Not sure I agree with the title that no one can ”escape” it. I think the wealth hoarding class does very nicely out of everyone else’s misery. Perhaps if things don’t turn around their grand children might go from owning the whole country to facing a guillotine.
More likely once there is a large enough percentage of people who will have no hope of owning, then they will start to have an effect at the polling booth.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflection of the voice; at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength, would have no need to conspire. They need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it.
So basically it says the homeowners will be affected because if they have children they will need to help them … And for those who have already purchased a home at an expensive price, their mortgage is impacted. Top Notch journalism.
Yeah ‘it’s coming for homeowners!!!’ = house prices are obscenely high and unobtainable for a significant portion of the population.
Like…no shit, that was the housing crisis before landlords found a new level of cunt to descend to.
The problem is that if you own a home and you’ve paid off the mortgage or paid it down over 20 years already then there’s no reason to sell, meaning prices likely won’t fall that much as people will prefer to sit on their asset than to sell at a loss, or at a perceived loss relative to what they were previously told the market would pay for it.
The only mechanism for prices to actually return to earth and make housing affordable again is wage growth and inflation, and the hope that housing prices don’t simply rise alongside wage growth. The only way out of this catastrophe is for inflation to reduce the value of money while house prices remain static in nominal terms. And even the “left” government of Australia see “tackling inflation” and “constraining wage growth to prevent inflation” as critical policy priorities.
Inflation driven by wage growth is actually the medicine needed. But this would hurt the already very wealthy minority so the cure is verboten and branded economic heresy by technocrats and the spineless neoliberals serving the interests of the wealthy that dare to call themselves the Labor Party.
Even if you conquer the mountain of ending negative gearing and the insanely generous tax subsidies that investors get, even then you need to wait a decade just to see prices enter a sane range relative to income again.
Millennials are doomed. Half of them will be renting until they die. The only way out of this trap is to making own 3-10 homes a bad investment. But can you imagine any Australian government decommodifying housing? It’s not going to happen which means a generation of renters and a poverty time bomb when the millennials want to retire.
For people stuck in the renting trap already in their 40s, they’re doomed now and the best idea the intelligentsia have is “maybe just live with your rich parents who sent you to a private school a bit longer and ask them for a loan.”
What’s needed is (1) a sudden and total end to the enormous subsidy given to the already wealthy in the form of tax incentives for property investment and speculation, (2) inflation driven driven by wage growth to reduce the real value of housing to bring it back to an affordable level.
Neither of the major political parties are unwilling to do (1) and even the “left” of politics view wage growth and inflation as the key evils that hurt “the economy”.
So we’re fucked. Time to read Mao.
Those houses are enormous! They’re bigger than some apartment complexes I’ve lived in. But they’re all right next to each other, and there’s not a tree in sight. I’m guessing it’s a brand new development for the upper-middle class. Is that right?
No. These houses are normally bought by recent migrants looking for a place to settle and raise a family. At least that’s the demographic most commonly buying them in Melbourne. It’s way more affordable and attainable than buying in the trendy in-demand inner and middle suburbs. People are often mortgaged to the absolute maximum of their abilities to get a foot in the door. The style of house is often sold as a pre-designed package by the developers, with little scope to change the design. And if you do want to change it, that’s extra cost that the buyers often cannot afford. Don’t blame the people living here, they are just trying to find a place to live. The blame needs to be with the government and councils for not setting better regulations for developers to allow for more green space, transport and amenities. Better yet, clearing the way for more family friendly mid and high density infill in the inner and middle suburbs, so the sprawl can be slowed.
Wait, how much does one of these cost? Those would be very expensive in the USA, given their size, and the fact that they look to be brand new.
Are you from the US? Think of Melbourne and Sydney like any huge populous city there. Closer to the centre costs more, even if it’s smaller. Location not size is the main driver of cost. A 2 bedroom apartment in Fitzroy (inner city) can cost more than a 4 bedroom house in Mernda (new development at city outskirts).
Yes, I’m in Seattle. A house like these would be over half a million dollars, an hour away from the edge of the city. There are little towns dotting the outskirts of King County, and they’re all still prohibitively expensive.
Oh they still are well and truly over that here. but a one bedroom unit closeish (Newtown in Sydney as an example) to the city would be about a half million usd
The guillotine is how they won’t escape the crisis.
Where I disagree is on owning a house. This should not be a primary thing whatever the wealth you have. It’s how people make other wealthier.
Housing is a human right as well as food. It can’t be a human right without having a majority of the housing in public hands. It’s not free or common housing. It’s to give affordable rent to everyone and make housing speculation not worth it.
Owning a house is a primary thing, but only a single one where you live long term and keep your belongings. Otherwise how can you expect any kind of privacy (a landlord not coming in with their own set of keys) or that your belongings won’t get thrashed while you’re at work or abroad for a longer time?
People need housing - it’s demand is inelastic, meaning that market forces fail around it - people will pay whatever they have to in order to keep a roof over their heads.
For an example of what this market failure looks like when you commodify essentials, look to the US healthcare system.
We’re a wealthy society that could provide these essentials, but we’d rather allow people to amass enough personal wealth that they can single-handedly undermine our democracy. Stop playing defence for the people treading on you - the chances of you benefiting from this dynamic are vanishingly small.
Revolutions without the pre-work tend to lead to a reconsolidation of power and resources into autocracy - but there’s plenty of other steps we can take in the right direction. Voting and advocacy is a good start.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Experts have published numerous reports on this topic in recent years for the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).
They’ve explained how that change in policy has led to a situation in which it’s become increasingly unrealistic for younger Australians to be able to buy a home by simply working hard.
They say a huge number of problems younger people face can be traced back to the 1980s and 1990s, when major reforms to Australia’s labour market regulations and wage-setting institutions, initiated by the Hawke-Keating Labor governments, contributed to the disappearance of the “norm” of full-time secure work.
“We know that in 2010 around about 12 per cent of people [who were] first home buyers were getting assistance from the bank of mum and dad,” University of Newcastle youth sociologist Julia Cook told ABC RN’s The Money podcast last month.
Other researchers have noted that, for people who have managed to get into home ownership, larger mortgage debts are causing an increasing number of older workers to delay their retirement.
“This is comfortably the largest share of the population citing these problems since the question was first asked in 2011,” lead researcher Dr James O’Donnell, from ANU, said.
The original article contains 1,091 words, the summary contains 199 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Stop leaving out important bits ffs
I live in NYC. Many Wall Street office buildings have already been repurposed as apartments/condos.
interesting as everytime I see this suggested everyone talks about how it’s too hard to do that. I don’t deny there are challenges involved but it always felt like such a copout when I’ve seen literal grain silos turned into apartments
They started a while ago, because it was much cheaper to convert the older buildings to housing than it was to rewire them to handle computers and the HVAC computers need.
imho, the building owners will cry about how hard it is until they get a fat subsidy to convert.
Yeah we’re at an inflection point. I’m not really sure where we’ll go next, housing crash? Move to small homes or mobile homes? Migration to smaller towns?
Personally I might move to a smaller town myself, somewhere I can afford a simpler lifestyle and either work for myself or a remote online job. Big cities are for visiting, not for living in.
Good.
