Whatever the reason, this piece from the Guardian by Dani Anguiano is better and more substantial than anything I've seen from the NYT on the California housing crisis.
Fresno is the largest city in the agricultural Central Valley, and has historically been one of the most affordable places to live in California. But during the pandemic, rents began to rise dramatically, climbing by 26% over 12 months.
Locals attribute the surge to people seeking to escape the high cost of living in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. But even as life returns to pre-pandemic norms, those who live here say the situation isn’t getting any better. Rents, which had been steadily climbing for years before the pandemic, are still rising and, coupled with a shortage of homes, that’s hitting low-income residents hardest.
“During Covid, Fresno and Central Valley rents just kept increasing,” said Jovana Morales-Tilgren, a housing policy coordinator with the Leadership Counsel for Justice and Accountability. “Many people were struggling and are still struggling. Landlords keep raising rents and people have nowhere to go.”
With a median cost of $1,141 for a one-bedroom and $1,421 for a two-bedroom, Fresno rents are still below those of San Francisco or Los Angeles. But Fresno is among the most diverse cities in the US, and also one of the poorest. About 50% of households make less than $50,000 a year, while a quarter of residents are in poverty, according to US Census data.
Fifty per cent of Fresno’s population is Latino, and several residents told the Guardian they immigrated here decades ago from Mexico because of Fresno’s job opportunities and affordability – a reality that is quickly disappearing.
“In places like Fresno you have really high rates of poverty and a significant share of people who have really low incomes,” said Carolina Reid, a faculty research adviser with the UC Berkeley Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “The labor market in Fresno is not catching up to the price of housing.”
The situation has left families with few options, forcing them to stay in substandard housing, move in with other family members or even leave Fresno entirely, Morales-Tilgren said.
So . . . inflation.
ReplyDeleteDo economists have a good explanation of why there has been inflation in stock prices and house prices over the past few decades but not much inflation in consumer prices? Intuitively, it seems that inflation is in "investments," so that's from rich people having too much money and looking for places to invest it? In which case the problem with houses is that they're not just investments, they're also places to live. So if we could just get rich people people to invest in gold or something useless like that and not flip houses . . .
Anyway, I'm sure I'm missing a lot on this. One of the weird things is how stock price inflation and house price inflation are often considered to be good things!