It was typical of Joe Biden’s presidency, but when faced with difficult problems, he blames his ironic approach of finding a scapegoat, making promises he hasn’t tried to keep.
His response to last year’s housing affordability crisis was a textbook case: denounced landlords and greedy real estate agents, making the false promise that his administration would build a new home for two million people through more deficit spending, and hope that no one would make a safe bet, considering the unpleasant media surrounding him.
“People are tired of being played for suckers, and I’m tired of playing them for suckers,” Biden said in a campaign speech slamming his scapegoat last year.
Biden’s fiery rhetoric, with his commitment to reducing housing costs during the union’s speech early in the spring, showed that he had little idea of how to solve the problem.
During his presidency, the median home costs more than doubled, and rents rose high and high.
Some cities take more time than median post-tax median income.
Poor adult in a housing
Almost a third of American adults are “residential poor,” spending more than 30% of their income on where they live.
As a result, Americans “will be taking more and more cars out of their way because they can’t afford a home.”
Some cities are trying to reserve parking spaces exclusively for homeless workers.
Young people are giving up on the American dream of homeownership achieved by their parents and grandparents.
“The Biden administration effectively transformed homeownership into luxury that is out of reach of the middle class,” the author writes.
This should not be the case.
But Damian Eales, CEO of Realtor.com (Fellow News Corp. Company), has plans.
His “Let America Build” campaign, launched this week, identifies urgent policy changes that will increase housing supply and make homeownership affordable.
For example, relaxing zoning restrictions around transport hubs to enable the development of multi-family homes would go a long way in solving the problem of 4 million “missing” homes.
“I want America to build more homes,” Eels said.
“The real reason that housing is uncontrollable isn’t the fees for real estate agents. It’s a shortage of supply, and that’s a political issue.”
With its latest “Housing Report Card,” Realtor.com has identified states that have successfully met housing and failed demand.
It’s no surprise that New York will continue from third place in the F grade.
The median listing price of a New York home is $664,622, and the median household income is $81,057.
In South Carolina, the most affordable state, the median list price was almost half, with median household income of $64,898.
Eales notes that Texas, the third most affordable state with a median listing price of $370,663, accounts for 15% of the new home under construction, although only 9% of the US population.
In contrast, California (median listing price of $756,185) accounts for 12% of the country’s population, but only about 7% of the new homes are built.
“In other words, it needs more than it’s giving, and the outcome is exporting people to Texas,” Eels says.
New York is getting worse. It represents 6% of the population and only 3% of the new home.
A twisted incentive
Over the past half century, housing has become a wealth-building vehicle that needs to increase significantly over time, an evil incentive only achieved by limiting supply.
Statistics compiled by National Zoning Atlas for Realtor.com show that 170,000 New Yorkers can’t afford their place, so they live with family and friends.
“There is a demand for more housing units in the metro area that can be filled by building more buildings, but there are not enough homes to meet the needs,” Land Use Atlas, Inc. says Sara Bronin, founder and CEO of
With complex building codes ranging from over 1,000 pages long, “zoning significantly constrains housing production in New York,” she says.
In Westchester County, for example, multifamily homes are permitted on only 5% of the land, and very few are permitted at transport stations.
Westchester is very well provided with Metro North Railroad, which connects directly to the Grand Central Terminal, which, like what happened in New Rochelle and White Plains, will relax zoning laws around the station, boost housing supply and stimulate the local economy while maintaining the semi-rural vibe of the county, where half of the land is zoned to a single acre.
Bronin recorded the zoning conditions for all transit stations in New York, finding that it would only allow multi-family development.
“Many of the land surrounding the transport is owned by the state or independent authorities,” says Bronin.
“I’m a huge fan of the idea that New York should consider a transportation-oriented zoning law that requires all the Railway Bureau’s jurisdiction to build surrounding apartment complexes. We’re not about the Skyscraper, but even small towns can support four- or five-storey apartment buildings.”
The property developer said, “We are not investing in apartment complex projects in New York City, as restrictions on cash and time costs associated with city approvals and what can be built will slow the growth of housing in metropolitan areas.
In other words, politicians who respond to Nimby’s preferences have boosted home prices by “manufacturing rarity.” This borrows the phrase from the hot new book for Democrats, “Abundance,” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson.
The rarity of the blue state
The author points out that housing rarity is the most severe in the richest cities of the Blue State, dominated by progressive elites.
Between 1940 and 1950, the United States built 8.5 million new housing units, they say.
However, in the late 1970s, housing construction began to lag behind the pace of population growth, and housing costs on wages began to rise.
“After the Great Recession, the housing market crashed in the 2010s and housing construction crashed.”
“Today, the average number of housing per 1,000 people in developed countries is around 470. [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development]. There are nearly 600 in France and Italy. There are about 500 in Japan and Germany. There are only about 425 in the US. . . The result is a housing crisis of incredible proportions. ”
That means that the Blue State and city residents are voting on their feet.
In 2023, New York lost 284,000 residents than it had gained.
“The young families are at a pace that several counties, including Manhattan, Brooklyn, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, are at a pace that will lose 50% of the under-5 childhood population over the next 20 years.”
Michael Bloomberg once declared when New York City homes were mayors who were “high-end products, and perhaps even luxury products.”
But it leads to a city of vast wealth disparity that no one wants, not a healthy situation.
