Home Buying Is Becoming ‘Unaffordable for Most Americans’
Yeah that&#x27;s the thing.  So America, for various reasons, hates giving out handouts.  They have the money for the most part, and there is the need, and taxes are low when they could be high...but they just can&#x27;t.  The national DNA is allergic to it.  So if you&#x27;re smart and can work the system you know the actual handouts are say federal students loans, like the terms are so so favorable and despite my objections mine will probably be forgiven.  In general that&#x27;s how the system works, public services and public assistance are tied to education.  Especially college.  While this is highly beneficial for me in particular, star student, merit scholarship to Caltech, later free ride in Stanford...you know it&#x27;s unfair.  But it makes sense for society, good investment.<p>There&#x27;s also Social Security and WIC, and welfare for mothers.  I think welfare for men is designed to be more expensive than what you can get from it, salty peanuts basically.  That&#x27;s the vibe I got when it was recommended I apply, no interest in attempting to get it.  Same is basically true of the food thing...the...the food thing.  So in fact California&#x27;s app for what the fuck is the food thing called?  the food thing, is great, they really made a great app.  But the problems are the latency is way too high, it&#x27;s $150 per person if you have no income but $15 if you get something, per month...so just a fucking waste of time.  And people cheat them, too.  Like they hinted I was supposed to lie and pretend I had no job.  So the real help is in...well it&#x27;s huge, Medical, best insurance available in California, OK that&#x27;s a huge thing.  Goes completely against my argument but I will undermine my argument anyway, it&#x27;s that good, and I won&#x27;t deny it recognition.  This is not an exception that proves the rule.  It is simply an exception.<p>Continuing.<p>There is one other way:  homeownership.  So this is how welfare is distributed in US:  you pay less taxes because mortgage interest is tax-deductible (restrictions apply).  California:  Prop 13, if you stay put your taxes become negligible due to inflation.  Then, it&#x27;s a financial instrument to borrow against that has much better terms than commercially available (second mortgage or HELOC).  Also, college financial aid offices leave that asset alone.  Plus, it&#x27;s savings from the Home-ec point of view, generally houses are larger than rentals so more space for stuff that&#x27;s needed less frequently, like tools and documents (especially receipts for mortgage payments, check the footnote) and you can invest in white goods longer term, benefit from repairs for longer periods of time, no landlord trying to read you like a poker player to see how much to raise your rent[1].  No landlord trying sneaky shit that the Tenant Manual of San Francisco talks about, like saying his mother is moving in so the tenant has to leave (but not then restricting the rental sale terms), or removing the door[2], or having a cozy relationship with police (landlords generally have no other job so they have all the time in the world for distorting the market, this is one way) so that police doesn&#x27;t recognize citizen&#x27;s arrests against them (the measure of last resort the Tenant&#x27;s Manual talks about, because from what I gather police will frequently say &quot;eh...fuck the law&quot; when a tenant calls them on their landlord).  And landlords behaving like terrorists (though not always) promotes homeownership!  The government loves it when people say &quot;I&#x27;ll do anything to stop dealing with these  landlords, I hate them so much, so I&#x27;ll buy a home.&quot;  So maybe they get a bit of a...pass!  Yeah, hey thanks for getting people to buy a house!  Thinking back landlords have been much better than the incentives lead to...well I can&#x27;t say that universally, it&#x27;s been a mix of a lot of good and a lot of bad.  And some of the bad landlords were subletting, and said worse than what I&#x27;ve said about their landlords.  Much worse than anything here.<p>Well to sum it up, for this handout there needs to be appreciation, meaning houses have to get less affordable.  That&#x27;s what home appreciation means.  Less affordable.  Synonyms.  Shitty handout if you ask me, but there has to be a handout, and this is the worst one, very little goes to the middle-class homeowner in fact.  Oh well sometimes a system is much better than what can reasonably be expected (Medical) and sometimes way worse than you thought possible (home appreciation as a form of government handouts).<p>[1] there is the bank, you don&#x27;t interact with them as much unless they&#x27;re foreclosing, and many try sneaky little things to fuck the debtor spesh at the beginning spesh when the contracts are getting signed.  Have them over a barrel, say the &quot;interest came back at just 1% more than we were expecting&quot; which means comish [EDIT:  comish is commission].  One house I lived in, the bank wanted to pretend several months of mortgage payments didn&#x27;t take place, so then the debtors had to show their receipts and the bank cut the shit...should have gotten punished instead, forfeit the debt, should have had to pay for that gamble instead of getting a mulligan...Chilean bank, what do you expect.<p>[2]  In my book if he removes the door he demolished the rental, making the tenant a squatter out of the landlord&#x27;s own volition, which means there&#x27;s no fifteen-year delay before it becomes the squatter&#x27;s property (for that delay it needs to be against the owner&#x27;s wishes), so now the tenant is the owner, and can place a new door on his property and if the landlord comes back it&#x27;s breaking and entering.  The former tenant, now landlord, can treat this former landlord, now trespasser, like any other burglar.  Although usually the virtual landlord will time things with eg the tenant getting fired to keep him from getting to the courtroom before getting victimized by a long string of victimizers.  Several landlords talked to my employers a lot.  So for that reason, the law ought to recognize it very rapidly, like there has to be a number you call.  That&#x27;s what evicteds (what you might call homeless, they had a home just got kicked out) I talk to tell me.  I actually talked to them, go figure!  After being extorted with the threat of instant eviction continually for years I actually talked to a few of them, just to know what was up with eviction straight from the horse&#x27;s mouth.  No 501.3c intermediating, no priest translating, no social worker softening the narrative, screw that, Jonathan Rámoz spoke Spanish and so did I, I just talked to him.