* Bob moves in, lives there ten years.

Renters:

* John moves in, lives there two years, moves out.

* Phil moves in, lives there two years, moves out.

* Mike moves in, lives there two years, moves out.

* Jess moves in, lives there two years, moves out.

* Fred moves in, lives there two years, moves out.

If we assume these people are self-interested, Bob will, on average, vote more than the renters, because Bob values future-Bob's well-being more than John values Fred's. It's only through the altruism of John, Phil, Mike, and Jess that Fred will get to benefit from a government that accounts for his interests.

It's also true that each renter has an incentive to vote for things of short-term value and to discount long-term benefits, so maybe it's okay that Bob ends up more represented. But "John isn't voting as much as Bob" isn't a case of John being less responsible than Bob. It's that they legitimately have different incentives.

[jjav]

> so maybe it's okay that Bob ends up more represented

In this example, I'd say it is very legitimate that the Bob has over time more influence how local things are run, since he's a long-time local that has to live with it. All the others are transients that come and go.

[lkbm]

Collectively, the others live with it for the same amount of time. Their incentives are lower to improve things locally, but the impact on them is the same.

[pochekailov]

Haha I am still not a citizen, so can't vote myself. I was trying to encourage my friends, but they were often too busy. They would vote for Hillary (or even for Trump), but never for a local mayor.

Sometimes I am considering running myself for a local government after getting my citizenship, with the only goal: drop housing price at my city for at least 70%. Once achieved - retire from politics :).

[dfxm12]

I've got the political party for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_Is_Too_Damn_High_Party

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79KzZ0YqLvo

[banannaise]

I voted, but somehow people keep saying my opinion doesn't matter because I, as a demographic, didn't vote.

[kubb]

Do you think there exists a political option that will give more rights to the renters?

Do you think there's a correlation between having more leisure time (living from rent) and having more ability to do politics?

Do you think blaming the renters for not voting is the most constructive way of going forward, or does it reinforce the status quo?

[pochekailov]

Q1: Yes, there is. Once a professional politician sees more activity from renters, they will include the renter's interests into their agenda

Q2: Yes, obviously there is a positive correlation. This is exactly why renters need to fight: stakes are against them. Current status quo is in favor of homeowners; it will not be possible to change it while being passive. Renters and homeowners have conflict of interests, there is inevitable fight.

Q3: I think blaming is the call for fight. If renters want better deal, they need to fight. Is it most constructive? I don't know, this is the best I can come up with. Does it reinforces the status quo? No, I think inactivity reinforces it.

[gitrog]

I'm sorry but your answer to Q1 is extremely naive. There is no way that activity from renters will even remotely approach the power of those who own property in politics. The latter group can lobby and make campaign donations, the former can't exactly...

The best thing you'll get is a campaign promise to do something about it, but not much action. The only way something will actually be done about it is if the effects of it become economically catastrophic or people start rioting en masse.

[JumpCrisscross]

> no way that activity from renters will even remotely approach the power of those who own property in politics

Can speak to New York politics. Tenants' associations have massive sway. I've canvassed elections where a single building's tenants' association could predictably swing the outcome.

They also ally with developers when advantageous, e.g. to continue building housing stock. (Their divergent interests explain much of our affordable housing policies' idiosyncrasies.) This combination of activism and pragmatism beats the well-funded candidate every time in local politics because their elections are decided by margins of hundreds or even tens of votes.

> latter group can lobby and make campaign donations, the former can't exactly

Donations, at the local level, are a threat to incumbents through enabling primary challengers. And tenants' associations absolutely lobby. The problem is renters in most cities are some combination of disorganized, disengaged and/or ideological to a dogmatic degree.

[bthater]

The latter group can unionize like the tenants union of Washington[1]. Unions can lobby on the behalf of their members and make campaign donations based on their dues. While their power may not be as great as the amount of individual homeowners who can independently donate a union is a good mechanism here for renters to advocate for affordable housing. Here in Seattle there are multiple unions that have lobbied to local city council members for increased tenants rights such as 6 month notice for increase in rent[2]. _Things_ are being done about the problem at the local level across the country through unionization of renters and workers.

[1]: https://tenantsunion.org/ [2]: https://council.seattle.gov/2021/09/27/sawant-congratulates-...

[banannaise]

Local politicians will often discount or ignore the opinions of people they see as renters rather than homeowners, in part because when a renter moves, they often leave the district.

I saw this recently in a fight over parking regulations - all the homeowners wanted strictly regulated street parking in neighborhoods, but none of the renters did. Both parties showed up to the council meeting discussing the regulation. Guess who won? Adding insult to injury, existing laws give owners a process for obtaining extra parking passes for guests, while renters get no such option and need to take a bunch of documents to city hall to get a pass when they move in. For street parking.

[nopenopenopeno]

You have an incredibly naive impression of representative democracy and capitalist political economy. US politicians serve the rich, not only because they are the rich but also because they need the donations to even be able to run. This isn’t a mere hiccup but rather the entire point of the design.

[pochekailov]

Yes, in my experience, the naïve interpretation is right 80% of time and it is always best to start from a naïve explanation of a process.

US politicians serve the rich only because they think that donations will help them win. Make the donations irrelevant - "rich" will loose the political power. How to make the donations irrelevant - go to vote, especially if you are poor and powerless. Convince your friends to vote. And not for a president, but for a local mayor, city council, judge etc.

[refurb]

I think young generation needs to engage in the politics with the uncompromised goal to crush the housing price

At least where I live, the “bank of mom and dad” either use their home equity to help their kids buy OR the kids are banking on getting the family home when they die.

We’re in too deep now. We basically painted ourselves into a corner where the economic engine is so intertwined with rising home prices that nobody wants the gravy train to end.

My best guess is tenancy laws change to be more and more in favor of tenants (SF, NYC) securing near permanent housing for current renters and massively disincentivizing an increase in supply of new rental units., completely screwing over those that come later.

Basically kicking the can down the road another few decades.

[_aavaa_]

> We’re in too deep now.

We're never going to be less "too deep". Kicking the can down the road condemns future generations to dealing with a worse problem.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

If you think we're in too deep, you should check out China.

[pochekailov]

I'm an immigrant :).

Banking on your family dying - this is like saying "I am a worthless loser". I want old generation to live eternally, and still afford housing.

[lotsofpulp]

If the old generation cannot work for eternity, what would be your solution to a declining labor participation rate?

[pochekailov]

Rejuvenation and life-extending technologies to keep labor energetic forever.

Industrial and maintenance automation for needing less labor.

Relying on next generation to fund your retirement is ok if you live modestly; but not ok if you live luxuriously.

Working person should not be doing worse than a non-working person; otherwise you have an extractive economy and social instability.

[mamonster]

Biggest problem IMO is that "young generation" is already split among ideological lines(myself included), and kind of hard to imagine a concentrated "young vs old" movement that wouldn't at some point devolve into infighting.

[rco8786]

Definitely not that simple. To use your same argument though, it’s not just homeowners - it’s homeowners and aspiring homeowners. Which is nearly everyone.

[pochekailov]

The longer I live the more I am finding the universe is working on extremely simple few principles; their relations create complexity.

Aspiring homeowners will never become homeowners if the price is exclusionary.

Take SF: with average salary of 75-79K, the apartment cost starts from 1.1M. Only 8% has salary > than 100K, that makes the remaining 92% the "aspiring" homeowners.

They will stay "aspiring" for the rest of their life. The only think they (or rather, "we") can do - make sure that post-zoomer generation don't have to be "aspiring" for their entire lives.

[api]

The only rational move is for aspiring owners to leave SF, and not for another crazy expansive city.

There is a gigantic country and world out there.

[ryukafalz]

I would say a non-exclusionary city would work just as well. Tokyo is the most expansive city I can think of and they've managed to keep prices down.

Still, fighting to make US cities more livable is a laudable goal.

[api]

It's a laudable goal but I have serious doubts about its achievability in cities that are already overpriced. Every single incentive leans in the direction of keeping prices high since not only would lower prices cost homeowners money but would also possibly cut into tax revenues and could financial ruin people who purchased under these high price regimes.

It's a bit of a ratchet. Once the prices go high, it's very hard to turn back. The only way out is probably to inflate the currency until a loaf of bread is $15 but housing is reasonable again, or for the state or federal government to offer some kind of huge tax write-off for depreciating home values. The latter is unlikely given the financial crunch faced by governments.

[ryukafalz]

>Every single incentive leans in the direction of keeping prices high since not only would lower prices cost homeowners money but would also possibly cut into tax revenues and could financial ruin people who purchased under these high price regimes.

Not really. The way out is higher density. What we care about isn't land price, it's housing price - in other words, how much does it cost for people to get as much housing as they need. Lowering housing costs and rising land costs are perfectly compatible if you don't artificially restrict lots to 1 unit as most of the country has done.

[rhacker]

Or raise rates. That's actually affecting housing prices. No one can sell at the price they wanted because no one wants a loan this crazy. Unfortunately this will have other consequences.

[randomdata]

> and they've managed to keep prices down.

Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they managed to crumble their economy which brought the value of housing down with it? They had a massive housing boom before the "Lost Decades". Japan is no stranger to asset prices rising out of control.

That said, when I have looked at Tokyo pricing it has always been in line with high priced North American cities, only configured differently. The difference in configuration means that the sticker price is often lower, but you are getting less for that lower price. Apples to apples the prices have always shown to be in the same ballpark.

[DiggyJohnson]

I know I’m just ranting into the wind, but I wish it was illegal/ban-able to bring up the Bay Area (and NYC and Austin) in high-level discussions of the American real estate market.

It just kills the discussion because it’s such an outlier.

I would not be a popular king, but it’s better to be feared than loved, I guess. I do understand what site I’m on.

[jjav]

> Take SF

> They will stay "aspiring" for the rest of their life.

They have a very viable option, which is to leave SF and go somewhere else where they can stop aspiring and afford to actually become homeowners if that's what they want.

I speak from first-hand experience, although in my case it was Manhattan not SF. I very badly wanted to live in Manhattan but no matter how I sliced the numbers, there was no way. Too expensive.

I didn't remain "aspiring" for the rest of my life though. I gave up on that dream and moved and bought a house elsewhere. It's worked just fine.

[randomdata]

Houses are ultimately purchased with wealth, so labour value input isn't all that significant.

[newsclues]

I’m not sure.

At a certain point, if landlords strangle renters it can make hiring hard (workers can’t afford Cost of living if rents are too high), thus making the business environment uncompetitive.

Will the business community have more power than landlords?

I think so, eventually.

[bbarn]

So far the business community's response has been "no one wants to work." because they can't afford to pay salaries.

Ultimately, people vote with their feet, or government intervenes on behalf of those who would lose money.

[newsclues]

In Canada business and government says this stuff, to justify importing immigrants to work for low wages and often lower standards of living.

[randomdata]

Importing immigrants in Canada requires that the employer provide suitable housing for the imported workers, so that brings us back to the earlier comment.

[newsclues]

In a lot of documented cases a tim Hortons franchise owner owns rental housing and rents it at outrageous rates to temporary foreign workers.

[nradov]

Peter Thiel agrees and has shifted his investments out of the Bay Area because high housing prices make it too expensive to hire workers there.

https://sf.curbed.com/2018/3/19/17138290/peter-thiel-slumlor...

[marto1]

All this is true, but you missed a crucial piece, addressing your "need to engage" - political energy capacity coming from the young. I'll be more than glad to be proven wrong, but I don't think young people have driven any sort of political change in the west for at least the last 20 years. There are many cases where they get used as a lever, but actual movements like "occupy wallstreet" got squashed fairly fast.

[Loughla]

100% accurate. While popular society takes small steps forward in regard to social and political changes, the actual politics has not changed from when I was a kid.

There are more politicians willing to admit they support gay people, I guess. But that's about it. Deep down where it counts - fiscal policy - nothing changes.

[namlem]

Tens of millions of Americans gained access to healthcare due to policy changes. The IRA just further expanded access to healthcare.

[jjav]

> Nothing will change while the homeowners have more political power than the renters.

Homeowners and renters of course have the exact same politica power, one vote each.

If renters are for whatever reason choosing to not exercise that power, what can one do? They are free to vote, please do.

That said, I always vote and not once has there been anything on the ballot on whether to build more in my town, so it's not like it matters on that front.

[fleddr]

Lol, 2-3 years of salary: https://www.longtermtrends.net/home-price-median-annual-inco...

That would be half of the 70-year average. 5 is the norm, and it never got below 4. And you opt for half of the lowest point ever?

[anovikov]

I think you are more than exaggerating. Thinking of someone who's 65 now and owns several homes, these people are utter fools. How much would money put into houses 40 years ago when they bought, and put into stocks at the same time, would make? You don't even need to google up to know the answer. SP500 would make 96x with dividends reinvested and 37x without. Median home price is not even 10x, and the median home has increased in size 1.5x in the meantime, plus required upkeep. Fix to housing problem is nothing but financial education for people.

[mrep]

Actually, you do need to google up if you want to look at an actual data analysis. I mean, you aren't even counting the rental income in your comparison. If you look at the rate of return on everything from 1870-2015, equity markets and housing actually provide somewhat similar returns [0]. Equity markets are far more liquid though so I choose them personally.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19817584

[nostrademons]

The equivalent to rental income is "with dividends reinvested". Dividends are the cash flows from owning a stock, just like rent is the cash flow from housing. So the 10x capital appreciation from housing is equivalent to the 37x capital appreciation from the S&P 500.

You and anovikov reach different conclusions because you're looking at different time scales. You're citing returns from 1870-2015; he's citing returns for the last 40 years, 1980-2020. The comment and paper you linked itself explains why: housing and equity returns were very comparable from the period 1870-1945, but equities significantly outperformed from 1945-present. I would bet on suburbanization as the cause: the U.S. embarked on a massive homebuilding project from 1945-2000, which kept supply high and prices relatively low during that period. Returns to housing since 2009 (when the bottom fell out of the homebuilding market) have much more closely matched equities.

[anovikov]

OK, so returns from 1870 to 2015 are same for housing and stocks. Which again proves that there's nothing morally wrong about housing prices, if these investments are replaceable, one can always invest in stocks to save up to buy housing (at least on average, that is).

[namlem]

On the contrary, housing shouldn't appreciate. It's bad for the economy as a whole, and especially for young people, for homes to be an appreciating asset. Housing should be a commodity, not an investment.

[mrep]

Housing doesn't have to appreciate to be an investment though because you still have rental income.

[bushbaba]

You forget that 1) you only have 20% down for a home. 2) homes can be sold without tax implications.

If housing had the same tax treatment as stocks it’d be a horrible investment.

[Applejinx]

Why should stocks be an asset class guaranteed to always expand at such a hyperbolic rate?

[pharmakom]

No guarantees, but stocks capture the value of technological innovation that housing (expect a few markets like SF) does not.

[6510]

10-20 years seems fine. It doesn't have to happen overnight. To fast would create chaos and make it into new lame situations for people.

Gradual rent control with a point system works just fine.

Personally I would like to see renting [gradually] changed into lease/buy. That I've paid the value of the house 3 times now (and the construction cost 7 times) could mean I own at least some of the house? Doesn't seem unreasonable.

[throwaway6734]

Add to this the upcoming social security and Medicare crises, the constant rise in healthcare prices driven by elder care, and a shrinking population that needs to support more retirees.

We're in a weird place in the US where young people are unwilling to flex any political power to stop elder people from financially taking advantage of them.

[pochekailov]

Only one question: why are they unwilling? Is it that hard? They won't be killed or tortured, like in Belarus or Russia, then why not?

[throwaway6734]

I think a lot of young people just are ignorant about the situation coupled with the rise of populists on the left and the right, there's always some abstract other to blame without a focus on concrete problems and possible solutions.

Whenever I talk to my young friends about Social Security's trust running dry in a decade they just handwave it away with stuff like: the government will just print more money or blame jeff bezos

[wyre]

As a young person (28), I think it’s because we feel powerless in the face of what is to come.

Young people have no power because we largely are in the renter and working classes; while the home and business owners fight against every mention of renter protections, increased housing, worker protections, etc.

Not to mention we see the world we are growing up into is quickly becoming more and more inhabitable while living with the truth that the fossil fuel industry has been lying about climate change for 50 years.

Who are the populists you’re talking about? I can only think of Bernie and Yang. Trump isn’t a populist.

We aren’t ignorant either. We are a product of the social media machine and a decreasing faith in educational institutions. I think a lot of people are too scared of the future so they don’t think about it. Blaming an abstract for political problems has been a thing for long as politics as been around.

[megaman821]

The millennials are the largest voting block in the US. What is everyone else supposed to do when the group with the most voting power "feels" powerless? I sure hope millennials are just late bloomers. Where are the great political leaders, engineers, scientists, artists and writers from the millennial generation? All these future problems are hard but solvable when there are people working to solve them.

[randomdata]

> the group with the most voting power "feels" powerless?

It seems like a strange thing to have powerless concerns about as voting only selects a representative. In my experience, the most likely candidates are all reasonably suited to the job, leaving it to matter little who ultimately wins. Even if you are powerless it is not that big of a deal, being the most inconsequential part of the process.

The real work happens after the vote has taken place when you have to start engaging with the selected representative on the regular to make your perspective known. It is guaranteed that you didn't elect a mind reader. It is not clear if the younger generations are aware of that. This may be why they feel powerless.

It my youth the message was always "contact your local representative", but in recent times that message has changed to "how could <insert political figurehead> do this to us?" There is some apparent degree of learned helplessness at play; perhaps because greater media exposure gives us insights into places with strong dictatorships and we project their conditions upon ours.

Invariably, those with enough land ownership ties will ultimately run into municipal issues that will require approaching council, at very least forcing a deeper understanding of government upon them. This may also help explain why those who own things are apparently more engaged politically.

[choko]

Perhaps they don't believe political participation will help, or maybe OP is simply incorrect in their assertions.

[nradov]

Young people often vote against their own economic self interest because the major political parties successfully leverage splitter social issues. Young voters are no different from old voters in that regard.

[JasserInicide]

Break out what "homeowners" actually is. It's increasingly becoming these shell companies and entities like Blackrock. We need to ban that shit immediately. The deed of a house should have a fucking person's name on it, not a company's.

[namlem]

Investment firms buying homes is a symptom, not a cause. The only reason they do that is because local government artificially inflate the value of homes through supply restrictions.

[rhacker]

Let's multiply Seattle housing count by 3. I'm sure you'll still be able to get from point a to point b in a day (if you survive the drive).

[kmeisthax]

[laughs in Phoenix]

In all seriousness, no. The way you multiply housing count is by making buildings taller and closer together, not by spreading them further out. This is how we used to build cities before cars and roads ruined them.

[nemo44x]

It's because most people don't want to live in small boxes stacked on top of each other. The market responded to what people wanted and it was larger single family homes with yards and living space. An automobile to get you to other places for shopping and entertainment. This is what most people people want.

I agree though that a lot of suburbs are just wastelands and I would consider them to be depressing places to live. But people seem to love them for some reason. A lot of these places don't even have sidewalks but I guess it makes sense as there isn't really anywhere to walk to.

[kenned3]

This!

I love how people seem to feel they can enforce their views of how a city should be build on others.

The fact of the matter is very clear.. we have so many detach houses because that is what people WANT.

For some odd reason there is a subset of the population who feel entitled to dictate how OTHERS should live. These people go on and on about "increasing density" while ignoring that some don't want to live like this.

[kmeisthax]

You are projecting.

The current state of affairs in the US is that, in most towns, detached single-family housing is the only thing you are legally allowed to build. When you buy land the local zoning board tells you what can be built on that land, and these zones are extremely fine-grained. Thus, the people who want detached houses are the ones who are dictating how others should live.

There is a huge demand for denser urban arrangements, because people would like to live closer to where they work and don't want to drive cars. This is why smaller houses in urban centers go for more money than larger houses in suburbs. This is an arbitrage opportunity for anyone with the capital to buy houses at the periphery of those urban centers and demolish or renovate them to house more people. Except that's illegal, so instead the market is stuck pricing by convenience, and you get a society that demands it's working class spend two or more unpaid hours of their lives each day driving from the suburbs into the city.

Historically, the transition to suburban home ownership as the default mode of living was also something dictated by elites rather than organically decided upon. To explain this we need to talk about cars, because suburbs and cars are basically a package deal. It is extremely inconvenient to live in the suburbs without owning a car, and cars do not work in cities where they have to compete for limited road space against pedestrians and public transit.

So the car companies demanded that the laws and cities change to make their business work. We invented the """crime""" of jaywalking[0] just to make cities more convenient to access in a large vehicle. Car companies even bought up and destroyed public transit, turning efficient streetcar and rail systems into buses that had to compete for road space with individual riders, and often lost. This meant more people having to buy back their freedom[1] by moving to the suburbs and buying cars to get to the job they used to walk to.

Had this decision not been made through top-down power and social engineering[2], the suburbanization of America would have been far more limited. We can see this in much of Europe and Asia, where attempts to level and rebuild cities in Henry Ford's divine image were resisted at every turn.

[0] "jay" is old-timey derogatory slang for rural farmers, roughly equivalent to today's "hick".

[1] I should point out that this freedom was an illusion because road capacity is far more limited for cars than it is for people. Suburbs will inevitably jam their streets and highways in ways that dense urban spaces cannot.

[2] As in, engineering society to work a certain way, not defrauding someone out of their login password

[kenned3]

i love it when people make statements liek "you are projecting" yet dont fully understand them.

What it means to be projecting?

According to Karen R. Koenig, M. Ed, LCSW, projection refers to unconsciously taking unwanted emotions or traits you don't like about yourself and attributing them to someone else. A common example is a cheating spouse who suspects their partner is being unfaithful.

I've not taken any of my views and projected them anywhere.

you simply look around, and you can find TONS of so called "Social justice warriors" demanding more public transit, more density..

Usually under some "Stop urban sprawl" mantra - who gives them the right to enforce how others want to live?

[29athrowaway]

Then each renter will become a homeowner, they will feel very comfortable, have 4 kids, and now you will need 4x more units.

Then their kids will have 4 kids, and you'll need 16x more units with respect to where you started.

Few generations after you have a much deeper problem that the one you started with. Now you live in a country with a population of over 1 billion, where protests cannot be controlled anymore and now you need a totalitarian regime with a massive surveillance and censorship apparatus to keep things under control.

The alternative is that everyone is stressed out and feels the pressure of a system that is over capacity.

Have you heard of Earth day? In 2022, it was April 22. It means that by April 22 we already consumed our environmental budget for the full year.

If we continue like this it's not going to be long until there's mandatory population control.

NOTE: this was edited

[TuringNYC]

>> Then each renter will become a homeowner, they will feel very comfortable

Not sure about the entire comment, but the above line is the clutch item. Once a renter turns into a homeowners, things change drastically. In the US you are typically highly leveraged once you buy a home. That means a 20% drop in home value wipes out all your equity. So once you buy into the system (esp with leverage) you have a huge incentive now to perpetuate the system that once enslaved you. Now you become the prison guard. Sadly, even the prison guard is in the prison of debt for many years, thus has to maintain the jail.

[bushbaba]

Well the birth rate is less than replacement rate. Without illegal immigration the US would not be seeing a population growth.

[sleepydog]

I don't understand. The population in wealthy countries is growing very slowly.

https://datacommons.org/tools/timeline#&place=country/USA&st...

What makes you say that housing costs are the cause? I've not heard of that argument before.

[wyre]

Reminds me of this [1] post yesterday that because sedans can only fit 2 car seats parents don’t have a third child because they can’t afford a bigger car.

Maybe, parents are having less kids because they can’t afford to move to a place with an extra bedroom.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32491901

[29athrowaway]

Because cost of life is high. Make cost of life lower and see what happens.

[ziddoap]

>It's fine for people to struggle and be stressed out, the opposite would be overpopulation.

People should struggle now to the point that they can't have kids so that 3 generations down the line we don't need more housing?

Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding. Because this seems like a pretty hot take if I'm understanding you correctly.

[rowanG077]

So your point is we need to keep people in such shitty situations they won't want to bring kids into this world?

[29athrowaway]

My point is that the system is overcapacity, that's the reality you like it or not.

If you want to watch Netflix and forget about what's happening outside, that's your choice. But we are completely destroying this planet in every way.

There are lots of mouths to feed every day depending on systems that are not sustainable and may collapse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjsThobgq7Q

If you go camping and have limited amount of food rations, water, etc, you will make sensible decisions about how to consume the supplies you have. This is very similar.

[reedjosh]

I find it funny that I agree with you in some ways that others might not.

For example, I agree people should ditch the dumb super hero movies and do something better. Maybe garden or learn to weld or something.

But I completely disagree with you that humans are destroying the planet in an unsustainable way.

Sure, there are huge challenge and excesses, but the human spirit should also bring solutions.

Particularly in the face of both energy and water shortages, we should be building coastal nuclear plants.

Not only do they provide clean energy, but they basically function as desalination plants.

That and it's pretty glib to make people "uncomfortable" so they don't procreate. Especially when here in the US we barely even have population growth.

[29athrowaway]

If we are not destroying the planet as you claim, then animal species would be flourishing. In reality, insects, fish, and many species of animals, especially animals above certain weight, they're all dying off and going extinct.

As we humans advance, we destroy the habitat of other species. As industrial agriculture expands, we consume all the topsoil (soil with microorganisms, worms, etc. in it.), we extract dietary micronutrients from it, we pump all of the groundwater, kill all the pollinators and insects, then cause collateral damage to all migratory species that cross those territories.

We dump trash everywhere, we pollute the atmosphere, we pollute the oceans, we make the oceans more acidic, we are raising the temperature of the planet, our industrial plants dump toxic chemicals everywhere... and the list goes on and on and on.

You, on the other hand, are heavily influenced by an alternate reality which is a combination of television and Internet content, documentaries, and uplifting stories about how some experimental technology 50 years away from mass production that is prohibitively expensive and makes things 1% better for the environment, while things get 10% worse each year. You are completely out of touch with reality and the hunter gatherers from the future hunting contaminated vermin will hate you.

[rowanG077]

Keeping people in misery is not the solution. Population control is much less ethically challenging IMO.

[reedjosh]

Again assuming a solution is even needed when birth rates in first world nations is already low.

[29athrowaway]

Keep telling yourself that. The environmental impact of the human population at large, which is growing consistently, has nothing to do with you by any means!

The millions of marine animals drowning in single use plastic bottles will concur with you.