I can’t speak for most of my generation because I always lived beneath my means; my first and only home was right after the Great Recession, because home prices just grew to insane levels. I would still be renting otherwise.
The problem of housing is real, and this should be
solvable because it’s first and foremost a policy problem which causes a supply problem.
For example I live in an area that encourages the rebuilding of single family homes into townhouses.
It’s a nice compromise and more cities should be adopting this; yet it’s certain states like California that represent a bi-partisan problem with outdated policies grandfathered in.
Certain segments of the population won’t vote against their self-interest; but these individuals will be the least impacted by destroying 401k, ironically enough.
It's not though, at least at the scale that it matters, it's an economic problem brought on by a decrease in individual's relative capex. If in 1970 a person (let's say carpenter because I like biblical analogues) could purchase a truck for $2,600, even if their entire yearly salary was $10K, they had a 2/3 left over after a major life changing purchase. If in 2025, someone makes $50K, they may be in a higher income bracket in their relative area, but the truck costs 50k and must be financed over ~"time(indebt)", that's happening across all sectors and is the issue
For Republicans, this represented a long-term desire by the WSJ crowd, to free-up money and assets locked in commercial banks; and make it available into the Investment Banking side.
For Democrats and the DEI crowd of then, relaxing the lending rules was considered a win for minorities who had a hard time buying property--mostly because of strict but impartial lending requirements, which was still pegged as "racist".
Around that time, China joined the WTO and by the early to mid 2000s the US was flush lenders wanting to get in on the mortgage-backed security action. This is when home prices doubled or tripled in value, in the span of 6 to 8 years, and was a nation-wide phenomena. It's only risk adverseness and a quip from a mortgage lender, when my family was denied many years earlier because we were quite poor, that saved me from a major financial mistake.
After the bust--which hit minorities the hardest, by the way--there should have been a price correction and this peaked in 2009: For a brief time in the early 2010s there was, with a supply of distressed properties, but strangely enough prices never corrected nationwide to the levels they should have and this is because of the long influx of cash from tech, which delayed things for another 10-12 years and kept the prices growing in areas that had jobs.
Your generation was responsible for the last 4-6 years of prices not getting corrected; when I pushed for unions and trade guilds at the cost of spiky income--proudly been doing so since the late 1990s, thank you--you can absolutely bet that I was shouted down recently as back in the 1990s and 2000s, whenever the topic steered near that direction.
Today, what we're left with are: Homes continuing to be built for those flush with money or nearing the highs of their career; and overpriced homes purchased during the early 2000s that at best are losing value through inflation.
> Your generation was responsible for the last 4-6 years of prices not getting corrected
Pushing back here, what kind of idiot thinks integrated economics over dissociative political topology works, this problem was festering when I was in diapers courtesy ya'll
The problem of housing is real, and this should be solvable because it’s first and foremost a policy problem which causes a supply problem.
For example I live in an area that encourages the rebuilding of single family homes into townhouses.
It’s a nice compromise and more cities should be adopting this; yet it’s certain states like California that represent a bi-partisan problem with outdated policies grandfathered in.
Certain segments of the population won’t vote against their self-interest; but these individuals will be the least impacted by destroying 401k, ironically enough.