Best Of

Re: What’s for breakfast?

Bake your own brioche and cut it thick

Rdp77

1

Re: you can't make this stuff up

One thing you touched on Calvin without explicitly mentioning is something I firmly believe in. People have put too much dollar value on too many things. They’re more worried about property value in dollars than they are in value for their quality of life and that of their family for generations.

Rdp77

2

Re: you can't make this stuff up

I think a lot of these housing problems would stop being problems if housing was easier to build. Of course houses are going to be more expensive when neighborhoods are allowed to tell builders that houses must have a yard, driveway, and minimum square footage, or that apartment buildings aren't allowed to be built above a certain height or occupancy.

Home ownership gives people a stake in their future, it allows generational wealth to be established when a hardworking American can save up, buy a small house, and raise a family. Those kids can then take the money from the house after the parents die, and fund college for their kids, which means the grand kids can buy a house at a younger age with no college debt. Then the great grandchildren can attend better schools and have a more stable upbringing, which leads to a more successful life. It compounds on itself generation to generation when people own assets, and the easiest way to get started with that is to own a house.

But right now, people in all these suburbs around the cities are so concerned with the value of their own house, that they're not willing to help anyone else make their own American dream. This leads to people renting everything, and having no realistic way to get out of poverty, generation to generation. When you don't own anything, you also don't take care of anything and you don't save any money. What's the point? It's all going to go to someone else. What's the point of building a porch for a house that you don't own, and won't see the appreciation from? Why bother going for that promotion at work? You still won't be able to own anything in any reasonably sized city.

When people own assets, that they can hopefully pass on to their kids, it changes the entire outlook of their life. But right now, no one with a middle class job gets to do that unless they do what I did and move out into the countryside somewhere, where land is cheap and HOA restrictions don't exist. Even then, I was hanging by a thread for that first year, just hoping that nothing significant broke and bankrupted me.

If we got some of these HOA restrictions out of the way, and let people build houses in areas that people needed them, I wonder what the country would look like? Sure, that 1 million dollar, 2,000 square foot house that's 5 minutes outside of the city would lose a lot of value, but I think overall, it would still be a net positive for the country as a whole. The problem is, you're not going to be able to convince those millionaires to give away their equity, so on we go with the not-in-my-backyard cycle.