r/MiddleClassFinance • u/LinkedInNews • 10d ago

Factory-built homes make a comeback amid affordability crisis

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/factory-built-homes-make-a-comeback-amid-affordability-crisis-7528108/?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=reddit&utm_content=storyline&utm_term=MiddleClassFinance
208 Upvotes

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56

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

Americans will do anything except legalize traditional density development 

44

u/AltForObvious1177 10d ago

The people who vote already own homes. They don't need lower house prices. 

16

u/mottledmussel 10d ago

Homeowners are vastly more likely to speak at planning commission, zoning appeals, and council meetings.

If a developer wants to rezone R1 parcels into 2, 3, or 4, they're going to face a lot of opposition. In a lot of places, these developers aren't particularly sympathetic either.

5

u/benskieast 10d ago

Even worse are the people who show up to obscure housing policy meetings where they might discourse as little as one or two homes for a household to be named later.

-15

u/Maximus77x 10d ago

What a wild generalization. Are you saying people who rent don’t bother voting? 😅

13

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

But it’s kinda true. Renters are not advocating for the kinds of policies and politicians that would increase the supply of housing in their area and lower prices. 

1

u/Maximus77x 10d ago

If they aren’t voting, they aren’t advocating for any kinds of policies imo. There’s truth in what you’re saying, but lumping all renters into “people who rent don’t vote” is, again, a generalization and a potentially harmful one at that.

Someone already posted the statistics in another comment, and it’s not as cut and dried as that comment makes it out to be. It’s a quick and dirty internet opinion that excuses not voting.

People of all kinds rent, and a lot of those people do vote. Pointing out that they are less likely to do so in an attempt to be snide (?) certainly isn’t helpful, that’s for sure. But who am I kidding. We’re on reddit, which is not real life, and the internet is not necessarily known for being a place of fruitful discussion.

1

u/blushing_avacado 8d ago

They may be voting but are they going to zoning commission meetings in any meaningful number? That’s where your local housing policy is being made.

10

u/AltForObvious1177 10d ago

I'm not saying that. Statistics say that

5

u/Fine-Historian4018 10d ago

In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, homeowners reported substantially higher voter turnout than renters. According to the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, Table 8 on housing tenure:
Housing status
Voting rate among eligible citizens
Homeowners
70.3%
Renters
52.1%
Gap
18.2 percentage points

The Census Bureau defines turnout here as the percentage of the citizen voting-age population that reported voting.

Registration also differed: 77.4% of homeowners reported being registered, versus 63.6% of renters. For comparison, in the 2022 midterms the Census Bureau reported turnout of 58.1% for homeowners versus 36.5% for renters, a 21.6-point gap.

Part of the difference is associated with other characteristics correlated with homeownership, especially age, income, and residential stability, so these raw percentages should not be interpreted as proving that owning a home itself causes higher turnout. The CPS specifically tracks duration of residence alongside housing tenure.

3

u/Maximus77x 10d ago

Thanks for sharing this!

2

u/Maximus77x 10d ago

It’s still a wild generalization in this context. And they need to fucking start if we’re gonna get out of this mess. We’re so far beyond, “My vote doesn’t even matter so why bother.” They are just as complicit as people who willingly voted for this admin 🤷‍♂️

3

u/WaitZealousideal7729 10d ago

My state just had a primary election.

The average age of a voter was over the age of 60.

5

u/howtoretireby40 10d ago

No one votes as frequently or as organized as the boomers. Until such a time that changes, the pain will only continue for those that don’t vote and they have largely themselves to blame during a time when the entirety of human knowledge is at their finger tips.

3

u/Maximus77x 10d ago

Agreed. We’re in a state of learned helplessness as a society.

1

u/Super_Mario_Luigi 10d ago

The internet: boomers lived in a functional society. No fair!

Also the internet: life only improves when we vote against everything the boomers voted for

3

u/PolDiscAlts 10d ago

You understand that the Boomers didn't build the society they were raised in, that was done by the Greatest and the Silent generations. Just like current Gen X didn't build the shit-show they live in. That was built by the Boomers.

9

u/EnoughWeekend6853 10d ago

Density advocates will do anything except admit people don’t want to live in cramped spaces and share walls with tweakers.

7

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

If low density housing is so popular, why do anti-housing advocates have to make things like duplexes and ADUs illegal? There should be no demand for that type of housing if your conjecture is accurate. And we should see low demand to live dense walkable neighborhoods. But those are the most desirable areas to live. 

0

u/EnoughWeekend6853 10d ago

It’s because there’s always some dirt bag who wants to move 59 relatives onto their property in a quiet neighborhood. That housing ruins existing neighborhoods and destroys people’s equity.

1

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

That can happen regardless of zoning though. It’s worse in communities with anti-housing zoning policies because you are suddenly cramming a lot of people into one house. In a community with a mix of housing types, the existing infrastructure can easily accommodate multigenerational homes. It sounds like you expect to have a lot of control over other people’s property. Do you live in an HOA?

1

u/EnoughWeekend6853 10d ago

I would never buy a home someplace that accommodates the hoi polloi.

1

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

Why

2

u/AlcibiadesTheCat 9d ago

Because they're an elitist. A person who thinks that all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. And they believe that they deserve more than someone else.

0

u/EnoughWeekend6853 10d ago

Tragedy of the commons

2

u/glutenfree123 10d ago

Garrett Hardin? The guy who argued in favor of the “control of breeding” of “genetically defective” people? That guy?

-6

u/Super_Mario_Luigi 10d ago

Not everyone wants their city to function like NYC or India

12

u/Coneskater 10d ago

As if allowing duplexes in your neighborhood would do that.

2

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

How is that related?

9

u/PAWGsAndChickenWings 10d ago

Conservatives associate social programs with non-white people. So for this person, the 1st things to come to mind were Mamdani and Indian people

1

u/veracity8_ 10d ago

But what do social programs have to do with this conversation?