What I am curious about is whether the book addresses the fact we haven't just embraced housing as a commodity or asset for ourselves, but how we have embraced platforms like AirBnb that are also having a very detrimental impact on the housing market in many major cities.
Something that was set up to allow people to make money off rooms in their homes or when they were away has ballooned into something much different. Instead of landlords having longer term leases with tenants - something that allows community to establish regardless of whether you rent or own - these short term rentals (STRs) have sent regular rents soaring because it's made long term rentals so much harder to find. There are so many issues, but it happened because we view these spaces as commodities first, homes second.
I am not against AirBnb in all circumstances (I was using VRBO back when it was an actual acronym) but I can't use these platforms without considering the wider implications.
Yes, and the impact this also has on the people who live there. My friend owns a flat in Edinburgh and almost her entire street at one point was air bnbs - which really impacts her sense of community as well. I think Edinburgh council have now brought in regulations to limit short term rentals
Totally agree. I once heard a stat (that I can't find to verify) that in 2022 somewhere around 40% of rental housing in Portland, OR was now AirBnB or similar vacation rentals. That's part of our housing problem because those places used to be rented to long term tenants. It's such a huge problem now.
So I agree as well that short term rentals have turned into a detrimental way to "maximize" property value by some types of owners, particularly in small resort and vacation communities. But I can offer some updated statistics specific to Portland:
Thanks for the updated stats! I'll check them out. Though I remember that one of the big issues is that the vast majority of vacation rental holders are still resisting registering so the denominator may be an issue here.
Yes! Thank you for this perspective! I only realized in the past few years how brainwashed Americans are about housing. It's *always* talked about as a financial instrument now. You are *always* urged to consider your profit margin on your home. It's WILD. The whole "renting is throwing money away" - I'm sorry, what?? You are literally paying for something that you need. A home should be thought of as a home first, not a financial instrument (though the way society is structured in America with health care and education costs, this is maybe the last tool for building wealth we have left...) The co-op model is exactly what is needed, we can try to find the balance of ownership/equity without the knee-jerk need to profit maximize and promote scarcity. Thank you for highlighting this!
I do think the “building wealth” nearly always means private wealth - and that way of hoarding leaves a lot of people behind.
Public wealth, and even degrowth (AHP you should interview that author) requires higher taxes to support a safety net, which works in other countries to address homelessness and provide universal healthcare, pensions, and education.
Instead - our main subsidized big gov public housing in this US is a mortgage interest deduction - but only for those who can afford it - and a down payment.
One of the few things Trump did right was the SALT cap- but there’s opportunities locally to decommodify.
I think the problem is that housing is the one way "average americans" used to have to grow wealth: it was easily accessible, it was easy to grow, and helped with various life function. It was also a "community" wealth growth - not only financially, but rooting people to their communities. When you eliminate that one line of wealth, it affects everyone. There are fewer ways to build wealth equitably.
Yes! I was a renter well into my thirties and just recently bought (which I may have some regrets about). I got so annoyed at the number of times my family members and others said I was "throwing my money away on renting." We don't use that analogy for anything else! I often retorted that I was paying money to live in a place I loved and that was a good use of my money. Now that I've bought, I am honestly not that in love with owning - there are so many issues. I loved some of the phrasing in this article about how to reframe a home that I can use in conversations.
There’s a lite version of this in NYC called HDFCs. They get tax benefits, and have rules that keep it from becoming an investment. Your income must be lower than the neighborhood median, you can only rent it to someone else for a certain number of months, and if you sell, you pay 30% of your profit back to the building.
I own one of these apartments. It’s the best thing I ever did for my finances, and has allowed me to stay in a non-extractive creative career AND stay in New York for the past 11 years.
Our 41-unit building is 2/3rd multigenerational Dominican families, and 1/3 creatives and city workers with their families. I know many of my neighbors, though there is a bit of a split between the old timers and newcomers, as you can imagine.
A 2-bedroom will go for about $400,000, which is less than half the market rate.
Because the rules are looser than the coops described above, though, there is some profit making. Dominicans who bought the units from the city when NYC was at a low point in the early 80s for $300 have sold them to retire to Florida. Because limits are based on income and not wealth, banks don’t like financing them, and the Venn diagram of people who make less than $110k and have $40,000 in cash is slim, HDFCs tend to (but not always) attract people whose families can provide the down payment or even the cash to purchase outright. Or people who temporarily of low incomes because they’re in grad school, etc.
Still, we’re not exclusionary. If someone qualifies, the board approves. So it’s a diverse set of people, and apartments do stay in the Dominican community.
I’ve been stressing over whether to sell and leave NYC for good. If I get a full time job in another state, I’ll have to sell. But it’s scary to leave behind this safety net that has cradled me through 2/3rds of my adult life. I’m living in another state and renting it below market to a friend of a friend, because I can afford to do that.
I’ve got two friends who are interested in buying it - one who is training to be a therapist and another who is a creative event producer. It will feel good if I can ensure they can stay in new York and continue their own creative careers, too.
Yet another book I bought so fast I may have hurt myself ...
I've been obsessed with Co-Op City in the Bronx for my whole life. As a child, driving past on the way to Westchester, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to live there and not in a private house. But everything I've learned about housing has taught me otherwise ... these residential communities can solve so many problems for Americans of all ages, if we just let go of the idealization of the single-family home. Almost every single paradigmatic, traditional understanding of "home" in this country requires wealth, competition, property values, etc.
I can’t wait to read more about Wenna’s family and St. James! One of the things that bothers me about the origin myth of American cohousing and other forms of community-based living is the whitewashing of it. Yes, there were cohousing communities in Denmark that inspired a lot of American versions (and were perhaps more easily wedged into our market-based landscape). But, as one example, Black people have been building their own housing communities and entire towns since the end of the Civil War. There are the freedom colonies throughout the South after emancipation (Dr. Andrea Roberts at UVA has done a lot of great work documenting these). New Communities, the first community land trust in the U.S. created to support Black farmers. Blackdom, New Mexico. Weeksville in Bed-Stuy. And many more, to say nothing of the many cultures across the world living in community either out of need or desire.
I think we could learn a lot from other peoples about both the financial models for this type of cohabitation and the self-governance, or the everyday how-to-get-along-ness (which my experience in cohousing tells me we still sorely need!). I would love to read a book about this (in addition to this book, as a huge social housing nerd!).
I appreciate this discussion because I thinking housing affordability/attainability is a huge linchpin issue. I'm quite involved in local housing policy discussions and my local YIMBY group, and the issue of housing being a vehicle for safety net is one I think about a lot. While housing _shouldn't_ be how people build wealth or safety net, it currently _is_ and locally some of our biggest opposition to zoning or land use changes are folks who aren't wealthy but are house-rich. They see building more housing as an attack on their safety net (among other issues). So for me, the sticky part is not recognizing that housing shouldn't be how people build wealth, it's how to transition to a different system knowing that a lot of folks _have_ bought into that incorrect system of their homes as vehicles for retirement, safety net, etc.
Also really appreciate the point about tying workers to a mortgage to quell labor organizing. And, end (or at least reform) the mortgage interest deduction!!!!!!!!!!! /rant Thanks for this interview!
Using this opportunity to also share another shared-equity model: community land trusts! If you havent heard of them, see if you can find one close to you. The world of shared-equity housing is vast and there are options every type of locality can pursue.
Will be checking out this book! I am on interest lists for a few co-ops in my city, but it is so discouraging how rare units come available... and how expensive they still are. I'm talking co-ops explicitly intended to address displacement in historically Black (and redlined) neighborhoods that still have nearly $1000 in monthly HOA/co-op dues! I dream of a world where all red tape goes away (or is significantly reduced) so that this country can build more housing period: co-ops, rental apartments, townhomes, condos, I want choices! ... If we don't build more housing in general, all forms off housing will remain expensive.
I have a question that occurred to me as I was reading about the older people who want to privatize so they can use the cash to retire elsewhere - which, of course there are multiple very legitimate reasons while people would want to leave despite the stable housing costs. Say your only child and your grandkids all live in Georgia and you want to be close to them and get away from the winters, but you want to buy or rent your own place there. But you don't have the savings that would allow you to buy or rent your own place there. One of the benefits to putting money into a house that I've seen touted is that it's essentially a forced savings vehicle. The potential benefit to a low-cost co-op situation is that you can put that money towards other things... but it might be hard to save it for the next (potential) stage of life. Until the whole nation is rife with low-cost co-op housing so you can move wherever you want to with the same type of financial freedom, is there a way to help people in these co-op housing situations keep their options open? Might it help reduce the temptation to privatize?
Having spent a large portion of my "spare" time over the past two years as part of a group creating the Kohala Community Land Trust, I love reading about a solution that works in areas with the kind of density we lack. But the principle is the same - set aside a portion of the existing housing stock as permanently affordable, never again to be sold in the speculative market. There are several bills moving through our Hawai'i State legislature supporting CLTs as the locally appropriate way to get off the merry-go-round of building more "affordable" housing that has a short deed restriction, then goes to market pricing requiring that more homes be built. It means an end to the narrative that owning a home is the primary way of building wealth, and therefore that homeownership is about financial gain rather than community health and stability.
I'm admittedly not great at finances, but what about this idea?
My 100yo+ 40-unit building was bought for $80k in the 70s. The owners essentially put as little money into it as possible (it's a bit...tenementy) but they also barely raised the rent over the years. I pay a half? a third? what I should compared to a similar apartment in town.
There's not a way to go back in time to buy cheap housing, but what if there were some sort of City program or nonprofit where the owners could choose to leave the building/home to be rented at an affordable rate in perpetuity?
There is (sort of) - as folks mentioned in the thread above, what you’ll want to google is “community land trusts.” If your area has an active CLT you could coordinate with them to buy your building, if you can get your neighbors and landlord on board. If not, it’s possible to set up your own trust
Interested in this author and the book but it seems very big-city focused. Is rural living addressed in the book as well, or is there a similar book rec focused on the rural challenges of housing affordability and decentralizing the SFH?
What I am curious about is whether the book addresses the fact we haven't just embraced housing as a commodity or asset for ourselves, but how we have embraced platforms like AirBnb that are also having a very detrimental impact on the housing market in many major cities.
Something that was set up to allow people to make money off rooms in their homes or when they were away has ballooned into something much different. Instead of landlords having longer term leases with tenants - something that allows community to establish regardless of whether you rent or own - these short term rentals (STRs) have sent regular rents soaring because it's made long term rentals so much harder to find. There are so many issues, but it happened because we view these spaces as commodities first, homes second.
I am not against AirBnb in all circumstances (I was using VRBO back when it was an actual acronym) but I can't use these platforms without considering the wider implications.
Came here to say this. I have watched AirBnB eat up all the little studios and 1bs in our town where single workers used to live.
Yes, and the impact this also has on the people who live there. My friend owns a flat in Edinburgh and almost her entire street at one point was air bnbs - which really impacts her sense of community as well. I think Edinburgh council have now brought in regulations to limit short term rentals
Totally agree. I once heard a stat (that I can't find to verify) that in 2022 somewhere around 40% of rental housing in Portland, OR was now AirBnB or similar vacation rentals. That's part of our housing problem because those places used to be rented to long term tenants. It's such a huge problem now.
So I agree as well that short term rentals have turned into a detrimental way to "maximize" property value by some types of owners, particularly in small resort and vacation communities. But I can offer some updated statistics specific to Portland:
it's more like 2% of total rental units are registered short-term rentals. There could be more being used illegally, of course, but likely not an additional 38%. Total registered short term rentals are 2,388 (https://www.portlandmaps.com/reports/index.cfm?action=short-term-rental) out of approximately 142,309 rental units (296,479 units total (https://www.portland.gov/bps/planning/housing-production/about#:~:text=The%20Buildable%20Land%20Inventory%20(BLI,use%20and%20multi%2Ddwelling%20zones.) times 48% rentals (US Census)).
Thanks for the updated stats! I'll check them out. Though I remember that one of the big issues is that the vast majority of vacation rental holders are still resisting registering so the denominator may be an issue here.
Yes! Thank you for this perspective! I only realized in the past few years how brainwashed Americans are about housing. It's *always* talked about as a financial instrument now. You are *always* urged to consider your profit margin on your home. It's WILD. The whole "renting is throwing money away" - I'm sorry, what?? You are literally paying for something that you need. A home should be thought of as a home first, not a financial instrument (though the way society is structured in America with health care and education costs, this is maybe the last tool for building wealth we have left...) The co-op model is exactly what is needed, we can try to find the balance of ownership/equity without the knee-jerk need to profit maximize and promote scarcity. Thank you for highlighting this!
I do think the “building wealth” nearly always means private wealth - and that way of hoarding leaves a lot of people behind.
Public wealth, and even degrowth (AHP you should interview that author) requires higher taxes to support a safety net, which works in other countries to address homelessness and provide universal healthcare, pensions, and education.
Instead - our main subsidized big gov public housing in this US is a mortgage interest deduction - but only for those who can afford it - and a down payment.
One of the few things Trump did right was the SALT cap- but there’s opportunities locally to decommodify.
I think the problem is that housing is the one way "average americans" used to have to grow wealth: it was easily accessible, it was easy to grow, and helped with various life function. It was also a "community" wealth growth - not only financially, but rooting people to their communities. When you eliminate that one line of wealth, it affects everyone. There are fewer ways to build wealth equitably.
The idea that renters are not “rooted” to their communities is questionable.
renters are; however, they are more likely to be uprooted. I'm sorry if that came off the wrong way.
Yes! I was a renter well into my thirties and just recently bought (which I may have some regrets about). I got so annoyed at the number of times my family members and others said I was "throwing my money away on renting." We don't use that analogy for anything else! I often retorted that I was paying money to live in a place I loved and that was a good use of my money. Now that I've bought, I am honestly not that in love with owning - there are so many issues. I loved some of the phrasing in this article about how to reframe a home that I can use in conversations.
There’s a lite version of this in NYC called HDFCs. They get tax benefits, and have rules that keep it from becoming an investment. Your income must be lower than the neighborhood median, you can only rent it to someone else for a certain number of months, and if you sell, you pay 30% of your profit back to the building.
I own one of these apartments. It’s the best thing I ever did for my finances, and has allowed me to stay in a non-extractive creative career AND stay in New York for the past 11 years.
Our 41-unit building is 2/3rd multigenerational Dominican families, and 1/3 creatives and city workers with their families. I know many of my neighbors, though there is a bit of a split between the old timers and newcomers, as you can imagine.
A 2-bedroom will go for about $400,000, which is less than half the market rate.
Because the rules are looser than the coops described above, though, there is some profit making. Dominicans who bought the units from the city when NYC was at a low point in the early 80s for $300 have sold them to retire to Florida. Because limits are based on income and not wealth, banks don’t like financing them, and the Venn diagram of people who make less than $110k and have $40,000 in cash is slim, HDFCs tend to (but not always) attract people whose families can provide the down payment or even the cash to purchase outright. Or people who temporarily of low incomes because they’re in grad school, etc.
Still, we’re not exclusionary. If someone qualifies, the board approves. So it’s a diverse set of people, and apartments do stay in the Dominican community.
I’ve been stressing over whether to sell and leave NYC for good. If I get a full time job in another state, I’ll have to sell. But it’s scary to leave behind this safety net that has cradled me through 2/3rds of my adult life. I’m living in another state and renting it below market to a friend of a friend, because I can afford to do that.
I’ve got two friends who are interested in buying it - one who is training to be a therapist and another who is a creative event producer. It will feel good if I can ensure they can stay in new York and continue their own creative careers, too.
This sounds awesome.
LOVE THIS. The hardest thing about a rare loophole like this is feeling like you can never give it up.
Brilliant to label for-profit housing a “speculative market”! Such a useful reframe.
Yet another book I bought so fast I may have hurt myself ...
I've been obsessed with Co-Op City in the Bronx for my whole life. As a child, driving past on the way to Westchester, I couldn't understand why anyone would want to live there and not in a private house. But everything I've learned about housing has taught me otherwise ... these residential communities can solve so many problems for Americans of all ages, if we just let go of the idealization of the single-family home. Almost every single paradigmatic, traditional understanding of "home" in this country requires wealth, competition, property values, etc.
I can’t wait to read more about Wenna’s family and St. James! One of the things that bothers me about the origin myth of American cohousing and other forms of community-based living is the whitewashing of it. Yes, there were cohousing communities in Denmark that inspired a lot of American versions (and were perhaps more easily wedged into our market-based landscape). But, as one example, Black people have been building their own housing communities and entire towns since the end of the Civil War. There are the freedom colonies throughout the South after emancipation (Dr. Andrea Roberts at UVA has done a lot of great work documenting these). New Communities, the first community land trust in the U.S. created to support Black farmers. Blackdom, New Mexico. Weeksville in Bed-Stuy. And many more, to say nothing of the many cultures across the world living in community either out of need or desire.
I think we could learn a lot from other peoples about both the financial models for this type of cohabitation and the self-governance, or the everyday how-to-get-along-ness (which my experience in cohousing tells me we still sorely need!). I would love to read a book about this (in addition to this book, as a huge social housing nerd!).
I appreciate this discussion because I thinking housing affordability/attainability is a huge linchpin issue. I'm quite involved in local housing policy discussions and my local YIMBY group, and the issue of housing being a vehicle for safety net is one I think about a lot. While housing _shouldn't_ be how people build wealth or safety net, it currently _is_ and locally some of our biggest opposition to zoning or land use changes are folks who aren't wealthy but are house-rich. They see building more housing as an attack on their safety net (among other issues). So for me, the sticky part is not recognizing that housing shouldn't be how people build wealth, it's how to transition to a different system knowing that a lot of folks _have_ bought into that incorrect system of their homes as vehicles for retirement, safety net, etc.
Also really appreciate the point about tying workers to a mortgage to quell labor organizing. And, end (or at least reform) the mortgage interest deduction!!!!!!!!!!! /rant Thanks for this interview!
Using this opportunity to also share another shared-equity model: community land trusts! If you havent heard of them, see if you can find one close to you. The world of shared-equity housing is vast and there are options every type of locality can pursue.
Will be checking out this book! I am on interest lists for a few co-ops in my city, but it is so discouraging how rare units come available... and how expensive they still are. I'm talking co-ops explicitly intended to address displacement in historically Black (and redlined) neighborhoods that still have nearly $1000 in monthly HOA/co-op dues! I dream of a world where all red tape goes away (or is significantly reduced) so that this country can build more housing period: co-ops, rental apartments, townhomes, condos, I want choices! ... If we don't build more housing in general, all forms off housing will remain expensive.
I have a question that occurred to me as I was reading about the older people who want to privatize so they can use the cash to retire elsewhere - which, of course there are multiple very legitimate reasons while people would want to leave despite the stable housing costs. Say your only child and your grandkids all live in Georgia and you want to be close to them and get away from the winters, but you want to buy or rent your own place there. But you don't have the savings that would allow you to buy or rent your own place there. One of the benefits to putting money into a house that I've seen touted is that it's essentially a forced savings vehicle. The potential benefit to a low-cost co-op situation is that you can put that money towards other things... but it might be hard to save it for the next (potential) stage of life. Until the whole nation is rife with low-cost co-op housing so you can move wherever you want to with the same type of financial freedom, is there a way to help people in these co-op housing situations keep their options open? Might it help reduce the temptation to privatize?
Having spent a large portion of my "spare" time over the past two years as part of a group creating the Kohala Community Land Trust, I love reading about a solution that works in areas with the kind of density we lack. But the principle is the same - set aside a portion of the existing housing stock as permanently affordable, never again to be sold in the speculative market. There are several bills moving through our Hawai'i State legislature supporting CLTs as the locally appropriate way to get off the merry-go-round of building more "affordable" housing that has a short deed restriction, then goes to market pricing requiring that more homes be built. It means an end to the narrative that owning a home is the primary way of building wealth, and therefore that homeownership is about financial gain rather than community health and stability.
I'm admittedly not great at finances, but what about this idea?
My 100yo+ 40-unit building was bought for $80k in the 70s. The owners essentially put as little money into it as possible (it's a bit...tenementy) but they also barely raised the rent over the years. I pay a half? a third? what I should compared to a similar apartment in town.
There's not a way to go back in time to buy cheap housing, but what if there were some sort of City program or nonprofit where the owners could choose to leave the building/home to be rented at an affordable rate in perpetuity?
There is (sort of) - as folks mentioned in the thread above, what you’ll want to google is “community land trusts.” If your area has an active CLT you could coordinate with them to buy your building, if you can get your neighbors and landlord on board. If not, it’s possible to set up your own trust
Interested in this author and the book but it seems very big-city focused. Is rural living addressed in the book as well, or is there a similar book rec focused on the rural challenges of housing affordability and decentralizing the SFH?
I love this topic, I yearn for co op living and for people in my community to see the value in it.