That has a lot to do with why this nation is so screwed up.
But there are plenty of areas where you can find “better” schools, where average people can’t afford to buy but they may still be able to rent, no? Of course there are. I know so because I attended schools located in areas like these, where there were millionaire dollar houses just a half-mile down the street from dumpy apartments. If someone has children and they want to give them the best education but they don’t have a whole lot of money, what should they do? Buy a house in the area where they can afford, where the schools just so happen to be subpar? Or rent an apartment on the good side town, where the schools are excellent?
If you were advising a young couple with two school-aged children making a combined income of, say, $53,000, and they want to start living the American Dream that everyone has crammed down their throats since the day they were born, which of the two choices above would you say is financially the smartest decision for them to make?
Do you think all apartments are in slum areas or something? You know, it’s possible to live in a safe, secure apartment building located in thriving commercial area. There are plenty of homeowners living in unsafe, crime-infested, food desert neighborhoods. One of the biggest benefits of renting is being able to move when a neighborhood starts to deteriorate. If I find myself suddenly stuck in a food desert, I can pack my stuff and go somewhere else.
Anyway, a renter who is in the position to buy a house in a “good” neighborhood is likely NOT stuck in a bad rental situation. If they can afford a down payment and a bank is eager to loan them money, then they aren’t likely to be living in a food desert or cowering in fear from street crime. So I’m not getting what point you’re making at all. A person with an average income isn’t going to be able to escape crime by buying a house any more than a renter with an average income can. In fact, a person who is especially worried about crime may be better off living in a complex (rental or condo) where there is protection in numbers and on-site security.
The only time I have ever been victimized by crime was when I lived back home, in the house my parents owned. I’ve rented apartments in northern NJ, south Florida, and central VA as a single woman. Very urban areas, very dumpy apartments. And never once have I had to call the cops (knocks on wood).
There is plenty of middle ground unless you are trying to make points on the internet. Then suddenly everything gets argued in black and white, including that there is no middle ground.
Food desert … cooking from scratch … I don’t know if you’d hear these terms outside the US. The place is laden down with food, it’s such a bizarre culture to an outsider. When I lived there I could bike to the nearest supermarket, but it took a while to realise many people would have to take a bus to the shops, or get a taxi - no wonder they’d grab those delightfully packaged foods from the fast food chains.
Quoting Alessan from memory, “what you call ‘cooking from scratch’, we call ‘cooking’”.
On the other hand, one of the criticisms against urbanizaciones in Spain is that often they do end up being food, store and people deserts: the immense majority of the country’s homes, even in very small towns, are mixed uses, but starting thereabouts of 1970 we started getting these areas which are mostly housing; either not a store to be seen, or if you see one it’s a pharmacy.
You go to the Atocha area of Madrid for example and any building is either mixed uses or government offices; there are little parks, there are benches, there are old people sitting on the benches and children playing and people going to and fro. Then you go to the Usera area (which isn’t particularly far from Atocha) and… where is everybody? There are parks, but you rarely see anybody who isn’t being pulled by a dog and if you do, it’s more likely to be someone with a well-trained dog than a dogless person or group merely enjoying the park. You see cars going into garages, but not people going into homes; there are some stores, but very, very few and they often have very limited opening hours (I remember a deli which only opened for lunch, for example).
I was working in Usera for a while and rented in Atocha. Talking about the housing market, the owner of the flat told me “yeah, we got lucky in that we bought our flat at the outer edge of the ‘old style’ areas; we didn’t even think of looking at the area itself rather than only at the house, but every other flat or house we’d been considering was in one of the zombie zones.”
Thank you for this ,it explains so much about some of my behavior and that of others.
Tho I grew up with a very large truck garden,so fresh is better,and I do understand unit pricing
Then why are attacking home ownership? Because protests aside, you most certainly are.
You’re welcome. I simply do no understand why some people attack the article as a series of lies and misstatements when it’s a very honest and powerful statement about what it’s like to be really poor and how it affects the psyche. I suspect they’ve never been really poor for any length of time, or that they didn’t read the article.
People attack it because Cracked has a history of baseless exaggeration.
In an article about libraries discarding books, they constantly referred to it as “book burning.”
It explains the feeling of panic when I got a largish check for being hit by an SUV - I had to get use it quick or it would vanish… Never mind that I can’t have more than $1,000 in the bank,the money HAD to be spent! So I paid my utilities ahead for over a year…that meant while I was healing I didn’t need to worry about writing checks…
We laugh at people we know who do crazy financial things but what gets me is how things seem to work out well for them. Like the ones who maxed out credit cars but did the bankruptcy thing, got out of the bills, and are now fine. Or they hook up with someone who pays off their bills. I know a couple who were in big debt and sued a doctor and used that money to pay things off.
I mean when was the last time you saw someone do something really financially dumb that ended up destitute and on the streets or in jail or something? They dont. They seem to have some lucky streak and things work out.
Its like they do stupid things then come out on top!
That shouldn’t happen!
Sometimes me, the person who’s conservative with money always looks like a sucker for being cheap.
Attacking it how? By saying it’s not the absolute least expensive way to have a place to sleep? How is that an attack?
Because you’re distorting what other people are saying so you can make your argument. I’m not saying home ownership is the absolute cheapest way to live… it’s clearly not. But home OWNERSHIP gives you an asset that you can use later in life that room rental does not.
No matter how you attempt to twist my argument, you can’t change that simple fact.
They have a history of paying internet freelancers who write poorly researched articles. In this case, one guy is writing about his (or her) experiences being poor and what they have noticed, which resonates with a lot of poor people or people who have been poor. But it isn’t a sociological study - nor is it based on one. Its not true for all poor people. And the behaviors it describes are not unique to poor people.
I just reviewed the thread to make sure I wasn’t going crazy. You entered this thread by arguing with even sven’s point that buying a house is not the end-all, be-all of anything. It was a very noncontroversial point that seemed to fly right over your head. So if anyone is distorting words around here, it’s you. She didn’t attack homeownership. She attacked the conventional wisdom that owning a home means you’re automatically financially better off than a renter. It’s great that you don’t believe this, but she never said you did. Which is why your defensive tone doesn’t make sense to me, and apparently to her as well.
Owning something is financially better than renting it. How is this in dispute?
Also, I entered this thread way back on page one talking about bathroom renovations. I only replied to even sven when she asked what was wrong with renting. All I said was that home ownership means you own something, which is better than renting it. And in the next reply I said that there was nothing “wrong” with renting if that’s what you want to do.
Person A has $15,000 in the bank. He uses all that money to cover the down payment and closing costs on a $100,000 house.
Person B has $15,000 in the bank. He uses $2,000 to secure a six-month lease on an apartment.
In six months, Person A and B both lose their jobs.
Who is financially better off in this situation? Who would you rather be?
That one is pretty easy.
If renting fits into your budget, but the mortgage PLUS the costs of owning a home (setting aside money for roof repairs, paying your own heating bill) doesn’t, owning a home is a poor choice. Eventually, one of three things will happen - you’ll get lucky enough to earn more and be able to afford the home you bought (not likely for people who are generationally poor with not a lot of chance of change, but not a bad bet for someone young with a professional career who is driven to succeed and whose student loans will be paid off in a few years - before they need a new roof), or more likely 1) the house will get foreclosed on because you can’t really afford it or 2) you’ll manage to pay the mortgage, but lack of maintenance will create an asset that is more of a burden than an asset. You can buy a home in Detroit for a few thousand dollars, but maintaining it in Detroit, paying taxes on it, and finding someone willing to buy it when you decide to move out of Detroit is expense and risk that a lot of people can’t afford.
On the other end, if you can afford to own a home, but PREFER to rent, then its just how does someone choose to spend money they can afford to spend. Everyone makes suboptimal financial decisions - and if you can afford to suboptimize to increase your quality of life - well, that’s what disposable income is for.
However, because there is a middle, there are people who rent, who can afford to buy and who are really screwing themselves over long term with the decision not to buy. They usually don’t live in expensive real estate markets - and often live in places where the rental market is tight. They have middle class incomes and enough job security (or perhaps skill security) that they can be relatively assured of being able to make the mortgage payments. These are the people who reach retirement without sufficient assets to retire, who if they had bought a home 30 years before, would have an asset that could help fund retirement that might have cost them a little more in cash flow than a rental, but an affordable “a little more.”
There are general rules of finances that do apply to everyone - avoid credit card debt no matter how cute those boots are for half off - but home ownership is not a universal.