They’re presented as ‘affordable housing’ but only young singletons are going to live in 150sqft places with shared bathrooms/kitchens, whatever they cost (and it isn’t like they’re amazingly cheap anyway).
So far as I have heard, it’s mostly the Amazonian influx that’s driving house prices up. Mostly out of towners, mostly single white guys (says the out of towner white guy who was single when he moved here…).
I was always aware when I moved to Capitol Hill that I was exactly the sort of gentrifier the neighborhood wasn’t entirely welcoming. At least I didn’t move into one of those fugly condo buildings going up everywhere.
Yes, I’ve seen exactly that. My mother and her twin sister barely spoke to each other for the last 30 years of their lives, due to a huge spat when their mom died over who would get which antiques. I never even knew what specific items they were fighting about, but it turned very bitter.
I suppose the bright side is that my generation saw how that works out and deeply internalized the lesson, so after my mother died and left her own collection of antiques and what-not, my brother and sister and I were more like “You like that? Sure, take it. Nobody wants this? Right, it goes off to be sold.”
Genuine progress is when the new generation gets to make its own new mistakes instead of repeating the last generation’s mistakes.
Yeah, I’ve looked at Inman, but it’s basically daydreaming at this point. Short of a windfall, I’ve pretty much given up on living in town.
I’ve given some more thought about how people are buying such expensive houses and I’ve arrived at three likely culprits:
People learned nothing from the housing bubble a few years ago and are buying more than they can afford
Inherited wealth: Parents died and you got a couple hundred thousand in inheritance. Sink into a house
Profits from the housing market: If you bought and sold at the right times over the past 10-15 years, you could have made a couple hundred thousand dollars in the process, enabling you to buy more house now.
I agree about the affordable housing issues. It’s part of a nation-wide demographic shift. The rich are moving into cities, driving prices up, and pushing poor people out to the suburbs. In Atlanta, that’s a particularly bad thing, since we don’t really have legitimate public transportation.
Yep, yep. Have you tried on the East side of Decatur, just outside of the city, maybe past Avondale? Maybe there is something affordable right around the perimeter? Either way, good luck!
I think those are pretty good points about some of the underlying causes. It’s a shame, really. Housing is more of a human rights issue. Not having a house means you are kind of screwed in many other ways.
