Have them throw a can of soup at a painting to raise awareness
It’s the new thing privileged people are doing. Throwing soup at paintings in art gallerias in Europe. They target ones that are behind glass, “just a prank bro”. Anyway it’s all a ploy so they can “raise” awareness about the Whales, Tibet, or Firefly being cancelled or whatever cause de celebre is hot this week.
Actually solving issues is difficult and slow. Throwing stuff is easy and makes you feel good about yourself. And in the end, only the feelings of the children of privilege matter.
Why don’t they just buy homes? Are they stupid?
I’ve never understood the need for a downpayment to purchase. If you can make the monthly payments that’s all that should matter.
In theory I guess it protects against the costs of dealing with defaults or having people walk away from underwater mortgages. But on the other hand, all of that stuff could be insured against.
But on the other hand, all of that stuff could be insured against.
Thats exactly what PMI (Private mortgage insurance) covers. However if the insurance company doesn’t think you’re a good risk, then you might not be able to get that either. I have never looked at what criteria they use to grant or deny PMI. I’ve also never known anyone personally denied PMI.
The downpayment requirements are much looser now then they used to be. Pretty much anyone in the US can get as low as 3 to 3.5% down, which means the down payment can easily be less than all the other home buying expenses (closing cost, inspection, title insurance, loan origination, moving, transfer taxes, …). You also typically have a month before you need to make your first principle repayment, which helps offset the down payment.
Veterans, active service members, and people buying in qualified rural areas can get 0 down mortgages.
Depending on where you live, there might be further assistance available. Around here, the county offers (means tested) down-payment assistance loans that cover 100% the minimum down payment, and has an interest rate that is at least 2% lower than that of the main loan. They also wave all transfer taxes for all first time buyers.
Decommodify housing along with every other human necessity, like water, food, utilities, and healthcare. There’s no way that any of these problems will be fixed permenantly otherwise.
They’re both. You can’t detach them from the market because they are products of the market. In order for a house to be built you need landscapers to clear out the plot, a construction crew to build up the house and foundation, electricians to wire up the house, plumbers to hookup the pipes, roofers to put on the shingles, architects to design the whole thing, and you need to buy the material… which require loggers, welders, miners, factory workers, glaziers, and the list goes on and on. Even then, you still need appliances like stoves, refrigerators, microwaves, etc and each of those has it’s own supply chain and ecosystem. All of these people are trading their labor for money, they’re not going to work for free. Therefore, in order to have a house, you have to pay all these people in the chain to actually get the final product which you can either sell or enjoy. A house is commodity made of commodities. I’m not exactly sure what you’re expecting here, do you think the government is going to build houses with slave labor? Do you think we’re going to water the ground and get houses to grow? Do you expect us to follow in steps of a failed ideology like Marxism and have the government try to control the entire economy? No, these are all dumb. We can acknowledge that these are necessities and should be made accessible, safe, and affordable but also acknowledge that they’re products of the market and therefore we have to work with it, not against it.
Of course they are, landlords are buying the house for what you would and doubling the mortgage payment as your rent. It should be illegal for people/corporations to rent out more than one single family home.
Residential units are generally considered 4 units or less. Over 80% of landlords are just normal people who spend their hard earned money on properties like this. Mom and pop landowners are incentivized to rent out their units as quickly as possible. Corporations, on the other hand? They can buy up entire neighborhoods and rent a single unit out for years just to manipulate market prices in their favor.
