Yay, Robyn for highlighting this (yrs trly's been harping on this bill from the peanut gallery for weeks). Campaign hint: hammer this home---while general inflation has cooled, housing is the single greatest expense--and you can't just 'shop around.' You're trapped. I suspect that this is, in large measure why the mood is so sour among so many.
This is a real effort to do something about it, and correctly identifies a villain--like it or dunt, an important political component.
When I first entered the job market, the country was suffering from the mid-70s oil crisis and the minimum wage was $2.50/hr. I thought I was rich when, a few months and a few raises later, I was making $3.00/hr and could go looking for a rental. Got a five room 200year old stone cottage on a horse farm up in the Blue Ridge for $200 mo/. When I think of the kids getting out of high school now, where can they live but with their parents or in impossibly crowded apartments?
One other thing about the hedge fund real estate inflation- inflated housing costs also raise property taxes, making it ever harder for olds to hang on to their places. Normally I never complain about taxes, they are the cost of having a more or less civilized society. But having those taxes raised by the predatory actions of rich people who simultaneously cut their own tax bills by buying legislation, and/or plain tax evasion, is not quite the American Dream I've always heard about.
Olds are also looking to downsize also. More and more of us. I don't want to be stuck in a rental condo either, so I'm stuck with a giant house. This needs to be addressed and it's been happening since 2008.
As I get older and more socially isolated, my tolerance for other people's noise has withered to near zero. I don't want to hear their crap taste in music or TV, their family arguments, their power tools or whatever. Haven't lived in an apartment, condo, row house, whatever since the late 70s and do NOT want to do so again. I like quiet.
I'm in my 40s and make really good money, but the market in my area is such a mess that I've been stuck in a rental condo for several years. My upstairs neighbors are, I suspect, professional clog dancers with an affinity for at-home bowling. I just want a damn house to myself with room for my kids to visit.
I feel for you. Hell is other people. My son-in-law and daughter, who live in California now still own a totally unmarketable little condo in Silver Spring, Maryland. Since 2008, their note on the place has been as one with the wreck of the Titanic, deep underwater.
My first wage was $3.10 per hour. Apartments could be had in my town for $100/mo. Were they grand? No. Basically livable? Largely. It was also largely inconceivable that one would work full time and qualify for food stamps, whereas now most of the working poor I know supplement their incomes with SNAP.
“A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. ”
"The New York Times notes that '[w]ith a divided Congress, the bills are unlikely to pass into law this session,' but that Sen. Smith still believes it’s worth it to start a conversation. I would argue that it is also very good to force Republicans to vote against this very, very unpopular thing. A thing that some of them have even tried to make a cause of their own (without doing anything about it, naturally)."
I'm pretty sure that Congress is only going to be a relatively small part of the problem. If, Heaven help us, the Fascist Gasbag wins -- and, yes, we must be prepared to consider this possibility -- would a second Trump Administration be willing to enforce such a law? (I *very* much doubt it!) How about the SCOTUS, no matter who wins? Do you think that the Court, as it currently stands, would actually uphold this law? I don't.
Don't get me wrong, the *idea* is great; but *A LOT* of things are going to gave to change in the near future if this bill is to have even the slightest chance of both passing and surviving as a law.
Yeah, the first thing that sprang to my mind was "ginned-up phoney lawsuit filed in a Texas court and designed to be upheld by the hacks in SCOTUS in 3, 2, 1...."
This is overdue. I had a guy contact me because his company was buying property in my area. I declined and called him on this practice. I did not hear back from him.
a large proportion of my mail is wheedling letters to get me to sell my house, and about half of them are addressed to my older sister because her name came first in the list of beneficiaries of my late father's will. These letters started as soon as his will cleared probate (charmingly called The State of Maryland Orphans' Court, btw).
I get mailers every week offering "fast cash" for my house. That, and offers from union-busting chudholes to leave my (teachers') union. I splurge on postage to send it back to them, appropriately annotated.
They do nothing. They don't build anything. They just make money for the sake of money. Their best deal is to make money passively, simply trade in things that inevitably increase in value. They tried owning all the mortgages and nearly caused a world wide economic failure. Now the scheme is to own the land. Fuck 'em. Somebody needs to give hedge funds a good hard kick in their balance sheets.
I just made a comment about this here like last week - apparently those excellent Dems read it and decided to take action.
Essentially what these private-equity goons are trying to do is turn America into feudal Britain where a few families owned everything and most people had to rent from them, and had few rights. Hopefully Republican voters will pressure their party to back this, but of course they may like living like powerless peasants, who knows.
“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of [whom] will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.” - Davis X. Machina
As soon as they realize it's being proposed by Democrats, they'll automatically hate it just out of stupidity and spitefulness. These people only care about "winning" the imaginary conflicts in their heads, they're not listening to facts or reason. They'd shoot their own feet off if Jill Biden started a "love your feet" campaign.
Hmm Now all those calls I get from people wanting to make a cash offer on my house make more sense. Seriously, I get a minimum of 5 per week, but sometimes I'll get as many as 3 in a day. I mean, I live in an ok neighborhood, but not so great that I'd expect to have to stop answering my damn phone because of all the vultures who want to buy my house.
We get the flyers in the mail to buy our property in the western Sierras. You actually call them and you get no reply. Until you mentioned it it never occurred to me that these were huge equity firms.
I’ve never heard of that until I read this column. I’m assuming this is primarily an urban phenomenon, but what the hell do I know? Are they giving you attractive enough offers to make you consider it? Or are they trying to sift out people who are desperate enough to take anything dangled in front of them?
And have you noted any changes in your neighborhood since these people started trying to buy up property there? A shift from mostly only owner occupied houses to mostly rentals?
I wish this could happen but it's money and the government is owned by it. I am seeing more and more homelessness purely because there is little subsidized housing and affordable single and multiple family options. It's very sad.
Don’t both-sides the issue. While there are corrupt fuckers in both parties, the vast majority of them are in the GOP. It’s not “the government,” it’s the red politicians.
I live in the SF Bay Area which is blue as hell and I can assure you that neither party can seem to do jack shit about it. I’m a Dem and not a fan of GOP believe me. But in a staunchly demo area we have some of the worst homelessness and I am seeing more up and down the peninsula here.
The trouble is, homelessness is not A problem, it is 100 problems, from financial to mental health to lack of access to education to fear of violence. And many of these problems have roots that go back decades. There is no magical cure for it, absent national will to just provide homes (which even Dems can’t afford to do). But it makes an awfully good target to “prove” that the Democrats can’t get anything done.
This whole trend is driven by financial inequality. If it weren't for ultra cash-rich investors outbidding the average working family, the investors could not compete with the highly motivated mom and pop family trying to buy a home for their family, but having to use a mortgage.
Yay, Robyn for highlighting this (yrs trly's been harping on this bill from the peanut gallery for weeks). Campaign hint: hammer this home---while general inflation has cooled, housing is the single greatest expense--and you can't just 'shop around.' You're trapped. I suspect that this is, in large measure why the mood is so sour among so many.
This is a real effort to do something about it, and correctly identifies a villain--like it or dunt, an important political component.
It's about time, yay!
Or, you know, ... we could just rid of the hedge funds (tax them out of existence).
When I first entered the job market, the country was suffering from the mid-70s oil crisis and the minimum wage was $2.50/hr. I thought I was rich when, a few months and a few raises later, I was making $3.00/hr and could go looking for a rental. Got a five room 200year old stone cottage on a horse farm up in the Blue Ridge for $200 mo/. When I think of the kids getting out of high school now, where can they live but with their parents or in impossibly crowded apartments?
One other thing about the hedge fund real estate inflation- inflated housing costs also raise property taxes, making it ever harder for olds to hang on to their places. Normally I never complain about taxes, they are the cost of having a more or less civilized society. But having those taxes raised by the predatory actions of rich people who simultaneously cut their own tax bills by buying legislation, and/or plain tax evasion, is not quite the American Dream I've always heard about.
Olds are also looking to downsize also. More and more of us. I don't want to be stuck in a rental condo either, so I'm stuck with a giant house. This needs to be addressed and it's been happening since 2008.
As I get older and more socially isolated, my tolerance for other people's noise has withered to near zero. I don't want to hear their crap taste in music or TV, their family arguments, their power tools or whatever. Haven't lived in an apartment, condo, row house, whatever since the late 70s and do NOT want to do so again. I like quiet.
I'm in my 40s and make really good money, but the market in my area is such a mess that I've been stuck in a rental condo for several years. My upstairs neighbors are, I suspect, professional clog dancers with an affinity for at-home bowling. I just want a damn house to myself with room for my kids to visit.
I feel for you. Hell is other people. My son-in-law and daughter, who live in California now still own a totally unmarketable little condo in Silver Spring, Maryland. Since 2008, their note on the place has been as one with the wreck of the Titanic, deep underwater.
Well said, and exactly right.
My first wage was $3.10 per hour. Apartments could be had in my town for $100/mo. Were they grand? No. Basically livable? Largely. It was also largely inconceivable that one would work full time and qualify for food stamps, whereas now most of the working poor I know supplement their incomes with SNAP.
According to Wiki:
“A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that holds liquid assets and that makes use of complex trading and risk management techniques to improve investment performance and insulate returns from market risk. ”
Houses are “liquid assets”?
They are if you have enough of them.
"The New York Times notes that '[w]ith a divided Congress, the bills are unlikely to pass into law this session,' but that Sen. Smith still believes it’s worth it to start a conversation. I would argue that it is also very good to force Republicans to vote against this very, very unpopular thing. A thing that some of them have even tried to make a cause of their own (without doing anything about it, naturally)."
I'm pretty sure that Congress is only going to be a relatively small part of the problem. If, Heaven help us, the Fascist Gasbag wins -- and, yes, we must be prepared to consider this possibility -- would a second Trump Administration be willing to enforce such a law? (I *very* much doubt it!) How about the SCOTUS, no matter who wins? Do you think that the Court, as it currently stands, would actually uphold this law? I don't.
Don't get me wrong, the *idea* is great; but *A LOT* of things are going to gave to change in the near future if this bill is to have even the slightest chance of both passing and surviving as a law.
Yeah, the first thing that sprang to my mind was "ginned-up phoney lawsuit filed in a Texas court and designed to be upheld by the hacks in SCOTUS in 3, 2, 1...."
But won’t someone think of the poor mom-and-pop hedge funds which will be disproportionately impacted by this socialist law?!?
This is overdue. I had a guy contact me because his company was buying property in my area. I declined and called him on this practice. I did not hear back from him.
a large proportion of my mail is wheedling letters to get me to sell my house, and about half of them are addressed to my older sister because her name came first in the list of beneficiaries of my late father's will. These letters started as soon as his will cleared probate (charmingly called The State of Maryland Orphans' Court, btw).
I get mailers every week offering "fast cash" for my house. That, and offers from union-busting chudholes to leave my (teachers') union. I splurge on postage to send it back to them, appropriately annotated.
"Return to Sender" costs them postage. They take you off their mailing list immediately for that.
They do nothing. They don't build anything. They just make money for the sake of money. Their best deal is to make money passively, simply trade in things that inevitably increase in value. They tried owning all the mortgages and nearly caused a world wide economic failure. Now the scheme is to own the land. Fuck 'em. Somebody needs to give hedge funds a good hard kick in their balance sheets.
I'm still shocked that hedge fund managers didn't commit suicide en masse after the 2000s.
Naturally, they all moved to a new scam. Guess we're going to have to help them along.
Great. Now do Bezos.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/4a35zp/jeff-bezos-is-funding-a-real-estate-startup-buying-up-family-homes-to-rent
And what exactly has Vance done to rein in hedge funds since becoming a senator?
his donors/owners would not like it.
Nothing ever!
I just made a comment about this here like last week - apparently those excellent Dems read it and decided to take action.
Essentially what these private-equity goons are trying to do is turn America into feudal Britain where a few families owned everything and most people had to rent from them, and had few rights. Hopefully Republican voters will pressure their party to back this, but of course they may like living like powerless peasants, who knows.
“The salient fact of American politics is that there are fifty to seventy million voters each of [whom] will volunteer to live, with his family, in a cardboard box under an overpass, and cook sparrows on an old curtain rod, if someone would only guarantee that the black, gay, Hispanic, liberal, whatever, in the next box over doesn’t even have a curtain rod, or a sparrow to put on it.” - Davis X. Machina
As soon as they realize it's being proposed by Democrats, they'll automatically hate it just out of stupidity and spitefulness. These people only care about "winning" the imaginary conflicts in their heads, they're not listening to facts or reason. They'd shoot their own feet off if Jill Biden started a "love your feet" campaign.
I know, sigh.
Hmm Now all those calls I get from people wanting to make a cash offer on my house make more sense. Seriously, I get a minimum of 5 per week, but sometimes I'll get as many as 3 in a day. I mean, I live in an ok neighborhood, but not so great that I'd expect to have to stop answering my damn phone because of all the vultures who want to buy my house.
We get the flyers in the mail to buy our property in the western Sierras. You actually call them and you get no reply. Until you mentioned it it never occurred to me that these were huge equity firms.
And the emails are brutal.
I’ve never heard of that until I read this column. I’m assuming this is primarily an urban phenomenon, but what the hell do I know? Are they giving you attractive enough offers to make you consider it? Or are they trying to sift out people who are desperate enough to take anything dangled in front of them?
And have you noted any changes in your neighborhood since these people started trying to buy up property there? A shift from mostly only owner occupied houses to mostly rentals?
I wish this could happen but it's money and the government is owned by it. I am seeing more and more homelessness purely because there is little subsidized housing and affordable single and multiple family options. It's very sad.
Don’t both-sides the issue. While there are corrupt fuckers in both parties, the vast majority of them are in the GOP. It’s not “the government,” it’s the red politicians.
I live in the SF Bay Area which is blue as hell and I can assure you that neither party can seem to do jack shit about it. I’m a Dem and not a fan of GOP believe me. But in a staunchly demo area we have some of the worst homelessness and I am seeing more up and down the peninsula here.
The trouble is, homelessness is not A problem, it is 100 problems, from financial to mental health to lack of access to education to fear of violence. And many of these problems have roots that go back decades. There is no magical cure for it, absent national will to just provide homes (which even Dems can’t afford to do). But it makes an awfully good target to “prove” that the Democrats can’t get anything done.
This whole trend is driven by financial inequality. If it weren't for ultra cash-rich investors outbidding the average working family, the investors could not compete with the highly motivated mom and pop family trying to buy a home for their family, but having to use a mortgage.
HELLZ YEAH! For the people, bitches!