#Landlords are causing the housing crisis

[benjaminallhope-fulltimemind]

Ain't that the truth.

[cinnastray]

Pls be patient with me while I sort out my housing situation :/ Drawn on my phone's notes app, hence the small scale

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The housing emergency and the second Trump term

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveill ance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/11/nimby-yimby-fimby/#home-team-advantage

Postmortems and blame for the 2024 elections are thick on the ground, but amidst all those theories and pointed fingers, one explanation looms large and credible: the American housing emergency. If the system can't put a roof over your head, that system needs to go.

American housing has been in crisis for decades, of course, but it keeps getting worse…and worse…and worse. Americans pay more for worse housing than at any time in their history. Homelessness is at a peak that is soul-crushing to witness and maddening to experience. We turned housing – a human necessity second only to air, food and water – into an asset governed almost entirely by market forces, and so created a crisis that has consumed the nation.

The Trump administration has no plan to deal with housing. Or rather, they do have plans, but strictly of the "bad ideas only" variety. Trump wants to deport 11m undocumented immigrants, and their families, including citizens and Green Card holders (otherwise, that would be "family separation" and that's cruel). Even if you are the kind of monster who can set aside the ghoulishness of solving your housing problems by throwing someone in a concentration camp at gunpoint and then deporting them to a country where they legitimately fear for their lives, this still doesn't solve the housing emergency, and will leave America several million homes short.

Their other solution? Deregulation and tax cuts. We've seen this movie before, and it's an R-rated horror flick. Financial deregulation created the speculative mortgage markets that led to the 2008 housing crisis, which created a seemingly permanent incapacity to build new homes in America, as skilled tradespeople retired or changed careers and housebuilding firms left the market. Handing giant tax cuts to the monopolists who gobbled up the remains of these bankrupt small companies minted a dozen new housing billionaires who preside over companies that make more money than ever by building fewer homes:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91198443/housing-market-wall-streets-big-housing-market-bet-has-created-12-new-billionaires

This isn't working. Homelessness is ballooning. The only answer Trump and his regime have for our homeless neighbors is to just make it a crime to be homeless, sweeping up homeless encampments and busting homeless people for "loitering" (that is, existing in space). There is no universe in which this reduces homelessness. People who lose their homes aren't going to dig holes, crawl inside, and pull the dirt down on top of themselves. If anything, sweeps and arrests will make homelessness worse, by destroying the possessions, medication and stability that homeless people need if they are to become housed.

Today, The American Prospect published an excellent package on the housing emergency, looking at its causes and the road-tested solutions that can work even when the federal government is doing everything it can to make the problem worse:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-tackling-the-housing-crisis/

The Harris campaign ran on Biden's economic record, insisting that he had tamed inflation. It's true that the Biden admin took action against monopolists and greedflation, including criminal price-fixing companies like Realpage, which helps landlords coordinate illegal conspiracies to rig rents. Realpage sets the rents for the majority of homes in major metros, like Phoenix:

https://www.azag.gov/press-release/attorney-general-mayes-sues-realpage-and-residential-landlords-illegal-price-fixing

Of course, reducing inflation isn't the same as bringing prices down – it just means prices are going up more slowly. And sure, inflation is way down in many categories, but not in housing. In housing, inflation is accelerating:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-03-08/inflation-housing-shortage-economy-cpi-fed-interest-rate

The housing emergency makes everything else worse. Blue states are in danger of losing Congressional seats because people are leaving big cities: not because they want to, but because they literally can't afford to keep a roof over their heads. LGBTQ people fleeing fascist red state legislatures and their policies on trans and gay rights can't afford to move to the states where they will be allowed to simply live:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/11/business/economy/lgbtq-moving-cost.html

So what are the roots of this problem, and what can we do about it? The housing emergency doesn't have a unitary cause, but among the most important factors is fuckery that led to the Great Financial Crisis and the fuckery that followed on from it, as Ryan Cooper writes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-housing-industry-never-recovered-great-recession/

The Glass-Steagall Act was a 1933 banking regulation created to prevent Great Depression-style market crashes. It was killed in 1999 by Bill Clinton, who declared, "the Glass–Steagall law is no longer appropriate." Nine years later, the global economy melted down in a Great Depression-style market crash fueled by reckless speculation of the sort that Glass-Steagall had prohibited.

The crash of 2008 took down all kinds of industries, but none were so hard-hit as home-building (after all, mortgages were the raw material of the financial bubble that popped in 2008). After 2008, construction of new housing fell by 90% for the next two years. This protracted nuclear winter in the housing market killed many associated industries. Skilled tradespeople retrained, or "left the job market" (a euphemism for becoming disabled, homeless, or destroyed). Waves of bankruptcies swept through the construction industry. The construction workforce didn't recover to pre-crisis levels for 16 years (and of course, by then, there was a huge backlog of unbuilt homes, and a larger population seeking housing).

Meanwhile, the collapse of every part of the housing supply chain – from raw materials to producers – set the stage for monopoly rollups, with the biggest firms gobbling up all these distressed smaller firms. Thanks to this massive consolidation, homebuilders were able to build fewer houses and extract higher profits by gouging on price. They doubled down on this monopoly price-gouging during the pandemic supply shocks, raising prices well above the pandemic shortage costs.

The housing market is monopolized in ways that will be familiar to anyone angry about consolidation in other markets – from eyeglasses to pharma to tech. One builder, HR Horton, is the largest player in 3 of the country's largest markets, and it has tripled its profits since 2005 while building half as many houses. Modern homebuilders don't build: they use their scale to get land at knock-down rates, slow-walk the planning process, and then farm out the work to actual construction firms at rates that barely keep the lights on:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/its-the-land-stupid-how-the-homebuilder

Monopolists can increase profits by constraining supply. 60% of US markets are "highly concentrated" and the companies that dominate these markets are starving homebuilding in them to the tune of $106b/year:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3303984

There are some obvious fixes to this, but they are either unlikely under Trump (antitrust action to break up builders based on their share in each market) or impossible to imagine (closing tax loopholes that benefit large building firms). Likewise, we could create a "homes guarantee" that would act as an "automatic stabilizer." That would mean that any time the economy slips into recession, this would trigger automatic funding to pay firms to build public housing, thus stimulating the economy and alleviating the housing supply crisis:

https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/SocialHousing.pdf

The Homes Guarantee is further explained in a separate article in the package by Sulma Arias from People's Action, who describes how grassroots activists fighting redlining planted the seeds of a legal guarantee of a home:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-why-we-need-homes-guarantee/

Arias describes the path to a right to a home as running through the mass provision of public housing – and what makes that so exciting is that public housing can be funded, administered and built by local or state governments, meaning this is a thing that can happen even in the face of a hostile or indifferent federal regime.

In Paul E Williams's story on FIMBY (finance in my back yard), the executive director of Center for Public Enterprise offers an inspirational story of how local governments can provide thousands of homes:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Williams recounts the events of 2021 in Montgomery County, Maryland, where a county agency stepped in to loan money to a property developer who had land, zoning approval and work crews to build a major new housing block, but couldn't find finance. Montgomery County's Housing Opportunities Commission made a short-term loan at market rates to the developer.

By 2023, the building was up and the loan had been repaid. All 268 units are occupied and a third are rented at rates tailored to low-income tenants. The HOC is the permanent owner of those homes. It worked so well that Montgomery's HOC is on track to build 3,000 more public homes this way:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

Other – in red states! – have followed suit, with lookalike funds and projects in Atlanta and Chattanooga, with "dozens" more plans underway at state and local levels. The Massachusetts Momentum Fund is set to fund 40,000 homes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/25/business/affordable-housing-montgomery-county.html

The Center for Public Enterprise has a whole report on these "Government Sponsored Enterprises" and the role they can play in creating a supply of homes priced at a rate that working people can afford:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-fimby-finance-in-my-backyard/

Of course, for a GSE to loan money to build a home, that home has to be possible. YIMBYs are right to point to restrictive zoning as a major impediment to building new homes, and Robert Cruickshank from California YIMBY has a piece breaking down the strategy for fixing zoning:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-make-it-legal-to-build/

Cruickshank lays out NIMBY success stories in cities like Austin and Minneapolis adopting YIMBY-style zoning rules and seeing significant improvements in rental prices. These success stories are representative of a broader recognition – at least among Democratic politicians – that restrictive zoning is a major contributor to the housing emergency.

Repeating these successes in the rest of the country will take a long time, and in the meantime, American tenants are sitting ducks for predatory landlords, With criminal enterprises like Realpage enabling collusive price-fixing for housing and monopoly developers deliberately restricting supplies to keep prices up (a recent Blackrock investor communique gloated over the undersupply of housing as a source of profits for its massive portfolio of rental properties), tenants pay more and more of their paychecks for worse and worse accommodations. They can't wait for the housing emergency to be solved through zoning changes and public housing. They need relief now.

That's where tenants' unions come in, as Ruthy Gourevitch and Tara Raghuveer of the Tenant Union Federation writes in their piece on the tenants across the country who are coordinating rent strikes to protest obscene rent-hikes and dangerous living conditions:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-12-11-look-for-the-tenant-union/

They describe a country where tenants work multiple jobs, send the majority of their take-home pay to their landlords – a quarter of tenants pay 70% of their wages in rent – and live in vermin-filled homes without heat or ventilation:

https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/terms-of-investment/

Public money from Freddie Mae and Fannie Mac flood into the speculative market for multifamily homes, a largely unregulated, subsidized speculative bonanza that lets the wealthy make bets and the poor pay their losses.

In response, tenants unions are popping up all across the country, especially in red state cities like Bozeman, MT and Louisville, KY. They organize for "just cause" evictions that ban landlords from taking their homes away. They seek fair housing voucher distribution practices. They seek to close eviction loopholes like the LA wheeze that lets landlords kick you out following "renovations."

The National Tenant Policy Agenda demands "national rent caps, anti-eviction protections, habitability standards, and antitrust action," measures that would immediately and profoundly improve the lives of millions of American workers:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JF1-fTalW1tOBO0FhYDcVvEd1kQ2HIzkYFNRo6zmSsg/edit

They caution that it's not enough to merely increase housing supply. Without a strong countervailing force from organized tenants, new housing can be just another source of extraction and speculation for the rich. They say that the Federal Housing Finance Agency – regulator for Fannie and Freddie – could play an active role in ensuring that new housing addresses the needs of people, not corporations.

In the meantime, a tenants' union in KC successfully used a rent strike – where every tenant in a building refuses to pay rent – to get millions in overdue repairs. More strikes are planned across the country.

The American system is in crisis. A country that cannot house its people is a failure. As Rachael Dziaba writes in the final piece for the package, the situation is so bad that water has started to flow uphill: the cities with the most inward migration have the least job growth:

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/housing/2024-10-18-housing-blues/

It's not just housing, of course. Americans pay more for health care than anyone else in the rich world and get worse outcomes than anyone else in the rich world. Their monopoly grocers have spiked their food prices. The incoming administration has declared war on public education and seeks to relegate poor children to unsupervised schools where "education" can consist of filling in forms on a Chromebook and learning that the Earth is only 5,000 years old.

A system that can't shelter, feed, educate or care for its people is a failure. People in failed states will vote for anyone who promises to tear the system down. The decision to turn life's necessities over to unregulated, uncaring markets has produced a populace who are so desperate for change, they'll even vote for their own destruction.

[shithowdy]

lying in bed thinking about the insane propaganda and lexicon manipulation that has made "landlord" into a generic term for anyone renting out any property, leaving no distinction on a public policy discussion level between "guy renting out his inherited family house" and "real estate investment firms that own 2500 units in the bay area". everything from online discussion to political ads immediately pivots to evoking sympathy for the former when discussing issues like evictions/squatting, effectively turning these small-fry local property owners into (often willful) political shields as they feel compelled to defend their assets against intentionally shittily-worded policy that doesn't make distinctions between Some Guy with 2 houses and a megafirm. i know the "middle class" is disappearing but the class line doesn't just happen solidly somewhere between "renter" and "rentee" and i genuinely hate seeing discussion constantly pivot away from the actual cause of the housing crisis to either sneer "eat the rich" at someone with 500k net worth or console their crying about said sneering.

idk where i was going with this. end property investment companies.

[inthestarsme]

Solar return observations pt. 1 ✨

‼️ Do not reproduce, repost or use any of my content without my consent. If you ever repost anything, you need to always mention my page ‼️

Hey guys! I hope you've been having a great christmas time! I'm starting a new little series, bc honestly, i haven't been observing anything new when it comes to birth charts lately, but i've really been into solar return charts, which is why i really wanted to make this. As you might have seen, i had already posted another observation which included some observations on solar return charts, which i deleted bc some of the things i shared didn't resonate with me and i only want to give you content i can truly stand behind. But i am mentioning this, bc i'm going to include some of the solar return observations i made in this post, so don't be confused if you think you might've already seen this on one of my posts.

If you do not know about solar return charts, i would recommend you to look it up beforehand. I am not the best at explaining this kind of stuff, but there are other astrology pages who have amazing introductions for people who are getring into solar return charts. Please look them up and then come back to this!!

Before we start: these are just my personal observations. I am by no means a professional astrologer, and i don't want you coming for me because you disagree with me on the meaning of something. If you want to correct me, feel free, but i will not tolerate any hate or disrespect (which means you will get blocked).

‼️Trigger warning: mentions of bad relationship experiences, bullying and mental health struggles ‼️

Sooo let's go!

Jupiter in the 8th house conjunct neptune in 7th house: Although of course this can show different in every persons life, for me in the year i had this placement i didn't meet my rich husband who was my wonderful soulmate. Instead i only dated one guy who in the beginning seemed very great but turned out to just be using me for intercourse. In general the guys i've met who were interested in me seemed quite stable and like good people, but turned out to actually be known by close ones as f-boys. So if you have this placement in your solar return chart, please beware. It might look better than it is, as neptune is also about illusions and in the 7th house of relationships, this can mean you might not see who the person truly is, and with jupiter in the 8th house, it could be because they might be using you for sexual endevours, or you might be more into sexual endavours than usual and thus give another person the illusion you might be into more to get access in that way (which: please don't do that. there is people out there who are willing to give you that without you having to betray them. it's not fair to someone who is trying to actually build a relationship).

Neptune conjunct the Descendant with Chiron in the 7th house: Adding to the last observation: the year i started dating my first boyfriend who was very toxic and completely used and betrayed me was the year i had neptune, the planet of illusions, in a very close conjunction to my descendant. Also, like chiron (the wound we cannot heal but which can heal others) would indicate, this whole situation sent me into quite a mental health crisis, which i didn't even realize until about 2 years later. it really messed with me, so please be careful if you have this placement. i still learned a lot about relationships, and i feel like i now would never again get into a relationship without being 100 percent certain about the persons intentions and so on, but it was still very unpleasent. So, please be careful.

Saturn, Pluto and Uranus in the 4th house: Whilst Pluto and (especially) Uranus can totally mean you moving because they are very much about change, i wouldn't say the same about saturn in the 4th house. Saturn is usually more about restrictions and difficulties. Of course there could be difficulties with your landlord for example, which might cause you to move, but otherwise, i think saturn here is more about not being able to move freely in your home or you feeling bound to your home for some reason. This can of course vary in interpretation depending on other aspects and planets, it could also be about problems with you family. It very much depends.

North node conjunct uranus in any house: Whatever house this placement is in, you might experience some significant change in this area or might learn something about this area of your life which will change it significantly. For example, a friend of mine had this in his 7th house and during that year, after a lots of years of being in an polyamorous relationship, they went back to a monogamous relationship because some things had appened, which made them realize for them to keep on having a healthy relationship, a monogamous relationship might be better. I also had this placement in my ninth house and during this year some things happened which significantly altered the way i handle my studies in college.

Stellium in 12th house (with sun and moon): You might be going through a phase where you are in more solitute and a lot of things you didn't know about will come to light. I am currently experiencing this, and i could totally feel the shift. I feel it kind of was like my last solar reutrn year i had so many experiences with traveling and meeting new people, that i kind of feel like an "experience fatigue". it felt like i was making so many new experiences, and focused on making more and so on, that i forgot to put meaning and intention behind those. So now i just want to slow down and still make experiences, but also focus on my inner world, on learning new things about myself and also work on some mental health stuff. also, i feel like there has been a lot going on behind the scenes on how people view or say about me which i don't or didn't know about, like for example one year a go, a comment i made on youtube got about 6000 likes and people were bashing me so hard in the comments and i didn't even notice until now 😭 idk, i hope whatever is going to be revealed isn't too harsh (the comments were bad but honestly, i didn't mind. it's not the first time i've gotten hate on social media lol). the 12th house is generally not considered to be very positive, but for now i feel like it is mostly about me time and discovering new things about myself.

Sun square pluto: I read something on the tumblr page "lavishlyleo" about this placement being a very difficult placement which can last for a looong time, and i looked it up: i've had this placement since i was about 14 years old. now, i've had quite a rough childhood, but me having to deal with that and having to process it and simultaniously starting to experience more bullying and so on started around this time. i think beforehand i knew my life wasn't the greatest, but i could still move through it and be very happy and content because i had a great friend group and a lot of other good stuff going on. the fact of me having to realized how the things i have gone through were so fucked up and how they messed with me was soo much harder tbh. but now this placement has been easing up a bit and will go away in about two years and i have honestly been doing so much better than the years beforehand, especially when it comes to my social life! i am so excited on seeing how life will be as soon as this placement finally goes away.

Chiron or lilith in the 11th house: As these two are more harsh and about experiencing some bad stuff to also learn and develope, having this in the 11th house may not be a good sing of you keeping your friend group and maybe losing those. Or in general just having bad experiences with groups of people.

I will leave you with this now. As the year progresses, i will see how certain placements play out in my and other peoples life, so i can give you some more observations i made. But i hope you enjoyed this!

Sending out love and please keep safe! Until next time byebye 🩵

[ardri-na-bpiteog]

The thing about a lot of rental regulations and the way property owners approach protections for tenants is that they're often coming from a place of some sort of theoretical balance between landlords and tenants. This appeals to landlords, but it's monumentally fucked from an actual like...moral or human rights standpoint because the landlord is always going to be in a position of power relative to a tenant because they control access to housing which is a basic human need.

Notice periods for example. A lot of places require both tenants and landlords to provide notice when terminating a lease. To some people, this sounds "fair" but in reality there is no reason to require a tenant to give notice when leaving. Particularly in situations such as where I currently live that if you've been in the same rental accommodation for awhile, you can have to give well over a month's notice to your landlord when moving out. Yet at the same time, most other landlords want you to move in immediately and will turn down applicants who can't move in right away.

You can give your notice before you start searching for a new apartment, but then you run the risk that if you don't find something by the time your notice period ends, you are homeless and your landlord has a new tenant ready to move in. This risk is especially high in a situation like the current housing crisis where you very well may not be able to find a new apartment in a month.

It makes far more sense for a tenant to be allowed to terminate a lease whenever they find a new place with minimal notice. At worst for the landlord, the apartment is empty for a couple of weeks and they "lose" money (really only actually losing money if they still have a mortgage on it. If they own it outright then they're just not getting free money from it at the moment. Either way, it's their responsibility to set aside money for such possible expenses). At worst for the tenant, they are kicked out and have nowhere to live.

This is why any sort of equivalence between tenants and landlords is stupid and the pro-landord take of "there are bad tenants too!!" or "landlords should be able to more freely evict people to get rid of tenants who don't pay/cause damage!!!" is a bad take.

There will never be any sort of equivalence as long as the worst case scenario for the landlord is that they have to spend some money and the worst case scenario for the tenant is that they are literally homeless.

[cappybaras]

The past few years I’ve watched my friend Hunter go through HELL with severe mold poisoning, abusive landlords causing a sudden move, and a stressful legal battle with social security. Now when he’s trying to start fresh, an awful fuck-up from the previous owners of his new home led to him not having functioning plumbing.

Through all this, Hunter held strong, but the $7,000 bill to fix the destroyed plumbing has left him no choice but to ask for help. Please, if you have the money to spare, donate to his fundraiser - even if it’s just $1, it’ll go a long way toward helping Hunter finally live the peaceful life he deserves. Shares are also greatly appreciated.

[prettiestboytoy2]

You know what is hilarious? Pretty much since Covid there is silent crisis in commercial real estate. Those are offices and shops mostly.

In most metropolitan areas vacancy of those spaces is either close to 50% or already exceeded them. Despite that, prices of those spaces somehow increased and despite falling demand keep rising.

Such scenario is only possible due to the fact that people who own and menage those spaces, think that "Price-Demand" relationship should only apply to poor people and by that they mean that you should work for less when times are hard (they are one's causing hard times). Those particular landlords have no way to terrorize thier customers the way regular landlords do because thier customers are other corporations and companies.

This crisis could be solved overnight by decrease in price but this simply does not register to those people as an concept because they've been raised to belive that thier profits and assets can only go up and everyone but them should take a hit. But now economy is booming while they are left behind. Many urban areas in USA are becoming commercial deserts because no one can afford rent there.

And what is arguably even worse is that there are usually multiple regulations in place to prevent anyone from changing those office spaces into residential ones to prevent prices of housing from going down too.

If you noticed push by corporations to "bring workers back to the office", its because shareholders who are often balls deep in that commercial real estate make it happen. Hoping for increase of demand. Not realizing thier entire business model is completly outdated (and parasitic). So they keep accumulating the debt instead of lowering the prices because they will go bankrupt before they allow anything to become more affordable.

[y-rhywbeth2]

Reading about 'tallhouses' and renting in the Realms, and casting a critical eye over the depiction of the city in the game again, with a focus on the amount of houses everywhere: If you live in Baldur's Gate (bar the fancier buildings in Bloomridge and the houses and estates in the Upper City - i.e. outside of being wealthy upper class, or upper-middle class and there's a house available) you do not live in a house and you are almost certainly not a homeowner: you are renting a room in a block of flats/apartment building which, statistically, is owned by a temple or shrine (the temples of Tymora, Gond, and Umberlee are going to dominate) or nobility. Or maybe a building owned by somebody who owes rent to the church/noble who owns the land its stood on. I think there's also been mention of halfling families often becoming landlords in human cities, but I'd have to dig that out again.

I'll leave off the research binge for my thoughts on daily life in the Gate for roleplaying/backstory purposes 'til the current project is done, but I still want to ramble:

The buildings are narrow, and extensions go upwards, and the streets are often overarched with supports so that we can build over that too. I'm pretty sure the structures are classified as tallhouses.

Welcome to the overcrowded city where space is at such a premium we can't have animals bigger than a cat (no room on the streets), street vending is illegal (there is no room on the streets), you can't really gather or cause a fuss outside of the home or pubs (ditto) all graveyards have to be outside the walls, and the only open space of note is the Wide.

Wyll's father is high ranking enough to have a house, unless Ulder really wanted to stick to his roots as the son of a blacksmith. Astarion was an upper city boy before that part of the city officially existed, but his family probably had a house. Lae'zel doesn't live here. Gale doesn't live here either, but he's got his own mage tower so he's not renting. Dunno about his childhood, Waterdeep is also a very populated city where people rent. Durge and likely Shadowheart would've grown up in rented rooms/suites (and Durge was canonically poor growing up, so likely not a very high quality or spacious one). As adults: Durge and Orin were temple priests and Bhaalists, so they'd be living in the temple/compound with the other faithful. Technically, the Sharrans don't have a temple, but she at least spent a lot of time down there and might've lived there; I don't remember seeing a dorm, only Viconia's room, but maybe I forgot something. Though all of these characters may have had public lives to draw attention away from their cult activity. Bhaalist 'daytime identities' and the Sharran love of secrecy, so they might've been renting a room in the city. Maybe a fancier more spacious one in Bloomridge. (Or owned a house, depending on how much one makes and wants to spend. Torilian priests are encouraged to get rich and own property.) Noble or well-off Tavs might've had a house, but other than that: you're renting, and possibly in the Outer City which exists specifically because the city proper had a housing crisis fitting the exploding population in.

Karlach grew up in the Outer City, specifically Tumbledown around the old Szarr cemetary, going off of her surname 'Cliffgate', referring to the geographic location. Considering the poverty of the outer city though, it's probably a case of still being packed into rented rooms and not very good quality ones. Which is, for the established character parallel purposes, probably the same or similar conditions Gortash grew up in.

[posttexasstressdisorder]

How Trump's billionaires are hijacking affordable housing

Thom Hartmann

October 24, 2024 8:52AM ET

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

America’s morbidly rich billionaires are at it again, this time screwing the average family’s ability to have decent, affordable housing in their never-ending quest for more, more, more. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Denmark have had enough and done something about it: we should, too.

There are a few things that are essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that should never be purely left to the marketplace; these are the most important sectors where government intervention, regulation, and even subsidy are not just appropriate but essential. Housing is at the top of that list.

A few days ago I noted how, since the Reagan Revolution, the cost of housing has exploded in America, relative to working class income.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income.

ALSO READ: He’s mentally ill:' NY laughs ahead of Trump's Madison Square Garden rally

In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

And now we’ve surged past a new tipping point, causing the homelessness that’s plagued America’s cities since George W. Bush’s deregulation-driven housing- and stock-market crash in 2008, exacerbated by Trump’s bungling America’s pandemic response.

And the principal cause of both that crash and today’s crisis of homelessness and housing affordability has one, single, primary cause: billionaires treating housing as an investment commodity.

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

— Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities. — Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets. — Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person. — Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties. — Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What���s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily. (Emphasis theirs.)

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

The math, however, is irrefutable.

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.

As the Zillow study notes:

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper. That Zillow-funded study laid it out:

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

This trend is massive.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:

“In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

After stripping neighborhoods of homes young families can afford to buy, billionaires then begin raising rents to extract as much cash as they can from local working class communities.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:

“The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street billionaire investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…”

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.”

It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.

“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:

“[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021. “Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.”

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:

“Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.

This all really took off around a decade ago following the Bush Crash, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

As Zillow found:

“The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15 percent of the U.S. population — and 47 percent of people experiencing homelessness.”

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through home ownership: over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

America should, too.

ALSO READ: Not even ‘Fox and Friends’ can hide Trump’s dementia

[basedhighsenberg]

I won't ever actually advocate this for numerous reasons, however: the meaner side of my brain keeps suggesting that a good solution to the current housing crisis would just be mass home invasions of boomer households and nonstop boomer genocide.

"But landlords-" crying about private landlords and trying to turn the government into everyone's landlord is not a solution.

"But Blackrock-" who runs these companies? Millennials? I think not.

This is definitely not respective of private property rights at all, would be a massive & unforgivable breach of the NAP, and would definitely cause unforseen problems potentially far worse than house prices being ridiculous.

However, every time I see a boomer list a shoebox-sized basement apartment for $2k/mo because it has "new stainless steel appliances", it sounds a little less ridiculously evil.

[rottenbrainstuff]

Haha! Canada is implementing much stricter immigration policies, which people generally support because 1) racism but also 2) it’s being claimed it will fix our housing crisis. It won’t, at all, but we cannot address the issues with landlords, airbnbs, overseas property investment, and worst of all, the fact that boomers are dependant on the value of their homes constantly increasing for their retirement security and this bubble is of absolute crisis proportions in Canada, worse than the US, no, we can’t address these issues, because people won’t like the solutions. Instead we will blame immigrants for it and placate the voters by saying we’ll restrict the number of immigrants entering. But I digress…..

My mom told me, in shock, that her neighbours are now being deported. They are a nice family originally from the Ukraine, they have been living here for several years now, and had a new baby about two years ago, and their recent application for… I don’t know, work visa, PR, whatever it was, was declined and they now have three months to leave the country. That’s it.

She’s in absolute shock, like, the immigration policy was supposed to target the people who aren’t contributing (read: brown people) and she never thought the leopards would eat HER neighbour’s faces, cause they’re obviously the GOOD (white) kind of immigrant.

Dunno what even to tell you.

[interviewiththevicious]

So how do Niko and Crystal pay rent cause neither of them have jobs. Boy Jorge & J-Sims are the only ones I see paying bills (WHICH IS WILD) how does that even work?? Is their landlord a ghost.

. I honestly would’ve even have these dumb questions if they didn’t show o’l girl paying RENT with a jar of coins that couldn’t be more than 78$ at best!

Babes, I already followed you down the twink-twonk ghost hole. I accept the ridiculous ghost physics that should have definitely resulted in the worldly proof of ghost. I accept the tardis bag, the walrus running a mystic emporium. I even accepted that Jenny from the block got pass U.S CUSTOMS with no identification. because that’s all FUN! but the American housing crisis ISNT!

To even suggest that a 720spt furnished studio with hardwood floors above a NICHE queer owned gothic butcher could be paid WITH A JAR OF COINS!!! OooOOooh go kick beans and toast.

[beardedmrbean]

A Nebraska lawmaker whose north Omaha district has struggled for years with a housing shortage is pushing a bill that, if passed, could make Nebraska the first in the country to forbid out-of-state hedge funds and other corporate entities from buying up single-family properties.

Sen. Justin Wayne’s bill echoes legislative efforts in other states and in Congress to curtail corporate amassing of single-family homes, which critics say has helped cause the price of homes, rent and real estate taxes to soar in recent years. Wayne said that has been the case in his district, where an Ohio corporation has bought more than 150 single-family homes in recent years — often pushing out individual homebuyers with all-cash offers. The company then rents out the homes.

Experts say the scarcity of homes for purchase can be blamed on a multitude of factors, including sky-high mortgage interest rates and years of underbuilding modest homes.

RISING RENT PRICES PUSH RECORD NUMBER OF AMERICANS TOWARD HOUSING CRISIS, PROMPTING LEGISLATIVE ACTION

Wayne's bill offers few specifics. It consists of a single sentence that says a corporation, hedge fund or other business may not buy single-family housing in Nebraska unless it's located in and its principal members live in Nebraska.

"The aim of this is to preserve Nebraska's limited existing housing stock for Nebraskans," Wayne said this week at a committee hearing where he presented the bill. "If we did this, we would be the first state in the country to take this issue seriously and address the problem."

A 14-page bill dubbed the End Hedge Fund Control of American Homes Act has been introduced in both chambers of Congress and would impose a 10-year deadline for hedge funds to sell off the single-family homes they own and, until they do, would saddle those investment trusts with hefty taxes. In turn, those tax penalties would be used to help people put down payments on the divested homes.

Democratic lawmakers in a number of other states have introduced similar bills, including in Minnesota, Indiana, North Carolina and Texas, but those bills have either stalled or failed.

The housing squeeze coming from out-of-state corporate interests isn't just an Omaha problem, said Wayne Mortensen, director of a Lincoln-based affordable housing developer called NeighborWorks Lincoln.

Mortensen said the recession of 2008 and, more recently, the economic downturn driven by the COVID-19 pandemic made single-family housing a more attractive corporate investment than bond markets.

"When that became the case, housing was commoditized and became just like trading any stock," he said. "Those outside investors are solely interested in how much value they can extract from the Lincoln housing market."

Those corporations often invest no upkeep in the homes, he said.

"And as a result of that, we're seeing incredible dilapidation and housing decline in many of our neighborhoods because of these absentee landlords that have no accountability to the local communities," Mortensen said.

Currently, about 13% of single-family homes in Lincoln are owned by out-of-state corporate firms, he said.

As in other states, Wayne's bill likely faces an uphill slog in the deep red state of Nebraska. At Monday's hearing before the Banking, Insurance and Commerce Committee, several Republican lawmakers acknowledged a statewide housing shortage, but they cast doubt on Wayne's solution.

"You know, you can set up shell companies, you set up different layers of ownership. You can move your domicile base. There's just a ton of workarounds here," Omaha Sen. Brad von Gillern said. "I also — as just as a pure capitalist — fundamentally oppose the idea."

[mad3lyncline]

𝑪𝑺𝑪𝑶𝑶𝑷 𝑺𝑴𝑷 𝑺𝑬𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑵𝑪𝑬 𝑺𝑻𝑨𝑹𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑺 . starters taken from cscoop's new SMP stream VODs . adjust pronouns as necessary !

there's a sketchy bridge but it's not big enough . i need a bigger sketchy bridge .

it doesn't have to be cohesive , it doesn't have to be good , it just has to be , you know , expression of self , you know . . . it's just you being you . and that's beautiful . and then it's all of us being all of us .

dude you're asking the most nerdy questions i've ever heard in my life right now .

chat , this guy's an asshole . fuck this guy .

[ name ] hates nobody . except for [ name ] .

this guy's a wench , bro .

my business is failing and i had to mortgage my house .

dude this is obviously info we're not privy to .

do you guys wanna buy this house from me ?

bro , FUCK landlords .

this guy caused a monkeypox superspreader event and i'm not allowed to get mad ?

i need someone to come in with a firefighter class hose every twenty four minutes and spray me in the face with it 'til i fuckin' hit the wall .

wait someone lives here , fuck ! i was gonna build my castle here . . .

dude you guys wish you went to costco and had fun with your dad .

h - o - t - t - o - g - o , you can take deez nuts to go !

he's meat riding so hard trying to be number one hater .

yeah , you would wanna build a wall , wouldn't you ?

oh no , please don't send a bunch of pizzas to our house . i would hate that .

you're actually building a wall ?!

this is a one sided feud , i'm just tryna do me .

i'm having some sort of fucking crisis about where i want to build .

leave him alone dude , he's gonna eat an airhead and his head's gonna get big and red .

it wasn't a real flavor ; it was just a mix of chemicals .

if you're gonna kill me do it in a cool way , at least .

bro i wish i was james with the giant peach .

dude this isn't politically motivated ! it's religiously motivated !

rocks aren't dumb ; they built our society . ain't you ever heard of concrete ?

what am i gonna do , beat him to death with my 24 sticks that i own ?

3 , 2 , 1 , slippery by migos .

WHAT ?! CAN'T A MAN VIBE ?!

[ name ] is not participating in brat summer .

let's kiss together !

[fancylala4]

https://www.tumblr.com/fancylala4/769606139530936320/tw-abuse-please-may-i-ask-for-advice-ive-been-a?source=share

(tw abuse)

Thank you so much for the reply. I've been hearing so much about the upcoming Trump presidency and I didn't know what to think, especially concerning my safety. Granted, there's no escape from anti-blackness/antiarabism/islamaphobia, but Trump is going to make it worse...it's still good to know that moving out is still recommended despite all the uspolitics going on. Thank you.

(I hope you stay safe as well. Sending best wishes your way).

Unfortunately I don't have friends I can talk to, but I already know of coolworks and a few alternatives. I'm also trying to save up money and get an online job, just in case.

I'll keep the recommendation to have/save money in mind, especially since you said earlier (in another ask) that shelters are full and finding an apartment is really hard.

Thank you so much!

Thank you so much. I really hope you survived this. Yeah, it sucks the annoying orange is going to be president again while right wingers are getting more bold now. But don’t let those losers demoralize you.

That’s a good start. You can try to get to know your co workers, befriend them and ask if they can help you out. Your in a great position to make friends.

Yeah, the housing crisis is getting worse because of selfish landlords and corporations buying out all the properties and raising the prices of rent. Which causes shelters to be in high demand. Heck, some shelters still have beds and refuse to give them to people who really need it. It’s just a huge mess out there and I really hate for anyone to go through that.

Also, did you see the website that anon send me? It could also be helpful to you as well.