I've used the analogy before of the game of musical chairs. If you add one more chair, it's not the fastest kid who benefits the most, he would have gotten a seat regardless. It's the slowest kid that now gets a seat who wouldn't have without the extra chair, even if it's not the specific new chair you added.
Yes! Love the musical chairs analogy. I became familiar with it from the authors of Homelessness is a Housing Problem (homelessnesshousingproblem.com). But interestingly, I just googled to find a direct quote and found it invoked in an article from...
drumroll...
1990.
We have literally been arguing about this for 34 years and are still doing so. Lolsob.
I had come up with one around forcing people to complete a race in faster and faster times (akin to increasing rents) before reading the musical chairs one and having to begrudgingly admit it was better :).
People need housing, am living in the North Bay Area, and the prices here are obscene, compared to five to ten years ago. Getting new housing built is not easy at all.
I didn't realize people thought of housing backwards like that. I always just assumed that new fancy housing meant every demographic would shift over one slot into it and open up base layer housing for actual poor people. Patting myself on the back for thinking it through, but kicking myself for missing how other people might see it. Thanks for the explainer!
Awesome piece! Really love how you pointed out the power of visuals, and how these visuals shape the narrative around housing. Big ah-ha moment for me on how to communicate visually on this topic.
Amazing! I just used this toilet paper shortage example with a funder a couple weeks ago. And now you've written the article that I can follow up with!
"To them (homeowners,) it’s mysterious why there should be a housing shortage." No, it's no mystery.
Corporate investors have taken over 30% of the market share. They are acquiring homes to rent out to middle-class families. They also try to dominate the neighborhoods they target by reducing the number of houses available for purchase. According to the California Bureau of Research, three companies already own more than 1,000 single-family homes each, and a fourth company is close to that number. Since the Great Recession, Wall Street has purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family homes. Corporate landlords will raise the price of renting hand over fist because they can. This is precisely why they went into real estate: it's highly profitable.
Politicians will always defer to their constituents during election time and then to their lobbyists, corporate interests and paychecks once in office. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Cities should take more responsibility and capitalism continues to destroy every aspect of society in the name of profit. Here's an article about corporate investors that provides more quantification in the first paragraph: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter23/highlight1.html
We have many laws regarding the need to create affordable housing, but municipalities ignore these in practice or have perhaps, one or two affordable units inside a tall building for appearances. Add to that, the NIMBYism and cheap housing seems like a fantasy some of us were lucky enough to live through from last century. Even the commune owner has to pay for fertilizer, property taxes and utilities, and interest rates have gone down only marginally.
Civil discourse is difficult enough without personal insults, as you see from this thread. Can we really expect people to have empathy and follow through on that idea of doing good just because? President Carter built houses, even at 99, but he was a special guy.
Is it van life for everyone? Are eggs soon to be a thing of the past, too? Along with the 95 percent of the species? Probably. Nothing I can say will change it.
I've used the analogy before of the game of musical chairs. If you add one more chair, it's not the fastest kid who benefits the most, he would have gotten a seat regardless. It's the slowest kid that now gets a seat who wouldn't have without the extra chair, even if it's not the specific new chair you added.
Yes! Love the musical chairs analogy. I became familiar with it from the authors of Homelessness is a Housing Problem (homelessnesshousingproblem.com). But interestingly, I just googled to find a direct quote and found it invoked in an article from...
drumroll...
1990.
We have literally been arguing about this for 34 years and are still doing so. Lolsob.
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2105/AJPH.80.9.1039
Damn, and I thought I came up with that one!
Haha, well great minds think alike!
I had come up with one around forcing people to complete a race in faster and faster times (akin to increasing rents) before reading the musical chairs one and having to begrudgingly admit it was better :).
As a former real estate agent, this is a very well done piece, congratulations.
Thank you so much!
People need housing, am living in the North Bay Area, and the prices here are obscene, compared to five to ten years ago. Getting new housing built is not easy at all.
Yup. I was lucky enough to live in SF circa 2009/2010. A few blocks from Dolores park for like $800-900 per month. Can't imagine what it'd cost now.
I didn't realize people thought of housing backwards like that. I always just assumed that new fancy housing meant every demographic would shift over one slot into it and open up base layer housing for actual poor people. Patting myself on the back for thinking it through, but kicking myself for missing how other people might see it. Thanks for the explainer!
Glad you liked it! And impressed your intuition was 100% in line with research haha. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3929243
I have never thought of this:
"Housing shortages look different because when housing is rented or sold it doesn’t go anywhere, it remains in public."
Also, most people looking for housing aren’t in public where we can see them. They’re at home searching online on Craigslist or Apartments.com."
Or, to think about it another way, people who want to live in a neighborhood but can't get 0 votes at the neighborhood association meeting.
Fantastic piece, thank you.
Cheers, really appreciate it!
Awesome piece! Really love how you pointed out the power of visuals, and how these visuals shape the narrative around housing. Big ah-ha moment for me on how to communicate visually on this topic.
Thanks so much! A picture really is worth a thousand words.
Amazing! I just used this toilet paper shortage example with a funder a couple weeks ago. And now you've written the article that I can follow up with!
That's great! I feel like a lot of people have their own analogies and tricks for explaining these things and it's super helpful to share!
Great read. Just FYI, you've misspelled Jerusalem Demsas' surname as "Desmas" in two places.
Ack, thanks so much for the heads up! Will fix!
"To them (homeowners,) it’s mysterious why there should be a housing shortage." No, it's no mystery.
Corporate investors have taken over 30% of the market share. They are acquiring homes to rent out to middle-class families. They also try to dominate the neighborhoods they target by reducing the number of houses available for purchase. According to the California Bureau of Research, three companies already own more than 1,000 single-family homes each, and a fourth company is close to that number. Since the Great Recession, Wall Street has purchased hundreds of thousands of single-family homes. Corporate landlords will raise the price of renting hand over fist because they can. This is precisely why they went into real estate: it's highly profitable.
Politicians will always defer to their constituents during election time and then to their lobbyists, corporate interests and paychecks once in office. It's not a bug, it's a feature.
Cities should take more responsibility and capitalism continues to destroy every aspect of society in the name of profit. Here's an article about corporate investors that provides more quantification in the first paragraph: https://www.huduser.gov/portal/periodicals/em/winter23/highlight1.html
We have many laws regarding the need to create affordable housing, but municipalities ignore these in practice or have perhaps, one or two affordable units inside a tall building for appearances. Add to that, the NIMBYism and cheap housing seems like a fantasy some of us were lucky enough to live through from last century. Even the commune owner has to pay for fertilizer, property taxes and utilities, and interest rates have gone down only marginally.
Civil discourse is difficult enough without personal insults, as you see from this thread. Can we really expect people to have empathy and follow through on that idea of doing good just because? President Carter built houses, even at 99, but he was a special guy.
Is it van life for everyone? Are eggs soon to be a thing of the past, too? Along with the 95 percent of the species? Probably. Nothing I can say will change it.
TLDR: “They won’t submit because they’re stupid and irrational and childlike, but on the plus side, this means we can manipulate them.”
This is how colonizers talk about the natives.
I hope you find peace.