California Renters Priced Out of Housing Due to Major Rent Increase (Los Angeles: real estate market, eviction)

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by msgsing

Get used to it. The proverbial thriving American middle class hasn’t really existed since the 1970’s. The United States sliding into third world status. The gap between the haves and have nots will become a universal phenomena.

So true. This is not in the best interests of the country, though. This is corporate interests run amok. This is what happens when you have a country that measures economic health by how well the stock market is doing, not by standard measures like employment statistics, homeownership, etc., which used to be how economic well-being was measured.

Funny how they suddenly started using new goal posts, and hardly anyone noticed....

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by arctictropical

There's a theory that this is happening because external territories to expand to had been exhausted. When there's lack of external resources, new countries, colonies, new markets to expand to (or to rob), to increase profits - the expropriation in profit-based, "growth"-oriented society turns inwards and it's middle class' resources that's to be consumed.
Indeed, this process had been going since the 70s, after that unique historic post-war bloom of the Middle class.

The theory doesn't make sense, though. "Consuming" the middle class only means, that that sector will end up too poor to be active consumers. A system operating on that premise would be doomed to collapse. Keeping the middle class strong, and expanding it by lifting more people up into it is what makes for a robust economy. That's one way markets can continue to expand.

That's what made the post-war period prosperous: lots of people getting university educations on the GI Bill and moving up into the middle class, factory workers moving up thanks to strong unions, and other boosts built into the system. A strong tax base also helped. What you have now, and have had since Bush II, if not all the way back to Reagan, is an erosion of the tax base, not only by corporate evasion of taxes, but by repeated tax cuts to higher earners, resulting in the middle class and lower-middle class carrying the tax load.

Big business is behind it all, of course. That's why politics has become so cutthroat.

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by arctictropical

What made post war period so prosperous for the USA was America expanding it's markets worldwide, after war victory, and coming close to being world-dominating empire (not the university educations, there're plenty of those around now...some of them sleeping on the street)
The rest (expansion and consuming middle class) is a bigger topic I'll try to respond later about.

What made the post-war prosperous for the US was both of the above factors. Free university education for returning servicemen and -women was a very big deal. It made a huge difference, catapulting a significant number of people into the middle class, or eventually beyond, even. And middle-class wages for factory workers, such as in the expanding auto industry, also made a significant difference.

Bear in mind, that these benefits took place after a large percentage of the American public had, in fact, been sleeping on the street, and in tent cities called "Hoovervilles", as a result of the Great Depression. One of the solutions was to provide education for people. Another, more immediate solution, was to provide government jobs via public works, financed by deficit spending, a controversial move at the time.


Marxian analysis can be insightful sometimes. Other times--not so much. I'll see you in Round 2.

[luv4horses]

High rises of smaller apartments are great, since they can fit more people on less land. Great that is for childless adults. But they only would work well when cars aren’t needed. So in places designed around subways, trains, and el’s (elevated trolleys) new high density builds would work. So which comes first?

[CA4Now]

Shanti Singh, a spokesperson for statewide renter advocacy group Tenants Together, said her organization’s hotline had an influx of calls ahead of the rent surge.

...she fears that renters are going to be priced out by landlords who know they can’t afford the increase.

“There are landlords hiking the rent, knowing the tenants can’t afford it and using it as an excuse to get them out,” she said, adding that the economic recovery has been “uneven” during the pandemic, especially along racial and class lines and that a rent hike will affect those already facing financial strain.

Manhattan Beach resident Taylor Avakian, who owns multiple properties in Los Angeles and North Carolina, said landlords should be able to raise rents to address an overall rise in costs.

“They have to make up for the difference somewhere,” he said. “If my power bill, insurance, etc., keep going up and I can’t raise the rent, then [landlords] are not incentivized to keep the buildings in good working condition. Why would they put in new water heaters if they can’t increase the amount of money or replace the amount of money they’re spending on expenses?”

“If the average apartment is $2,000 a month, then 10% would be $200 a month, which is like going out and leasing out a Honda Civic without any warning,” said Pasadena Tenants Union organizer Ryan Bell. “People don’t do that without planning and making sure they can afford it.”

“More people are falling into homelessness faster than we can help them find their way back into housing,” he said. “It’s like we’re taking on water faster than we can bail them out, and it’s because of the rising cost of rent.”

https://www.latimes.com/california/s...s-to-inflation

[1AngryTaxPayer]

A one time move to Sterling Colorado and they can get an apartment for 500 or so a month. They just don't want to move.

[mgforshort]

Originally Posted by Igor Blevin

Some of the causes exacerbating rent increases listed in the video are specific to California. It is bad enough that soaring inflation is causing rent increases nationwide, but then California piles on with onerous regulation. It is a two-fer. This is pertinent in the discussion of why California housing costs are so high, which is a main reason given when people leave California. It all ties together.

I was reading this in the Sacramento Bee and I can't remember all the numbers. In short, after Florida, California is the number two state where foreign investors are buying all sort of properties from that little old house in Oakland up to entire apartment buildings. They buy partly for the rental income, but mainly it is a way for the investors to secure their wealth from inflation or government takeover. Most of the buyers are Chinese and they always pay cash, therefore reducing the available homes / condos for the locals.

I understand in many countries foreigners aren't allowed to buy real estate, and such a ban could help affordability in the USA.

[MechAndy]

I do believe that there are still certain areas in California that have extended the anti eviction policy due to covid.
So many good working class people lost their nest egg due to that policy.
I have never heard any assistance to them to help them recoup their losses have you?
As with many things “the higher the risk the higher the reward”.
In this case the higher rent is the higher reward.
Sounds like a system deemed to fail doesn’t it?

[Ruth4Truth]

Originally Posted by MechAndy

I do believe that there are still certain areas in California that have extended the anti eviction policy due to covid.
So many good working class people lost their nest egg due to that policy.
I have never heard any assistance to them to help them recoup their losses have you?
As with many things “the higher the risk the higher the reward”.
In this case the higher rent is the higher reward.
Sounds like a system deemed to fail doesn’t it?

A friend in Seattle was stuck in an apartment he couldn't pay rent on, when the Covid restrictions were in force. He was a restaurant cook. When the restrictions relaxed, he at least got back to work and could start paying rent again, but he still owed back rent. Unemployment Admin in Seattle screwed up so badly, a lot of people couldn't collect. By mistake, they gave the money away to people who didn't qualify, and the feds refused to give them more.

Eventually, the city set up a fund for people who never got their unemployment, and owed back rent. Friend was able to get squared away. But the restaurant business is down so employees don't get enough hours (even with two jobs). Meanwhile the rents keep going up. City and state gov't pay hasn't gone up 20%. UW pay hasnt, nor has retail pay.

[MechAndy]

So I guess you haven’t heard of any program to help the struggling landlords out either huh?

There has been numerous credible stories of people loosing the second houses for pennies on the dollar with the rent for free tenants still in them to investors.
Those people took it in the shorts trying to do the American Dream thing.


Also,
I too was one of those people that never got an unemployment check for what like near a year.
I couldn’t get one of them nice free checks either because I earned too much and I couldn’t get an unemployment check that I earned due to their incompetence.
I would call and be put on eternal hold over and over again just to be hung up on.
I am fortunate enough to have had ample savings where as lots of people didn’t.
One can only wonder how they survived or what they did to make out.
Wonder if crime and violence went up ?

I’m normally a pretty much happy go lucky person all thought I will admit these last few years have bittered me.