The Difficulty In Getting Affordable Housing - How Can It Be Resolved?
As someone who is seeking to find and gain affordable accommodation, I, like many others in similar circumstances, have encountered difficulty in doing so. I am aware that there are many reasons for this. The point of this discussion is to discuss why this is, what can be done about it - particularly what the government can do about it - and why this hasn't already been done.
Frequently reported in the news and mentioned on political programs is the severe lack of affordable housing. At least here in the U.K., but I expect it's a similar situation elsewhere as well. In recent years, house building in general reached its lowest level since the 1920s (in 2010, with 112,000 homes being built across England and Wales), and hasn't improved by much since then (in 2015, this increased to 149,000).
One specific problem I've seen is the fact that there is housing benefit available, but that most landlords won't accept any tenants on housing benefit. This is frustrating, because for someone like me who is on a part-time contract with a low income, finding an affordable flat to rent is difficult as it is, and some housing benefit would be very helpful and make a big difference.
Is this general problem due, in part, to incompetence, ideology, or both? I suspect that sadly it is both. And I think that electing a Labour government would help, at least ideologically. But they're doing terrible in the polls, which isn't a good sign. Although it's early days, with the next general election due in 2020.
Just recently in the news, the governing Conservative Party made it clear that despite evidence that the U.K. faces a critical shortage of homes to rent, their focus is on home ownership. They were also widely criticised for what they called the creation of affordable housing, which wasn't actually affordable to people on low or average income.
Frequently reported in the news and mentioned on political programs is the severe lack of affordable housing. At least here in the U.K., but I expect it's a similar situation elsewhere as well. In recent years, house building in general reached its lowest level since the 1920s (in 2010, with 112,000 homes being built across England and Wales), and hasn't improved by much since then (in 2015, this increased to 149,000).
One specific problem I've seen is the fact that there is housing benefit available, but that most landlords won't accept any tenants on housing benefit. This is frustrating, because for someone like me who is on a part-time contract with a low income, finding an affordable flat to rent is difficult as it is, and some housing benefit would be very helpful and make a big difference.
Is this general problem due, in part, to incompetence, ideology, or both? I suspect that sadly it is both. And I think that electing a Labour government would help, at least ideologically. But they're doing terrible in the polls, which isn't a good sign. Although it's early days, with the next general election due in 2020.
Just recently in the news, the governing Conservative Party made it clear that despite evidence that the U.K. faces a critical shortage of homes to rent, their focus is on home ownership. They were also widely criticised for what they called the creation of affordable housing, which wasn't actually affordable to people on low or average income.
Comments (68)
But the thing is, we're a market economy. When you go to buy a house, what do you do? You go the bank, they take your details, assess your income and credit risk, and then lend you as much as they think you're likely to be able to repay. It's in their interest to lend as much as prudently possible - that's what banks do. And if there are plenty of buyers, and not a lot of stock, then the result is houses that are 12 times the value of the average annual income, which is where we're at in Sydney (and I believe the picture is very similar in London; there's a report here).
What can the government do about it? Not very much. We don't live in a command economy where the Kommisar works out how many shoes, houses, or cars the citizens will need each year. It's a market economy, driven by supply and demand, and lubricated by the banks. Unless and until something drastic changes that, I can't see how it will change.
I think for sure that if there was a big economic downturn - a depression or long, deep recession - then prices would fall, but that's purely because less people would be making the income to repay loans. And that also wouldn't be a lot of good for anyone with equity in the housing market. Recall that after the 2008 crash, many people in the US ended up with 'negative equity', i.e. owing more on their house than its resale value. And, due to the very peculiar practice of mortgage holders being able to walk away from their properties, unique to the USA, many did. Whole neighbourhoods became vacated. You could buy houses in the rust belt of the US for a couple of hundred bucks for a while (not that you would want to.)
So I don't think there's an easy answer, I think it is a structural characteristic of the advanced economies. Sorry to sound so gloomy.
Do you not think that a middle-ground is possible? Because I haven't ruled that out. I want the government to intervene more, if that's what it takes, but that doesn't necessarily mean jumping to an extreme.
Here in Oz, we have a particular tax law called Negative Gearing, which means you can write off costs associated with investment properties. That has been accused of artificially inflating the housing market, but at the last election, the Opposition said they would wind back negative gearing, and the Government (who won by 1 seat) then accused them of trying to 'torpedo the value of the family home'. Result: nothing changed, as usual. Other than that, there's a lot of chest-beating and faux sympathy from the politicians, but what can they actually do? It's a devilishly difficult policy problem.
Even now there is all this talk about building more affordable houses, but it will only be sticking a plaster, with all the problems of planning restrictions, lack of a skilled workforce to build them, and private developers continually creaming off the profit in building expensive housing in desirable (expensive) areas and scrimping on affordable housing commitments.
I think we should try something more innovative like the mass production of prefab housing after the 2nd world war and a government task force driving schemes through the red tape.
Well, like you say, the Housing Needs Register here only works well for those assessed to be of a higher priority. It won't work for someone like me, so although I continue to bid on council properties, I have no hope of being successful. So, that rules out that option.
So, I look to the private renting sector. But, as I said, there's a critical shortage of homes to rent. So, create more? Make them affordable? Make housing benefit work for people in my situation and similar situations? Increase the minimum wage? Intervene more.
Yes, that's the sort of thing that the government should be focussing on rectifying, I believe. But what have they done? What do they plan to do? I don't have much faith in the current government.
The problem with the private sector is that it's up to the landlords to determine the rent and whether or not to accept people on benefits, and given the demand they're obviously going to try to get as much money as they can and from people with a job.
Unless the government decides to regulate this sort of thing and enforce maximum prices based on location (and make it illegal to refuse people on benefits), but then the landlords might decide that selling the property is the better option for them, and so they might be bought by those who plan to live there rather than rent it out.
Maybe the government could itself become a property investor, building and renting out houses as if they're a private business, and so not prioritising prospective tenants based on their need, as is the case with council houses.
There are things that can be done to improve this situation though, and not all of them drastic - although drastic change may well be required. For example, it used to be the case that housing benefit would be paid directly to the landlord, and that gave them some security, but then for some reason it was changed, and it now gets paid to the tenant, some of whom inevitably and irresponsibly spend it on other things and fall short when it comes to paying the rent, so now they don't have that security, and potential tenants like me are worse off as a result.
The government could provide incentives, even if stronger intervention were to be ruled out. But, to be clear, I haven't ruled out stronger forms of intervention. Regulation might be just what's needed.
Also, you can have a job [I]and[/I] qualify for housing benefit, like I do, and like many others do, but they simply say: sorry, no housing benefit.
And, regarding the bolded part in your second paragraph, the government should do more to make renting the more attractive option - at least, unless they do a whole lot more to make buying the better option for people like me - whilst either enforcing or incentivising landlords to accept people in circumstances like mine, which ought to include some housing benefit, rather than taking a gross amount of my wages and leaving me with very little.
Enforcing maximum prices based on location might not be the right way to go about it, and I very much doubt that it's the only way to go about it.
In this country councils wound up council house building about 40 years ago, which provided the required cheap rental housing. Sold the stock off cheap and then forgot about the whole issue for a few decades. In the meantime planning restrictions have become small minded, full of red tape and painfully slow. Meanwhile immigration is running at around 300,000 per annum.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcbjWGj3jBk
Argument: Not enough housing units are built to accommodate new families/couples/individuals.
Proposed Solution: Build adequate housing units. Easier said than done though.
That's true in big American cities as well. In some places a tiny house can fly under the radar of restrictions. Finding a place to park it is the trick.
tiny house
A home is no longer a place to live in but a market commodity, hence the silly property shows on TV etc. The overwhelming influence of the limited interests of economists and marketers has become destructive for our societies.
It seems the problem is the government, having severely limited the construction of new homes, thus making demand high and supply low and thereby creating increased prices.
The other solution is to get a better job. I know it sounds so American of me, but when there's a problem, how about looking within for the solution instead of asking for help. I'd have sympathy if you had one arm or half a brain, but you're fully intact, fully capable, just unwilling. Take a job that stresses you, annoys you, pains you, challenges you and your reward is a two bedroom apartment as opposed to a one room flat. If you don't want the job I've proposed, at least accept your one room flat as what you earned.
Did anyone here actually grow up with a real father figure in their lives? Doubtful.
The rate of housing inflation compared to wage earning increases over the years does not really bear this solution out. Just getting a better job does not increase supply of reasonably affordable homes.
The governments are not useful because most voters (the majority of the population) are property owners, or are in the process of paying for the ownership of property.
Politicians have a vested interest in seeing property inflation, which benefits voters, so policies tend to be oriented towards increasing property values rather than bringing them down.
In my young days I was in Shelter, a housing charity and campaign group, and I keep up an interest in how it's all going. Sadly the British housing market has been seriously distorted by vote-seeking political parties: there is too much selling-off on the cheap of public housing to buy the votes of the tenants-turned owners, not enough building of public housing, and the wrong sort of tax incentives and disincentives, fantastic sums spent on benefits which go to landlords . We could remove tax relief for mortgage payers, sting the owners of empty properties with big fines, allocate more public funds to house-building, control the rapaciousness of landlords through the tax and licensing system, and introduce a Land Value Tax which economists of all political stripes have long agreed to be a good idea. (http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/11/economist-explains-0) I'm not holding my breath re any of these ideas. Meanwhile, come and live in Todmorden, OP, it's lovely here! I daresay you could afford it! - But it'll be a bit of a commute to work.
Post WWII houses (built by the million) consisted of a bedroom, a kitchen, a bath, and an additional room set on a concrete slab (no basement). These were designed for at least 2 people, and were expandable into the attic space. Today, ordinary new houses and apartments might provide 1000 square feet (or more) per person. A suburban house for two might have 3 or 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, a large family room, a very large kitchen, an office room or library room, game room, large 2-3 car garage, laundry area, and so on. Land in suburbs is often parceled up into rather large lots. McMansions are are even worse, being absurdly big.
More living space and land = higher costs. One solution is to use zoning and tax law to discourage excessive size in housing, and to build better multi-family buildings. Many people dislike multi-family housing (apartment buildings) because they are usually quite unattractive, often too large for single family home neighborhoods, and worse, cheaply constructed. Better, older apartment buildings had thicker walls and floors which insulated one unit from other units. In cheaply constructed buildings noise and odors migrate freely within the building.
People also dislike multi-family housing because it is fairly common for many renters to be victimized by unruly, loutish, rude people in just one apartment. Barbarian-control is a necessity, not an amenity. (And unruly, loutish, rude slobs generally do not realize that they are a problem. Were young (or old) slobs housed in concrete bunkers far away from other people, they would not be a problem.
Be careful, there. I can just see your little corner of paradise being over-run and ruined by a plague of tourists, developers, builders, summer people--marauders all--coming to trash the place.
I had no idea what they were until I just googled the term. Interesting.
I thought someone might bring that one up, and I'm not surprised that it was you, Hanover. But this isn't all about me. It's a personal problem, but it's also a general problem, and it would be irrational to apply that reasoning universally or even in general. Obviously, we can't all get those higher paid jobs for various reasons, and it's not just a matter of being qualified or willing. Some of us have to do those lower paid jobs, otherwise the economy and society as we know it wouldn't function. So, even if I got a better paid job, the problem wouldn't go away, it would just go away [I]for me[/I] - after a successful application, that is. But then, in a way, I would become part of the problem, because those who are less well off ought to be more of a priority, because it is harder for them to find a place within their budget. The focus should be on helping the lower class; and if the middle class increases, then the focus on the middle class, as opposed to the lower class, will likewise increase.
As for "...at least accept your one room flat as what you earned", I don't have a one room flat, so I can't. That's the problem. And I don't even want, let alone need, a two bedroom apartment. A small one bedroom flat or studio apartment within my budget would suit me just fine. The problem is that there aren't enough of them available, and when they do become available, they go very quickly; and also that even the ones within my budget are more costly now than they were before, and that the benefits system is a failure, in that it's supposed to help people like me, but it doesn't, and actually makes matters worse.
Call some place paradise / Kiss it goodbye...:)
No danger of excess immigration of late, BC, but thanks for worrying for me.
I get why it seems wrong to subsidise landlords, but the changes to the housing benefit system, including diverting benefits away from landlords to tenants has made matters worse, as this article explains:
Why landlords are shunning profitable benefit tenants.
A way of helping recipients budget? Are you fucking kidding me? They need to get their priorities straight, and the sooner the better. They've made a right mess of it.
Not for free. You wouldn't be able to legally park them anywhere you like. And I know from recent local events, which were frequently reported in the local paper at the time, involving a group of travellers who illegally parked their caravans around the town, that there aren't enough such places in town or nearby.
How to solve this issue under anything like our current economic and social structure is difficult. I'd have to think about it a lot more. It's worth thinking about, though, because I agree it's a pressing issue.
What always gets me is how there are so many people who can afford such expensive real estate. For example, I'm in New York City. Metro NYC real estate prices are crazy--with the "raw" cost of real estate here + property taxes + quite often maintenance fees, parking fees, monthly transportation costs, etc., it's mind-boggling to consider how so many people can afford living anywhere within about 60 miles of NYC proper.
And of course when you go to places that are far more affordable, it always bewilders me how people manage to live there, too--since there typically aren't many jobs, and especially not many high-paying jobs, in those locales. For example, pick a random spot in, say, Utah, anywhere outside of the Provo/Salt Lake/Ogden coridor along I-15. How do people manage to live someplace like Salina (Utah), or Kanab, or even Moab? Where the heck would they work?
One difficulty in getting political traction here is that 'they' include both Conservatives and originally New Labour.
At least minimally adequate housing, health care, education, food, water, and clothing (the necessities) ought to be treated as rights, and not perquisites or privileges. But, alas, we don't live in such a world.
Terminology:
Mobile homes, for instance, are considered the province of white trash--for no good reason. Manufactured housing is affordable and is at least adequate. However, if your city zones them into the least attractive part of town, and the mobile park operator basically puts everyone's trailers in one big gravel parking lot, the benefit of mobile housing will be devalued. Mobile and or prefabricated housing is a ready solution on the supply end. If mobile home parks receive the benefit of tree-planting and landscaping, they don't have to look like instant slums.
Yes, I know. I'm no fan of New Labour. That change, the LHA, was introduced in 2008 under a Labour government lead by the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown. But the Labour Party has moved on from the New Labour era.
The number one problem is letting banks freely manufacture credit - ie: debt. That is the fuel that drives the speculative bubble.
Then you have the political settings that encourage general speculation in an unproductive asset.
Down the list is constraint on land supply. If this were the critical problem, people wouldn't see ex-urban McMansions and prime beachfront as such great "investments". Small and safe properties would be in higher demand.
Good luck. Have you considered lowering housing costs by pooling resources with compatible people? It's definitely not everybody's nice cuppa tea, but it might be a step up. Something sort of communal, but not slovenly...?
I feel your pain. McDoodle's suggestion of moving to a cheaper county might be a good idea too -- but where life is cheaper is often where the means of support are diminished.
Good work and good housing (that is, living in a place where you feel glad to go at the end of the day and where you like your mates) and those two things not being too far apart make for a happier life. Is 1 room of one's own enough for now?
I wish you luck. There are a lot of cities in the world, Metro London, Metro New York, San Francisco etc. where people are driven into the outer suburbs to find places they can afford, then they spend hours and cash commuting -- 2+ hours a day commuting is a significant subtraction from life.
What's that song, "We all need some body to lean on"?
If finding affordable housing was such a no-brainer, your approach might make some sense. Your comment would be appropriate for me: I have assets and resources. Young, unestablished people haven't or can't accumulate the assets and income that it takes to just go out and find a nice place to live. It isn't just the monthly rent. Many landlords want the first and last month, (and maybe a damage deposit) in advance. That requires a chunk of change, and 30 days later another rent check is due. If you don't have substantial cash on hand, up-front expenses are a real problem.
My sister and her three kids moved in with me a couple of months ago, so I've been super busy with that, along with my dad whom has lived with me for about a year and a half now.
I showed up here with a back pack and 300 dollars three years ago. I have a job were the actual work and skill done determines your pay by a small business owner, with only the four employees. I am not this point the de facto boss (like a boss) as I'm the most senior person that's actually there, and I'm the one that actually does the work. I usually work from 9 till 3, and make between 300 and 600 dollars a day. I can do 60 bundles tear off prep and shingle (not my self, but any one else only saves me at max an hour a day) in 6 hours, and I'm satisfied with that. I work too hard to maintain that level of productivity for much longer than six hours. So, the longer the day goes on the less it becomes worth my time, plus I'm driving between three and three and a half hours a day, so I don't want to work too late. I have of course, on occasion worked till like 7:30 to do 100 bundle houses in a day, which the boss that gets the jobs would like me to do everyday, but fuck him.
I hardly achieved it all my self though, I had a lot of help. Someone taught me it, and got me into it, and supported me when I got started, and continues to help me a whole lot, and be just a fantastic human being to me, and I of course could never repay what they've done for me, which allowed me to get established, and help my family.
I had many years of failure, desperation, inability to cover necessities, and support my loved ones when they were counting on me. That sort of failure I would prefer any other imaginable torment to. Not any more though, and I have higher goals, I have a big family. I'm going to save them all.
You can't live for yourself, that's where emptiness is, there's nothing there to live for.
...'in passing' ;-)
You do make a valid point here, which is that your resolving your problem won't resolve the overall problem. I will say, though, that a major part of the public assistance problem is that many (maybe you, maybe not) do not do all they can for themselves but instead find public assistance (which would include housing subsidies) an easier way out and a disincentive to self sustain. As I've noted, I have little problem providing for those who truly can't provide for themselves, but once those who really don't need the help start requesting it, everyone suffers because the resource is limited. What then happens is that there are demands that the rich give more, which is certainly something I've read on this board.
And so while I can't resolve THE problem, I do think it's reasonable to resolve the best I can one person at a time, with the understanding that eventually there'll be some that really need aid and then we can deal with them one person at a time.
Problems finding affordable housing usually occur in very high demand areas. Taking Atlanta as an example, if you want to live in the gentrified intown areas or the traditionally high rent areas, you're not going to find affordable housing. There is, though, plenty of affordable housing not terribly far from the city that is on the public transportation system. Of course, what holds for Atlanta does not hold for Manhattan or San Francisco and probably not many European cities that are densely populated and have limited land they're willing to develop. The solution from a free market perspective (which I would advocate) would be to increase supply, which would mean allowing greater development of currently undeveloped land.
I know you feel a great obligation for your fam, and that is admirable. I suspect at some point our young and now over-producing Wosret is going to find himself someone special and how extended family fits into this picture will be a challenge, but that's the next chapter of this journey.
I can say that housing costs dropped dramatically when the housing bubble burst and there remain large areas where investors bought up homes and turned them into low rent rentals. Low rent housing is not attractive economically for many reasons: poor schools, transient neighbors, high crime, etc. It's not as if people are living in the street for lack of housing, but it's that poor housing sucks and no one wants to live there. It's less a question of finding affordable housing than it is in finding quality affordable housing.
The problem of affordable housing is not a problem one person can resolve with self sufficiency.
The problem is that the pace of housing development is not at equilibrium with the pace of population growth.
In fact in the youtube vid I posted the current rate of housing development in the UK is about half the rate of current population growth.
If this is true then all of the UK will be a "high demand area."
No one person can produce a solution to that problem simply from being self reliant it will require a concerted effort of many people.
Sometimes when all you have is a hammer it begins to seem as though every problem is a nail.
But in this case the problem is not the result of a lack of self sufficiency so self reliance will not be how the solution is applied.
That may be the case in the UK, but it's certainly not the case where I live. In fact, when the housing bubble burst, many homes remained unsold. Supply was way beyond demand. I realize that the Atlanta market is not representative of the world. It is likely that European land use regulations limit housing significantly and that is causing the problem.
There actually was one townhouse on the first page that looks fairly reasonable in light of where it was. The prices weren't too dissimilar for what you'd find around where I live, although we have very few castles, considering our lack of kings and princes.
Well there are several factors that will contribute to the problem.
One is population growth compared to supply development (in the west there is has been a increasing trend for population growth to outpace housing development).
One is the rate of inflation of housing (the ratio of yearly income compare to the cost of housing has been growing wider and wider for several decades).
And one is living styles (the amount of people living in a single household is trending down which is a further strain on supply relative to demand).
All the bubble bust did was serve to readjust the inflation of housing relative to yearly income.
There still is a significant disparity between average housing cost compared to average yearly income (property inflation is has increased about 4000% in the UK since the early 70s)
And the reason for this is in part due to the supply/demand ratio.
The typical policy solution is to ease credit and lend money to more people, but that is what contributed to the bubble in the first place.
If the supply is less than the demand throwing more money at that problem just increases the pricing.
So eventually the bottom fell out when the bubble burst.
The reason people did not immediately buy up supply was because there was also a major credit crunch that came with bust.
Several decades ago a person could spend anywhere from two to three times their annual income to buy property and so giving a loan was more reasonable for the creditors..
But even after the housing market bubble burst the cost of typical home was still many more times than average yearly salary and on top of that credit was tight for consumers, while large institutions were essentially given interest free loans..
So that is why large institutions were able to snap up the supply rather than consumers.
I agree that simply subsidizing or easing credit does not really address the issue of supply compared to demand and will in fact contribute to an increase in pricing.
So a solution for the UK would have to be to incentivise more development.
You are only 1 (just 1) injury away from months of unemployment. If it is available, and it might be available--look and see--invest some of your earnings in a private disability insurance policy. Even if Canada has a state disability programs, the more protection your income has the better.
These private policies won't replace the amount of your earnings, but they could keep your fairly full boat afloat should you break a leg. Having some extra income during the time you can't work could save your house.
I can't remember... are you saving money? If not, start. Now is the time. Money in the bank can solve a lot of small problems that would otherwise snowball into big problems. Are your worthy and deserving relatives contributing to the cost of the household (like, through benefits of some kind or work)? If not, they should be doing something.
I hope you can keep up the pace for quite a long time -- just because that will mean you're still healthy and going strong, but be extra careful. We all want you to have a long good life.
If you can't get between jobs and affordable housing, then they might as well not exist. For example, North Minneapolis has affordable housing, thanks to white flight several decades ago. A number of suburbs have job opportunities not available in North Minneapolis. It isn't laziness that prevents fairly poor people from getting between the two: It is lack of a car and zero workable transit. Commuter bus lines bring thousands of white white collar employees into the center city in the morning, and return them to the suburbs in the late afternoon. There is no center-city-to-suburb-and-back transit during the day or past the early evening rush hour. Sometimes there is "tenuous transit" -- 1 bus line connecting to another line once each hour, and another connecting once an hour. This kind of schedule is just not workable on a day in day out - years long basis.
It isn't that suburb-to-suburb, town-to-town and round-trip transit can't be arranged, but it is expensive, and takes a long time to amortize. In addition, many white suburbs are not anxious to be conveniently connected to poor parts of the central city.
A much-studied, long-planned light rail line between Minneapolis and a western outer suburb will cost about $2 billion, and just about every foot of the distance has been contested by some local interest that views it as a nuisance.
Like a shared house? Yes, I've considered that and decided against it. I've lived in a shared house before, and I'd rather not go back to that. I did try to persuade a good friend of mine to share a two bedroom flat, which would be more affordable than having a one bedroom flat or studio apartment to myself, but she didn't want to do so in the town in which I live, and that's non-negotiable for me. But I'd rather just have a place to myself anyway. The situation isn't so dire that that's not an option.
Quoting Bitter Crank
I'm not going to move county, nor town, nor even outside of a distance too far for me to walk to and from my workplace. I don't drive, and public transport is an extra cost I'd rather avoid. It's cheaper and more convenient to be close to where I work. And I like my current job, and I quite like this town, and my closest friends live nearby, and so on and so forth. So, no.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, no, not really. But it depends what you mean by "now".
I currently spend most of my time when I'm at home in my own room in a house with two other family members. And that has been the case for years. There were and are great personal benefits to that - I pay no rent. But is that enough? No, that's not enough. Obviously not, otherwise I wouldn't be looking to move out. It will just have to do until I find somewhere better.
One room in a shared house? No, that wouldn't be enough either. I want more privacy and more space than that, and that is achievable, so I don't plan on settling for less. Been there, done that.
Thanks for wishing me luck.
Going back to this...
I'm not exactly asking for help. But how about, when something is set up to help people, it should actually help people. And if help is available, why shouldn't I take advantage of it? I don't mean exploit it, but rather use it the way that it was intended to be used, to my advantage. That's just good sense.
You are welcome. Unfortunately, wishing you luck is the most I can do.
I've had a couple of jobs where I could walk to work. That is a vastly preferable arrangement to even being able to ride a bike to work (even if the weather is tolerable). One winter I biked back and forth about 10 miles between a job that ended about 10 in the evening; the rides were peacefully quiet with little traffic, but some days were pretty cold, and that was a mild winter. One generates a lot of heat biking, but not that much.
I understand. Solitude and enough room to cook, read, play games, have company over, sleep, and such are essentials. Is solitude or company more important? It's a coin toss.
I moved a lot over the years after college; I was restless. Finally in 1995 we bought a house (our first, we were in our 50s). It was nice at last to be rid of the problems of the shared spaces of apartment buildings. True, I have to mow the lawn, clean the eaves troughs out twice a year, keep the raspberries under control, shovel snow off the walks, etc. but all that is good exercise for an old folk. Plus I have been destroying my lawn with raspberry bushes, service berry, phlox (perennial flowers), day lilies, milk weed, and any other moderately attractive weed, so there is less and less lawn to mow.
I hope that my next move is to the cemetery, with no intervening stop at a nursing home.
Living with family... for most of my semi-senile-siblings, living with them would probably speed up the trip to the cemetery considerably. Me or them, maybe both.
People are, indeed, entitled to use entitlements, or benefit from benefit programs if they need them. Lots of conservative Americans (Hanover is getting more so as he gets older) just assume anybody collecting on a public benefit a) doesn't need it; b) is cheating in order to get it; or c) is too lazy to do without it. Public benefits = waste, fraud, and abuse.
My guess is that Brother Hanover Himself probably is a happy beneficiary of the federal tax deduction for mortgage payments. He might also be the beneficiary of other tax deductions, like maybe a deduction for his home office, and the like. Tax deductions are just public benefits by another name.
Whilst I acknowledge that abuse of the benefit system is indeed a problem, I think that your approach is a greater problem, in that it shifts a vital focus away from the wealthy and towards the poor, and not in a good way, at a time when wealth inequality is greater than it has been in a long time (e.g. the UK is the only G7 country to record rising wealth inequality in 2000-14. Wealth inequality has risen four times faster in the seven years after the crash compared with the seven years before), and many of the wealthiest in society aren't paying enough tax (e.g. this report estimates that tax evasion might cost the UK £85 billion a year; tax avoidance might cost £19 billion, and tax not paid £18 billion). This is a much greater problem, as the following article shows: Benefit fraud v tax evasion: Which costs more?
Quoting Hanover
We already have means tested benefits, which do just that.
Quoting Hanover
Given the current state of affairs here, it's not just problematic finding affordable housing in very high demand areas. It has become commonplace. The overall demand has increased significantly.
Quoting Hanover
Yes, definitely increase supply. None of the main political parties over here say otherwise. But we need a government which won't just basically pay lip service.
Well put.
Not quite that much, it's seasonal, so more like 8-9 months rather than 12. I of course don't want to take care of everyone forever or anything, it's just that everyone needs that launch pad, someone to actually help they get established. My dad was making three times less than he is now from disability and social assistance (he pays me 300 a month, 90 of which pays my little sisters cell phone bill, so he gives me 210 for utilities a month. He though, could afford to live by himself and take care of himself now if he wanted. My sister has also found an apartment in a close by town (the biggest town I'll let Dad drive to from home, since he has health issues, I have a second vehicle which he uses) I didn't charge my sister for anything, not that she didn't offer or insist, but we need an opportunities to get our shit together without someone using us, or taking from us, when we're at our lowest points.
I also, it just so happens did have a girl friend for a couple of months last year, didn't work out but it was definitely fun while it lasted.
I'm trying to save, winter is coming, and I try to save enough to maintain things during the off season. I did it without trouble last year, but had to get a job for the last month of winter the year before, and might also this year as well.
There is WCB but I am indeed attempting to prepare for everything. Last year I was explaining to my dad that I had to save a certain amount also for the unforeseen when I was budgeting, and he said "like what?", lol... if I knew, it wouldn't be unforeseen....
On yet another note, they give sweet houses away at Alberta, you can get them for one dollar. No joke, you just have to move them.
Alas there aren't enough local jobs for local people round here :)
I think this is a philosophical mistake, particularly in relation to economics. A macro problem is not always solvable at the micro level. Problems that present themselves at different levels require different answers. Indeed, quite often if everyone does the right thing for themselves on the micro scale, the macro result is not the right thing for the group as a whole. People crossing a footbridge begin to march in step, making the whole footbridge swing perilously; the intervention of engineers becomes necessary to re-balance the system as a whole.
In my youth I was a housing aid adviser to people, and it became clear to me at one point that the best thing for an individual to do was to cheat the system, even though that would mess up the system as a whole. The affluent were already doing that by piling up housing debt when they didn't need the loan, because they received tax relief on the interest repayments, and while this seemed to me an ethical cheat it was entirely lawful; it therefore meant that every rich house-owner was receiving a far greater subsidy from the government than, say, a poor tenant in public housing that had long ago paid off its own debt. All the poor could do was to find ways of elevating themselves up the waiting list, or illicitly sub-letting part of their dwellings (besides fiddling the details of their income to receive more benefit.
These inequities and follies remain in the UK housing system, and have been compounded by subsidies to buy-to-let landlords for their investment and running costs. The thing requires a system-wide reform, which it has alas no prospect of getting under either prospective regime.
It costs about £70,000 to build a house - a nice modern insulated one. The average house price is somewhere around £270,000. The £200,000 difference is the cost of land with planning permission, which is not being manufactured any more.
Even in depressed areas, one is hard pressed to find even an old, rundown Victorian terraced house with no garden for anything close to the cost of building a house. My house is one of those, and is worth about £140,000. So I won't be moving to London anytime soon, where the same house would be worth from 3 to 10 times the price, depending on centrality.
So you landless peasants who rent obviously have to pay the equivalent in rent of a loan on the house plus a bit for maintenance and insurance, and a bit for the profit of the landlord. And that is almost everywhere a huge chunk of the minimum wage which is what peasants are supposed to be worth.
Aye, and there's the rub. There is a glut of peasants, not a shortage of housing. Time for a war...
Now you're stuck with "The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Your tired, your poor, your tempest tossed huddled masses yearning to own real estate!" They are just going to keep driving up prices. Is it too late to retract Australia's and India's independence?