Owning a house a the sine qua non of middle class life was a) a historical anomaly and b) a big mistake.
We can’t fix the cost of housing because so many people own houses. If 10% of people owned their own homes and the rest were owned by corporate landlords we would not have politicians climbing all over each other to make sure that homes values are a one way bet.
Politicians would like to help corporate donors, all other things being equal. But that imperative for any particular donor is no where near as strong as the need to acquiesce to desires of a large majority of their most engaged constituents (i.e. homeowners). The times when politicians are most strongly in favor of a particular company/industry is when they have a lot of jobs in the district. Campaign donations are a means to an end. Pissing off large numbers of voters directly contradicts that end.
> Pissing off large numbers of voters directly contradicts that end.
Pissing off large numbers of voters is a daily occurrence by virtually every politician in the US. Politicians don’t care about that. They only care about pissing off certain voters and certain political leaders.
Perhaps. The issue is how much power they can organize into impact. If you piss off a million people with psychosis and intense depression, it might be survivable compared to angering thousands of rich Christian cattle ranchers who call their lobbyists to fine-tune the political hacks in office to their liking. It's not impossible to do it without means, it's more difficult to play the game as an outsider from below rather than work connections through channels from at or above.
Yes, which is a good thing. Why not create wealth that the citizenry can take advantage of?
Politicians in your world would never see any community voter permanence, because if everyone is a resident, everyone is effectively a transient voter to them. You would only need to kowtow and keep them happy for the 6 months prior to the election.
The communities have no anchors…except for the corporations that own all the property. They would have all the power and that sounds horrible to me.
We need to subsidize the building of houses outside of dense urban areas but close enough to areas offering employment choices. As of now, the inventory is primarily being driven towards the high-end in a "trickle-down" non-management of inventory where average people lose interest in investing in themselves or the future of anything. Millions of disgruntled, idle, and dissatisfied individuals don't make for a stable economy or safe country. E.g., you don't have many suicide bombers, mass shooters, or addictions/crimes/"quick-fix" politicians of despair in productive, sustainable economies.
A typical student who did the “right things” starts life with 60-120k in debt. To acquire remunerative employment, they must then move to a successful major city likely to consume 30-50% of their income. To afford a house, this individual must then save 2-300k in liquid capital to afford a down payment and prove they have stable employment to purchase a home, which dependent on the whims of the federal reserve may erase what is now 10-15 years of savings.
A rational observer would remark on where this 10-15 years of surplus went? A Luddite would argue that one should simply do nothing
If they're only in the major cities because they have to be to get their careers going and would prefer to be somewhere else, $2-300k would buy them a complete, well-renovated house large enough for a family in cash in much of the central part of the country.
Having to move to a city isn't the same as having to stay in a city.
One moves in a large city to start a career. At which point, by the time that middle America house is within reach, your support system is in the city as well. Friends for pet-sitting, likely family close-ish for child care, public transit to avoid paying for insurance, gas, parking, and a car. An emotional support network, instead of being (for at least the first bit) physically all alone with no friends nearby - because let's be frank: having all your friends a multiple-hour drive away, and none nearby, can feel bleak. Doubly so when your long-term partner isn't ready to sacrifice the above for a house in flyover country. And all of this precludes keeping your professional network nearby as well, making getting a new, better paying job easier as well.
None of these are insurmountable. Not at all. But the more barriers in place, the more likely it is that our hypothetical person will be stopped by one.
Granting that I only lived in the Midwest for 8 years, my experience was that those who "moved away to a city" still had most of their family support system in the place they left, not the one they moved too. Yes, they certainly made friends in the city, but their family and "oldest friends," the ones they grew up with, were still at home in flyover country.
These people should not be confused, though, with those who could not wait to get away from home and were beyond glad for an excuse to move to the city. Their motives and relationships are completely different.
I'm only talking here about the ones who "had to" move to a city to get started--the folks middle-American companies depend on for the long haul after they cut their teeth on the coasts.
>A typical student who did the “right things” starts life with 60-120k in debt.
Very few degrees are worth taking on that kind of debt. Also, doing the first 2 years in community college with basic FAFSA is very affordable. And since when do college students not work while going to school? My nephew finished his mechanical engineering degree a couple years ago (State University system with first 2 years in community college) and he ended up with under $12k in debt which he already paid off.
Then again, he didn't decide he just had to go to an out of state private university for all 4 years while not working at all. Vastly different approaches will deliver vastly different results.
We can’t fix the cost of housing because so many people own houses. If 10% of people owned their own homes and the rest were owned by corporate landlords we would not have politicians climbing all over each other to make sure that homes values are a one way bet.