NorthHawk wrote:I don't know what's happening in your area, but the housing prices are ridiculously high here.
It's in a large part because of the corporate aspect of buying housing for profit. That didn't used to be a big thing but when you have billion dollar companies
bidding on housing, the individuals will be priced out. Our housing prices have been increasing somewhere around 15-20% per year in the hottest markets so
the investment is extremely attractive. That in turn pushes up rents which prices people out of their rental homes and others can't afford to buy in the market
where they have careers or businesses. The economic portion plays a huge role up here and combined with the other issues previously discussed we have a
big problem. The problem with the jobs aspect is the wages haven't been keeping up with the price of housing. Housing has gone up 300% or more the last
15 -20 years but wages have not increased at anywhere near that rate. We bought our current home 16 years ago. It has tripled in value. I was working then
and together we had an income of about $130,000. Today's wages for those jobs would be about $150,000 and we wouldn't have been able to afford the home
we have - and we don't have any kids. With the average house price over $1M and 2 bedroom Condos at $675000 (from the last report I saw) it would be very
tough for a family to afford a place to stay. Renting a 1 bdrm appt is now in the area of $1600 - $2000/ month. Ten years ago it was around half that.
So for us, economics is a big factor.
I'm sure politics plays some part in it, but I'm not convinced it's a big part - at least I haven't heard much of anything that it is. It might be one of those things
that you can't prove but just know it's true.
They're sky high here, too, up 37% over last year, although real estate is still a lot cheaper here than it is in the Seattle area. Our vacancy rate for rentals is 2% even though they're building apartments like crazy. Amazon is building not one, but two warehouses, each with over 1 million square feet and plan to start hiring 1500 workers this summer. There's several other employers, including my former employer, that are expanding their operations. Costco is building a 2nd warehouse. The local economy here is on steroids.
But the problem with real estate nation wide has more to do with demographics than anything else. The baby boomer generation is retiring and they're not downsizing or selling their homes:
Thanks to their sheer numbers, the baby boomers have shaped society, driving social change and the economic expansion since the 1970s. But now they're influencing society in a new way -- by holding on to their homes.
The oldest baby boomers are now in their early 70s, an age that in previous generations signaled a desire to downsize into condos and apartments. But economists are finding that boomers aren't yet downsizing, at least not in the numbers that some of them had predicted. That's pinching the real estate market because Americans over 65 have the highest homeownership rate of any generation. Almost 80 percent of seniors own their homes, compared with 35 percent of Americans under age 35.
With boomers remaining in their homes, that removes about 33 million properties from the market, Realtor.com estimated. That's significant considering 5.5 million existing homes were sold last year, according to the National Association of Realtors.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/housings-b ... ownsizing/Baby boomers have lived healthier lifestyles than previous generations. We didn't grow up smoking two packs of cigarettes like my parents generation used to, and we're living longer and not going into the nursing homes and graveyards like our parents did. Of course, that will change eventually, likely within another 10 years, and a whole bunch of houses will start hitting the market and create a glut of housing.
There's no doubt that the real estate market is one of the factors in homelessness, but it's not the root cause. Otherwise, why would my area, with a 2% rental vacancy rate, not be showing at least some tent cities? If people can't find a place to rent that they can afford, they usually have options, like living with a relative or friend, until something affordable opens up.
I agree that politics isn't a major factor in homelessness, but it does contribute to it. It also has the tendency to attract it from other areas from around the region, which is likely one of the reasons why I don't see tent cities in my area.