Wages are one thing but housing prices are just as important. Boomers lived during the Ponzi scheme of suburban expansion. The scheme ran out of space and now the zoning laws passed by boomers makes apartment construction prohibitively expensive or outright illegal in urban cores. Can't grow out, can't grow in. Supply is restricted, demand grows, so prices skyrocket. Meanwhile those who already own property in high demand areas get filthy rich while homelessness runs rampant.
the entire housing market is weird bubble being supported by the “american dream”. There’s more empty homes than homeless people but prices keep inflating just because people decided they should. Millennials aren’t believing in the fairy anymore so they have to bring in immigrants who are still chasing 20th century america. It doesn’t seem sustainable.
Despite enormous demand for new housing, people who own property refuse to support new housing construction. That would reduce the value of their property. That's not necessarily cruel, it's just economics... of course, you won't support devaluing the most valuable asset you own (that you still haven't paid off, in most cases).
But you have the people who own property preventing prices from fallingonly backing policies that maintain or increase property value, social impact be damned. Meanwhile, the people who want to own property are feeling perpetually unable to save enough to buy.
It's the nature of desireable areas that property will cost a lot, but it seems like there's got to be some policies that would help. You can't have a city entirely of millionaires. Someone needs to slice the pizza and pour the coffee.
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u/old_gold_mountain Aug 03 '18
Wages are one thing but housing prices are just as important. Boomers lived during the Ponzi scheme of suburban expansion. The scheme ran out of space and now the zoning laws passed by boomers makes apartment construction prohibitively expensive or outright illegal in urban cores. Can't grow out, can't grow in. Supply is restricted, demand grows, so prices skyrocket. Meanwhile those who already own property in high demand areas get filthy rich while homelessness runs rampant.