Insightful and important. Overwhelmingly, people become homeless because they can't afford the rent. I keep thinking there has to be a breaking point where it isn't profitable for corporate landlords to price people out of housing. Unfortunately, I feel like that moment isn't going to come.
Thank you, Patricia. That means a great deal to me -- I admire your work! And I agree. I thought the breaking point might come this year, but a friend reminded me of the seemingly endless capacity of hedge funds and private equity and, well ... she's right. I'm so grateful for people in my area who recognize the truth of what you say and try to do something about it: people become homeless, for the most part, because they can't afford the rent.
More than three decades ago, Vermont created one of the most innovative programs I’ve ever encountered at the state level: The Housing Conservation Trust Fund. (https://www.vhcb.org/) Its duel mission is to fund land and farm conservation AND affordable housing. All from the same state fund.
It came about because land conservationists and low-income and affordable-housing advocates worked together in a broad coalition to get it passed by our Legislature. Republicans and Democrats alike have supported and funded the program since its creation in 1987 (although do recognize that Vermont Republicans, for the most part, aren’t much like most of today’s Republicans).
Even so, despite the program’s many successes, housing here in Vermont remains far too unaffordable for far too many people. We have one of the highest rates of people without permanent housing in the nation. But because we’re compassionate with our tax dollars (and highly progressive when it comes to income taxes) the state has housed people and had some of the lowest effective homelessness rates.
Even so, we’ve not come close to solving the problem. Far too many Vermonters cannot afford housing. It’s crushing and sad and immoral. And it’s only gotten worse with the terrible flooding this summer that cast so many people from their homes.
I don’t have answers, of course. I’m no housing expert. But as a conservationist, I know that even here in Vermont, even when we work together with affordable housing advocates, we’re still not doing enough. We must do more and give more.
One of the central reasons for LVT being enacted is to recognize that it's the *community* that creates value in property, not just a property owner. I don't have to do anything for the value of my property to increase where I live, and can privatize -- enclose -- increased value of all the work my community puts into making this a good place to live. That would be true whether I lived here full-time, as I do, or only a couple weeks a year in a house or condo that's otherwise empty.
Vermont sounds like it's done some amazing things! I know it's not enough, but the fact that it's even prioritized these efforts is pretty outstanding. I like that you pointed out how housing advocates and land conservationists worked together on these issues. I've said this a couple of times in presentations to outdoors and conservation groups over the last year or so, and I think it's still true, that if we don't make our communities good places to live, we'll lose everything else we care about. Environmental concerns are also livability concerns!
Sep 15, 2023·edited Sep 15, 2023Liked by Antonia Malchik
Thanks for your optimism and the LVT link. (By the way, we fund that Vermont Housing Conservation Trust Fund, in part, with a tax on certain property sales.) Oh, and Vermont also has something called "Use Value Appraisal," which taxes well-managed forests and farmland not at its development potential, but at a lower rate based on its "current use" (https://fpr.vermont.gov/forest/UseValueAppraisal).
Wow, UVA seems like such an obvious approach and yet I don't hear of it used much. Maybe that's something we can work on implementing in Montana.
That tax on property sales sounds kind of Georgist! (Which is what economists who study/follow/advocate for Henry George's approaches to property call themselves.)
A friend of mine, over a cup of coffee yesterday told me this sad tale.
After over 30 years of upland bird hunting for only the price of an ask and his reputation as an ethical and respectful hunter, he was informed on opening day that hunting would now cost him $100 per day.
A thirty-year-old relationship, an old "Montana" style relationship and friendship cast aside for a lousy $100 bucks.
Oh lord, yes, that thing. I've heard of it, probably avoided reading more because it's so infuriating. It drives me absolutely bonkers, honestly, that people can't see that feudalism and nobles' lands are being recreated right under our feet.
My friend Kathleen McLaughlin has a lot to say about this, which I hope she writes about more, having to do with the gutting of local journalism and also that almost all the journalists working in the state today aren't from here and don't know the history or culture of the various parts of the state, and it hampers their ability to tell, research, and frame the reporting they do. And that in turn affects the information we all receive, how we perceive it, and what effects it has on our power as citizens but also our interpersonal relationships.
I just can't get over it. I didn't circle it, but you can see the increase in rent, too, whew. People have asked me if this can partly be blamed on lack of supply, but I think a very under-reported thing that's happening in a lot of places (as in Kenneth's comment below about Boise) is that investors are buying up housing and knocking it down to replace with vacation rentals for the high-end market. Makes me furious!
Those are very kind words! I tend more to fatalism than optimism or pessimism, TBH (blame it on the half-Russian in me), but take a lot of lessons from my Russian grandparents, who never gave up on their values even living under Stalin in a society that rejected everything they believed to be good.
Montana is not the only place where developers are trying to silence the public. Utah's last legislative session went down the same path, though in a different way.
Also, maybe a wee bit tangential but just watched Century of the Self and how Freud's nephew originated propaganda and pr, associating commodification with desires and identity and just...oof. Knew it was all by design, but damn, to see it laid out is really stunning. Some of the practices of trickle down economics and the way that industry responded in backlash to FDR....and how the Nazis appropriated those tactics...just ugh. It's so dark, and all in plain sight really. Reminds me as well of the news of the silicon valley billionaires buying up land to create some utopic ideal....for them. It's the predatory aspect of it all that is really, really disturbing.
Oh, yeah, yes. Adam Curtis has a way of laying it all out that I cannot for the life of me begin to describe but I am totally addicted to and I think does a really good job of describing all the layers of WTF we live amidst. It’s SO dark, and weird, and …
And the buying up land to create a utopic ideal … I’m just waiting for the indentured servitude aspect to combine with company towns because that’s where it’s all headed (thank you to Octavia Butler for always predicting the future so bleakly but so well).
That graphic of home costs you shared is just so insane. And this essay is so great at getting to the heart of the issue--the questions of who gets to refuse, who gets to be a part of a community matters. That quote: " it’s important to have a group of people who are willing to be witnesses and are willing to speak up"--I think that's what our job is on this earth, really--to bear witness and to SPEAK UP. Always love reading about your place(s) and the way it shapes your thoughts. 💜
I like that. A friend of mine who’s worked for the BBC for a long time has reported on some really horrific things. I asked her once what she did to cope, and she said she really took to heart that many times her job is to bear witness, even if nothing can be done to change what happened.
Always love it that we’re connected here, and hearing your thoughts! <3
This is such a beautiful piece that deals with the nuance of this issue. Every county in every state is dealing with this on some level, but the circumstances are definitely unique to each area. I would be nice if those in charge understood that.
Absolutely. It's one thing that I think gets lost in so much focus in national reporting. Every state, county, and community has different needs, different struggles, different resources, and different ways of addressing all of them. Sometimes those in charge get that, but so often ... not. 😕
“Too many people who have the power to make decisions about inequality, poverty, housing, and all the rest of it have never faced caring for children without a roof over their heads, never had to choose between medicine and food, never been subjected to the exquisitely contemptuous social dismissal that comes with being poor, much less without a home—never experienced being a political tool, but never a human being worthy of mutual respect. They’ve never felt the seams of a ragged safety net rip, never known what it’s like to live without that net at all, never tried to survive in the economic cracks of a society. Some of them don’t even believe those cracks exist.”
This is the best composition I have read this entire week. Hits hard in all the right ways. Thank you for your work Nia.
I wish affordable housing requirements worked. In New Jersey we've had them for decades and the developers seem to know how to play hardball until they are eased into nonexistence.
Yeah, so much depends on enforcement and culture. We lived in barely-upstate New York (Orange County) for 12 years, and I could not get over the level of corruption and graft in that state. I’m not saying you couldn’t get away with that in Montana—I can think of several examples locally—but it does play out differently with lower population density.
I think our affordable housing requirement could have had an effect before it was made illegal, but I never really thought it was robust enough to have much of one, and in any case who defines “affordable”? Personally, I’m more of a proponent of Henry George’s Land Value Tax, which recognizes that the community more than the property owner creates value in a property, and is credited with keeping housing affordable and reducing inequality in several Pennsylvania municipalities for decades where it was enacted.
But fundamentally, it’s hard to make a meaningful shift until a larger percentage of people see other values as being more important than profit. I don’t mean to be flippant about that — Adam Smith was the one who said that rentiers and monopolists were the greatest threats to the health of a nation’s economy, which is largely forgotten these days. When it comes to housing, rentiers are often what’s creating the problem. But I’d love to see more people rethink what they mean by “self-interest;” having clean air and water and lots of wild spaces, and a strong community where all kinds of people can live is in my self-interest, which I think a whole lot of people would agree with. Too many have just been persuaded that “self-interest” can only be monetary/financial.
I might not get around to it but can always share them if you’re interested. My capacity to absorb information far exceeds the time I have to make narrative out of it. 😂
As usual -- beautiful and thoughtful. I have one observation to share -- just my opinion. I think the expression trickle down has worn out its usefulness. I believe a better statement of what happened in that key moment when angst was high and as a result Thatcher and Reagan came to power. Neoliberalism and its policies had torn this country apart starting after the Civil War. It was finally thrown on the ash heap during the FDR Presidency and the emergence of the US as a great power. It is beyond tragic that we chose to resurrect its principles. I think it is the root of much of our current and bizarre inequality. This certainly extends to housing and property.
I think I agree with you. The phrase is still very much in play where I live, but my county is a good 20 years behind the times in a lot of things. The free-market ideology dictates a lot of policies and attitudes where I live, and trickle-down is part of that.
Still wild to think of what high-income tax rates were until the 70s or so! And wild to think of how few people know that.
Sep 7, 2023·edited Sep 7, 2023Liked by Antonia Malchik
I didn't mean to have it sound like trickle down is the wrong name. What I think it a new name was necessary because it was a repackaged old and failed ideology. It is not surprising in that light that after a generation of its peculiar ideas, Britain was an easy mark to abandon the EU. I think it is just an accident of circumstance. I also think it is not unreasonable that a newer way of thinking can take over in the future. The part that amazes me is with all our 'complexity' of thought it was really just a repackaged old idea. It ushered in remarkable inequality, terrible fighting over labor versus capital, trust busting, etc. We just happen to act as if it was inevitable and a better idea. It was neither. Tax rates certainly a good example.
Oh, I see what you mean! Yes, a new name is needed. For a lot of things, really.
I interviewed some people yesterday that left me feeling like a space had opened up in my mind. An imaginative space that's always there, but doesn't get enough exercise and tends to be stiff in its movements. The conversation was about land trusts and the commons, and reminded me of why the commons is such a revolutionary-but-old idea in the first place. It sails a passage that discards many of the economic and social binaries we're mostly taught are the only options.
This one hits close to home. It raises my hackles. Despite objections raised by some of us in the community, just recently our city council unanimously passed a new zoning code (upzoning) that will essentially give carte blanche to speculators and developers to rebuild our city (Boise) in order to "solve" the current (manufactured) housing crisis, all while demolition permits to knock down existing affordable housing flow like water out of the city.
The graph you included is downright criminal, or if our society had its values straight it would be. It really pisses me off. And this is not the product of mere supply and demand. There is something much more nefarious going on. Predatory real estate firms have been doing this for many decades, but corporations and private equity firms have now figured out that having large numbers of single-family houses, apartments, and condos on the asset column of their balance sheets can be very lucrative...especially once they've conspired to manipulate local markets and drive up prices.
These are the new colonizers. These are the new conquistadors. The fact that shelter is a human necessity, and therefore ought to be a human right, matters not a whit to them. Nor does the fact that when they swoop in to "undervalued" communities in order to make their killing they are disrupting, and oftentimes irreparably damaging, people's lives and futures. But hey…that's not their problem. After all, the system is designed for maximum exploitation and profit taking. That was the promise of the "New World," and now that same promise just wears a new suit of clothes. They’re only playing by the rules…right? The business of America is business, my friends, and if you can’t stand the heat of success and progress then get the hell out of the kitchen. Just…don’t go anyplace where we have to look at your misfortune and your squalor. If you lost your bootstraps somewhere back in that field of broken dreams that used to be your beloved community…so what? Get jobs cleaning our resorts, manicuring our gardens, and serving our meals. We’re trying to live the good life here, and your pathetic penury offends our sensitivities.
I'm going to do some more reading and thinking and scribbling before writing a more detailed and thoughtful response (I hope).
Keep those sky photos coming, Nia. They never get old.
These skies keep me sane. I'm glad I can share them!
There is so much I want to copy from your comment and just respond YES. To all of it, really. National media reporting keeps dismissing the effects of private equity and predatory real estate on housing, but when I listen to housing advocates, tenants' unions reps, etc., these asset-stripping entities come up constantly. So many well-meaning people believe that it can't possibly be that bad, but ... it is that bad.
That chart was shocking to see, even though I know how bad things are. My spouse and I are financially stable -- well-off by now, by any standard I've ever lived by, I'd say, and him, too; he grew up equivalently poor in England but of course it was very different because of things like never having to pay for health care -- but there is no way in hell we could even approach thinking about moving here now, and the rest of my family even less so. I honestly don't know where any of us would be living, or how. And we'd still be better off than huge numbers of people. I didn't circle it, but the rental increases lower down are almost more shocking to me.
"If you lost your bootstraps somewhere back in that field of broken dreams that used to be your beloved community…so what? Get jobs cleaning our resorts, manicuring our gardens, and serving our meals." YES. I wrote this in an essay last year or the before, but what's happening isn't people looking for service; it's demanding and feeling entitled to subservience, to servitude from people who are less well-off. Feeling like you've earned it. Pisses me off so much, and I might even be more pissed at people who keep trying to justify it because they still believe capitalism works if we just do it right. We're just creating a form of capitalism-infused feudalism all over again, and tweaks aren't going to stop it.
I'm sorry about Boise. :( That's infuriating. It bothers me to no end that people keep talking about "the problem is we don't have enough housing" when I can literally see developers knocking down housing that exists to replace it with luxury rental condominiums for vacationers or second-homeowners. I'm sure you can see it, too.
I definitely noticed the obscene increase in average rents on the graph. Also worth noting is how disproportionate that increase is to the increases in both population and total housing units. There is a story to be told there, and not a very complimentary one.
I am in a similar position to you and your spouse. Using money from a severance package I received after the company I had worked for was purchased and then shut down, I was able to purchase my home back in 1998 for a reasonable price. It has since more than tripled in assessed valuation (which is bullshit), and my property taxes have kept pace with that increase (Funny how I haven't noticed a commensurate increase in either the quantity or the quality of the public services and infrastructure I enjoy). Needless to say, if I didn't already own my home I have no idea how I would manage. But that's no concern of the developers, speculators, and well-healed transplants. They don't even acknowledge how their behavior destroys communities and lives. In fact, here's how a recent California transplant put it in a discussion thread:
"Perhaps people need to stop blaming and complaining and get a college education to get a good paying career. Just like the majority of Californian's. Hhhmmm, but I'm sure that this won't make any sense to you, lol 😅🫣🤔😮"
Right?! It's ridiculous. My spouse and I have done nothing to "increase the value" of our property, but it's easily doubled in value, and probably more. And same, very much the same, regarding taxes. Though the new governor did hire people for state offices at much larger salaries than those positions had received before. Many of them like-minded people from out-of-state. Totally unrelated, I'm sure.
I am SO TIRED of the college/work harder/get a job line. Seriously, this has been a problem for like 5,000 years. Only, once upon a time people in many parts of the world could walk away and live just as well somewhere else. All those enclosures and private property signs put a stop to that ... nothing has changed.
“Trickle-down economics hasn’t worked in the 40 years since it was first grafted onto the American psyche, and trickle-down housing isn’t going to fare any better.” Amen, Nia, and thank you as always!
Insightful and important. Overwhelmingly, people become homeless because they can't afford the rent. I keep thinking there has to be a breaking point where it isn't profitable for corporate landlords to price people out of housing. Unfortunately, I feel like that moment isn't going to come.
Thank you, Patricia. That means a great deal to me -- I admire your work! And I agree. I thought the breaking point might come this year, but a friend reminded me of the seemingly endless capacity of hedge funds and private equity and, well ... she's right. I'm so grateful for people in my area who recognize the truth of what you say and try to do something about it: people become homeless, for the most part, because they can't afford the rent.
As always, thanks for this, Nia.
More than three decades ago, Vermont created one of the most innovative programs I’ve ever encountered at the state level: The Housing Conservation Trust Fund. (https://www.vhcb.org/) Its duel mission is to fund land and farm conservation AND affordable housing. All from the same state fund.
It came about because land conservationists and low-income and affordable-housing advocates worked together in a broad coalition to get it passed by our Legislature. Republicans and Democrats alike have supported and funded the program since its creation in 1987 (although do recognize that Vermont Republicans, for the most part, aren’t much like most of today’s Republicans).
Even so, despite the program’s many successes, housing here in Vermont remains far too unaffordable for far too many people. We have one of the highest rates of people without permanent housing in the nation. But because we’re compassionate with our tax dollars (and highly progressive when it comes to income taxes) the state has housed people and had some of the lowest effective homelessness rates.
Even so, we’ve not come close to solving the problem. Far too many Vermonters cannot afford housing. It’s crushing and sad and immoral. And it’s only gotten worse with the terrible flooding this summer that cast so many people from their homes.
I don’t have answers, of course. I’m no housing expert. But as a conservationist, I know that even here in Vermont, even when we work together with affordable housing advocates, we’re still not doing enough. We must do more and give more.
I keep coming around to Henry George's idea of a Land Value Tax. This is a bit of longer read, but it's a good, comprehensive overview of how LVT works in places in Pennsylvania where it was enacted decades ago, especially in Harrisburg: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/3/6/non-glamorous-gains-the-pennsylvania-land-tax-experiment
One of the central reasons for LVT being enacted is to recognize that it's the *community* that creates value in property, not just a property owner. I don't have to do anything for the value of my property to increase where I live, and can privatize -- enclose -- increased value of all the work my community puts into making this a good place to live. That would be true whether I lived here full-time, as I do, or only a couple weeks a year in a house or condo that's otherwise empty.
Vermont sounds like it's done some amazing things! I know it's not enough, but the fact that it's even prioritized these efforts is pretty outstanding. I like that you pointed out how housing advocates and land conservationists worked together on these issues. I've said this a couple of times in presentations to outdoors and conservation groups over the last year or so, and I think it's still true, that if we don't make our communities good places to live, we'll lose everything else we care about. Environmental concerns are also livability concerns!
Thanks for your optimism and the LVT link. (By the way, we fund that Vermont Housing Conservation Trust Fund, in part, with a tax on certain property sales.) Oh, and Vermont also has something called "Use Value Appraisal," which taxes well-managed forests and farmland not at its development potential, but at a lower rate based on its "current use" (https://fpr.vermont.gov/forest/UseValueAppraisal).
Wow, UVA seems like such an obvious approach and yet I don't hear of it used much. Maybe that's something we can work on implementing in Montana.
That tax on property sales sounds kind of Georgist! (Which is what economists who study/follow/advocate for Henry George's approaches to property call themselves.)
The King's Deer comes to Montana:
https://landtrust.com/us/montana
A friend of mine, over a cup of coffee yesterday told me this sad tale.
After over 30 years of upland bird hunting for only the price of an ask and his reputation as an ethical and respectful hunter, he was informed on opening day that hunting would now cost him $100 per day.
A thirty-year-old relationship, an old "Montana" style relationship and friendship cast aside for a lousy $100 bucks.
What the hell is happening to our Montana?
Oh lord, yes, that thing. I've heard of it, probably avoided reading more because it's so infuriating. It drives me absolutely bonkers, honestly, that people can't see that feudalism and nobles' lands are being recreated right under our feet.
My friend Kathleen McLaughlin has a lot to say about this, which I hope she writes about more, having to do with the gutting of local journalism and also that almost all the journalists working in the state today aren't from here and don't know the history or culture of the various parts of the state, and it hampers their ability to tell, research, and frame the reporting they do. And that in turn affects the information we all receive, how we perceive it, and what effects it has on our power as citizens but also our interpersonal relationships.
The stark contrast between median house cost to median income!! 😳
This was really powerful to read, Antonia. I so appreciate your grounded optimism - failure is possible, but so is success...if we show up!
I just can't get over it. I didn't circle it, but you can see the increase in rent, too, whew. People have asked me if this can partly be blamed on lack of supply, but I think a very under-reported thing that's happening in a lot of places (as in Kenneth's comment below about Boise) is that investors are buying up housing and knocking it down to replace with vacation rentals for the high-end market. Makes me furious!
Those are very kind words! I tend more to fatalism than optimism or pessimism, TBH (blame it on the half-Russian in me), but take a lot of lessons from my Russian grandparents, who never gave up on their values even living under Stalin in a society that rejected everything they believed to be good.
Wow about your grandparents. And yes grounded optimism to me could also be realism or fatalism-if-things-continue-status-quo 😝
Bravo. Great essay.
Montana is not the only place where developers are trying to silence the public. Utah's last legislative session went down the same path, though in a different way.
I bet they did. 😕
Also, maybe a wee bit tangential but just watched Century of the Self and how Freud's nephew originated propaganda and pr, associating commodification with desires and identity and just...oof. Knew it was all by design, but damn, to see it laid out is really stunning. Some of the practices of trickle down economics and the way that industry responded in backlash to FDR....and how the Nazis appropriated those tactics...just ugh. It's so dark, and all in plain sight really. Reminds me as well of the news of the silicon valley billionaires buying up land to create some utopic ideal....for them. It's the predatory aspect of it all that is really, really disturbing.
Oh, yeah, yes. Adam Curtis has a way of laying it all out that I cannot for the life of me begin to describe but I am totally addicted to and I think does a really good job of describing all the layers of WTF we live amidst. It’s SO dark, and weird, and …
And the buying up land to create a utopic ideal … I’m just waiting for the indentured servitude aspect to combine with company towns because that’s where it’s all headed (thank you to Octavia Butler for always predicting the future so bleakly but so well).
That graphic of home costs you shared is just so insane. And this essay is so great at getting to the heart of the issue--the questions of who gets to refuse, who gets to be a part of a community matters. That quote: " it’s important to have a group of people who are willing to be witnesses and are willing to speak up"--I think that's what our job is on this earth, really--to bear witness and to SPEAK UP. Always love reading about your place(s) and the way it shapes your thoughts. 💜
I like that. A friend of mine who’s worked for the BBC for a long time has reported on some really horrific things. I asked her once what she did to cope, and she said she really took to heart that many times her job is to bear witness, even if nothing can be done to change what happened.
Always love it that we’re connected here, and hearing your thoughts! <3
This is such a beautiful piece that deals with the nuance of this issue. Every county in every state is dealing with this on some level, but the circumstances are definitely unique to each area. I would be nice if those in charge understood that.
Absolutely. It's one thing that I think gets lost in so much focus in national reporting. Every state, county, and community has different needs, different struggles, different resources, and different ways of addressing all of them. Sometimes those in charge get that, but so often ... not. 😕
Thank you for reading!
“Too many people who have the power to make decisions about inequality, poverty, housing, and all the rest of it have never faced caring for children without a roof over their heads, never had to choose between medicine and food, never been subjected to the exquisitely contemptuous social dismissal that comes with being poor, much less without a home—never experienced being a political tool, but never a human being worthy of mutual respect. They’ve never felt the seams of a ragged safety net rip, never known what it’s like to live without that net at all, never tried to survive in the economic cracks of a society. Some of them don’t even believe those cracks exist.”
This is the best composition I have read this entire week. Hits hard in all the right ways. Thank you for your work Nia.
Aw! 😭😭😭💞
💜🌼🤗
You're the best, Swarna. So glad we met!
I wish affordable housing requirements worked. In New Jersey we've had them for decades and the developers seem to know how to play hardball until they are eased into nonexistence.
Yeah, so much depends on enforcement and culture. We lived in barely-upstate New York (Orange County) for 12 years, and I could not get over the level of corruption and graft in that state. I’m not saying you couldn’t get away with that in Montana—I can think of several examples locally—but it does play out differently with lower population density.
I think our affordable housing requirement could have had an effect before it was made illegal, but I never really thought it was robust enough to have much of one, and in any case who defines “affordable”? Personally, I’m more of a proponent of Henry George’s Land Value Tax, which recognizes that the community more than the property owner creates value in a property, and is credited with keeping housing affordable and reducing inequality in several Pennsylvania municipalities for decades where it was enacted.
But fundamentally, it’s hard to make a meaningful shift until a larger percentage of people see other values as being more important than profit. I don’t mean to be flippant about that — Adam Smith was the one who said that rentiers and monopolists were the greatest threats to the health of a nation’s economy, which is largely forgotten these days. When it comes to housing, rentiers are often what’s creating the problem. But I’d love to see more people rethink what they mean by “self-interest;” having clean air and water and lots of wild spaces, and a strong community where all kinds of people can live is in my self-interest, which I think a whole lot of people would agree with. Too many have just been persuaded that “self-interest” can only be monetary/financial.
We're going to see a lot of this get worse as private equity has bought up real estate and is trying to squeeze as much profit as they can.
VERY much so. I have 3 new articles and podcasts on that subject in my feed right now.
I am eager to hear what you have to say about it!
I might not get around to it but can always share them if you’re interested. My capacity to absorb information far exceeds the time I have to make narrative out of it. 😂
I listened to this recently, about tenants’ unions, and it talks specifically about the private equity issue in the second half: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/building-local-power/id1158105558?i=1000613496648
As usual -- beautiful and thoughtful. I have one observation to share -- just my opinion. I think the expression trickle down has worn out its usefulness. I believe a better statement of what happened in that key moment when angst was high and as a result Thatcher and Reagan came to power. Neoliberalism and its policies had torn this country apart starting after the Civil War. It was finally thrown on the ash heap during the FDR Presidency and the emergence of the US as a great power. It is beyond tragic that we chose to resurrect its principles. I think it is the root of much of our current and bizarre inequality. This certainly extends to housing and property.
I think I agree with you. The phrase is still very much in play where I live, but my county is a good 20 years behind the times in a lot of things. The free-market ideology dictates a lot of policies and attitudes where I live, and trickle-down is part of that.
Still wild to think of what high-income tax rates were until the 70s or so! And wild to think of how few people know that.
I didn't mean to have it sound like trickle down is the wrong name. What I think it a new name was necessary because it was a repackaged old and failed ideology. It is not surprising in that light that after a generation of its peculiar ideas, Britain was an easy mark to abandon the EU. I think it is just an accident of circumstance. I also think it is not unreasonable that a newer way of thinking can take over in the future. The part that amazes me is with all our 'complexity' of thought it was really just a repackaged old idea. It ushered in remarkable inequality, terrible fighting over labor versus capital, trust busting, etc. We just happen to act as if it was inevitable and a better idea. It was neither. Tax rates certainly a good example.
Oh, I see what you mean! Yes, a new name is needed. For a lot of things, really.
I interviewed some people yesterday that left me feeling like a space had opened up in my mind. An imaginative space that's always there, but doesn't get enough exercise and tends to be stiff in its movements. The conversation was about land trusts and the commons, and reminded me of why the commons is such a revolutionary-but-old idea in the first place. It sails a passage that discards many of the economic and social binaries we're mostly taught are the only options.
I sent you a private thread about a book we are reading next month. I imagine it will get into some of these topics.
I saw it -- owe you an email!
NP
This one hits close to home. It raises my hackles. Despite objections raised by some of us in the community, just recently our city council unanimously passed a new zoning code (upzoning) that will essentially give carte blanche to speculators and developers to rebuild our city (Boise) in order to "solve" the current (manufactured) housing crisis, all while demolition permits to knock down existing affordable housing flow like water out of the city.
The graph you included is downright criminal, or if our society had its values straight it would be. It really pisses me off. And this is not the product of mere supply and demand. There is something much more nefarious going on. Predatory real estate firms have been doing this for many decades, but corporations and private equity firms have now figured out that having large numbers of single-family houses, apartments, and condos on the asset column of their balance sheets can be very lucrative...especially once they've conspired to manipulate local markets and drive up prices.
These are the new colonizers. These are the new conquistadors. The fact that shelter is a human necessity, and therefore ought to be a human right, matters not a whit to them. Nor does the fact that when they swoop in to "undervalued" communities in order to make their killing they are disrupting, and oftentimes irreparably damaging, people's lives and futures. But hey…that's not their problem. After all, the system is designed for maximum exploitation and profit taking. That was the promise of the "New World," and now that same promise just wears a new suit of clothes. They’re only playing by the rules…right? The business of America is business, my friends, and if you can’t stand the heat of success and progress then get the hell out of the kitchen. Just…don’t go anyplace where we have to look at your misfortune and your squalor. If you lost your bootstraps somewhere back in that field of broken dreams that used to be your beloved community…so what? Get jobs cleaning our resorts, manicuring our gardens, and serving our meals. We’re trying to live the good life here, and your pathetic penury offends our sensitivities.
I'm going to do some more reading and thinking and scribbling before writing a more detailed and thoughtful response (I hope).
Keep those sky photos coming, Nia. They never get old.
These skies keep me sane. I'm glad I can share them!
There is so much I want to copy from your comment and just respond YES. To all of it, really. National media reporting keeps dismissing the effects of private equity and predatory real estate on housing, but when I listen to housing advocates, tenants' unions reps, etc., these asset-stripping entities come up constantly. So many well-meaning people believe that it can't possibly be that bad, but ... it is that bad.
That chart was shocking to see, even though I know how bad things are. My spouse and I are financially stable -- well-off by now, by any standard I've ever lived by, I'd say, and him, too; he grew up equivalently poor in England but of course it was very different because of things like never having to pay for health care -- but there is no way in hell we could even approach thinking about moving here now, and the rest of my family even less so. I honestly don't know where any of us would be living, or how. And we'd still be better off than huge numbers of people. I didn't circle it, but the rental increases lower down are almost more shocking to me.
"If you lost your bootstraps somewhere back in that field of broken dreams that used to be your beloved community…so what? Get jobs cleaning our resorts, manicuring our gardens, and serving our meals." YES. I wrote this in an essay last year or the before, but what's happening isn't people looking for service; it's demanding and feeling entitled to subservience, to servitude from people who are less well-off. Feeling like you've earned it. Pisses me off so much, and I might even be more pissed at people who keep trying to justify it because they still believe capitalism works if we just do it right. We're just creating a form of capitalism-infused feudalism all over again, and tweaks aren't going to stop it.
I'm sorry about Boise. :( That's infuriating. It bothers me to no end that people keep talking about "the problem is we don't have enough housing" when I can literally see developers knocking down housing that exists to replace it with luxury rental condominiums for vacationers or second-homeowners. I'm sure you can see it, too.
I definitely noticed the obscene increase in average rents on the graph. Also worth noting is how disproportionate that increase is to the increases in both population and total housing units. There is a story to be told there, and not a very complimentary one.
I am in a similar position to you and your spouse. Using money from a severance package I received after the company I had worked for was purchased and then shut down, I was able to purchase my home back in 1998 for a reasonable price. It has since more than tripled in assessed valuation (which is bullshit), and my property taxes have kept pace with that increase (Funny how I haven't noticed a commensurate increase in either the quantity or the quality of the public services and infrastructure I enjoy). Needless to say, if I didn't already own my home I have no idea how I would manage. But that's no concern of the developers, speculators, and well-healed transplants. They don't even acknowledge how their behavior destroys communities and lives. In fact, here's how a recent California transplant put it in a discussion thread:
"Perhaps people need to stop blaming and complaining and get a college education to get a good paying career. Just like the majority of Californian's. Hhhmmm, but I'm sure that this won't make any sense to you, lol 😅🫣🤔😮"
I'm going to leave it right there...for now.
Right?! It's ridiculous. My spouse and I have done nothing to "increase the value" of our property, but it's easily doubled in value, and probably more. And same, very much the same, regarding taxes. Though the new governor did hire people for state offices at much larger salaries than those positions had received before. Many of them like-minded people from out-of-state. Totally unrelated, I'm sure.
I am SO TIRED of the college/work harder/get a job line. Seriously, this has been a problem for like 5,000 years. Only, once upon a time people in many parts of the world could walk away and live just as well somewhere else. All those enclosures and private property signs put a stop to that ... nothing has changed.
“Trickle-down economics hasn’t worked in the 40 years since it was first grafted onto the American psyche, and trickle-down housing isn’t going to fare any better.” Amen, Nia, and thank you as always!
I guess we’ll see but … we’ve seen this episode before, I feel like! Thank you, as always, Greg!