Originally published at: Don Jr and JD Vance hate first-time homebuyers - Boing Boing
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Cokehead and the Shillbilly* no doubt think that Mr. Potter is the true hero of It’s a Wonderful Life.
[* also the title of an early '80s TV pilot]
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Where are those overly-pedantic NYT and WaPo fact-checkers when you need them?
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It’s good to see our families-are-so-precious-that-they-must-be-protected-from-barren-democrat-spinsters squad going so hard against something that’s often a fairly trivially obvious blocker to family formation…
I wonder if the ‘zOMG illegals’ angle is just being used because it’s the most effective way to keep Republican voters from thinking about the possible benefits to themselves of a benefits program; or if JD is specifically concerned by an arguably pro-natalist policy potentially ensuring a future for nonwhite children.
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Yeah, completely ridiculous.
Also fun fact: you’re legally a first-time homebuyer if you haven’t owned a home in more than 3 years.
Separate note: while we’re working hard to subsidize demand, can we please try to also stop restricting supply so much? Let people build more housing in more places where it’s actually needed and wanted, in the forms it’s needed and wanted?
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“whoawhatthefuckisthatweirdpinkwormythingfuckfuckfuckthankgoditispointingawayfrommeandhasn’tspottedmeyet!!!”
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There was once a time when the Federal, State and local governments saw fit to actually take an active role in building much-needed affordable housing. Subsidized apartment buildings (often known as “the projects”) got a bad reputation starting around the 1970s or so and have mostly fallen out of favor politically, but bringing back some (hopefully better) version of that would do a lot for people who desperately need a place to live.
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When we bought this house we qualified for the then $10K tax credit that had been passed to prop up a collapsing bubble. It was nice to get but didn’t really affect the affordability that much. And the bubble collapsed anyway.
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I see signs of it here and there in the news. When it comes to affordable housing, lessons really have been learned regarding design, build quality, and inclusivity.
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‘Don Jr because, like his Dad, he’ll inherit his future’
I suspect that will amount to a grand total of a heap of IOUs and unpaid legal bills.
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That’s all good, obviously, but are there any public housing projects being built on the scale that’s needed? I don’t know if it’s just a misperception on my part but it seems like the public housing projects of the 1950s and 1960s were built much faster and at much larger scale than the projects of today.
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One theme I think the Democrats have been very successfully hammering home during the DNC this year has been all the ways Republicans have been trying to stop people from starting or raising families despite their “pro-family” rhetoric. From IVF to feeding hungry children to housing, it’s clear which party actually cares about the things that make families possible.
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Well a first time homebuyers credit is, at best, a symptomatic treatment for the fact that house prices are too high. Unlike actions that would lower prices or at least allow them to fall, it leaves the boomers, speculators, and others that have profited from appreciation sitting on their gains.
I admit that unlike 2007, I have no idea what the reason is that house prices are so high. I tend to suspect that just like then, excessive Wall Street money is somehow the root cause, but the linkage is not obvious as it was then. I mean a house is always going to be expensive, but housing costs compared to incomes are higher than is usual.
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Therein lies the problem with private equity firms and foreign oligarchs buying up real estate as investments. Its spurs the building of large high priced, low occupancy buildings. Wasting available urban space solely for profits.
(Replaced the link with something not paywalled)
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Yeah, but last time I looked at it, their purchases tended to be concentrated in certain areas. It’s not obvious to me that they control enough of the housing market at the national level to keep prices at the current unsustainable levels.
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That’s part of it, but the reason that’s what gets built is because it’s the main type of housing they can profitably build, and if projects are clearly unprofitable then builders and developers won’t build them. In large part, that’s a matter of codes and zoning and lots of weird local rules in each place creating all sorts barriers that drive up per-unit costs.
In a saner world that was actually trying to make things better, “Rich people want to own homes in our city, and not use them or any nearby public infrastructure, but pay us lots of property taxes we can use for the benefit of other residents,” really isn’t the kind of thing that other residents should have to see as a problem.
Instead, lots of people want to move to NYC (and other cities) and its suburbs, lots of barriers make sure there aren’t enough new homes being built to accommodate them all, so they bid up prices for the limited pool of options. I maintain that if the big buildings full of empty apartments hadn’t been built, the result wouldn’t look like “We built more and cheaper housing instead.” It would look like “We didn’t build nearly as much housing, everyone else is basically competing for the same units still, and the property tax base is smaller.”
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Don Jr is going to be sooo disappointed.
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