We will solve our affordable housing crisis with vastly expanded immigration

by philg

From the New York Times, a tireless cheerleader for more low-skill immigration into the U.S…. “Pandemic’s Toll on Housing: Falling Behind, Doubling Up”:

Even before last year, about 11 million households — one in four U.S. renters — were spending more than half their pretax income on housing, and overcrowding was on the rise. By one estimate, for every 100 very low-income households, only 36 affordable rentals are available.

When your hospitals are 110 percent full, the solution is more immigration. When there are 3X as many people who need affordable housing compared to the supply, the solution is more immigration.

One block back from the sand in Atlantic Beach, Florida:

(in other words, migrants are welcome, but not the big concrete condo and apartment buildings that could actually house an expanded population; note that signs of virtue/justice were extremely rare in Florida (January 2021 trip) compared to here in Maskachusetts; I took this photo because it was an unusual scene)

Related:

  • “Hunter Biden and wife Melissa upsize into $25k-a-month canal-front home in Venice, California” (Daily Mail): “Interestingly the homeless people who were living up along the street he now lives on are gone. … His two-year-old daughter with stripper Lunden Roberts, 29, was not present. … The stylish 3,700 square feet home boasts 25-foot acoustic ceilings hanging over contemporary limestone white floors in the living room.” (a fairly spacious house; will Hunter Biden be willing to dedicate a spare bedroom to housing one of the migrant families that his father tells Americans it is their responsibility to shelter?)
  • “Turned Back by Italy, Migrants Face Perilous Winter in Balkans” (NYT, today): “To escape persecution in his homeland, a 27-year-old Pakistani man walked over mountains and through woods on an arduous 18-month journey across Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia until he finally reached the Italian border.” (the remaining 216 million people in Pakistan must suffer continued persecution? Italians don’t want to solve their own hospital and housing overcrowding situation by taking in more migrants?)

12 thoughts on “We will solve our affordable housing crisis with vastly expanded immigration”

  1. I don’t know about you, Philip, but here’s what I have learned: The proper responses to destructive and misguided policy choices implemented by ideologically-driven elites for their own political and economic benefit, to the diminution of yours, in a relentless crusade to establish permanent sociopolitical suzerainty are the following:

    1) Question one’s own sanity to the point that having one’s head examined is not merely a choice but a necessity.
    2) Perpetually debase and degrade oneself for being so foolish as to object.
    3) Give up.

    Resistance is futile. Facts do not matter, argument is a vestigial and pointless waste of time, a deprecated relic of a discredited (and racist!) impulse, and nothing can be done. That is what I see everywhere in Massachusetts among people who complain about all these things day in day out, try to cope with the wreckage, but ultimately continue to vote for the same people, over and over again. They complain, but will not act.

    • In other words, I no longer believe our Republic functions according to the enlightened beliefs of our founders, defended over the years through the innumerable sacrifices of millions of men and women. I think it boils down to:

      “We will give you a shit sandwich to eat. If you complain about it, we will give you two more shit sandwiches. And you will eat them all, and vote for us again. See the mass.gov website for more information about where you can stand in line to receive your next shit sandwich allocation.”

  2. I like that the sign includes the slogan in Hebrew — though I hadn’t heard that any Israelis are interested in emigrating to the US and virtually no Americans can really speak or understand Hebrew. Is the logic that if you are going to include Arabic you need to offset it with Hebrew?

    • There are Israeli-Americans, and many of them live in Florida. But all of them have English language as second native tong.

  3. Of course more immigration is the answer: just replace citizens who complain about housing prices with immigrants on welfare who are grateful for their free housing. Problem solved!

  4. At 57 years of age, I’m looking for a new home for the first time in over 23 years. In Memphis TN the housing market has never before been the seller’s market it is today. If you have a well cared for home in a desirable subdivision you can sell your home in 48 hours or less. When I began my search I was told I would need to be pre-approved for the price range I was looking at buying and I’d need to tour the property as early as possible on the day it lists, and be prepared to put in my offer that same day (often over the asking price for the best shot at “winning” the home). The home would be spoken for within the first 24-48 hrs, and if in a highly desirable area, the home often sells within the first 2-3 hours it is on the market. If you aren’t a well prepared buyer with great credit with an effective and quick acting agent, you have basically no shot at all at buying a home in a desirable neighborhood in Memphis. How anyone of modest financial means going to compete in that marketplace?

    To discuss a bit further, I’ve used Google maps and Google Earth as I’ve searched and seen a lot that surprised me. It is absolutely stunning the number of high end homes. In Memphis there are hundreds upon hundreds of McMansions (I call them) that appear to be 10,000+ sq ft on vast multi-acre lots. The cost of the concrete for their long winding driveways cost most than the average total home costs. Who are these people? and how are there so many of them?

    There was a quote in the movie The Big Short made by Christian Bale as he portrayed Michael Burry is talks about the “apparent” strength of the housing market. He mentions income levels had remained flat, but home values continue to soar, which would indicate the homes are debt rather than assets (actual higher value).

    Housing is a vicious cycle of self perpetuating doom. When the economy tanks, interest rates fall, which means people can buy much more house than they could at a higher borrowing rate so they go “all in” when interest rates are down, buying the maximum home they can stretch their budget to afford. Sellers in turn jack prices to the moon because they know they will be able to move the higher priced homes while interest rates are low. It doesn’t take long before consumers are paying exponentially higher prices for the same homes than they could have purchased for tens of thousands of dollars less only a few years prior.

    I’ve lived in a modest 3 bedroom 2 bath cookie cutter brick home for 23+ years. I purchased the home in 1997 for $107,900. Today the home is valued at nearly $200k. My home pales in comparison to homes in highly desirable neighborhoods. Some of those homes have increased 3 fold in the same time period. This is NOT sustainable if people in this country are going to be able to afford to own a home and still have any meaningful income not committed to paying their mortgage.

    Capitalism is all about supply and demand. People want more of something, you can charge more for it. Cost of building materials and labor go up too. Less demand, lower cost. I “get it”. But housing would seem to be the one thing critical to quality of life for citizens that should be spared from profiteering. Yet BECAUSE housing is a bare necessity, anyone looking to maximize profit wants to be a provider of things that people MUST have. One the most key foundational rules of capitalism is that those with the supply cannot be allowed to collude to control pricing. Yet in today’s age of instant and ever more complete information, it’s not necessary to collude with anyone when you can get real time notifications of what your competitors are doing. All it takes is one to say “I’ll take less”. But in today’s “I don’t just want to be comfortable, I want to be RICH” mindset, who the hell is going to take less when they can just jump on the bandwagon and take more?

    And the wheels on the bus go round and round.

    • What’s the deal with Memphis?

      Are the neighborhoods diverse, or naturally segregated?

      Are white middle class people having unspoken rules about there they can live and go about their business?

      When I lived in Houston, there was a huge area on the east side of Main St. and/or Highway 288 where nobody went. This area contains Texas Southern university, UH and the Third Ward.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Ward,_Houston

    • What is the attraction with Memphis? Census.gov illustrates some disproportional demographics and states a 25% poverty rate. NeighborhoodScout shows Memphis as the most crime-ridden city in the US!

      Or are you really referring to outer suburbs of Memphis?

      And what job opportunities and large employers are in Memphis?

    • Fedex employs 30k+ in the Memphis area. Methodist Le Bonheur employs roughly 13k people, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, which employs about 3600, Babtist Healthcare corp employs around 7500. There are several companies that have employee counts in the thousands in Memphis, such as Nike, International Paper, XPO Logistics, Autozone, Service Master, DHL and the list goes on. And as is the case is most major US cities, the crime is almost exclusive to the lower income areas, as you said, with a 25% poverty rate, the low income areas stick out like a sore thumb when crime is mapped to where it occurs. This is not in any way unique to Memphis. However, there is no question that Memphis is a national favorite among low income blacks. The proportion of blacks on govt subsidies in vs other large cities is disproportionately higher. Generally speaking, the further East you go in Memphis, the lower the crime rate, and the higher the income level. The suburbs of Collierville, Arlington, Cordova, Germantown, Lakeland, and most of Bartlett are reasonably crime free. People who live in those areas feel safe. Lets not forget that the Northeast Mississippi suburbs of Olive Branch, Southhaven, Nesbit, Byhalia and Hernando are part of the greater Memphis area and also offer low crime living with reasonable home prices. The most troubled areas of Memphis are centered in and radiate out from downtown. I work for the one of the corporations headquartered in Memphis and I work daily with two men who relocated from Southern California in the last couple of years. They both live out in the Collierville area and both are still stunned everyday at the vast improvement in their quality of life as compared with how they lived in Southern California. The schools in the suburbs have been great for their children, and they have been able to purchase far more home for their money than in Cali. I work with another friend who relocated from Chicago and he and his family have had the same experience. That said, there is little question that if you wander into one of the known bad areas, it won’t take you long to find trouble. But how is that different from other big cities in the country. Yes, the bad neighborhoods do tend to be worse than bad neighborhoods elsewhere, but why would I go to those areas?

    • @Anonymous 9:16pm

      Thanks for sharing!

      Yes, I can look all that up, but there is nothing like a “boots on the ground report”.

      Do you think Memphis is in a more stable equilibrium than Detroit of the past? Or is it already the same?

      How is the relationship between police and community?

    • My personal feeling is that the equilibrium is still better than Detroit. And the police/community relations are a long way from where they were 6-7 years ago. When AC Wharton was elected mayor, he had to make some really tough choices about the pension promises that Willie Harrington had made that were not realistic or sustainable. As a result, police left the Memphis PD at a record rates. It’s taken several years to restore the trust between city leaders and the police (and fire dept as well), but it’s much better now.

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