shortage of affordable housing for young adults

this subject is called Economics. A liberal is not able to understand it. Doing away with min wage is not anti worker:
Reasons intelligent people oppose minimum wage and are pro worker:

1) makes it illegal to employ people not worth minimum wage
2) raise prices for poor people who often shop where minimum wage folks work
3) speeds up automation and replacement of minimum wage jobs
4) teaches workers that you get ahead with govt violence rather than being worth more
5) raises prices, reduces demand, and thus reduces employment
6) makes American workers even less competitive with foreign workers
7) makes a huge % of work force (42%) minimum age workers with no incentive to improve their skills.
speeds up transition from high density brick and mortar employment to low density on line employment
9) encourages govt to enact more libsocialist policies to get more votes from the supposed beneficiaries

 

so you want to switch from corporatism to capitalism to increase GDP to 4-5%??

 

well, liberals have killed the economy with socialism so what do you expect? If we switched to capitalism
we could have 4-5% growth again and we'd all be able to afford a lot more, including apartment rentals!!

 

We could always make automation and tools illegal !! If we had thought of that in the stone age we could all be farmers today!!

 

I don't think young adults have been displaced by automation.

(With the possible exception of a few menial filing jobs)

These jobs are still being done, it's just they're not being done by teens and young adults.

You see this especially in the high cost of living areas. (Don't ask me what the connection is though)

 

Then live with their parents from the get as I indicated in my very first post in this thread. I am sure somebody somewhere will concoct an argument about a poor unwed orphaned mother with one eye and diabetes to throw at the wall, but at the end of the day, if you cannot afford your situation, it is up to you to change your situation and not expect someone else to throw extra money your way because your wants exceed your means. Part of growing up is screwing up and learning to deal with the consequences. If someone screws up, that is a teachable moment for them.

 

The minimum wage is anti-worker. It prevents low-skilled workers from competing with high skilled workers based on price. When a low-skilled worker and a high-skilled worker are applying for a job, and the employer knows that, whichever one he hires, he's going to have to pay $15/hour, which applicant will lose the competition for the job?

 

Great point China competes very successfully with hi wage America because it has lower wages. why should we deny low skill American workers the same opportunity to compete.

 

Labor is increasingly a smaller part of the input so China's competitive advantage just in terms of wages is over stated.

 

Yes I agree the main advantage China has that allow them to move 600 million people into the middle class comes from American liberals with their taxes regulations and unions.

 

Chinese middle class and American middle class are not comparable. Hell, Chinese middle class and American poverty aren't really that comparable. There are a few factors at play, one of them is that we have to invent new stuff to improve productivity. China just has to wait until somebody else invents new stuff, in the meantime, even antiquated stuff just deployed improves productivity over the nothing it replaced.

 

Nobody said they were comparable so why are you wasting your time talking about it?

 

If you have any idea what your subject is or what your point is would you please let me know. Thank you

 

You raised the topic, so why are you wasting your time raising it?

 

You have replied twice criticizing me for replying to a point YOU brought up. Do you find yourself not knowing where you are when driving at night as well?

 

The topic of this thread is "shortage of affordable housing for young adults".

 

The problem is not the shortage of affordable housing, any affordable structure could be built, the “supply” is by law artificially limited, the problem is the Zoning laws.

I know where there is a lot for sale for $10,000, great location, but due to zoning and the Real Estate “principle of regression” or desire to discriminate no affordable structure could be put there.

In the early 80’s, after a discussion of housing projects, my extremely socialist girlfriend took me around Christchurch to look at “government” houses; the government housing, actual houses, were interspersed in the community in such a way that you couldn’t tell the difference. Although I was never convinced the government should buy people houses, they had to stay in them for five years or something before they could sell them, I was fully convinced that zoning to keep people from building what they want was wrong.

Later in the 80’s I had a 2.5 acre lot, tried to get zoning to build a small house, so the payment would be no higher than a car payment, was denied. They were not shy about it; the county, in Gingrich’s district south of Fulton County and John Lewis district had a 6% black population; the only way to keep the ******s out was to require larger house sizes than previously existed; you could not build there now the size house I was forced to build.

If the Gestapo Communist Gubermint lovers don’t want someone building tiny next to them, or putting a TOW on it, they should buy the lot, all of the lots as far as the eye can see. Any Republican that disagrees should be hung by the neck until dead, and any Democrat that disagrees should put between to wooden boats and set out in the sun and given all the food and water they can consume; all according to the laws I would support.

 

Renting is insane. Dead money. Why force your kids into that situation?

 

Isn't this a broader issue I'm on SSI Disability with no hope of becoming self-sufficient now I get $735 a month in cash so realistically should pay for housing with utilities half that or $363 and have money left for other essentials and needs. Now try to even get a rented room for that in an urban location with a bus line or two and shopping and such within a modest distance? I would pay at least $400 a month but it would be inclusive to sometime they ask for more than I get one I looked at in the paper was $200 a week. Now affordable housing policy should cover all needs of housing not just young people but the elderly, the disabled and the working poor. They need small disabled accessible efficiency places for say if you add utilities maybe $350 a month which I'm not seeing even being considered. Maybe even rent to own it would be something.

 

if you buy a house for $600,000 your $600,000 is dead and gone.If you rent it you have $600,000 very much alive to do with as you please.

 

In a place like San Francisco, if there is some vacant land which is sized nicely to build a 30-story apartment building, will developers be interested in developing 200 square foot studios renting for $500/month or luxury condos selling for $1-$5 million? If the demand for the 200 square foot rentals far exceeds the supply, quickly those rents will rise to $1000-$3000/month or whatever the market will pay. How can we limit rent increases on private real estate and expect developers to build more? IMO this tells me two things are required; First, cities must zone for low-rent units, and second, either local or federal government must fund these developments.

Even if we would ever build low-rent units, small units, in high-density buildings, we don't have the infrastructure to support them. We sorely need effective public transit! Anyone who has been to Paris, or other similar cities with excellent public transit, quickly finds there is no need for a personal auto. I suppose decades of very cheap gasoline in the USA has conditioned us to personal vehicles instead of using public transit.

Another problem is people! In the above scenario, how many Americans are okay with 200 square foot rentals? Why do we buy homes that are 2500 or 3000 or more square feet when we only use 1000 square feet of those homes? Why do we buy $35,000 cars when a $10,000 car serves almost the identical purpose? IMO we have the inflation we see today because Americans are reckless consumers!

 

Well, if the current American youth weren't so lazy and feel so entitled, then they could move out to countryside and build their own modest homes and have land to grow their own food.

Improvise, adapt, overcome.

 

I'll take it a step further; it should make no difference how much a person earns. If a person earning $200K desires a small $500/month rental unit they should be able to do this. Just because they earn $200K does not mean they are required to spend all of it on housing? But, rents can never remain low once the demand equals or exceeds the supply, so government must be involved in some way...

 

Great idea except there is NO countryside land anywhere near the high employment centers...

 

Well that's the question, isn't it? Whether open markets are the most efficient way to sort out these problems, or whether some sort of government policy or intervention would be overall more beneficial to handle some of the negative aspects that emerge over some people not being able to compete. For example, young adults. They grew up their entire lives in that area and their family support system is there. But they cannot afford to go out and live anywhere in the region they grew up in. Sure, some might argue they should go off and leave to a completely different region where the cost of housing is much lower far away. But that does disconnect them from their family support system in case there is some sort of emergency and they need help. It can also be difficult for many of these 18 and 19 year olds to live far away from family help.

And these young people may have no idea which region to go. They could very well find themselves in a poor region in the middle of nowhere, since they didn't have the best idea where they should have moved to. We are expecting young people to make some big decisions, getting up and moving across the country so they can live a life.

In the old days if your city was too expensive you'd just move to the city next door. Nowadays, for many families in urbanized super regions (like Southern Florida, Southern California, the Bay area, New York to New Jersey, etc) they'd have to travel a far distance to find somewhere more affordable. In many cases, the more rural areas surrounding these high-cost-of-living areas, 100 to 500 miles out have elevated unemployment rates because so many people from the have already moved out there trying to get away from the high cost of housing without moving too far a distance away from their relatives and what they know.

For example, look at the unemployment rates of the three states bordering California. I'm saying, you can move 200 miles away from the urban core, but then maybe the jobs aren't there. It's all a ratio of the cost of living, available job opportunity, and number of people who've already moved out there in the last few years trying to get away from the same things you were trying to get away from.

This is not the case in all areas of the country, but I do believe it is the case in the areas where most of the people in the country live. Vast tracks of land out in North Dakota don't really help lower the population density when it's not really so viable to live out there.

And where there is job opportunity, people have already moved there. (That's why I think the best economic opportunities are in areas which are rapidly growing, where the economic opportunities are outpacing the current population)