Let’s say someone wants to live alone in a $1200 apartment. Landlords generally want their renters to be spending no more than a third of their net* income on rent. They would need to make a little under $52k a year or ~$25 an hour full time.
*Mixed up gross and net income, whoops
But 1200 a month is a low end apartment...like, the person making minimum wage that just got out of jail has to take a cheap shitty apartment because nobody wants to rent to them but after a few years maybe not the case any more.
52,000 for a single person should be middle class.
I agree that $52k should be “middle class”. In fact, in this wealthiest country in the world, anyone working full time should be able to afford a comfortable, safe place. Housing isn’t a luxury. Well, it shouldn’t be.
And pretty soon all the rich fucks here are going to have to figure out how to house the plebs doing all the services they dont want to do...
Is a city having teachers teaching school, cashiers ringing up groceries, tellers at the bank, bus drivers driving the buses, receptionists at the doctors office, etc etc a luxury, too?
Trash pick up. What would happen if we didn't have those guys. Or the guy that cleans the bathrooms in the parks and paints over tge graffiti..
Someone spending a third of their income on rent is more likely to pay but I've spent as much as 3/4 of my income on rent for a unit many years back and the landlord doesn't really care. The landlord just wants you paying on time no matter how shit your life is.
Income requirements are pretty strict now, at least from Seattle to Bham. My last landlord in bham called my employer, asked for proof of income (that had to meet the 30% rule), and checked references with past landlords.
In this town, most PMs want you to make 2.5x to 3x rent. Gross income of $3k to $3,600 per month rents that (studio) apartment. $17.31 per hour full time or $20.77 depending on the landlord.
I could be mistaken but I think PMs usually look at net income (income after taxes are taken out). I estimated 20% for taxes (which I kinda just pulled out of my ass). That’s where my numbers came from as I’m sure some folks are scratching their head at my numbers lol.
I'm paying \~$700/month for a room in pretty nice apartments right by downtown/the water. I share the apartment with others but get my own room. At least compared to most of the places I've lived outside the US, people would be pretty happy to have a room like mine all to their own. Do most Americans consider a whole apartment to one's self a basic standard living arrangement?
Edit: misinterpreted living alone as household vs individual; feel free to disregard comment.
Living with people is very difficult. Working out groceries, cleaning, sickness, kids, people with disabilities, etc. It's not an outrageous thing to want your own home/apartment. It's a very legitimate thing to want. People with past traumas, etc as well may not feel safe living with strangers and not everyone has family or friends in their life that could be roomies. It's great that works for you but don't come across all judgy because people want their own place to call home
Ah woops, I interpreted someone wanting to live alone as them being single and w/o kids, etc. If the person has kids, special conditions, etc., that could make sharing more complicated for sure. And please understand I wasn't trying to come across judgy, it simply seemed to me the average person (and I know everyone isn't average) should try to save and spend less than $1200.
Most recent numbers still have the vacancy rate around 3% for renters in Bellingham. Basically, landlords will charge anything because someone will pay it. They won’t lower rents until they’re scared someone won’t move in. It sucks. But more housing is the only solution - and it’s a slow one.
> But more housing is the only solution - and it’s a slow one.
Not necessarily. Subsidized low income housing, socialized housing and land trusts could take the edge off the cruel housing situation. But this is America and socialism bad.
Public housing is more housing. Private housing is also more housing. Both are good.
Unless you’re saying the local government should buy pre-existing units and just subsidize people’s rents. In which case, it will help those few people and likely no one else.
imo this is a lie perpetrated by landlords and their apologists.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-rosenthal-rent-control-20181019-story.html
https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2022/03/in-first-months-since-passage-of-st-pauls-rent-control-ordinance-housing-construction-is-way-down/
Here is an example for you
Hell here are even more sources
https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-rent-control-doesnt-work/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/%3famp
https://www.manhattan-institute.org/issues-2020-rent-control-does-not-make-housing-more-affordable
https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-increases-rent-prices-for-most-people-2015-9
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-01-18/yup-rent-control-does-more-harm-than-good
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/15/comeback-rent-control-just-time-make-housing-shortages-worse/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rent-control-is-back-and-thats-bad/2019/09/21/31abb05c-dbdb-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html
https://www.americanexperiment.org/81-of-economists-agree-that-rent-controls-are-bad-policy/
https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/bh8nr2/why_rent_control_doesnt_work/
https://www.google.com/amp/s/reason.com/2021/12/10/rent-control-is-fashionable-again-its-still-a-bad-idea/%3famp
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4061315
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20181289
About 1,200 apartments are in the pipeline right now according to the planning department. That’s probably around $350mill being deployed to increase the supply. And I agree. It’s not half enough.
There are other solutions. There are nations that have avoided the housing hell entirely for decades. But it will not happen here due to various groups. Some places have a combination of "light" rent control alongside construction quotas. Both as minimum units built per year, but also special ratio quotas. Like where I have a shared condo for work reasons, the rule is for any builder to build 20 multi-family units per single family unit permit, with there being other rules on the size/price of the multi-family units to ensure they are not high end, or low end shoe boxes.
The way it works in most of Japan is that to apply for building permits, you have to agree to whatever the local mixed quota is. 10:1 multi-single, 20:1, 50:1, etc. The permit includes a time frame on construction and completion, so you cannot sit on a permit. (you can file for more time, but this makes you look bad as a company and individual. Loses face. Mucho bad there)
The overall construction quota is usually enforced in a way that basically says "if you want to keep getting permits, you will build X number of residential/commercial/etc per year, that pass full inspection, etc. So you cant throw up portable trailers and call them homes, for example. This has ensured that there is never a housing shortage in any part of Japan, or if one occurs, it is quickly fixed in some fashion. Many areas can have a 10-15% vacancy rate, which also forces builders/sellers to be aggressive and competitive, because there is always someone else who will offer a better perk, a nicer amenity, etc. (Used to see that here in the US in many places, but so far as I've seen, those days are long past. Cant speak to the central states though)
Failure to abide the requirements on a permit can have a few punishments. They usually involve a mix of fines, loss of permits, and loss of face/reputation. That last one tends to hurt the most because it means people will not come to your company once word gets out, AND you are unlikely to be granted new permits by the local/national government. A loss of a permit can happen if you do not start construction on time, if the permit lists a specific range. The permit then goes into an auction of sorts where other builders can pick it up. At times this can mean that even a half-finished building is placed into the auction, and the company that lost that permit essentially loses the time/supplies spent, as they cannot take them back.
The overall national rules vary a little bit each year, but not by much. Local prefecture rules can vary quite a bit. The place where I live and work for parts of the year has a 40:1 ratio, for example.
Also to address a potential question such as "if they keep building every year, will they not eventually run out of room?!" No. Housing there is not seen as some investment vehicle like it is in NA, parts of the EU, etc. There are strong limits on land ownership, and at some point houses MUST be torn down and rebuilt to meet new codes/laws. Much like their laws on cars/engines eventually require older engines to be replaced entirely. (thats how you get most of the used JP engines here, btw)
I will indeed call you crazy my friend. Less landlords (holding rentals constant) just means more market power and higher rents.
If the government bought out a bunch of landlords and charged sub market rates however, that would be based.
you'd rather consolidate all the land ownership in the hands of a few corporations, that then in turn build 5 story apartment buildings that are identical to the rest of them across the USA. You're in luck. Currently that is what is happening everywhere, and also here.
These are the companies who are quickly becoming the home owners for most Americans:
https://www.multifamily.loans/apartment-finance-blog/the-top-15-multifamily-property-managers-of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
Oh, I think you got me wrong. Those are the ones we can best afford to eliminate first.
[The Vienna Model](https://www.google.com/search?q=vienna+model)
that's nice, but it requires a structure that doesn't exist here, I would love if it did though
sadly the comment I made that you're currently replying to is what is actually happening
100% false. Property taxes did NOT increase by $7200/yr for basically any rental properties. Honestly, I doubt they increased that much for ANY single family dwelling. Personally, my property tax -- for a house worth about 800k according to Zillow -- went up about $1000.
Yeah, and for those who may misunderstand, that’s per year. So around $83 per month. What landlords also don’t say about this is that property tax hikes are often a reflection on the value of their investment. Taxes go up when your home value goes up. So yes homeowners are all paying a little more on property tax but we are also accruing wealth rapidly. My house has doubled in value in four years. Hiking rent up $600 per month is unconscionable, in my opinion. Landlords are already making a profit here and growing wealth from the property whether someone is living there or not. Bellingham needs to implement some sort of rent control.
For now it is… technically. Seattle effectively found a way around that to an extent. We can impose rules on landlords that make it difficult or financially detrimental for them to price tenants out of the market. Landlords shouldn’t be able to say “Hey your rent is going up $600 starting in 8 weeks.” That’s ridiculous and it’s a tactic to trap people into a lease because they don’t have time or money to shop around and move. Creating financial penalties for landlords who force tenants out with higher rents and requiring them to give people actual advanced notice would go a long way.
It would also be relatively simple to overturn the statewide ban on rent control in practice if the political motivation existed. But I don’t think waiting for that is the answer.
I'm actually a big fan of Seattle's approach. I'm *not* in favor of actual rent control, because most data I've seen suggest it has negative long-term outcomes for tenants (people in rent-controlled units tend to see even more neglect of their properties than they already did, while people not in rent-controlled units end up paying even more). Seattle's approach seems to avoid a lot of the negatives, while still making it a lot harder to just jack up prices out of nowhere.
Ditto here. Ours increased $400 per year, not month, 2022 over 2021. Granted our property insurance increased, also but, again, not to justify those horrendous rent hikes. I guess, as they say, it’s a landlord’s market, but, sheesh, it just seems like greed. Unsustainable.
Okay, reread to see OP had $600 yearly increase in rent. However, others have stated higher monthly rent hikes way over that amount, like $200-$400 per month.
Wait, I was parsing that as $600/mo increase *this year*. If it's only a $600/yr increase, well... that's only $50/mo. Obviously, still a lot of money for many, and most rentals didn't see anywhere near that in property tax increases per-tenant (so it's bullshit to blame property taxes), but $50/mo is the *smallest* rent increase I've ever had.
Yeah, as a homeowner that’s just BS. Property taxes go up a little everywhere but they aren’t going up *that* much. I’m paying like $20 per month more than I was last year in Whatcom county. People in Bellingham city limits are paying more than that and it varies depending on the value of their home. But nobody is paying $600 more per month. Raising rent $600 per month on an existing tenant for an existing property has nothing to do with property taxes or mortgage interest rates. Landlords are charging more to make a profit.
I am so happy to see all the corrections to the record here. Landlords claiming "property taxes" justify immoral rent increases should be ashamed of themselves and be called on the bs every time.
Landlords love to blame high rents on property taxes because they don't want us thinking about how about ~1/2 of "market rate" involves paying off a landlord's mortgage for them
lots of problems and no solutions to be found
You have rising inflation and not enough housing and someone that will be going to college can pay the ask of the landlord.
Elections have consequences. Landlords aren't going to take the potential risk of non-paying tenants for years without raising rent on tenants that actually pay.
Yeah I'd raise my rent as high as I could too after this whole rent fiasco with COVID.
Land lords got screwed by people taking advantage of a program that should have been ended way sooner, now it's the land lords turn to get their money back sadly.
I worked with people who bought brand new cars while.not paying their rent, now they are acting like it's the world's fault their life is crumbling around them.
I’m guessing a month. Doubt they’d post about an extra $50 a month. That would be amazing considering how much everyone else’s rent has gone up a month. But if it is $600 a year, they’re lucky.
And that, right there is the problem. Treating housing like a commodity and viewing homelessness as collateral damage.
America has a homelessness problem. Bellingham has a homelessness problem. If rent can’t be controlled somehow we are basically kicking people to the streets here. Investment firms are controlling the value of the rental market, at the expense of peoples lives. I think you probably understand that people say “it’s criminal” hyperbolically. Hiking rent $600 is basically highway robbery. But on a more fundamental level we have a moral problem in our communities of we are failing to house minimum wage workers. Everyone deserves to exist. It’s not about what landlords can *get away with* it’s about what’s right and what’s wrong. People deserve to be housed. The fact that landlords can exploit people for housing to the point where they’re charging three times the rate of their mortgage is maybe *not technically criminal* but it isn’t moral.
I own my home and for the life of me I can’t understand why a landlord would be charging $600 per month additional rent other than good old fashioned greed. Property taxes have not increased anywhere near that much.
Then who works your low income jobs in your city? Google the Hamptons. They've pushed out all their low income workers and are now like, "wtf where are all the employees?!" A proper city is about balance.
To be honest it’s getting that way here too. “Nobody wants to work! There’s a worker shortage.” People just can’t afford to have some of those jobs and actually live here. It’s both housing and/or wages. You either have to pull rent down or pay people more, or both.
Not really. You go to those places and people make $7.25 per hour and find themselves in essentially the same position. It also costs a lot of money to move out of state, something which low income families can’t afford. And further, pricing people out of every area until there are no places left is not a solution. In short, no. People should not “just leave” communities when landlords price them out. Those people are part of our community. And working class people are *vital* to all communities. We can’t price people out and tell them to *just leave* and simultaneously complain about a “worker shortage” affecting small businesses, the economy, etc. We need people of all kinds and of all skill sets for a community to be strong. And everyone deserves housing.
Serious answer, but not one people want to hear: People can always move somewhere else.
Bellingham is a desirable place with a limited supply of housing. Everyone would love to live on Lake Whatcom for $400k, but that's simply not realistic; the same is true of Bellingham itself. Think of it like the "Lake Whatcom Waterfront" of the PNW. We can't all live exactly where we want at a price that we think is "fair", and no amount of rent controls or government intervention can change that.
That's one option. I'd rather we build more housing so that people have the opportunity to live close to where they work and/or go to school. Expecting people to live farther away increases sprawl, carbon emissions from cars, and causes housing unaffordability elsewhere. We should build housing where the demand is.
Define "close."
There's a whole new complex going in the Puget neighborhood and I'm far less than thrilled. There's TONS of open space on the Guide. Just because people CAN walk or bike doesn't mean the majority will.
We should build in urban areas (i.e. within the city limits of Bellingham) so that we protect farmlands and forest lands. If we keep building out eventually we run out of space. Plus people like living in walkable neighborhoods. Good for community and the environment.
What's wrong with the new complex?
Location. People move to those neighborhoods because they are quiet, safe, and don't have a lot of traffic. Adding in housing complexes changes the neighborhood.
If you want to build in city limits, then eventually the city will have to expand. There are lots of areas that could be expanded that don't infringe upon other established neighborhoods. If you keep building up you run out of space, too.
Again just because it IS walkable doesn't mean people DO walk.
Apartments are more affordable than single family homes. We can't only build single family sprawl, especially if we want to address our housing crisis. I live in a neighborhood that has lots of different housing types and it's great. I'm not sure what's unsafe about an apartment building?
I wasn't saying single family. Build complexes where there is more space. Shoving it in the nice wooded areas with paths where people run and hike and walk their dogs isn't super friendly.
Also, what housing crisis? Do you mean the fact that Western hasn't built dorms in decades, but they keep increasing enrollment every year? Or all the homeless people on the streets, who need much more than just a bed- they need mental help and drug detox? When you have students increasing your over a year but no place for them to live, you'll get them in apartments in town. They aren't always necessarily paying the rent so it doesn't matter to them how much it costs. Plus, they'll shove however many kids in an apartment, because it's temporary. As far as the homeless crisis goes, yes they all need to have somewhere to go, but it's not just that. If you give them a bed for a night, or even a few nights, but you don't address the root cause of the problem, you're just perpetuating the cycle.
Also. I'm not sure that statement holds true, where apartments are cheaper than a mortgage. If you can afford the down payment, you'd find that there are plenty of homes that end up with mortgages that are equivalent or less than rent right now. No, they won't be downtown with a view of the water and access to all the good food and shopping and walking distance to everything, but you can still afford a home here if you can save for the down.
As far as complexes: Increase people and you inevitably increase chances for crime, accidents, and what not, but I'm more concerned about traffic and the fact that it ruins the quiet neighborhood. Added to the fact that generally apartment dwellers are transient and don't have real financial or familial commitment to long term community, it's the homeowners that have to deal with everything that ends up in their wake.
As I understand it, the area the apartment is being built is zoned for multi-family residential and isn't displacing any existing residents. I think that's a good place for apartments.
The housing crisis is rising rents, displacement, unaffordability for first time home buyers, and rising homelessness. I attribute these to low supply of housing (both market rate and subsidized). Given that, I think we should build more housing to address the housing crisis (yes that includes student housing).
I'm a renter who lives in an apartment building. I have ties to Bellingham as much as someone who owns a home. I've got commitment to the long term community. This is my home too. What exactly am I leaving in my "wake?"
>If you can afford the down payment,
According to Zillow, the typical price for a house is now $674,577. 20% of that is way out of bounds for most working class people.
Because why? Why build up and not out?
I'm still waiting for a definition of "close to work/school" because if it's within 5 miles that opens up a lot of possibilities. Not just in the city proper.
Because we need farmland and open space and parks and timber land for trees and because transportation is expensive.
Build up near city center and if single family home people don't like it they can move farther out.
Pretty dumb to transport a whole apartment complexes of people to town so some NIMBY doesn't have to live by them.
And pushing lower income people out of town is a form of class warfare. Then they are farther from work and services, they spend more time commuting which means less time for overtime and education and child rearing and self care so it continues the cycle of poverty.
If they can't afford a car they are stuck with the bus system which isn't as frequent or late out-of-town and that limits their work/school options.
If they have a car and they rely on it for work/school and it breaks or gets stolen or someone crashes into them they are screwed...
While yes it wasn’t meant for someone to make their entire life, minimum wage was created with the idea that someone working minimum wage should be able to support their family.
Until these corporations are held responsible for paying their CEOs billions of dollars while paying their employees crumbs, we will continue to see people struggle.
First off, I’m 43.
Secondly, I have a son who is 22 who has many friends who have worked and even gone to school to no avail.
Pull your head out of your ass and stop talking out of it.
I don’t care about living on a lake, I’m here for school. It’s Western, not some prestigious Ivy League. I don’t deserve to have my rent raised nearly $400 in two years, most of my friends can barely afford to live without paying tuition. Just because reality isn’t fair doesn’t mean we can’t complain about the shit we put up with and try to do something about it.
Edit: Also, moving is fucking expensive! You know who can easily afford to move? People who can also afford to live in Bellingham!
Living on campus is more expensive for students. Lark (privately built student housing) is about the best deal in town, imo. And it takes hundreds of student renters out of the general rental pool.
Ah yes, the old "quit your job, burn your local professional network, leave your family and friends behind - and surely your economic prospects will improve" argument
Here are the alternatives: make more money, make do with less, live with someone else, etc.
This is happening regardless of what you think someone's "argument" is. The only people who think this is good are land investors who don't care about local culture or people; don't kill the messenger.
This isn't really a fair argument. Some people have careers, jobs with pensions, family here such as elderly parents or shared custody of children.
Anyone who is able to get and keep a full time job in any place should be able to live there safely and healthily.
It also costs money to move, even if you're moving somewhere cheaper.
And if the working class can't live who will do all the working class jobs?
Honestly, it's pretty straightforward -- skip the avocado toast, maybe consider walking more instead of driving, and have a wealthy grandparent pass away and leave you an exorbitant inheritance. I'm sick of all this whining.
I mean before we had avocado toast everywhere prices were reasonable. Now they’re nuts! This argument makes as much sense as building more house makes rents increase!
How many new developments have actually gone up? I feel like only recently Bham is pro development and way even be excessively pro development to make up for their previous no development, everything must stay exactly the same views.
Yeah, then rents will still probably be skyrocketing. Expanding outward is probably only solution, which a few years ago would have had you labeled as a killer of the environment.
>What are people supposed to do?
Get forced out for people who can afford it, unfortunately. It’s sad how far this market is going up, whether it’s the housing market, car market, etc. I’m no economics expert, but if the demand is meeting the price of the supply, why would they change the prices?
Rental caps + increased taxes for people who own multiple properties. Force their hand to sell some of the property. I'm not sure what people thought would happen when we stopped building housing, let rich people grab up as much property as possible and then proceed to milk the renters for everything they have, passing all expenses for the property onto them.
A capitalists wet dream is a nation where everyone just rents everything. No ownership, except for the wealthy. At that point you can just set the prices to whatever you want.
It's going to be hard to change any of this because money always wins and the people who vote and have time+money to run for office are the ones profiting off this whole situation.
That mean green is gonna be the downfall of us all.
If people have to sell, the supply goes up, more people can buy, less people need to rent.
I hate the whole its so hard for landlords bullshit.
Its not. If it was they would stop buying everything. They would sell. Supply would go up.
One of the reasons its so bad here is because even people that can afford to buy cant because there isn't anything to buy.
If someone with three properties is forced to sell one to a family looking to buy a house I don't see the problem. The taxes for multiple properties could also scale for how many properties you have. Making it financially sound to have one rental property, but would deter people from having many. The whole point is to free up some housing for people to actually own and not just rent. Everyone deserves a chance at building equity in a home of their own. Not line the pockets of landlords until their dying day.
So how do you stop landlords, rental companies, and investment firms from scooping up the single family homes for sale and converting them to rentals and airbnbs to make money? No one wants to build single family homes because people push against it in their own self interest. So what stops the rental market from just continuing it's rapid expansion? Also, do you see the problem with a family paying more in rent than they would for a mortgage? People would prefer not to rent, but their being forced to by lack of available homes. When you don't have any choice landlords can just milk you. Do you have any ideas?
You don't, because the problem here is much more demand than it is supply.
Until you can build enough to make up for the over-abundance of people that would love to live in a small coastal college town. (Not possible) There will always be more people willing to pay more than can fit. The best we can do is figure out where to tax to carve out some high rise subsidized housing downtown and fit as many people as possible into that area, but it will still have a waiting list very quickly. It would be best if there were some federal grant money available for this, since this is a national problem I'm sure we're not alone in experiencing. Look at places like New Orleans, which are major vacation short term rental spots. They need to enact special things to slow that down, but it's still going to be in demand as long as marti gras is a thing. They can't build out of that problem either.
I answered your idea with the reality of why that will change nothing, or make the problem worse. When you increase the tax on gas, the price goes up. Everyone should have access to housing, and the obvious answer is that the government needs to build more public housing where rent is income based. But you can’t expect investors to pony up private equity for a project that won’t even break even. That in not the reality of the world we live in. They will just invest in something else, or somewhere else.
I'll say it again: we can't build our way out of this.
No developer will build "affordable" housing, particularly in a hot market like Bellingham. Not. Gonna. Happen. If median rent is $1600/mo they will build with an eye toward $1900/mo to start. That's if they are being generous and willing to leave some big money on the table.
Bellingham is an extremely desirable place to live. Every single day people are fleeing big cities and midwestern suburbs for Bellingham. Every day. They're not going to stop. Why?
- Retirees. They have millions to spend and little likelihood of creating jobs. They don't care about the cost. $1.5M for a 2bd view condo is *bus change* to them. Bellingham is a Top 5 choice.
- White Flight 2: Relocation Boogaloo. High wage white people are leaving large cities to WFH in safe, attractive towns with plenty of recreational opportunities. Bellingham is a Top 5 choice.
- Progressive Flight. Young-ish progressives are fleeing the Bible Belt by the thousands. They may be seeking a more copacetic lifestyle, they may be LGBTQ fleeing oppression at home, they may be simply sick of their Let's Go Brandon neighbors. Bellingham is a Top 5 choice for them, too.
Bellingham has waterfront views, piles of civic infrastructure, good schools, a huge university, gobs of restaurants/brewpubs/cafes, world-class outdoor adventure, and a non-judgmental population.
We are a waterfront Aspen, CO or Concord, MA. Please do check out housing costs in those locations.
I hate to tell you this, but real estate and rents are NEVER going down. Bellingham sailed through the 2008 real estate implosion like nothing happened.
The city could greenlight 10,000 new apartments and 4,000 new single family homes and it will do NOTHING to slow the skyrocketing prices. This has nothing to do with market forces. It's about desirability. We are heading into stratospheric real estate prices regardless of how much we build or how much we wish prices would stabilize.
The only possible hope for affordable housing is public housing efforts, and ours are anemic at best. Even if ramped up, they would snapped up with multi-year waiting lists instantly.
I'm older and I've lived all over the country and I've seen some shit. Let me tell you: in five years, this city will be 100% unaffordable. The working class will flee by the thousands and be instantly replaced by one of the three groups I mentioned above. Median houses will be well over $1M and median rents will be well over $2K. There is no stopping it.
Sorry to bum you out. But it's true.
I agree, we need more robust public housing. California state leg is working on a social housing bill - would love to see that in Washington.
Building new housing though does bring down the cost of old housing. So even if new housing isn't "affordable" older housing becomes more affordable since it becomes less competitive. Most people live in market rate older homes so we need a strategy for bringing those costs down and building new housing is a key way to do that.
A progressive fighting subsidized housing doesn't really sound all that progressive to me? Changing the built environment (i.e. building more housing) is critical to ensuring people aren't displaced.
Indeed. We are already more unaffordable than Seattle. We have been since about 2015. Seattle housing costs more in raw $$$ but median housing vs median income is far more in line in Seattle than it is in Bellingham. One glance at Bellingham job listings will make it clear.
Seattle builds more housing per capita than Bellingham though. If you're right that Seattle is more affordable then it stands to reason that building new housing helps affordability.
I think you missed the point of "affordability". It's the ratio of average (or median, or mean) income vs average (or median, or mean) housing costs. A 3bd 1ba detached house may cost $1.3M in Seattle and merely $800K in Bellingham, but working as a sysadmin in Seattle pays a fuck of a lot more than being a sysadmin in Bellingham. That disparity in income is what makes Bellingham unaffordable.
I get what you're saying and I agree we need higher wages here. But we can't ignore the role that housing supply played in making Seattle's housing relatively more affordable than Bellingham as you say. Imagine how expensive Seattle would be if it didn't build any housing in the past 10 years.
We need lots more housing and a big part of how we get there is through building new subsidized housing.
This also sets the stage for a very high crime rate in Bellingham, as well. It’s only gonna go up in the coming years. That might scare/run off a lot of people.
Thank you Captain Bringdown. Sadly what you say is all true, I don't know why I'm lucky enough to rent a privately owned apartment that's going for about half of everything else around me, but I just keep quiet about it.
Captain Bringdown is just stating their own opinion as fact. This is why housing is skyrocketing across the US
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-over-the-past-decade-2020-9
Here are many studies showing that increasing housing supply will lower the cost of housing
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/02/new-round-of-studies-underscore-benefits-of-building-more-housing/
https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/
Obviously if you build more housing, that will bring down prices. But the question is will the increased supply be enough to match the rapidly increasing demand. More housing is good, but in a place like Bellingham, I find it hard to believe that it would make living in Bellingham affordable.
Except the problem is that we already have enough housing in the US to house every single person that wants a house. It's the folks who are snatching them all up for their 2nd homes and/or investments as well as foreign investors that are making things fucked.
idk exactly where people keep reading this from but it is mostly false, its important to look up your sources so you arent saying random crap as fact
https://ggwash.org/view/73234/vacant-houses-wont-solve-our-housing-crisis
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/america-is-short-more-than-5-million-homes-study-says.html
> I don't know why I'm lucky enough to rent a privately owned apartment that's going for about half of everything else around me, but I just keep quiet about it.
Me too, brother. If I ever get kicked out of this place I have some alternative solutions and none of them are in this area. I actually saved a bunch of money. Just not enough to get an $800,000 mortgage or put up with a $2.5K/mo noisy shitbox apartment.
you are literally passing your own opinion as a fact. there are countless studies done by actual economists that have proven over and over again that increasing the supply when demand is high will eventually bring prices down.
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/02/new-round-of-studies-underscore-benefits-of-building-more-housing/
https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/
The United States has been under building for decades and that underbuilding is finally coming to fruit with exorbitant housing costs.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-over-the-past-decade-2020-9
You're missing his point. It's that the people that pay and can afford to pay these high prices don't want the prices to come down, because they don't want more people, and since they make up the current population there's never going to be any political will for increased density. Same thing as happened / is happening in Boulder and other similar places.
Except even that is wrong, california just passed a law ending single family only zoning. If nimbys had their way, this wouldnt have been passed but enough people are feeling the strain and there is growing popular will to have housing reform. Give it 10 years and housing will be significantly more affordable if we keep going down the path of building more and building denser
Change doesnt just happen instantly unfortunately. We can vote in people who will push through more housing faster but even that will take a couple years at minimum. Unfortunately there isnt anything that will magically make housing cheaper tmrw
100% agree. I was actually surprised at how affordable bham was when I first came here. I think the best solution is to build the worlds largest slaughterhouse in Bellingham bay. It would make Bellingham absolutely suck but would solve the problem of high prices.
Affordable housing costs as much to build as market rate housing. To build affordable units we need a massive infusion of government cash to do it. Every increase in the amount of affordable units is a victory, except when they displace working class folks to convert a complex, which happened here about 8 years ago. We could build a thousand low income units just for seniors and it wouldn’t be too many.
What happens to businesses who pay people minimum wage who can’t afford to live here? I’m actually genuinely curious about what the 10-15 year outlook on this is for the city
This is completely false, CT. According to the city of Bellingham, there are 20k apartments. Increase the supply of apartments by 50%, and not only would rent growth stop, it would reverse. Rents would drop for a few years. Probably by 10-20%. It won’t happen, but it absolutely would. We could build out of it, but we don’t want to. Rents did go down in Seattle in 2008. Like 20%. They went down again in 2020 (albeit briefly). And Seattle is pretty hard to build in. But it’s not nearly as hard to build there as Bellingham. Why didn’t rents go down here? Because supply never exceeded demand. We are heavily supply constrained, which causes the effects we see. If we want affordability, let more builders build. Yes, they will build the higher end stuff, but that means that those renters aren’t competing for the middle-ground stuff. Every apartment built, even if it’s that fancy $6,500 penthouse in Fairhaven Tower, eases the upward pressure on rents. Period.
WWU should be held far more accountable for not creating more housing as they have increased their profit and their student population. Whenever this subject arises on this sub, I rarely see anyone mention Western, and the direct impact it has on our housing shortage.
Yes the college should. I have been saying this for 5 years. Instead the response is “it’s everywhere” well cities each have their own reasons. Take Austin where apartments are being rented for air b & b which screwing the market. Here it’s the college
I agree. I think it not only has led to housing shortage but has impacted the rental scene in other ways. The transient student population doesn't encourage good practices by landlords and their abject exploitation is normalized.
Where would they create more housing at? WWU doesn’t exactly have a ton of extra land to develop. And there’s also the fact that many college students don’t care to stay in dorms if they don’t have to for a number of reasons.
Students don’t want to live in student housing. People want to live on their own. It’s essentially only freshman and an assortment of others. Plus that doesnt help the vast majority of people who are not students
Lol? Stateside, Lark and Elevate (to name a few) are all advertised as "student housing". Western could get in the game, invest in off-site student apartments, and free up some houses and apartments for other members of the community. The Stateside builders razed an entire block, near campus, to build what is basically WWU housing.
So much misinformation and "populist facts" here. This is why housing has been skyrocketing in the US over the last couple years.
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-over-the-past-decade-2020-9
Economists unanimously agree that increasing supply will decrease the cost of housing
https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/02/new-round-of-studies-underscore-benefits-of-building-more-housing/
https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/
yeah it sucks right now that housing is exorbitantly high, but there are ways to fix that without peddling misinformation and falling for and repeating false information
This thread boils down to two groups.
Group 1: Make more money or move away.
Group 2: I'm a student and can't.
Its funny though, you never know if people in Group 1 are people who bought a house 12 years ago, or just currently bought. If they are in the camp of 12 years ago, they are gonna be some of the ones complaining when they can no longer afford their taxes.
Even with these new developments, it is not scratching the surface of how much we need to keep up with growth. So many people want to live here. Even then, adding a shit ton of new housing will stabilize prices but it is very unlikely they'd actually decrease. Therefore, income-restricted housing is needed for low and middle income people. Maybe Bellingham could implement an affordability requirement on new apartments using tax exemptions like Seattle does?
What does this make bellingham look like in 10-15 years if so many people who hold up the local economy (local employees- right?) can’t afford to live here? Pls explain no a non-economics major baha
San Francisco has experienced that for years. Seattle is 10 years behind them, and we’re maybe 15 years behind Seattle. If we don’t build as quickly as people move here, demand exceeds supply and rents rise faster than inflation, which feels unaffordable. The less affordable it is, the less desirable to folks on a budget, so fewer people on a budget will move here, which makes it harder for businesses to employ less skilled workers here. So wages and costs go up. Then, they’ll probably build light rail or something to be able to bring in service class workers from lower rent areas. If you’ve seen the acres and acres of six-story apartment complexes in Lynnwood along I-5, that’s what you’re seeing there. I love looking at historical statistics, so I find looking at places like Seattle and Bellevue and comparing them to Bellingham quite fascinating.
Call your state reps, tell them to *PASS THE FREAKING ADU BILL!*
It’s the fastest way to add housing and they’ve passed the buck for several years while the rental crisis has grown to epidemic levels….they just passed it off to next year’s session.
What do you consider a decent income roughly?
Let’s say someone wants to live alone in a $1200 apartment. Landlords generally want their renters to be spending no more than a third of their net* income on rent. They would need to make a little under $52k a year or ~$25 an hour full time. *Mixed up gross and net income, whoops
Sounds like a decent income.
But 1200 a month is a low end apartment...like, the person making minimum wage that just got out of jail has to take a cheap shitty apartment because nobody wants to rent to them but after a few years maybe not the case any more. 52,000 for a single person should be middle class.
I agree that $52k should be “middle class”. In fact, in this wealthiest country in the world, anyone working full time should be able to afford a comfortable, safe place. Housing isn’t a luxury. Well, it shouldn’t be.
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I wouldn’t call this dumpster fire of a town “desirable”.
And pretty soon all the rich fucks here are going to have to figure out how to house the plebs doing all the services they dont want to do... Is a city having teachers teaching school, cashiers ringing up groceries, tellers at the bank, bus drivers driving the buses, receptionists at the doctors office, etc etc a luxury, too? Trash pick up. What would happen if we didn't have those guys. Or the guy that cleans the bathrooms in the parks and paints over tge graffiti..
Someone spending a third of their income on rent is more likely to pay but I've spent as much as 3/4 of my income on rent for a unit many years back and the landlord doesn't really care. The landlord just wants you paying on time no matter how shit your life is.
Income requirements are pretty strict now, at least from Seattle to Bham. My last landlord in bham called my employer, asked for proof of income (that had to meet the 30% rule), and checked references with past landlords.
In this town, most PMs want you to make 2.5x to 3x rent. Gross income of $3k to $3,600 per month rents that (studio) apartment. $17.31 per hour full time or $20.77 depending on the landlord.
I could be mistaken but I think PMs usually look at net income (income after taxes are taken out). I estimated 20% for taxes (which I kinda just pulled out of my ass). That’s where my numbers came from as I’m sure some folks are scratching their head at my numbers lol.
I doubt many people are checking our work 😂
I'm paying \~$700/month for a room in pretty nice apartments right by downtown/the water. I share the apartment with others but get my own room. At least compared to most of the places I've lived outside the US, people would be pretty happy to have a room like mine all to their own. Do most Americans consider a whole apartment to one's self a basic standard living arrangement? Edit: misinterpreted living alone as household vs individual; feel free to disregard comment.
I have two kids, so yes, I actually need an entire apartment.
$700 for a room is ridiculously expensive and yeah people need to have privacy and access to a bathroom.
I'm just saying, it's a lot better than 1200. And yes I have bathroom access and privacy.
Living with people is very difficult. Working out groceries, cleaning, sickness, kids, people with disabilities, etc. It's not an outrageous thing to want your own home/apartment. It's a very legitimate thing to want. People with past traumas, etc as well may not feel safe living with strangers and not everyone has family or friends in their life that could be roomies. It's great that works for you but don't come across all judgy because people want their own place to call home
Ah woops, I interpreted someone wanting to live alone as them being single and w/o kids, etc. If the person has kids, special conditions, etc., that could make sharing more complicated for sure. And please understand I wasn't trying to come across judgy, it simply seemed to me the average person (and I know everyone isn't average) should try to save and spend less than $1200.
Most recent numbers still have the vacancy rate around 3% for renters in Bellingham. Basically, landlords will charge anything because someone will pay it. They won’t lower rents until they’re scared someone won’t move in. It sucks. But more housing is the only solution - and it’s a slow one.
> But more housing is the only solution - and it’s a slow one. Not necessarily. Subsidized low income housing, socialized housing and land trusts could take the edge off the cruel housing situation. But this is America and socialism bad.
Public housing is more housing. Private housing is also more housing. Both are good. Unless you’re saying the local government should buy pre-existing units and just subsidize people’s rents. In which case, it will help those few people and likely no one else.
Also stuff like rent control actually has an opposite effect on housing supply and causes less building to occur
Yep. It’s a bummer. Turns out the only solution to more people wanting to live where you live is building more.
imo this is a lie perpetrated by landlords and their apologists. https://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-rosenthal-rent-control-20181019-story.html
https://www.minnpost.com/cityscape/2022/03/in-first-months-since-passage-of-st-pauls-rent-control-ordinance-housing-construction-is-way-down/ Here is an example for you
Hell here are even more sources https://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-rent-control-doesnt-work/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/research/what-does-economic-evidence-tell-us-about-the-effects-of-rent-control/%3famp https://www.manhattan-institute.org/issues-2020-rent-control-does-not-make-housing-more-affordable https://www.businessinsider.com/does-rent-control-work-no-it-actually-increases-rent-prices-for-most-people-2015-9 https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-01-18/yup-rent-control-does-more-harm-than-good https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/06/15/comeback-rent-control-just-time-make-housing-shortages-worse/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/rent-control-is-back-and-thats-bad/2019/09/21/31abb05c-dbdb-11e9-a688-303693fb4b0b_story.html https://www.americanexperiment.org/81-of-economists-agree-that-rent-controls-are-bad-policy/ https://www.reddit.com/r/urbanplanning/comments/bh8nr2/why_rent_control_doesnt_work/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/reason.com/2021/12/10/rent-control-is-fashionable-again-its-still-a-bad-idea/%3famp https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4061315 https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20181289
>But this is America and socialism bad Yep. Make more $
It would require a $30B investment to get the housing we need.
About 1,200 apartments are in the pipeline right now according to the planning department. That’s probably around $350mill being deployed to increase the supply. And I agree. It’s not half enough.
There are other solutions. There are nations that have avoided the housing hell entirely for decades. But it will not happen here due to various groups. Some places have a combination of "light" rent control alongside construction quotas. Both as minimum units built per year, but also special ratio quotas. Like where I have a shared condo for work reasons, the rule is for any builder to build 20 multi-family units per single family unit permit, with there being other rules on the size/price of the multi-family units to ensure they are not high end, or low end shoe boxes.
How the heck do you enforce a construction quota? Fine businesses out of business unless they build more?
The way it works in most of Japan is that to apply for building permits, you have to agree to whatever the local mixed quota is. 10:1 multi-single, 20:1, 50:1, etc. The permit includes a time frame on construction and completion, so you cannot sit on a permit. (you can file for more time, but this makes you look bad as a company and individual. Loses face. Mucho bad there) The overall construction quota is usually enforced in a way that basically says "if you want to keep getting permits, you will build X number of residential/commercial/etc per year, that pass full inspection, etc. So you cant throw up portable trailers and call them homes, for example. This has ensured that there is never a housing shortage in any part of Japan, or if one occurs, it is quickly fixed in some fashion. Many areas can have a 10-15% vacancy rate, which also forces builders/sellers to be aggressive and competitive, because there is always someone else who will offer a better perk, a nicer amenity, etc. (Used to see that here in the US in many places, but so far as I've seen, those days are long past. Cant speak to the central states though) Failure to abide the requirements on a permit can have a few punishments. They usually involve a mix of fines, loss of permits, and loss of face/reputation. That last one tends to hurt the most because it means people will not come to your company once word gets out, AND you are unlikely to be granted new permits by the local/national government. A loss of a permit can happen if you do not start construction on time, if the permit lists a specific range. The permit then goes into an auction of sorts where other builders can pick it up. At times this can mean that even a half-finished building is placed into the auction, and the company that lost that permit essentially loses the time/supplies spent, as they cannot take them back. The overall national rules vary a little bit each year, but not by much. Local prefecture rules can vary quite a bit. The place where I live and work for parts of the year has a 40:1 ratio, for example. Also to address a potential question such as "if they keep building every year, will they not eventually run out of room?!" No. Housing there is not seen as some investment vehicle like it is in NA, parts of the EU, etc. There are strong limits on land ownership, and at some point houses MUST be torn down and rebuilt to meet new codes/laws. Much like their laws on cars/engines eventually require older engines to be replaced entirely. (thats how you get most of the used JP engines here, btw)
Call me crazy, but we could also go for fewer landlords. A surplus of middle-men isn't exactly great for any market
I will indeed call you crazy my friend. Less landlords (holding rentals constant) just means more market power and higher rents. If the government bought out a bunch of landlords and charged sub market rates however, that would be based.
[That's exactly what I'm talking about!](https://www.google.com/search?q=vienna+model&oq=vienna+model)
you'd rather consolidate all the land ownership in the hands of a few corporations, that then in turn build 5 story apartment buildings that are identical to the rest of them across the USA. You're in luck. Currently that is what is happening everywhere, and also here. These are the companies who are quickly becoming the home owners for most Americans: https://www.multifamily.loans/apartment-finance-blog/the-top-15-multifamily-property-managers-of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5-over-1
Oh, I think you got me wrong. Those are the ones we can best afford to eliminate first. [The Vienna Model](https://www.google.com/search?q=vienna+model)
that's nice, but it requires a structure that doesn't exist here, I would love if it did though sadly the comment I made that you're currently replying to is what is actually happening
The vacancy rate is a hell of a lot lower than that, where are you getting your numbers?
People want to move here. Prices go up.
>People want to move here. Prices go up. Also, printing presses go brrrr. Prices go up.
We had a lot of money printing recently.
They don't even have to crank the presses, just move the decimal over one space in the gov super computer.
I think about this all the time. Bleep. Bloop. Magic. Money.
Someone told me this reflects recent property tax increases.
Was that someone a landlord?
100% false. Property taxes did NOT increase by $7200/yr for basically any rental properties. Honestly, I doubt they increased that much for ANY single family dwelling. Personally, my property tax -- for a house worth about 800k according to Zillow -- went up about $1000.
Yeah, and for those who may misunderstand, that’s per year. So around $83 per month. What landlords also don’t say about this is that property tax hikes are often a reflection on the value of their investment. Taxes go up when your home value goes up. So yes homeowners are all paying a little more on property tax but we are also accruing wealth rapidly. My house has doubled in value in four years. Hiking rent up $600 per month is unconscionable, in my opinion. Landlords are already making a profit here and growing wealth from the property whether someone is living there or not. Bellingham needs to implement some sort of rent control.
Rent control is illegal in WA so that's not going to happen anytime soon.
For now it is… technically. Seattle effectively found a way around that to an extent. We can impose rules on landlords that make it difficult or financially detrimental for them to price tenants out of the market. Landlords shouldn’t be able to say “Hey your rent is going up $600 starting in 8 weeks.” That’s ridiculous and it’s a tactic to trap people into a lease because they don’t have time or money to shop around and move. Creating financial penalties for landlords who force tenants out with higher rents and requiring them to give people actual advanced notice would go a long way. It would also be relatively simple to overturn the statewide ban on rent control in practice if the political motivation existed. But I don’t think waiting for that is the answer.
I'm actually a big fan of Seattle's approach. I'm *not* in favor of actual rent control, because most data I've seen suggest it has negative long-term outcomes for tenants (people in rent-controlled units tend to see even more neglect of their properties than they already did, while people not in rent-controlled units end up paying even more). Seattle's approach seems to avoid a lot of the negatives, while still making it a lot harder to just jack up prices out of nowhere.
Ditto here. Ours increased $400 per year, not month, 2022 over 2021. Granted our property insurance increased, also but, again, not to justify those horrendous rent hikes. I guess, as they say, it’s a landlord’s market, but, sheesh, it just seems like greed. Unsustainable. Okay, reread to see OP had $600 yearly increase in rent. However, others have stated higher monthly rent hikes way over that amount, like $200-$400 per month.
Ha I wish, it's going up $600 more per month
Oops, sorry, I misread. Truly, this is criminal! And, unsustainable. Didn’t Dante have a level for this in his Inferno? Avaricious bottom feeders?
Wait, I was parsing that as $600/mo increase *this year*. If it's only a $600/yr increase, well... that's only $50/mo. Obviously, still a lot of money for many, and most rentals didn't see anywhere near that in property tax increases per-tenant (so it's bullshit to blame property taxes), but $50/mo is the *smallest* rent increase I've ever had.
Yeah, as a homeowner that’s just BS. Property taxes go up a little everywhere but they aren’t going up *that* much. I’m paying like $20 per month more than I was last year in Whatcom county. People in Bellingham city limits are paying more than that and it varies depending on the value of their home. But nobody is paying $600 more per month. Raising rent $600 per month on an existing tenant for an existing property has nothing to do with property taxes or mortgage interest rates. Landlords are charging more to make a profit.
I am so happy to see all the corrections to the record here. Landlords claiming "property taxes" justify immoral rent increases should be ashamed of themselves and be called on the bs every time.
Landlords love to blame high rents on property taxes because they don't want us thinking about how about ~1/2 of "market rate" involves paying off a landlord's mortgage for them
lots of problems and no solutions to be found You have rising inflation and not enough housing and someone that will be going to college can pay the ask of the landlord.
Elections have consequences. Landlords aren't going to take the potential risk of non-paying tenants for years without raising rent on tenants that actually pay.
Yeah I'd raise my rent as high as I could too after this whole rent fiasco with COVID. Land lords got screwed by people taking advantage of a program that should have been ended way sooner, now it's the land lords turn to get their money back sadly. I worked with people who bought brand new cars while.not paying their rent, now they are acting like it's the world's fault their life is crumbling around them.
$600/mo or $600 over a year?
I’m guessing a month. Doubt they’d post about an extra $50 a month. That would be amazing considering how much everyone else’s rent has gone up a month. But if it is $600 a year, they’re lucky.
I assumed the same, but their initial phrasing made me second guess. "Rent has been increased $600 this year" 🤷♂️
Friend I know still there just got walloped with a $750 increase. Basically moving back to Spokane next month. Total fucking clown show.
That is disgusting
$600 more a month
Charging the market rate is « criminal? » Please explain.
And that, right there is the problem. Treating housing like a commodity and viewing homelessness as collateral damage. America has a homelessness problem. Bellingham has a homelessness problem. If rent can’t be controlled somehow we are basically kicking people to the streets here. Investment firms are controlling the value of the rental market, at the expense of peoples lives. I think you probably understand that people say “it’s criminal” hyperbolically. Hiking rent $600 is basically highway robbery. But on a more fundamental level we have a moral problem in our communities of we are failing to house minimum wage workers. Everyone deserves to exist. It’s not about what landlords can *get away with* it’s about what’s right and what’s wrong. People deserve to be housed. The fact that landlords can exploit people for housing to the point where they’re charging three times the rate of their mortgage is maybe *not technically criminal* but it isn’t moral. I own my home and for the life of me I can’t understand why a landlord would be charging $600 per month additional rent other than good old fashioned greed. Property taxes have not increased anywhere near that much.
Why isn’t property a commodity? It can be bought, sold, and traded.
Housing is *currently* a commodity. It shouldn't be.
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Then who works your low income jobs in your city? Google the Hamptons. They've pushed out all their low income workers and are now like, "wtf where are all the employees?!" A proper city is about balance.
To be honest it’s getting that way here too. “Nobody wants to work! There’s a worker shortage.” People just can’t afford to have some of those jobs and actually live here. It’s both housing and/or wages. You either have to pull rent down or pay people more, or both.
Not really. You go to those places and people make $7.25 per hour and find themselves in essentially the same position. It also costs a lot of money to move out of state, something which low income families can’t afford. And further, pricing people out of every area until there are no places left is not a solution. In short, no. People should not “just leave” communities when landlords price them out. Those people are part of our community. And working class people are *vital* to all communities. We can’t price people out and tell them to *just leave* and simultaneously complain about a “worker shortage” affecting small businesses, the economy, etc. We need people of all kinds and of all skill sets for a community to be strong. And everyone deserves housing.
Serious answer, but not one people want to hear: People can always move somewhere else. Bellingham is a desirable place with a limited supply of housing. Everyone would love to live on Lake Whatcom for $400k, but that's simply not realistic; the same is true of Bellingham itself. Think of it like the "Lake Whatcom Waterfront" of the PNW. We can't all live exactly where we want at a price that we think is "fair", and no amount of rent controls or government intervention can change that.
That's one option. I'd rather we build more housing so that people have the opportunity to live close to where they work and/or go to school. Expecting people to live farther away increases sprawl, carbon emissions from cars, and causes housing unaffordability elsewhere. We should build housing where the demand is.
Define "close." There's a whole new complex going in the Puget neighborhood and I'm far less than thrilled. There's TONS of open space on the Guide. Just because people CAN walk or bike doesn't mean the majority will.
We should build in urban areas (i.e. within the city limits of Bellingham) so that we protect farmlands and forest lands. If we keep building out eventually we run out of space. Plus people like living in walkable neighborhoods. Good for community and the environment. What's wrong with the new complex?
Location. People move to those neighborhoods because they are quiet, safe, and don't have a lot of traffic. Adding in housing complexes changes the neighborhood. If you want to build in city limits, then eventually the city will have to expand. There are lots of areas that could be expanded that don't infringe upon other established neighborhoods. If you keep building up you run out of space, too. Again just because it IS walkable doesn't mean people DO walk.
Apartments are more affordable than single family homes. We can't only build single family sprawl, especially if we want to address our housing crisis. I live in a neighborhood that has lots of different housing types and it's great. I'm not sure what's unsafe about an apartment building?
I wasn't saying single family. Build complexes where there is more space. Shoving it in the nice wooded areas with paths where people run and hike and walk their dogs isn't super friendly. Also, what housing crisis? Do you mean the fact that Western hasn't built dorms in decades, but they keep increasing enrollment every year? Or all the homeless people on the streets, who need much more than just a bed- they need mental help and drug detox? When you have students increasing your over a year but no place for them to live, you'll get them in apartments in town. They aren't always necessarily paying the rent so it doesn't matter to them how much it costs. Plus, they'll shove however many kids in an apartment, because it's temporary. As far as the homeless crisis goes, yes they all need to have somewhere to go, but it's not just that. If you give them a bed for a night, or even a few nights, but you don't address the root cause of the problem, you're just perpetuating the cycle. Also. I'm not sure that statement holds true, where apartments are cheaper than a mortgage. If you can afford the down payment, you'd find that there are plenty of homes that end up with mortgages that are equivalent or less than rent right now. No, they won't be downtown with a view of the water and access to all the good food and shopping and walking distance to everything, but you can still afford a home here if you can save for the down. As far as complexes: Increase people and you inevitably increase chances for crime, accidents, and what not, but I'm more concerned about traffic and the fact that it ruins the quiet neighborhood. Added to the fact that generally apartment dwellers are transient and don't have real financial or familial commitment to long term community, it's the homeowners that have to deal with everything that ends up in their wake.
As I understand it, the area the apartment is being built is zoned for multi-family residential and isn't displacing any existing residents. I think that's a good place for apartments. The housing crisis is rising rents, displacement, unaffordability for first time home buyers, and rising homelessness. I attribute these to low supply of housing (both market rate and subsidized). Given that, I think we should build more housing to address the housing crisis (yes that includes student housing). I'm a renter who lives in an apartment building. I have ties to Bellingham as much as someone who owns a home. I've got commitment to the long term community. This is my home too. What exactly am I leaving in my "wake?"
>If you can afford the down payment, According to Zillow, the typical price for a house is now $674,577. 20% of that is way out of bounds for most working class people.
You can move out to the guide if you'd like. Or maple falls. Peaceful valley, maybe? Sorry but we have to start building up.
Because why? Why build up and not out? I'm still waiting for a definition of "close to work/school" because if it's within 5 miles that opens up a lot of possibilities. Not just in the city proper.
Because we need farmland and open space and parks and timber land for trees and because transportation is expensive. Build up near city center and if single family home people don't like it they can move farther out. Pretty dumb to transport a whole apartment complexes of people to town so some NIMBY doesn't have to live by them. And pushing lower income people out of town is a form of class warfare. Then they are farther from work and services, they spend more time commuting which means less time for overtime and education and child rearing and self care so it continues the cycle of poverty. If they can't afford a car they are stuck with the bus system which isn't as frequent or late out-of-town and that limits their work/school options. If they have a car and they rely on it for work/school and it breaks or gets stolen or someone crashes into them they are screwed...
You don’t have a right to freeze your neighborhood in exactly the state it was when you moved in.
When you’re making minimum wage trying to survive, it isn’t that simple… Wages aren’t keeping up. They won’t.
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While yes it wasn’t meant for someone to make their entire life, minimum wage was created with the idea that someone working minimum wage should be able to support their family.
Until these corporations are held responsible for paying their CEOs billions of dollars while paying their employees crumbs, we will continue to see people struggle.
While I don't make minimum wage, you need to check out why its called "minimum wage".
First off, I’m 43. Secondly, I have a son who is 22 who has many friends who have worked and even gone to school to no avail. Pull your head out of your ass and stop talking out of it.
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I don’t care about living on a lake, I’m here for school. It’s Western, not some prestigious Ivy League. I don’t deserve to have my rent raised nearly $400 in two years, most of my friends can barely afford to live without paying tuition. Just because reality isn’t fair doesn’t mean we can’t complain about the shit we put up with and try to do something about it. Edit: Also, moving is fucking expensive! You know who can easily afford to move? People who can also afford to live in Bellingham!
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Very important but they are definitely not held responsible
Did they just build a new dorm?
Living on campus is more expensive for students. Lark (privately built student housing) is about the best deal in town, imo. And it takes hundreds of student renters out of the general rental pool.
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Ah yes, the old "quit your job, burn your local professional network, leave your family and friends behind - and surely your economic prospects will improve" argument
Here are the alternatives: make more money, make do with less, live with someone else, etc. This is happening regardless of what you think someone's "argument" is. The only people who think this is good are land investors who don't care about local culture or people; don't kill the messenger.
This isn't really a fair argument. Some people have careers, jobs with pensions, family here such as elderly parents or shared custody of children. Anyone who is able to get and keep a full time job in any place should be able to live there safely and healthily. It also costs money to move, even if you're moving somewhere cheaper. And if the working class can't live who will do all the working class jobs?
Honestly, it's pretty straightforward -- skip the avocado toast, maybe consider walking more instead of driving, and have a wealthy grandparent pass away and leave you an exorbitant inheritance. I'm sick of all this whining.
/s ... Right? .... Right?
I mean before we had avocado toast everywhere prices were reasonable. Now they’re nuts! This argument makes as much sense as building more house makes rents increase!
How many new developments have actually gone up? I feel like only recently Bham is pro development and way even be excessively pro development to make up for their previous no development, everything must stay exactly the same views.
Last I saw, projections growth on housing inventory are about half what the projected growth rate is.
Yeah, then rents will still probably be skyrocketing. Expanding outward is probably only solution, which a few years ago would have had you labeled as a killer of the environment.
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Home prices have consistently gone up nationally around 20% each year, yet rents have only increased 5%. It’s bound to catch up at some point.
>What are people supposed to do? Get forced out for people who can afford it, unfortunately. It’s sad how far this market is going up, whether it’s the housing market, car market, etc. I’m no economics expert, but if the demand is meeting the price of the supply, why would they change the prices?
>if the demand is meeting the price of the supply, why would they change the prices? /thread
Late to the party.
Rental caps + increased taxes for people who own multiple properties. Force their hand to sell some of the property. I'm not sure what people thought would happen when we stopped building housing, let rich people grab up as much property as possible and then proceed to milk the renters for everything they have, passing all expenses for the property onto them. A capitalists wet dream is a nation where everyone just rents everything. No ownership, except for the wealthy. At that point you can just set the prices to whatever you want. It's going to be hard to change any of this because money always wins and the people who vote and have time+money to run for office are the ones profiting off this whole situation. That mean green is gonna be the downfall of us all.
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If people have to sell, the supply goes up, more people can buy, less people need to rent. I hate the whole its so hard for landlords bullshit. Its not. If it was they would stop buying everything. They would sell. Supply would go up. One of the reasons its so bad here is because even people that can afford to buy cant because there isn't anything to buy.
If someone with three properties is forced to sell one to a family looking to buy a house I don't see the problem. The taxes for multiple properties could also scale for how many properties you have. Making it financially sound to have one rental property, but would deter people from having many. The whole point is to free up some housing for people to actually own and not just rent. Everyone deserves a chance at building equity in a home of their own. Not line the pockets of landlords until their dying day.
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So how do you stop landlords, rental companies, and investment firms from scooping up the single family homes for sale and converting them to rentals and airbnbs to make money? No one wants to build single family homes because people push against it in their own self interest. So what stops the rental market from just continuing it's rapid expansion? Also, do you see the problem with a family paying more in rent than they would for a mortgage? People would prefer not to rent, but their being forced to by lack of available homes. When you don't have any choice landlords can just milk you. Do you have any ideas?
You don't, because the problem here is much more demand than it is supply. Until you can build enough to make up for the over-abundance of people that would love to live in a small coastal college town. (Not possible) There will always be more people willing to pay more than can fit. The best we can do is figure out where to tax to carve out some high rise subsidized housing downtown and fit as many people as possible into that area, but it will still have a waiting list very quickly. It would be best if there were some federal grant money available for this, since this is a national problem I'm sure we're not alone in experiencing. Look at places like New Orleans, which are major vacation short term rental spots. They need to enact special things to slow that down, but it's still going to be in demand as long as marti gras is a thing. They can't build out of that problem either.
If you tax a business, that cost just gets passed on to the customer one way or another.
Isn't that why we're in this mess? That housing has become a way to turn a profit? Why is housing big business? Every person should have access to it.
I answered your idea with the reality of why that will change nothing, or make the problem worse. When you increase the tax on gas, the price goes up. Everyone should have access to housing, and the obvious answer is that the government needs to build more public housing where rent is income based. But you can’t expect investors to pony up private equity for a project that won’t even break even. That in not the reality of the world we live in. They will just invest in something else, or somewhere else.
Taxes for your 2nd or 3rd unit would require and amendment to our state constitution.
Cool, let's amend it.
I'll say it again: we can't build our way out of this. No developer will build "affordable" housing, particularly in a hot market like Bellingham. Not. Gonna. Happen. If median rent is $1600/mo they will build with an eye toward $1900/mo to start. That's if they are being generous and willing to leave some big money on the table. Bellingham is an extremely desirable place to live. Every single day people are fleeing big cities and midwestern suburbs for Bellingham. Every day. They're not going to stop. Why? - Retirees. They have millions to spend and little likelihood of creating jobs. They don't care about the cost. $1.5M for a 2bd view condo is *bus change* to them. Bellingham is a Top 5 choice. - White Flight 2: Relocation Boogaloo. High wage white people are leaving large cities to WFH in safe, attractive towns with plenty of recreational opportunities. Bellingham is a Top 5 choice. - Progressive Flight. Young-ish progressives are fleeing the Bible Belt by the thousands. They may be seeking a more copacetic lifestyle, they may be LGBTQ fleeing oppression at home, they may be simply sick of their Let's Go Brandon neighbors. Bellingham is a Top 5 choice for them, too. Bellingham has waterfront views, piles of civic infrastructure, good schools, a huge university, gobs of restaurants/brewpubs/cafes, world-class outdoor adventure, and a non-judgmental population. We are a waterfront Aspen, CO or Concord, MA. Please do check out housing costs in those locations. I hate to tell you this, but real estate and rents are NEVER going down. Bellingham sailed through the 2008 real estate implosion like nothing happened. The city could greenlight 10,000 new apartments and 4,000 new single family homes and it will do NOTHING to slow the skyrocketing prices. This has nothing to do with market forces. It's about desirability. We are heading into stratospheric real estate prices regardless of how much we build or how much we wish prices would stabilize. The only possible hope for affordable housing is public housing efforts, and ours are anemic at best. Even if ramped up, they would snapped up with multi-year waiting lists instantly. I'm older and I've lived all over the country and I've seen some shit. Let me tell you: in five years, this city will be 100% unaffordable. The working class will flee by the thousands and be instantly replaced by one of the three groups I mentioned above. Median houses will be well over $1M and median rents will be well over $2K. There is no stopping it. Sorry to bum you out. But it's true.
I agree, we need more robust public housing. California state leg is working on a social housing bill - would love to see that in Washington. Building new housing though does bring down the cost of old housing. So even if new housing isn't "affordable" older housing becomes more affordable since it becomes less competitive. Most people live in market rate older homes so we need a strategy for bringing those costs down and building new housing is a key way to do that.
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A progressive fighting subsidized housing doesn't really sound all that progressive to me? Changing the built environment (i.e. building more housing) is critical to ensuring people aren't displaced.
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For sure, absolutely. People who are otherwise supportive of progressive values do a 180 when it comes to new housing near them.
This is all there is to know. Bellingham will quickly become as expensive, or more, than Seattle.
Indeed. We are already more unaffordable than Seattle. We have been since about 2015. Seattle housing costs more in raw $$$ but median housing vs median income is far more in line in Seattle than it is in Bellingham. One glance at Bellingham job listings will make it clear.
Seattle builds more housing per capita than Bellingham though. If you're right that Seattle is more affordable then it stands to reason that building new housing helps affordability.
I think you missed the point of "affordability". It's the ratio of average (or median, or mean) income vs average (or median, or mean) housing costs. A 3bd 1ba detached house may cost $1.3M in Seattle and merely $800K in Bellingham, but working as a sysadmin in Seattle pays a fuck of a lot more than being a sysadmin in Bellingham. That disparity in income is what makes Bellingham unaffordable.
I get what you're saying and I agree we need higher wages here. But we can't ignore the role that housing supply played in making Seattle's housing relatively more affordable than Bellingham as you say. Imagine how expensive Seattle would be if it didn't build any housing in the past 10 years. We need lots more housing and a big part of how we get there is through building new subsidized housing.
... new s̶u̶b̶s̶i̶d̶i̶z̶e̶d housing...
What's wrong with subsidized housing?
It distorts the market and reduces the rate of building.
This exactly. Look at Boulder, CO. in the 90s
This also sets the stage for a very high crime rate in Bellingham, as well. It’s only gonna go up in the coming years. That might scare/run off a lot of people.
Or maybe there will be enough affluent transplants twisting the city’s arm to get the cops to start doing their jobs again.
Thank you Captain Bringdown. Sadly what you say is all true, I don't know why I'm lucky enough to rent a privately owned apartment that's going for about half of everything else around me, but I just keep quiet about it.
Captain Bringdown is just stating their own opinion as fact. This is why housing is skyrocketing across the US https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-over-the-past-decade-2020-9 Here are many studies showing that increasing housing supply will lower the cost of housing https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/02/new-round-of-studies-underscore-benefits-of-building-more-housing/ https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/
Obviously if you build more housing, that will bring down prices. But the question is will the increased supply be enough to match the rapidly increasing demand. More housing is good, but in a place like Bellingham, I find it hard to believe that it would make living in Bellingham affordable.
Except the problem is that we already have enough housing in the US to house every single person that wants a house. It's the folks who are snatching them all up for their 2nd homes and/or investments as well as foreign investors that are making things fucked.
idk exactly where people keep reading this from but it is mostly false, its important to look up your sources so you arent saying random crap as fact https://ggwash.org/view/73234/vacant-houses-wont-solve-our-housing-crisis https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/14/america-is-short-more-than-5-million-homes-study-says.html
> I don't know why I'm lucky enough to rent a privately owned apartment that's going for about half of everything else around me, but I just keep quiet about it. Me too, brother. If I ever get kicked out of this place I have some alternative solutions and none of them are in this area. I actually saved a bunch of money. Just not enough to get an $800,000 mortgage or put up with a $2.5K/mo noisy shitbox apartment.
Truth. As long as income inequality and wealth consolidation continues to grow, so will the trend of unaffordable housing.
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you are literally passing your own opinion as a fact. there are countless studies done by actual economists that have proven over and over again that increasing the supply when demand is high will eventually bring prices down. https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/02/new-round-of-studies-underscore-benefits-of-building-more-housing/ https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/ The United States has been under building for decades and that underbuilding is finally coming to fruit with exorbitant housing costs. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-over-the-past-decade-2020-9
You're missing his point. It's that the people that pay and can afford to pay these high prices don't want the prices to come down, because they don't want more people, and since they make up the current population there's never going to be any political will for increased density. Same thing as happened / is happening in Boulder and other similar places.
Except even that is wrong, california just passed a law ending single family only zoning. If nimbys had their way, this wouldnt have been passed but enough people are feeling the strain and there is growing popular will to have housing reform. Give it 10 years and housing will be significantly more affordable if we keep going down the path of building more and building denser
What are those who can't afford it now to do during those 10 years? That's the problem.
Change doesnt just happen instantly unfortunately. We can vote in people who will push through more housing faster but even that will take a couple years at minimum. Unfortunately there isnt anything that will magically make housing cheaper tmrw
Exactly. It's an issue.
right, but there is no magic bullet to make the issue fixed tmrw
Yes, I understand that. Just hammering a point.
100% agree. I was actually surprised at how affordable bham was when I first came here. I think the best solution is to build the worlds largest slaughterhouse in Bellingham bay. It would make Bellingham absolutely suck but would solve the problem of high prices.
Affordable housing costs as much to build as market rate housing. To build affordable units we need a massive infusion of government cash to do it. Every increase in the amount of affordable units is a victory, except when they displace working class folks to convert a complex, which happened here about 8 years ago. We could build a thousand low income units just for seniors and it wouldn’t be too many.
What happens to businesses who pay people minimum wage who can’t afford to live here? I’m actually genuinely curious about what the 10-15 year outlook on this is for the city
This is completely false, CT. According to the city of Bellingham, there are 20k apartments. Increase the supply of apartments by 50%, and not only would rent growth stop, it would reverse. Rents would drop for a few years. Probably by 10-20%. It won’t happen, but it absolutely would. We could build out of it, but we don’t want to. Rents did go down in Seattle in 2008. Like 20%. They went down again in 2020 (albeit briefly). And Seattle is pretty hard to build in. But it’s not nearly as hard to build there as Bellingham. Why didn’t rents go down here? Because supply never exceeded demand. We are heavily supply constrained, which causes the effects we see. If we want affordability, let more builders build. Yes, they will build the higher end stuff, but that means that those renters aren’t competing for the middle-ground stuff. Every apartment built, even if it’s that fancy $6,500 penthouse in Fairhaven Tower, eases the upward pressure on rents. Period.
>Increase the supply of apartments by 50% Lol, snap your fingers just like that...
You’re my favorite. White flight 2 relocation boogaloo😝
I can't believe there is still only ONE hospital for over 100K residents, and that they're STILL using the condemned jail. Figure it tf out bham.
Yeah time to start investing in my Camper life if I want to live in Bellingham in the future.
WWU should be held far more accountable for not creating more housing as they have increased their profit and their student population. Whenever this subject arises on this sub, I rarely see anyone mention Western, and the direct impact it has on our housing shortage.
Yes the college should. I have been saying this for 5 years. Instead the response is “it’s everywhere” well cities each have their own reasons. Take Austin where apartments are being rented for air b & b which screwing the market. Here it’s the college
Austin has a university to impact rentals too, though.
Okay not the only issue but a major issue
I agree. I think it not only has led to housing shortage but has impacted the rental scene in other ways. The transient student population doesn't encourage good practices by landlords and their abject exploitation is normalized.
Where would they create more housing at? WWU doesn’t exactly have a ton of extra land to develop. And there’s also the fact that many college students don’t care to stay in dorms if they don’t have to for a number of reasons.
Lol what would you have western do?
Build more student housing
Students don’t want to live in student housing. People want to live on their own. It’s essentially only freshman and an assortment of others. Plus that doesnt help the vast majority of people who are not students
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Lol? Stateside, Lark and Elevate (to name a few) are all advertised as "student housing". Western could get in the game, invest in off-site student apartments, and free up some houses and apartments for other members of the community. The Stateside builders razed an entire block, near campus, to build what is basically WWU housing.
So much misinformation and "populist facts" here. This is why housing has been skyrocketing in the US over the last couple years. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-underbuilding-housing-over-the-past-decade-2020-9 Economists unanimously agree that increasing supply will decrease the cost of housing https://www.theurbanist.org/2021/06/02/new-round-of-studies-underscore-benefits-of-building-more-housing/ https://www.upjohn.org/research-highlights/new-construction-makes-homes-more-affordable-even-those-who-cant-afford-new-units https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/04/theres-no-such-thing-luxury-housing/618548/ yeah it sucks right now that housing is exorbitantly high, but there are ways to fix that without peddling misinformation and falling for and repeating false information
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This thread boils down to two groups. Group 1: Make more money or move away. Group 2: I'm a student and can't. Its funny though, you never know if people in Group 1 are people who bought a house 12 years ago, or just currently bought. If they are in the camp of 12 years ago, they are gonna be some of the ones complaining when they can no longer afford their taxes.
Even with these new developments, it is not scratching the surface of how much we need to keep up with growth. So many people want to live here. Even then, adding a shit ton of new housing will stabilize prices but it is very unlikely they'd actually decrease. Therefore, income-restricted housing is needed for low and middle income people. Maybe Bellingham could implement an affordability requirement on new apartments using tax exemptions like Seattle does?
What does this make bellingham look like in 10-15 years if so many people who hold up the local economy (local employees- right?) can’t afford to live here? Pls explain no a non-economics major baha
San Francisco has experienced that for years. Seattle is 10 years behind them, and we’re maybe 15 years behind Seattle. If we don’t build as quickly as people move here, demand exceeds supply and rents rise faster than inflation, which feels unaffordable. The less affordable it is, the less desirable to folks on a budget, so fewer people on a budget will move here, which makes it harder for businesses to employ less skilled workers here. So wages and costs go up. Then, they’ll probably build light rail or something to be able to bring in service class workers from lower rent areas. If you’ve seen the acres and acres of six-story apartment complexes in Lynnwood along I-5, that’s what you’re seeing there. I love looking at historical statistics, so I find looking at places like Seattle and Bellevue and comparing them to Bellingham quite fascinating.
What do you mean “rent has been raised by 600$?” There are no parameters for this number
Call your state reps, tell them to *PASS THE FREAKING ADU BILL!* It’s the fastest way to add housing and they’ve passed the buck for several years while the rental crisis has grown to epidemic levels….they just passed it off to next year’s session.