> For decades part of the logic for buying a house was that, after the down payment, mortgage payments were generally cheaper than renting.
I thought the logic was that, after say 30 years, you own the home you were making mortgage payments on.
My dad explained it to me best. He had bought a single-family house in Homer, Alaska after having moved up there and working in construction for a number of years. He had never owned a home in his life. He got a 30-year fixed loan. He said at the time he was questioning himself as to what he was doing — mortgage payments were something like $400 a month!
"Ten years on, you know what the monthly mortgage was?" he asked me. "$400 a month," was his (obvious) answer. He laughed when he said it because at the time that would have been peanuts for rent.
He wasn't there for the whole of 30 years but had enough equity in the home some years later that when he did sell it he was able to outright purchase land out East End and build a new home on it.
To be sure, times have changed — the market has changed (interest rates have changed of nothing else). But putting money toward ownership still seems like a win.
Certainly over mortgage payments is balanced by risk of unexpected repair and upkeep costs. Property capital gains is balanced by the capital gains you could have from investing in other things instead.
> My dad explained it to me best.
I'm glad you have a found memory of your dad explaining it to you, but this bunch of folk wisdom is killing is killing this country.
Calling them fond memories is not a way I would have characterized them. Regardless, the same strategy regarding home ownership worked for me.
Of course to your point there's no telling if I had been renting and putting every extra dollar into the stock market if I might not have come out ahead. But realistically how many people "invest" in that manner with their income? I can tell you my blue-collar background had not raised me to be investment savvy. (I would have no idea what capital gains were until I was probably in my forties.) I suspect that for most people with similar upbringing an investment in their home is their only significant investment in their lifetime — or it was once that way.
(Who knew they were killing this country.)
I guess that one's out the window now as well then if they can't even afford that.
Unexpected repair and upkeep cost — you're suggesting the landlords just eat that?
(In my case I have learned to do repairs myself. That has been very liberating, FWIW.)
If I am following, your alternative is that we all become renters for life — using any extra money we have to invest in the stock market?
> If I am following, your alternative is that we all become renters for life — using any extra money we have to invest in the stock market?
So yes, given the current situation, that is the mathematically best option for many, many people, far more than people think.
I'm sympathetic though to the idea that asking everyone to be "savvy" is not workable. (Of course, meeting the societal expectation that "unsavvy" home buying also yields nice returns also has major costs.) I think the right answer is probably that the government should think about making sure people have very simple retirement savings vehicles. For example, allowing you to buy more into social security and then get more back.
I think it's really difficult to put a number or dollar figure on the sense of security you'd feel living in a home you own with no mortgage, especially in retirement years.
Well, it's probably not $1 and also not $1,000,000,000 right?
The point is that people should run the numbers. If they are close enough, sure, go with your gut preference, but if they are way different than you expected, maybe give it a little extra consideration.
A lot of people point out these intangibles to give themselves licensed to not run the numbers, and just assume what they want to be true is true, and I'm sorry, but the argument ("intangible, hard to measure benefits exist" and yes they do) just doesn't support a conclusion that strong.
It's also a little more than that. After having raised a family and seen the nest empty, the wife and I can downsize at any time into a smaller (less expensive) home. The difference in the price of the homes will obviously help in retirement.
Don’t be a dick.
Also, economists agree that owning property is still one of the best ways of generating long-term wealth. It’s not folk wisdom. It’s science.
We were lucky enough to buy this year, and I love the house we bought and the location it resides in, but honestly, I enjoyed being a renter, and I wish the stigma around renting would go away.
Until then, affordability will continue to suffer as long as housing is treated as an appreciating asset. They are diametrically opposing goals. To wit, Americans have been stretching their finances to get into their first homes for a long time (think 401(k) loans and ARMs of the past).
In my very recent experience... I don't think this statement holds as much water as it did a year ago or even six months ago. Right now, in the Phoenix metro area, I'm seeing properties sit on the market for over 100+ days, complete with price cuts, before closing now. Sellers are also far more willing to factor in concessions to help a sale close.
It's for this reason that I'm now considering a purchase for the first time in years. I missed the boat after the pandemic… so I decided to wait. I think my patience is paying off.
And in my experience a bunch of my neighbors are selling their homes for massively more than they bought them for a few years ago. One sold so fast I couldn't even go view it.
It is a mistake to think this is not by design. The lack of proper taxing for big companies owning land and houses for renting is ridiculously low and completely put on tenants.
These taxes should be exponential and force a cap to where such businesses can make money.
Own nothing structure is the worst possible future. You become a slave of work and your life is completely unstable as little fluctuations are passed down to people.
This is already happening with all little services that we pay for and there is absolute no reason to not think it will happen to everything.
I'd really like to see individual states put limits on foreign ownership as well as the number of rental 1-4 family units a company (including subsidiaries) one can own.
I think there are just some kinds of housing where ownership doesn't make sense; any sort of shared building requires an HOA fee, and the mortgage for a 1-bed in a shared building could easily have an HOA fee that's half the cost.
What's more is the most up-to-date data says housing is becoming more affordable, at least in cities with a high percent of illegal immigration. This is a story about millionaires who now have to temporarily rent after their million dollar home burned down and they wait for the market to adjust. It's sad, but not reflective of the average person or their experience
On the other hand, Vancouver is doing a phenomenal job building up compared to San Francisco. So there's plenty to be jealous about on both sides of the equation.
What if we had some sort of voting system that allowed people to have some say into what they value? You wouldn't give everyone the same amount of voting credit, we'd allocate these voting credits to people depending on how much value we think they provide society.
Some might value having a nicer car and smaller house, others might want more land, and then depending on how people 'vote' with those credits.
According to the last US census, the tract I live in in Chicago is one of the densest places in the city outside of central districts with high-rises.
I live in a two flat. When I go outside, I am greeted by squirrels and the honey bees from next door (the lady keeps them to help her garden, which is beautiful). Large, lush trees line the block from and back. The only smells that waft over are the smells from other people's cooking.
The loudest nuisances are leaf blowers, loud cars, car horns, and dirt bikes. All things that occured at the same rate, if not more, in the single-family-home-only suburb I grew up in.
The most danger in my day to day life is caused by people in cars: driving too fast, not stopping and yielding when proper and required, and generally just being shit at piloting a vehicle. This was far more pronounced in the same suburb I grew up in, to the point of being so oppressive I couldn't really go anywhere without one.
Literally nothing about my "dense" living is loud (to an unreasonable degree), smelly (unless like, other people grilling chicken is offensive to you), or dangerous (vs the baseline rates at least).
No one should be forcing you to live in a "prison" like mine (where I can walk 5 minutes to an excellent grocery store or 10 minutes to a larger supermarket, god, the horror!), but you shouldn't be forcing me to live in a "prison" like a sprawled out SFH only suburb by encoding your preferences into zoning code and law. The simple fact is that more people prefer to live like I do, given what houses are going for around here, exacerbated all the more by the fact that if my neighborhood burned down, it would be *illegal* to build it back the way it exists now.
I am happy for you that you are living in a community that sounds like it is more or less to your liking. I am not saying your lifestyle should be illegal or prohibitively expensive, which I think you are saying certain pro-SFH people with zoning/lobbying power are trying to do. I am definitely against those types of people.
I do agree as well that cars are a nuissance and a danger. My ideal view of the world involves SFH with acreage, and the banning of noisy gas cars and leafblowers. I don't even like electric cars all that much, I would prefer most people bike, and that heavy delivery trucks deliver to centralized locations instead of everywhere. I will not excuse the actions of fellow car drivers at all.
What I will vehemently defend, however, is the rational pricing and legality of single family housing with acreage. There is no possible way that I will live with people surrounding me on 6 sides, banging their feet on the ground, blasting music, cooking all their different cuisines going into a shared AC system, screaming. There is no possible way I will put myself in proximity to those, thanks to the way our world is architected, choose violent crime on random bystanders.
You cannot take that right away from me, and if you do, I will go somewhere where I still have that right. And if there is nowhere left to go, then you know what happens next, and only history can give you examples from then on, such as what happened to the Ukrainian Kulaks in the 1930s.
Ideally what I would like is a land value tax. This would result in a lot of current suburbs being redeveloped into something denser.
It would still be possible to live fairly far out in a single family home (where basically multi-unit buildings wouldn't "outbid" SFHers for the land / land rent obligation), but I suspect only the "true believers" would take this option.
To the extent one believes in markets acting fairly, this should be very fair. If people really do greatly prefer by and large SFHs, the value of land as apartments should be lower than expected: more people per land, getting value from the land, but getting less value because of the unpleasant nature of apartments.
This! i don't see how people think it's acceptable to cram people together like livestock when they object to the same conditions happening to chicken livestock.
But the amount of population decline needed to give everyone American-style suburbs that are small enough to not have horrible commutes is....a lot.
If you go to Europe, you can see ~5 story density is not loud, not smelly, and not dangerous though. It's also not dangerous in America either (but loudness and smells are problems because we're dumb as shit about these things). So I dunno, you do you, but I in the city don't wanna subsidize your coddling in the myriad ways I do today.
> I in the city don't wanna subsidize your coddling in the myriad ways I do today.
Then stop...? Subsidies have an expected return on investment. If that isn't being realized, there is no reason for you to continue. I bet you won't, though. It is easy to say you don't want to give when it is nothing more than talk. Acting upon it, however, necessitates giving up what you get in return, and we both know you don't actually want to give that up.
1. How do you think taxes are paid, exactly, that removes choice? Certainly if you don't pay taxes you will be cut off from everything that taxes offer in return, so it is unlikely to be a choice you want to make, but we already went down that road of what happens if you give up on your end of the bargain.
2. Taxes aren't paid to a magical deity in the sky. It is merely a pool of resources shared by a community. How the resources are used are up to the community. The community equally expects a return on subsidies.
Sure. That's a pretty good way to ensure that you don't see the benefits if you don't contribute. At a national scale it is probably the only way to ensure it as it is pretty hard to keep tabs on someone otherwise.
> that his taxes subsidize my SFH lifestyle, then he is correct to say that he is tired of being forced to coddle me.
He isn't forced to. He can remove himself from the community which he does not align with. Even better, he can work to reshape the community to fit his expectations. If the subsidy isn't working, he won't be alone in wanting change. No doubt the community is simply waiting for someone to stand up and resolve the matter. Things don't get fixed by way of magic. But being part of a community that sees a need for subsidies is part of the expected return on investment. The community wouldn't be what it is without those subsidies.
And if America wasn't working for you, you'd have already done it. You wouldn't be the first. In reality, you maintain ties because you see the value you get in return.
But America isn't apt here anyway. In this case, it was said that it was a city that was offering the subsidy. It isn't unusual to leave a city when it isn't working for you. People leave the city they once called home every day because it no longer meets their needs.
In fact, in many circles you are considered a bit of an odd-ball if you don't leave the place you call home from time to time in recognition that it is unlikely that the community you found yourself in (e.g. because you were born there) is the community that is actually right for you.
No the city does not choose to subsidize the suburbs. These decisions are not made at the city-level. (Not, to say, that I necessarily like the decisions that are made at the city-level either.)
American state and local governance is generally pretty dogshit. But this is where I am from, and this is where most of the people that I know live, so...sucks. Just because those reasons (or "frictions", if you assume I could meet other people somewhere else just fine) lead me to stay (for now) doesn't mean that there are not real problems.
> No the city does not choose to subsidize the suburbs.
Cities do often subsidize suburbs by their own choice. Absent in this thread is exactly what subsidies are being discussed, of course. But either way, moving away from the city still removes one from the situation. It was made abundantly clear that it was the city offering the subsidy. Don't like the city, don't be there. Simple as that.
> doesn't mean that there are not real problems.
"If the subsidy isn't working, he won't be alone in wanting change. No doubt the community is simply waiting for someone to stand up and resolve the matter. Things don't get fixed by way of magic."
If all of this is to say that the value you find in the subsidy is simply that it allows you to be lazy — to not have to do anything about it — that can certainly still be valuable. We're not here to judge what one finds valuable.
But what is clear is that there is some kind of value that is recognized, but withheld from the reader. "I don't want to subsidize X" is a stupid statement without also "and I am willing to give up A, B, and C" for it to go. There isn't a person on earth who wants to give something in a vacuum.
The US is in a state of immense grid-lock. It is not that the suburbs like ripping me off more than I like being ripped off, it's that everyone has very limited power against an extremely inert status quo.
I am not currently involved with efforts to e.g. repeal the mortgage tax deduction, change highway vs public transit funding ratios, institute a land value tax and other things, but I am very involved with https://www.etany.org/ and peripherally involved with https://opennewyork.org/, which ought to change some things. This is the best I can do for now.
I would be very interested in hearing how you subsidize my lifestyle, and I will refrain from flippant attacks like "do you pay my mortgage" because it sounds like you are alleging there is some externality that I am producing that you are paying for.
Regarding horrible commutes, I for one believe that it is the companies who demand in person work who are the ones who are being coddled here with transport infrastructure. In reality, we need a two speed road network-- one for seriously heavy trucking, and the other for bikes. I have no problem giving up my personal car, if that's the angle you are going to take.
Whatever the closest shared government you have pays more to provide services to sparsely-populated areas than densely-populated ones.
But frequently, those governments do not charge people who live in sparsely-populated areas enough to cover those increased costs.
For example, a mile of urban street/utilities might serve 40,000 people, while a mile of suburban street/utilities may serve 400.
There's a decent amount of writing and videos on the subject, both for[1] and against[2]. The "for" arguments have convinced me because they use data and are presented by experts in urban planning and government, while the "against" arguments rely on appealing to principles/emotion and are frequently presented by politicians who treat the suggestion as a cultural threat.
My reaction to this information is, anyone is welcome to build a city. I don't think the government should block you from it. I'll even pay part of my salary to keep you there.
But do not come looking to me to adopt your way of life. Furthermore, if that means that you in turn shut off my sewer and electric and police and etc, I have absolutely no problem with that.
Thanks to technology, it has never been easier for me to have my own self contained sewer, my own solar panels, my own well/water delivery.
Yes you can say these things are inefficient, but as always life is a spectrum. Does your apartment have its own heat producing unit? Why aren't you using the soviet style centralized heat system that heats the whole town? They don't even have thermostats-- just open a window!
Trust me, I don't want any of your hand outs, I'm sorry I receive them at all. And I'm sorry that SFH people mess up your zoning on purpose playing dirty politics games. I don't support any of that, and I'm happy to let my house drop in value. But my land is my land, and anything one inch outside of that is not.
It is far more common for HOAs to be under priced and neglected.
They are run by elected volunteers (from member homeowners); and approximately no one wants to volunteer. What everyone does want is lower dues. When combined with the minimal effort that goes into running most HOAs, this tends to cause them to reduce dues by neglecting maintenance and emergency reserves. Then, when the bill comes due, they need to issue a large special assessment to cover the cost.
Many HOAs do suck, but density unfortunately does require greater coordination amount residents. Either the residents do it themselves, or the landlord does it.
Single stair allowing narrower buildings side by side ameliorates them problem though, in that the units of coordination are much smaller.
Or the local government does it. Which is one of the reasons HOAs took of. Local governments realized that they could avoid work if they required developers to created HOAs to take care of that pesky local governance.
> For decades part of the logic for buying a house was that, after the down payment, mortgage payments were generally cheaper than renting.
I thought the logic was that, after say 30 years, you own the home you were making mortgage payments on.
My dad explained it to me best. He had bought a single-family house in Homer, Alaska after having moved up there and working in construction for a number of years. He had never owned a home in his life. He got a 30-year fixed loan. He said at the time he was questioning himself as to what he was doing — mortgage payments were something like $400 a month!
"Ten years on, you know what the monthly mortgage was?" he asked me. "$400 a month," was his (obvious) answer. He laughed when he said it because at the time that would have been peanuts for rent.
He wasn't there for the whole of 30 years but had enough equity in the home some years later that when he did sell it he was able to outright purchase land out East End and build a new home on it.
To be sure, times have changed — the market has changed (interest rates have changed of nothing else). But putting money toward ownership still seems like a win.
Certainly over mortgage payments is balanced by risk of unexpected repair and upkeep costs. Property capital gains is balanced by the capital gains you could have from investing in other things instead.
> My dad explained it to me best.
I'm glad you have a found memory of your dad explaining it to you, but this bunch of folk wisdom is killing is killing this country.
One has to actually run the numbers to see how all the things net out. I would start with https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/upshot/buy-rent-cal...
Calling them fond memories is not a way I would have characterized them. Regardless, the same strategy regarding home ownership worked for me.
Of course to your point there's no telling if I had been renting and putting every extra dollar into the stock market if I might not have come out ahead. But realistically how many people "invest" in that manner with their income? I can tell you my blue-collar background had not raised me to be investment savvy. (I would have no idea what capital gains were until I was probably in my forties.) I suspect that for most people with similar upbringing an investment in their home is their only significant investment in their lifetime — or it was once that way.
(Who knew they were killing this country.)
I guess that one's out the window now as well then if they can't even afford that.
Unexpected repair and upkeep cost — you're suggesting the landlords just eat that?
(In my case I have learned to do repairs myself. That has been very liberating, FWIW.)
If I am following, your alternative is that we all become renters for life — using any extra money we have to invest in the stock market?
> If I am following, your alternative is that we all become renters for life — using any extra money we have to invest in the stock market?
So yes, given the current situation, that is the mathematically best option for many, many people, far more than people think.
I'm sympathetic though to the idea that asking everyone to be "savvy" is not workable. (Of course, meeting the societal expectation that "unsavvy" home buying also yields nice returns also has major costs.) I think the right answer is probably that the government should think about making sure people have very simple retirement savings vehicles. For example, allowing you to buy more into social security and then get more back.
I think it's really difficult to put a number or dollar figure on the sense of security you'd feel living in a home you own with no mortgage, especially in retirement years.
Well, it's probably not $1 and also not $1,000,000,000 right?
The point is that people should run the numbers. If they are close enough, sure, go with your gut preference, but if they are way different than you expected, maybe give it a little extra consideration.
A lot of people point out these intangibles to give themselves licensed to not run the numbers, and just assume what they want to be true is true, and I'm sorry, but the argument ("intangible, hard to measure benefits exist" and yes they do) just doesn't support a conclusion that strong.
It's also a little more than that. After having raised a family and seen the nest empty, the wife and I can downsize at any time into a smaller (less expensive) home. The difference in the price of the homes will obviously help in retirement.
That's just the capital gains argument restated. The question is what the other capital gains would be.
Right. The mortgage is the floor; the rent payment is a rising ceiling
You get it :)
Don’t be a dick. Also, economists agree that owning property is still one of the best ways of generating long-term wealth. It’s not folk wisdom. It’s science.
https://archive.ph/QqQaf
We were lucky enough to buy this year, and I love the house we bought and the location it resides in, but honestly, I enjoyed being a renter, and I wish the stigma around renting would go away.
Until then, affordability will continue to suffer as long as housing is treated as an appreciating asset. They are diametrically opposing goals. To wit, Americans have been stretching their finances to get into their first homes for a long time (think 401(k) loans and ARMs of the past).
In my very recent experience... I don't think this statement holds as much water as it did a year ago or even six months ago. Right now, in the Phoenix metro area, I'm seeing properties sit on the market for over 100+ days, complete with price cuts, before closing now. Sellers are also far more willing to factor in concessions to help a sale close.
It's for this reason that I'm now considering a purchase for the first time in years. I missed the boat after the pandemic… so I decided to wait. I think my patience is paying off.
And in my experience a bunch of my neighbors are selling their homes for massively more than they bought them for a few years ago. One sold so fast I couldn't even go view it.
I'm in Rhode Island
I think this goes to show how hyper local real estate really is.
It is a mistake to think this is not by design. The lack of proper taxing for big companies owning land and houses for renting is ridiculously low and completely put on tenants.
These taxes should be exponential and force a cap to where such businesses can make money.
Own nothing structure is the worst possible future. You become a slave of work and your life is completely unstable as little fluctuations are passed down to people.
This is already happening with all little services that we pay for and there is absolute no reason to not think it will happen to everything.
I'd really like to see individual states put limits on foreign ownership as well as the number of rental 1-4 family units a company (including subsidiaries) one can own.
I think there are just some kinds of housing where ownership doesn't make sense; any sort of shared building requires an HOA fee, and the mortgage for a 1-bed in a shared building could easily have an HOA fee that's half the cost.
What's more is the most up-to-date data says housing is becoming more affordable, at least in cities with a high percent of illegal immigration. This is a story about millionaires who now have to temporarily rent after their million dollar home burned down and they wait for the market to adjust. It's sad, but not reflective of the average person or their experience
I envy Americans. Your average house price is 5x the average income and you all are becoming aware of it and complaining about it.
In Canada, that ratio is 12x and we're taking it while convincing ourselves it's normal...
On the other hand, Vancouver is doing a phenomenal job building up compared to San Francisco. So there's plenty to be jealous about on both sides of the equation.
[flagged]
What if we had some sort of voting system that allowed people to have some say into what they value? You wouldn't give everyone the same amount of voting credit, we'd allocate these voting credits to people depending on how much value we think they provide society.
Some might value having a nicer car and smaller house, others might want more land, and then depending on how people 'vote' with those credits.
Sorry, dense housing is loud, smelly, and dangerous. You can't force me to live in a prison like that.
The world simply needs less people. Trying to cram more people into less space is inhumane.
According to the last US census, the tract I live in in Chicago is one of the densest places in the city outside of central districts with high-rises.
I live in a two flat. When I go outside, I am greeted by squirrels and the honey bees from next door (the lady keeps them to help her garden, which is beautiful). Large, lush trees line the block from and back. The only smells that waft over are the smells from other people's cooking.
The loudest nuisances are leaf blowers, loud cars, car horns, and dirt bikes. All things that occured at the same rate, if not more, in the single-family-home-only suburb I grew up in.
The most danger in my day to day life is caused by people in cars: driving too fast, not stopping and yielding when proper and required, and generally just being shit at piloting a vehicle. This was far more pronounced in the same suburb I grew up in, to the point of being so oppressive I couldn't really go anywhere without one.
Literally nothing about my "dense" living is loud (to an unreasonable degree), smelly (unless like, other people grilling chicken is offensive to you), or dangerous (vs the baseline rates at least).
No one should be forcing you to live in a "prison" like mine (where I can walk 5 minutes to an excellent grocery store or 10 minutes to a larger supermarket, god, the horror!), but you shouldn't be forcing me to live in a "prison" like a sprawled out SFH only suburb by encoding your preferences into zoning code and law. The simple fact is that more people prefer to live like I do, given what houses are going for around here, exacerbated all the more by the fact that if my neighborhood burned down, it would be *illegal* to build it back the way it exists now.
Ok, let me try to take your post point by point.
I am happy for you that you are living in a community that sounds like it is more or less to your liking. I am not saying your lifestyle should be illegal or prohibitively expensive, which I think you are saying certain pro-SFH people with zoning/lobbying power are trying to do. I am definitely against those types of people.
I do agree as well that cars are a nuissance and a danger. My ideal view of the world involves SFH with acreage, and the banning of noisy gas cars and leafblowers. I don't even like electric cars all that much, I would prefer most people bike, and that heavy delivery trucks deliver to centralized locations instead of everywhere. I will not excuse the actions of fellow car drivers at all.
What I will vehemently defend, however, is the rational pricing and legality of single family housing with acreage. There is no possible way that I will live with people surrounding me on 6 sides, banging their feet on the ground, blasting music, cooking all their different cuisines going into a shared AC system, screaming. There is no possible way I will put myself in proximity to those, thanks to the way our world is architected, choose violent crime on random bystanders.
You cannot take that right away from me, and if you do, I will go somewhere where I still have that right. And if there is nowhere left to go, then you know what happens next, and only history can give you examples from then on, such as what happened to the Ukrainian Kulaks in the 1930s.
Ideally what I would like is a land value tax. This would result in a lot of current suburbs being redeveloped into something denser.
It would still be possible to live fairly far out in a single family home (where basically multi-unit buildings wouldn't "outbid" SFHers for the land / land rent obligation), but I suspect only the "true believers" would take this option.
To the extent one believes in markets acting fairly, this should be very fair. If people really do greatly prefer by and large SFHs, the value of land as apartments should be lower than expected: more people per land, getting value from the land, but getting less value because of the unpleasant nature of apartments.
This! i don't see how people think it's acceptable to cram people together like livestock when they object to the same conditions happening to chicken livestock.
Get excited, the world is gonna have less people!
But the amount of population decline needed to give everyone American-style suburbs that are small enough to not have horrible commutes is....a lot.
If you go to Europe, you can see ~5 story density is not loud, not smelly, and not dangerous though. It's also not dangerous in America either (but loudness and smells are problems because we're dumb as shit about these things). So I dunno, you do you, but I in the city don't wanna subsidize your coddling in the myriad ways I do today.
> I in the city don't wanna subsidize your coddling in the myriad ways I do today.
Then stop...? Subsidies have an expected return on investment. If that isn't being realized, there is no reason for you to continue. I bet you won't, though. It is easy to say you don't want to give when it is nothing more than talk. Acting upon it, however, necessitates giving up what you get in return, and we both know you don't actually want to give that up.
Sorry I'm not sure I agree with this either. How does he have a choice to not pay taxes?
1. How do you think taxes are paid, exactly, that removes choice? Certainly if you don't pay taxes you will be cut off from everything that taxes offer in return, so it is unlikely to be a choice you want to make, but we already went down that road of what happens if you give up on your end of the bargain.
2. Taxes aren't paid to a magical deity in the sky. It is merely a pool of resources shared by a community. How the resources are used are up to the community. The community equally expects a return on subsidies.
I don't exactly understand. If you don't pay taxes in the USA (as a normal every day person), you will literally be put into jail.
If it is true what he is saying, that his taxes subsidize my SFH lifestyle, then he is correct to say that he is tired of being forced to coddle me.
> you will literally be put into jail.
Sure. That's a pretty good way to ensure that you don't see the benefits if you don't contribute. At a national scale it is probably the only way to ensure it as it is pretty hard to keep tabs on someone otherwise.
> that his taxes subsidize my SFH lifestyle, then he is correct to say that he is tired of being forced to coddle me.
He isn't forced to. He can remove himself from the community which he does not align with. Even better, he can work to reshape the community to fit his expectations. If the subsidy isn't working, he won't be alone in wanting change. No doubt the community is simply waiting for someone to stand up and resolve the matter. Things don't get fixed by way of magic. But being part of a community that sees a need for subsidies is part of the expected return on investment. The community wouldn't be what it is without those subsidies.
I would have to leave America, become a citizen elsewhere, and renounce my American citizenship to avoid paying federal taxes.
And if America wasn't working for you, you'd have already done it. You wouldn't be the first. In reality, you maintain ties because you see the value you get in return.
But America isn't apt here anyway. In this case, it was said that it was a city that was offering the subsidy. It isn't unusual to leave a city when it isn't working for you. People leave the city they once called home every day because it no longer meets their needs.
In fact, in many circles you are considered a bit of an odd-ball if you don't leave the place you call home from time to time in recognition that it is unlikely that the community you found yourself in (e.g. because you were born there) is the community that is actually right for you.
No the city does not choose to subsidize the suburbs. These decisions are not made at the city-level. (Not, to say, that I necessarily like the decisions that are made at the city-level either.)
American state and local governance is generally pretty dogshit. But this is where I am from, and this is where most of the people that I know live, so...sucks. Just because those reasons (or "frictions", if you assume I could meet other people somewhere else just fine) lead me to stay (for now) doesn't mean that there are not real problems.
> No the city does not choose to subsidize the suburbs.
Cities do often subsidize suburbs by their own choice. Absent in this thread is exactly what subsidies are being discussed, of course. But either way, moving away from the city still removes one from the situation. It was made abundantly clear that it was the city offering the subsidy. Don't like the city, don't be there. Simple as that.
> doesn't mean that there are not real problems.
"If the subsidy isn't working, he won't be alone in wanting change. No doubt the community is simply waiting for someone to stand up and resolve the matter. Things don't get fixed by way of magic."
If all of this is to say that the value you find in the subsidy is simply that it allows you to be lazy — to not have to do anything about it — that can certainly still be valuable. We're not here to judge what one finds valuable.
But what is clear is that there is some kind of value that is recognized, but withheld from the reader. "I don't want to subsidize X" is a stupid statement without also "and I am willing to give up A, B, and C" for it to go. There isn't a person on earth who wants to give something in a vacuum.
The US is in a state of immense grid-lock. It is not that the suburbs like ripping me off more than I like being ripped off, it's that everyone has very limited power against an extremely inert status quo.
I am not currently involved with efforts to e.g. repeal the mortgage tax deduction, change highway vs public transit funding ratios, institute a land value tax and other things, but I am very involved with https://www.etany.org/ and peripherally involved with https://opennewyork.org/, which ought to change some things. This is the best I can do for now.
I would be very interested in hearing how you subsidize my lifestyle, and I will refrain from flippant attacks like "do you pay my mortgage" because it sounds like you are alleging there is some externality that I am producing that you are paying for.
Regarding horrible commutes, I for one believe that it is the companies who demand in person work who are the ones who are being coddled here with transport infrastructure. In reality, we need a two speed road network-- one for seriously heavy trucking, and the other for bikes. I have no problem giving up my personal car, if that's the angle you are going to take.
> and I will refrain from flippant attacks like "do you pay my mortgage"
Well to start with, have you heard of the Mortgage Interest Tax Deduction? I quite arguably do contribute to your mortgage!
The actual answer is far more complex. https://www.strongtowns.org/ has some info, though some of their stuff is debatable.
Whatever the closest shared government you have pays more to provide services to sparsely-populated areas than densely-populated ones.
But frequently, those governments do not charge people who live in sparsely-populated areas enough to cover those increased costs.
For example, a mile of urban street/utilities might serve 40,000 people, while a mile of suburban street/utilities may serve 400.
There's a decent amount of writing and videos on the subject, both for[1] and against[2]. The "for" arguments have convinced me because they use data and are presented by experts in urban planning and government, while the "against" arguments rely on appealing to principles/emotion and are frequently presented by politicians who treat the suggestion as a cultural threat.
1: https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason...
2: https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/do-cities-really-subsidiz...
My reaction to this information is, anyone is welcome to build a city. I don't think the government should block you from it. I'll even pay part of my salary to keep you there.
But do not come looking to me to adopt your way of life. Furthermore, if that means that you in turn shut off my sewer and electric and police and etc, I have absolutely no problem with that.
Thanks to technology, it has never been easier for me to have my own self contained sewer, my own solar panels, my own well/water delivery.
Yes you can say these things are inefficient, but as always life is a spectrum. Does your apartment have its own heat producing unit? Why aren't you using the soviet style centralized heat system that heats the whole town? They don't even have thermostats-- just open a window!
Trust me, I don't want any of your hand outs, I'm sorry I receive them at all. And I'm sorry that SFH people mess up your zoning on purpose playing dirty politics games. I don't support any of that, and I'm happy to let my house drop in value. But my land is my land, and anything one inch outside of that is not.
There are plenty of open spaces outside of cities.
Preventing people from having children would be much more inhumane than forcing people to live in condos.
But don't condos tend to involve HOAs, which are often overpriced and corrupt?
I swore off renting and HOAs many years ago. But for city life, there's not much of a choice, absoulutely.
It is far more common for HOAs to be under priced and neglected.
They are run by elected volunteers (from member homeowners); and approximately no one wants to volunteer. What everyone does want is lower dues. When combined with the minimal effort that goes into running most HOAs, this tends to cause them to reduce dues by neglecting maintenance and emergency reserves. Then, when the bill comes due, they need to issue a large special assessment to cover the cost.
Many HOAs do suck, but density unfortunately does require greater coordination amount residents. Either the residents do it themselves, or the landlord does it.
Single stair allowing narrower buildings side by side ameliorates them problem though, in that the units of coordination are much smaller.
Or the local government does it. Which is one of the reasons HOAs took of. Local governments realized that they could avoid work if they required developers to created HOAs to take care of that pesky local governance.
Having a hoa fee also changes your mortgage math.