In other news
In the current news climate we see that some figures and events tend to dominate the front-pages heavily. Still, there a
I lived in Austin where there was pretty strict zoning. I bitched about it back then, but looking back I don't think I hate it. It keeps some schmuck from building something other than a home next door to you. I kinda like that.Airbnb had changed my outlook on the whole thing. I had one above a condo I lived in and one next door to a house I lived in. It was beyond horribl
In So Cal a lot of suburban communities, including my own, have blocked short term rentals. When we bought our house a few years ago part of the contract was promising not to turn it into a short term rental.
American-style strict zoning is very weird to a foreigner like me. I visited a friend a few years back, and to do shopping you had to drive X miles from the residential zone for houses to a commercial zone with shops. And there was no infrastructure to support walking anywhere, sidewalks were dotted around randomly and ended randomly, and road crossings seemed non-existent. I
It's the cars.
Places like you describe exist in the USA, and parking is a goddamned nightmare.
The independence of a personal vehicle has been as American as apple pie for the better part of a century and we don't want to ride buses with the poors. It takes 3-7 times longer to get to your destination and time is money, friend.
A vast majority of our rental units are in Milwaukee neighborhoods like you describe, where you could exist just fine without a vehicle. Still, most tenants DO have a vehicle, and that's a pain point since we have mostly duplexes with limited off-street parking. Newer apartment buildings are generally constructed with underground parking garages. Obviously, no new single family homes are constructed with inadequate space for personal vehicles because you'd be a fool to do so.
How many years until this is the reality? Why do you need to live 1 minute from the store if you can live in a residential district around green spaces and have drones deliver your toilet paper and Chipotle?
I can already order certain things on Amazon and have them arrive a few hours later as part of my Prime subscription.
What locations are you frequently walking between? In most places where a variety of retailers are within easy walking distance, pedestrians are already accounted for. Every time I see a YouTube video complaining about American stroads or anti-pedestrian infrastructure, it's usually along some enormous stretch of big box stores and chain restaurants. Are you going to stop at Denny's first and then walk over to Outback for another meal? Are you going to go buy some lumber at Home Depot and then stop by Target for some new shoes?
What is the actual use-case here?
I honestly don't know, but I suspect that corporations buying up homes contributes more to the housing shortage than anything else. I'd like to see the stats on how ownership has changed through the years.
While corporate ownership has increased its still a small fraction of the overall ownership slice (1-2% last I checked). There are things corporations can do to hide their ownership but I am not entirely sure how common that is.
The biggest issue was covid. New dwellings slowed to a near halt and people were at home with not a lot to do and ended up watching self help content that told them to flip houses. Single family home purchases for investment purposes nearly doubled between March 2020 and June 2023 from 15%->26%
In So Cal a lot of suburban communities, including my own, have blocked short term rentals. When we bought our house a few years ago part of the contract was promising not to turn it into a short term rental.
I live about 30 minutes from a popular mountain town and there are apartments on the market right now trying to sell for massive losses because they bought them to AirBNB and the city wouldn't let them.
Its their fault for not checking with the city first. I'm sure they just assumed they could do whatever they wanted with the property
Stuff like single family home zoning was written as a way to keep segregation after it became illegal to do it outright snd above the table. But now it’s just making building more difficult and expensive and also not really helping keeping minorities out.
and democrats are overwhelmingly more responsible for that than republicans, and given that's an exceptionally important issue, perhaps a top3 issue for local and state government (coupled with law enforcement of violent crime and education), it's crucial to admit republicans are absurdly better than democrats at one of the most important issues of local government.
they are also exceptionally better at law enforcement.
I honestly don't know, but I suspect that corporations buying up homes contributes more to the housing shortage than anything else. I'd like to see the stats on how ownership has changed through the years.
big corporations own less than 0.5% of residential properties, it's a radical left inane cope to claim they are responsible for the "housing shortage".
besides they rent so it's identical to the same property being owned by normal landlords.
For goor or bad, the US has a social covenant that Euros just dont really understand. We are extremely permissive of our governments insistence that we facilitate tremendous levels of destructive, antisocial behavior among the lowest classes of society (drugs, crime, filth, violence); but only on the condition that the rest of us can build communities to insulate ourselves and
I am an euro with American family members.
you are far LESS permissive of drugs crime filth and violence than we are.
your police kills a lot more people (per 100k) than we do, you jail more people, your drug laws are absurdly strict for consumers (here you do not go to jail with small quantities of cocaine if they aren't enough to trigger "for sale" presumption for ex).
we have millions of literally unregistered homes (homes built with no permit) in the south.
and the main thing is that in a place where the median sqft price is $600 or more, allowing more building will never make it affordable for bottom of the barrel people anyway.
it's not about rich people hating the filth of society, that's universal. no community in the world wants an immigration center or an homeless shelter nearby.
it's that you don't even want the bus drivers and the secretaries and the nurses and the pre K12 teachers nearby, unless they are married with or the offspring of, people making 200k+
I honestly don't know, but I suspect that corporations buying up homes contributes more to the housing shortage than anything else. I'd like to see the stats on how ownership has changed through the years.
What is being done with the housing corporations are buying? If people are still living there it shouldn't create a shortage.
In So Cal a lot of suburban communities, including my own, have blocked short term rentals. When we bought our house a few years ago part of the contract was promising not to turn it into a short term rental.
In a lot of places (like Las Vegas), short term rentals without a special permit have been illegal for a long time; there just wasn't much enforcement until people started complaining about party houses.
What is being done with the housing corporations are buying? If people are still living there it shouldn't create a shortage.
A small subset are being kept empty on purpose because of banking shenanigans, but it's barely even worth a footnote.
I need to provide annual rent rolls to our lenders, and "VACANT - $3000" makes the banker feel better than "RENTED - $1800" for the same unit. Some vacancy is expected. Low rents are no bueno and a great way to get yourself in trouble.
Worth noting as well that for the businesses where this is pertinent, they're maybe already in trouble. Landlording isn't like owning. No such thing as a 30 year lock in the rental business. A lot of mid-sized landlords got wiped out during the first crash. If it happens again, even to a lesser degree, history will repeat itself there. I'm nearing the point of mandatory refinance on quite a few properties and a lot of those mortgages are going from 2% to whatever the current rate will be. That alone might cause a big selloff for some poorly-capitalized corporate landlords who are leveraged to the tits and spent the money on stupid things.
We've got millions in dry powder just waiting for the shoe to drop.
It's the cars.Places like you describe exist in the USA, and parking is a goddamned nightmare. The independence of a personal vehicle has been as American as apple pie for the better part of a century and we don't want to ride buses with the poors. It takes 3-7 times longer to get to your destination and time is money, friend.A vast majority of our rental units are in Milwauk
Just for you I went outside and extended my evening run from 5 socialist-supporting kilometers to 5 freedom-loving miles. Which was nice.
Spoiler
I tend to word myself purposefully. So when I write "As a foreigner", I mean that. Countries all have their quirks of culture, norms, laws and regulations. I'm not a person who goes "USA bad!". I do in fact like your country. I just don't like its current administration or where it seems to be headed.
The meaning of that phrase is that if I wasn't foreigner, I might see things very differently. Perhaps there were other things I would have known to appreciate.
As for your question, it is probably for the wrong person. Personally, I walk. Like a lot. I walk for leisure, for thinking, to socialize, to hike and sometimes even just to walk. What I don't all that much of is to walk for utility; I rarely work for errands, and I'm not the type of person who is organized enough to walk, run or bike to work. Still, it's nice to know that I could if I wanted to. To me it seems less constrained.
As for public transport, I don't really need it all that much. But if I want to use it, I can go outside, walk 30 seconds, hop on a bus and be off to a few beers downtown, and the bus has always been nice and clean. I do think that if you want public transport to be nice, it can't just be for "the poors" as you call it, because then it will just become neglected in political plans. "The poors" don't have much political oomph. Make sure the middle class has to take the bus now and then too, and I can guarantee you that the buses will be nice... because they vote and do politics.
I'm not sure where your friend lives, but a vast majority of the USA is pretty fantastic for that type of walking. You might not have sidewalks everywhere, but you'll have wide roads or county-maintained trails.
Those evil stroads that are always on blast for being terrible rarely have any residential homes on them. If they do, it's because some owner refused to sell to the developer.
Everywhere I've ever lived has been pedestrian-friendly, with the possible exception of when I was 14 and had just arrived in Sussex, WI. I walked or rode my bike 2 miles along the shoulder of what was a 55mph highway to get to my job at a grocery store. Nowadays they've added a sidewalk to it.
Having sidewalks in that subdivision though would be an enormous waste of money.
It's a fair point that it probably felt less walk-able to me than it was. Still, sidewalks are nice and so are plentiful road crossings for pedestrians. People should walk more, it's good for you and forces you to look at neighborhoods in a different manner. What looks okay from a car window can be pretty grim on foot, also a car blocks the other senses (smell, noise) and can make us ignore a lot of pollution / littering. It's also a positive feedback loop... if it is nicer to walk, you walk more.
Just for you I went outside and extended my evening run from 5 socialist-supporting kilometers to 5 freedom-loving miles. Which was nice.
Spoiler
I tend to word myself purposefully. So when I write "As a foreigner", I mean that. Countries all have their quirks of culture, norms, laws and regulations. I'm not a person who goes "USA bad!". I do in fact like your country. I just don't like
That's true for buses being on time and AC working and stuff like that.
But when the main reason that makes taking public transport problematic depends on national politica and the local administration in charge of public transport can't do anything about it, the problem stays.
We all know what the main, fundamental, overwhelming reason above everything else combined public transport is very good in Japan is.
My city has sidewalks and bike lanes throughout but the 3 minute drive to the store around the corner quickly becomes a 25 minute walk
My city has sidewalks and bike lanes throughout but the 3 minute drive to the store around the corner quickly becomes a 25 minute walk
That sounds like an interesting bit of urban planning.
Then again, it is a bit of the opposite here. Once in the city, you could walk a distance in minutes, which would probably take 15 minutes to drive + you would probably have to walk longer anyway. An emphasis on walkable streets, pedestrians having all the rights, plus some infrastructure being (literally) medieval doesn't make for effective car travel.
it's that you don't even want the bus drivers and the secretaries and the nurses and the pre K12 teachers nearby, unless they are married with or the offspring of, people making 200k+
The US murder rate is 12x that of Italy. The potential costs of living among the dysfunctional parts of society are MUCH higher in the US than anywhere in Europe, by magnitudes. American parents obsess about making sure their children go to "good schools," which is really just code for doing your best to minimize the likelihood my child will be physically hurt by one of their classmates.
But guess what, despite my country having a much much much higher murder rate than yours, the murder rate in my neighborhood is probably similar to yours. Because I live in a very over-priced suburb with strict zoning rules.
And guess what, there are actually plenty of private and charter/magnet schools for "underprivileged" kids to get an opportunity to go to a "good school" too; they just have to go through a vetting process to make sure they aren't going to bring dysfunction from their neighborhoods with them.
That is the game we play.
I am about to invest in 5 million pennies and keep them in a 50 gallon barrel in my garage. The downside potential of this investment is 0.
What do you think?
I hope this investment pays off before I die of copper poisoning.
US is ending penny production: How will you be impacted?
Grab your coin purse: The U.S. may be on the verge of ditching its penny. The U.S. Treasury is reportedly gearing up to stop putting new one-cent coins into circulation by early next year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, which could change the way you pay.
The Treasury made its final order of penny blanks this month, the WSJ reported, citing a spokesperson, meaning the Mint will only produce pennies until it runs out of blanks. The end of the penny will mean businesses will have to round up or down prices to the nearest five cents, the spokesperson also told the WSJ.
it doesn't mean prices have to be round up to the nearest 5 ffs, it means the final sum of everything you buy has to be rounded up
it doesn't mean prices have to be round up to the nearest 5 ffs, it means the final sum of everything you buy has to be rounded up
If i buy something on debit that costs. 1.06. It will cost me 1.06.
If something costs 1.06 and I have exactly 1.06 in cash, It costs 1.06. (for as long as pennies stay legal tender or are accepted)
If I buy somethinh that costs 1.06 and I give a $5, then it rounds up.
If i buy something on debit that costs. 1.06. It will cost me 1.06.
If something costs 1.06 and I have exactly 1.06 in cash, It costs 1.06. (for as long as pennies stay legal tender or are accepted)
If I buy somethinh that costs 1.06 and I give a $5, then it rounds up.
again, but it's not prices being rounded, just the final sum.
that is equal to the price only if you buy one thing. prices can still be granular in cents, you buy 9.99,1.06 and so on.
and at the end you round, once
Probably true. I grew up on the countryside, but have lived in cities since university. While that can be nice, there are things that will never be "right" about city life. Everything takes too long, the light is never quite right and silence exists only as the anticipation of noise.
Probably true. I grew up on the countryside, but have lived in cities since university. While that can be nice, there are things that will never be "right" about city life. Everything takes too long, the light is never quite right and silence exists only as the anticipation of noise.
I understand the light thing but what do you mean with the bold? it's rather the opposite, you get stuff done quicker in the city, especially if it's a good mid-sized one. From seeing a pediatrician for your kids to finding house help or a babysitter if you need, to buying groceries and everything else, the city allows you quicker fixes than rural livestyle.
