Tag: housing

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Money is not morality

While shooting the breeze with a friend tonight I realized that “Poor people are degenerates” and “Don’t tell me I can’t afford something I ought to be able to afford!” attitudes are two sides of the same coin.

The first position, commonly associated with rich assholes who think they are self-made, is a mistake because it assumes that someone’s income or wealth is solely a factor of their moral character, i.e. their willingness to work hard to accomplish their goals. However, that is not the case. Not all hard work is equally remunerated; the free market doesn’t care how hard you work, but only about the supply and demand of your skill. It’s fundamentally amoral. (Remember, don’t confuse “amoral” with “immoral.”) This is also the primary reason why we should not trust in the market to take care of people. The market does not care if you live or die.

The second position, which I see more in people on my side of the political aisle, is born out of a place of frustration and anger. It’s the idea that “if I can’t buy a house on 30% of my income, then that guideline is wrong and bad and shaming! Don’t shame me!” But having or not having money is not (or shouldn’t be!) a locus of shame or pride. It’s just a matter of numbers. But people see “you can’t afford to buy a house yet,” and they take it as a moral attack on their value as human beings.

Neither of these attitudes are good. If you find yourself falling into either one, please try to remind yourself: money is not a measure of your inherent worth as a human being.

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The Rural Idyll Fallacy

A couple years ago I was complaining about people who romanticize The Countryside™️, and coined (?) the term “Rural Idyll Fallacy.”

Basically, it’s that if many people move to an uncrowded rural area, it becomes crowded and loses the charm that drew folks to migrate there.

(As a side note: development needs to be carefully planned! Dense urban development with transit + old town areas continuing to exist is much better than miles and miles of cookie-cutter foam mansions sitting in former cow pastures. A McMansion doesn’t get better if you put it on 2 acres of monocrop fine fescue. Now get off my lawn, I want to grow a forest again.)

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Cost of living increases and housing

When I got my first job and moved into my own apartment, in 2006, I rented a “one bedroom with den” for $1000. It was about 1000 square feet.

At the time, I was making about $45,000 a year. By the 30% rule, my monthly max for housing costs should have been $1125, so I was doing okay there. (And it definitely helped that I had no student loan debt or car payment. I have a lot of class privilege.)

For grins, I went back and looked at that same apartment complex today. At first, I was impressed: the one-bedrooms are still being rented for $1000! But then I looked closer. The $1000 unit is 450 square feet. There is no “one bedroom with den” option.

Turns out, that’s now listed as the “two bedroom deluxe” unit, and it rents for $1750. (The “den” did have a window, so I don’t know why it wasn’t listed as a Bedroom in 2006. I don’t know what year the complex made this change.)

For comparison, someone at my same entry-level job today would be making $60,000. By the 30% rule, their maximum on rent should be $1500. So they probably shouldn’t live in the “deluxe 2 bedroom” apartment, but they’d still be okay in the 1-bedroom; and they’d be able to spend the “extra” $500 (girl math!) on, I don’t know, student loans or something.

I honestly think more places should be renting out efficiency apartments like that. It’s one part of a solution that’s going to have to be many-faceted (because one single solution can’t fix everything).

For reference, with the Maryland minimum wage of $15, the annual salary would be $31,200, so about half of what this Entry Level person today would be making. So to live in a 450 square foot one-bedroom efficiency, where I live, you’d need to have a roommate. Two people could swing it for the two-bedroom, if they were thrifty, but it would be tight. They could get a roommate for the second bedroom, which would make it a bit easier; 3 adults in 1000 square feet is not the most fun thing, but it’s workable.

In my ideal world, a single person earning minimum wage would be able to rent the aforementioned 450-foot efficiency apartment for 0.3 of their monthly gross wage, period. This should be our societal standard for “can someone afford to live on the baseline level, y/n?”

Anyway. Small soapbox over. Just ran those numbers today and thought it was interesting. (And if you’re local and you want to know the name of the complex, let me know. I’m not posting it here though because they’re not paying me and I didn’t love them THAT much.)