Rent Is Too Damn High
From prominent political thinker and widely followed Slate columnist, a polemic on high rents and housing costs—and how these costs are hollowing out communities, thwarting economic development, and rendering personal success and fulfillment increasingly difficult to achieve. Rent is an issue that affects nearly everyone. High rent is a problem for all of us, extending beyond personal financial strain. High rent drags on our country’s overall rate of economic growth, damages the environment, and promotes long commutes, traffic jams, misery, and smog. Yet instead of a serious focus on the issue, America’s cities feature niche conversations about the availability of “affordable housing” for poor people. Yglesias’s book changes the conversation for the first time, presenting newfound context for the issue and real-time, practical solutions for the problem.
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What Hacker News says
- I think these are understandable and well intended questions! But they also makes it seem like you're not very familiar with standard economic analysis. I would encourage you to read The Rent is Too Damn High by Yglesias which is by an american (leftist) who I think has a much better set of ideas for improving the lives of renters than "occupation friendly" housing regulations and other "zero sum" ideas. And yes, buying and administering rental properties is societally valueable just like running a bakery, restaurant or software consultancy is.
https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B...
- Put me in the camp that's very anti-AirBnB as a resident who doesn't want where I lived turned into a hotel. I live in NYC. It's a problem.
The real problem here is not Airbnb, which is a symptom; it's zoning, which forbids market-clearing prices and a sufficient number of units to satisfy demand for living in and visiting the city.
For more on this, see e.g. Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High: https://www.amazon.com/Rent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp/B... .
When we have sane zoning, we'll have sane prices. Today there was an NYT opinion piece that comes at the issue from a racial angle: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/opinion/sunday/zoning-law... but I don't think we even need the racial angle; we can come at it from a position of fundamental justice and human flourishing.
- These countries are all showing syptoms of first-world economy disease; low-birth rate, government budget deficit, high healthcare expenditure, bureaucracy
There are two other major problems in parts of the U.S. and Europe (in particular) that're underrated: 1. insane land-use control laws that make it illegal to build reasonably price housing (see Matt Yglesias's The Rent is Too Damn High for more: http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp...) and 2. transfer payments to older people that were originally conceived and executed when the number of workers to retirees was much different than it is now.
The first is important because it impedes family formation and innovation. The second is important because it makes not having children easier, because other people's children will be forced to support you through their contribution to transfer payment programs. Yet neither issue gets much play in the press.
- There is also no great tragedy in two parties coming to terms on a transaction when both of them agree - by definition, they're both better off because of the transaction. $70K for a the weeded lot next door it not a bad deal.
The real tragedy here is land-use restrictions that most municipalities instituted in the '70s and '80s, which prevent the supply of housing to meet demand (http://jakeseliger.com/2015/12/27/why-did-cities-freeze-in-t...).
Many "gentrifiers" in many Atlanta neighborhoods would probably prefer to live in NYC, LA, SF, or Seattle, but those municipalities have strict rules that prevent the building of sufficient housing to meet demand. So people move elsewhere. Matt Yglesias discusses this in more detail in The Rent is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp...).
- Unaffordable housing, especially in cities, is a huge and regressive drag on the economy.
Housing is unaffordable primarily due to parochial land-use restrictions, as Matt Yglesias explains in The Rent Is Too Damn High (http://www.amazon.com/TheRent-Too-Damn-High-Matters-ebook/dp...) and I explain here: http://jakeseliger.com/2015/09/24/do-millennials-have-a-futu....
If we want cheaper housing, all we have to do is legalizing the building of it.
- I read Yglesias' "The Rent is Too Damn High" book and liked it ( http://amzn.to/1Zo1TEj ) but it seemed a bit "high-level". I wonder if there are other examples of places that have significantly looser zoning, besides Houston, that actually look like attractive places to live? Houston is not my cup of tea.
Also, how does that really work out in practice - can I buy a house in a residential neighborhood and open a noisy biker bar in it?
