A new report shows California has the highest poverty rate in the US, alongside Louisiana, and rates have shown little improvement.
Despite the abundant wealth in the state – more billionaires live in California than anywhere else in the US – in 2024 about 7 million people, or 17.7% of residents, could not afford to cover their basic needs. In 2021, California’s poverty rate reached a historic low of 11%, but as pandemic-era policies came to an end, rates surged in the state and across the US, according to the report from the California Budget and Policy Center released last week.
I don’t get the problem with trying to solve housing by constructing more???
The housing crisis is not a problem of lack in supply. More than enough houses exist in the US for everyone to have a roof over their heads. The houses they are building are not going to go to houseless people or even bought by renters or families trying to expand their spaces, they will either be rented out at rates the houseless still can’t afford or used as tax havens.
I get what you’re asking but just building new buildings without programs to make sure they get into the hands of people in need it’s just spinning wheels. Things like what I just described combined with rent control and regulate the use of real estate as an investment would go a long way to fixing things.
I think we’re ideological allies but this is misinformed.
Only very few economists favour rent control: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_regulation because it generally decreases the amount of available housing and has other deleterious effects. I say this as someone who benefitted personally from rent control.
Generally, increasing the supply of housing lowers its cost: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_crisis There is discussion in there about zoning being a problem too.
I do think that we still need some policies to curb runaway housing asset appreciation (e.g. higher taxes on non-owner occupied housing).
Legit too drunk to really converse on this in a satisfying way right now, both agree and disagree with things you said here. I intend to come back and readdress what you’ve said
Not to mention these construction and development companies get money, tax breaks, and lax regulations from the state to build housing that is then gobbled up by the wealthy and rented back to us serfs at a profit.
But if you keep building and building it should have an effect. Empty places still have to pay property tax. I guess im just saying im fine with us push push push build more housing but yeah I like other laws with it. One thing is I would like rental to be limited for non apartment buildings where the owner does not live there and not allow apartment buildings to do airbnb as that is for hotels/motels and taxed for such.
Why would it have an effect? If we have more houses than we already need and that hasn’t fixed things, doing even more of it probably won’t either. The wealthy have a bottomless pit of money and can always invest more into real estate. This argument is not too different than trickle down economics which has been proven time and time again to be a complete farce.
I doubt we have more than we need. empty buildings are money pits. you pay taxes and upkeep and get nothing back.
They’re money pits based on what? This chart disagrees with your assessment that “you get nothing back” on real estate investments. If that were true, nobody would be doing it.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ASPUS
Eventually but the same money in the s&p500 would get you more and be less likely to lose money over your purchase price and would not lose money every year until you sell.