The Non-capitalist Solution to the Housing Crisis

[coopsbc]

Great video Uytae! One minor caveat. At around the 4:30 mark you talk about paying off the mortgage and then rent being like really cheap. Many co-ops have used the financial room provided by paying off their mortgage allows them to reinvest in the physical asset to maintain high quality housing, while still keeping reasonable housing charges.

[NicholasBall]

Housing prices are unlikely to significantly decrease until there's a substantial increase in housing supply. In the USA, there's a shortage of millions of housing units, and construction isn't keeping pace. The constant demand for housing, coupled with population growth, means that even a slight price drop attracts numerous buyers who quickly absorb the available supply. I'm considering purchasing affordable houses in 2024 and possibly venturing into stock investments. When is the best time to enter the stock market? Some people say it is profitable, but others say it's risky. Any advice?

[benjanorris]

"Sending a reminder that ultimately housing is for people, not profits" wow this hit hard, how to we get this message across to the government?

[CameronFussner]

The issue is that either the renter or the owner must in some way pay insurance and property taxes if they want a "permanent roof" with utilities like electricity, gas and water. Because of this, many people—at least in California, where I currently reside—are living in tents. No taxes, rent, mortgages, or insurance. The number of people who tell me they live in their car that I meet amazes me. Its crazy out here!

[brandbryce]

I moved into non-profit housing for the first time, a year and half ago. For the first time in my life, everything makes sense and I am getting ahead financially. I love my place and my rent is a pleasure! I qualified for this non-profit housing by being over 55. Since moving here and seeing my life flourish I have come to believe we should have this solution available for everyone! I live in Squamish, BC a small town with (guess what?) a housing crisis. Rents are approximately Vancouver level. Not mine. Plus I feel security for the future and more connected with my neighbors and the people who run the society that produced this non-market housing. I don't see why we cannot have this in Canada.

[bof]

We just have to convince the people who made this crisis and have everything to gain from it and are simultaneously in charge of handling it that they should do this!

[Raymondjohn]

Back in the day, when I purchased my first home to live-in; that was Miami in the early 1990s, first mortgages with rates of 8 to 9% and 9% to 10% were typical. People will have to accept the possibility that we won't ever return to 3%. If sellers must sell, home prices will have to decline, and lower evaluations will follow. Pretty sure I'm not alone in my chain of thoughts.

[RaymondKeen.]

The fact that there is already an excessive amount of demand awaiting its absorption, despite how everyone is frightened and calling the crash, is another reason why it is less likely to occur that way. 2008 saw no one, at least not the broad public, making this forecast, as I'll explain below. The ownership rate was noted to have peaked in 2004 in the other comment. Having previously peaked in the second quarter of 2020, we are currently at the median level. Between 2008 and 2012, it dropped by 3%, and by the second quarter of 2020, it had dropped from 68 to 65.

[youthactionpact]

I work for Vancity and I wish we did more advertising like this. Giving away 30% of our profit each year allows us to make some really impactful changes in our communities. Just imagine if all banks did the same, or if everyone decided to more their banking to FIs with these same values. We could legitimately erase the housing crisis.

[TexasRedOutlaw]

Social housing was a massive stabaliser in the UK until Margeret Thatcher introduced the Right to Buy scheme, it was seemingly a chartiable policy, allowing tenants to buy the houses from the local councils rather than renting.

Eventually though, you now have an entire generation that have since brought these social houses on the cheap in prime central locations, sold them at record profits and then gone to spend their retirement in a lovely country home, these homes were of course sold to private landlords, who will now rise the rent and profits and you have my generation, who can never afford a house and can barely afford the predatory rent, and no actual social housing solution, since they were all sold away into the private market.

Alas, today a house in the place I grew up costs upwards of 1 million where it was sold for 60k in the 90s

But of course our wages have not seen a 2000 % increase to match

[MegatPage]

I sold a couple properties in 2020 and I'm waiting for a house crash to happen so I buy cheap. In the meantime, I've been looking at stocks as an alt., any idea if it's a good time to buy? I hear people say it's a madhouse and a dead cat bounce right now but on the other hand, I still see and read articles of people pulling over $225k by the weeks in trades, how come?

[strangelyukrainian]

The thing I’ve always hated about renting, is that they’ll charge huge rates on you, and then talk about how they charge those rates to fix things, but if you’re fixing things so much that every tenant has something broken once a month and it takes more than a thousand dollars to fix, then there’s an issue with the building, or the people who own it, or both. And if their excuse is “oh, but it may not be you that’s causing things to be broken” then great, lower my f*cking rent, and stop making me cough up dough for what other people break. And so when you get down to it, it really is just them taking advantage of people in desperate need of housing.

[ghans]

The problem I see in my town in the US is that there are droves of people moving here, buying multiple houses, and instead of renting, they are turning them into AirBNB's and timeshares. The average individual income is $28, 000 for an individual here, while the average rent is $1450. You need to spend over 60% of your income on rent alone, excluding utilities, rising gas and grocery prices, loans and other bills, etc. The wait time for low income housing is approaching 3 years. Every town council meeting I watch only concerns more benefits for seniors and retirees, while swarms of younger people are moving out because literally cannot afford to rent an 800 square foot studio. Almost every business I see is desperate for workers. Some have had to close down permanently. It's getting ridiculous, but sure, let's keep lowering the cost for the retirees so they can have more money to spend at the closed down stores while they struggle to find somebody to drive them there.

[emryspaperart]

im glad you mentioned that it's relatively cheaper because frankly nearly 2k a month is still an insane price to pay to exist in someone else's building

[SapphireFaden]

I really really really appreciate how you treated price-regulated housing and increasing the supply the housing as not just compatible, but actually complementary. The worst part of housing debates among progressives is when it devolves into "nothing but rent control" vs. "nothing but new market construction", and this is one of the most elegant avoidances of that tendency I've seen!

[mochilex]

"it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism"

[TheSousaphon]

The UK used to have a large supply of council housing which operated as non market housing. These were built and maintained by local councils and often used for people who couldn't afford normal market rent. This was effective until they got sold off in the 80s where it's really been going down hill since then.

[inventor]

Another critical part of fixing the housing issue is zoning laws, between mixed use zoning, vertical zoning, better public transit access (there are some cities in canada that are 40% parking lot) and non market housing there is a lot of good ways to combine these to form sustainable communities. Unfortunately NIMBYism tends to cause problems.

[hopefully]

The issue is similar in USA. California has extremely high rent but whenever anyone tries to build something homeowners come out in mobs to contest it.

[AriaIndy]

Currently paying $3500 for a 1 bedroom 20ish minutes outside of downtown Miami. When I moved here a few years back I was paying $2400 for a studio and that went up since then as well. Truly so crazy and I’m not sure how people can afford to live in this city as it continues to rise