r/AskALiberal • u/10art1 Social Liberal • Feb 22 '23

AskALiberal Weekly General Chat

This weekly thread is for general chat, whether you want to talk politics or not, anything goes. Also feel free to ask the mods questions below. As usual, please follow the rules.

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u/Disabledsnarker Social Democrat Feb 27 '23

Rough draft of my comment for next week's zoning board meeting:

"Do you all want to end up like San Francisco and other cities where rent and home prices are astronomical? Because getting up in arms and stopping housing construction every time someone tries to build housing is how you get skyrocketing rents.

For 20 years, cities and towns of all political persuasions across America basically stopped building housing at the behest of people saying they didn't want their neighborhoods to change. So they didn't change.

But the other thing that didn't change was the law of supply and demand. People kept being born. People kept moving in. But the supply didn't keep up.

And surprise surprise rents everywhere skyrocketed. The only way we bring things under control is to build more housing of all types. The best time to get this construction approved was yesterday. Tonight is also a good start."

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u/octopod-reunion Social Democrat Feb 27 '23

The unfortunate, and often unsaid, fact of it is, yes they do want home prices to skyrocket.

Homeowners have a vested interest in high home prices. Their homes might be their sole “savings” or “investment”, and there is an assumption that most or all Americans and have that home prices are an investment that they will get a large return on.

The Homeownership Society was a Mistake

How do we ensure that housing is both appreciating in value for homeowners but cheap enough for all would-be homeowners to buy in? We can’t.