People Who Live In Suburbs: Classy, Icky, or Dudes?

Federal housing policies changed the whole landscape of America, creating the sprawlscapes that we now call home, and in the process, gutting inner cities, whose residents, until the civil rights legislation of 1968, were largely excluded from federally backed mortgage programs. Of new housing today, 80% is built in suburbs—the direct legacy of federal policies that favored outlying areas rather than the rehabilitation of city centers. It seemed that segregation was just the natural working of the free market, the result of the sum of countless individual choices about where to live. But the houses were single—and their residents white—because of the invisible hand of government.

Sure, but you could also have policy favoring ownership in cities. It's not only homeownership policies that led to sprawl and urban exodus.

or you could just not have policy favoring any particular market outcome

not favoring

there's no such thing

that is, technically speaking, true, by 'not favoring' I more meant 'policies that were created w/ an intent towards one particular outcome'.

iatee: he's describing the history of specific governmental policies, not making any argument about whether promoting homeownership is good or bad in general, or was even good or bad as a general proposition at the time. he's just describing what actually happened, why it happened, and the consequences. (implicitly, given what we know about sugrue, we can also see that he would tend to believe that what actually happened was bad, but we can't infer what he would have preferred to happen except "not that".) the arguments you're getting out of him beyond that seem to me really coming from attitudes that you're bringing to the table.

"It's time to accept that home ownership is not a realistic goal for many people and to curtail the enormous government programs fueling this ambition."?

tbf I think we're getting those arguments from the headline: "The New American Dream: Renting
It's time to accept that home ownership is not a realistic goal for many people and to curtail the enormous government programs fueling this ambition"

well I don't think we have to begin and end w/ that article

ultimately homeownership is more a cultural issue than an economic one, and the question is whether we'd rather be more like ireland, spain and italy or more like germany, denmark and sweden.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate

iatee: that's exactly what i addressed earlier when i suggested that the subtitle was the only explicit place, and i suspect that sugrue had little to do with it based on A) having read a bunch of sugrue B) not seeing it argued explicitly in the piece and C) knowing how subtitles and titles of articles and editorials tend to get written.

Also lol at "question is whether we'd rather be more like ireland, spain and italy or more like germany, denmark and sweden." being a cultural rather than economic one! Some of these things are not like the others...

yeah I'm not sure how you can read that article and think he's suggesting that we need the rate of homeownership to grow or stay constant, which leaves one possibility

basically I can read that article and think "he's a historian who has no particular attitude towards current federal policies regarding homeownership except that a bubble is a bad idea. or if he does have such an attitude he's keeping it to himself because he's writing as, you know, a historian, and his work, while informed by a pretty clear set of concerns, deliberately stakes itself out as basically descriptive."

really you think the dude who wrote "Federal housing policies changed the whole landscape of America, creating the sprawlscapes that we now call home" has no particular attitude on the subject

Well if you want to talk about whether more homeownership is a net good, you have to talk about more than just the housing bubble (which was created by a lot more than just the fact that federally-backed mortgages exist) or the house-as-investment mentality. You have to talk about whether it's beneficial to encourage people to be more geographically mobile versus stationary, both in cultural and economic senses, whether the "forced" saving of home equity is a good thing to encourage (not literally forced since no one has to buy a house), whether local housing policies concerning renters are going to be sufficient to protect their rights, whether it's a good thing to let residents capture some of the benefit of rising land prices versus being at the mercy of rent-raising landlords, etc.

And I don't really understand how ownership versus renting is really the central issue in suburbanization, because as I said, you could just as easily promote ownership in cities or renting in suburbs.

what would the downsides to increasing the capacity for geographic mobility be? places w/ renter majorities tend to have strong renter rights, not-coincidentally. and we should be less concerned about who gets the gains for rising land prices and more concerned about how rising land prices affect the city's overall affordability - individual households have reason to want to constrain a city's housing construction, whereas renters have an interest in as much overall housing as possible.

that's sorta a generalization, you can be a renter-NIMBY, but you don't have a 'personal investment' in the same sense

there's no "downside to increasing the capacity for geographic mobility" so much as there is an arguable upside to the "ownership stake" in a community. For example where I rent my street looks like a complete hellhole but I don't give enough of a fuck to be involved in any significant way because I doubt I'm going to be able to afford to live there in a year or two.

"Federal housing policies changed the whole landscape of America, creating the sprawlscapes that we now call home"

^^ that's a pretty straightforward, descriptive sentence. you're reading more into it, because of how you feel about the word "sprawl" and what it connotes to you in the context of your understanding of the suburbs and housing issues. i'm not even trying to argue you're right or wrong, or what sugrue "really" thinks or whatever. just, you know, that we should be able to tell the difference between advocacy and historical description.

in a world where nyc were capable of building a housing supply that matched the demand, you wouldn't have to worry about being priced out so quickly, and people concerned w/ this issue generally think that renters political interests are more in line with increasing our housing supply.

fair point

NYC is probably not the ideal example for an argument about any aspect of fed housing policy.

well it's a good example of how a place w/ a 31.0% homeownership rate can still function

I don't think it functions that well tbh unless you're very well off.

again that's mostly due to a constrained housing supply I mostly just meant 'functions as a civil society'

BTW "stronger renters rights" kind of undermine your points here, because (1) they contribute to constrained housing supply and (2) they make renting more like owning, and in that sense "favor a market outcome" by stripping some of the advantages owning has over renting

well I don't mean rent control, I just meant basic 'tenant's rights'

the right to a roommate under nyc law, for example, does not constrain housing supply.

hey iatee, I'm buying a house with a federallybacked loan, r we enemies now ;_;

Rent control is not the only renter-oriented regulation that's going to increase landlords' cost and impact supply! What about housing codes, rights to repairs, anti-eviction protections, etc.? These are all good things imo, but they're all also "artificial" constraints on the market.

I mean you know a law that says a landlord who can immediately get a higher rent for his apartment can't just show up one day and throw the tenant out immediately is a "constraint on supply" that's going to lead to "less efficient market outcomes" and it's also an "artificial" tip of the balance in favor of renting.

the market, like all markets, doesn't just appear out of nowhere, it's something that was on a certain level created by certain policies and laws. just as big banks might 'hate the SEC' but wall st couldn't exist if the SEC didn't exist, the contract law that and 'standards' we use are what creates 'the renter housing market'. if we had different rules, we would have a different market, but if we had no rules, we would have no market. in that sense the right to repairs does not 'create a less efficient market' because it's a basic aspect of the market. it's a net positive because people don't have a lot of information about the building they're going to be renting and if they were responsible for the repairs, wouldn't be able to price that into their decision making + wouldn't be as interested in renting places that might require extensive repairs if they weren't staying for long. we can imagine a market without this rule, it just seems like a worse one for both parties. the same is not true for every single law.

places w/ renter majorities tend to have strong renter rights, not-coincidentally.

i do enjoy when you present totally unsubstantiated arguments like this as facts to build your case on.

counterexamples off the top of my head would be portland and the twin cities. pretty sure it has more to do with lib/conservative leanings than housing percentages

both are about 50-50 renter and thus are bad examples of 'places w/ renter majorities'...

and again, I meant that as a trend not a rule. the political interests for tenants rights exist in places w/ tenant majorities - why would that *not* be true? it's almost true by definition, whether or not those interests are expressed politically, they are there. on top of that density has a correlation w/ left-wing politics, so,.

so as usual your source is "i think this is true"

no my source is 'please find a place w/ 75% of the population as renters that also has below average tenant rights'

the market, like all markets, doesn't just appear out of nowhere, it's something that was on a certain level created by certain policies and laws. just as big banks might 'hate the SEC' but wall st couldn't exist if the SEC didn't exist, the contract law that and 'standards' we use are what creates 'the renter housing market'. if we had different rules, we would have a different market, but if we had no rules, we would have no market. in that sense the right to repairs does not 'create a less efficient market' because it's a basic aspect of the market. it's a net positive because people don't have a lot of information about the building they're going to be renting and if they were responsible for the repairs, wouldn't be able to price that into their decision making + wouldn't be as interested in renting places that might require extensive repairs if they weren't staying for long. we can imagine a market without this rule, it just seems like a worse one for both parties. the same is not true for every single law.

― iatee, Thursday, April 5, 2012 5:49 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This sounds like free-marketeer sophistry to me, but I was kind of baiting you for it

even that wouldn't 'prove anything', maybe there is some republican town w/ self-hating renters, but it's a trend that's by defintion of 'political interests' going to be true. if those interests aren't expressed it's a political failure not an economic one.

xp

you must have been an infuriating undergrad

like supporting your assumptions with "well prove me wrong then" is kinda hilarious

yeah hurting idk how you're reading 'markets only exist because of the government' as 'free marketeer sophistry'

dude you are one of the less interesting people to argue w/ here but your 'counterexamples' that you jumped in w/ were places that do not have renter majorities, so at least do some research before you jump in to the mix

but if we had no rules, we would have no market

First we wouldn't have no rules and secondly, huh?

what's huh about that? there is no 'free market' without contracts and rule of law.

"just as big banks might 'hate the SEC' but wall st couldn't exist if the SEC didn't exist"

wait waht -- this is basically the opposite of history.

Iatee, there's no question that stuff like NYC housing code and tenant protection law (1) constrains supply/increases landlord costs, (2) does more than just "create a market" and (3) in some ways benefits tenants more than landlords. For example evicting a tenant in NYC is really, really difficult. It could be easier without "not having a market", and making it easier would reduce landlord costs and probably contribute to increased housing supply. And having the law it is makes a renter a little closer to an owner. I'm not saying I'd want to change the law, but that's the effect. And I'm talking about things beyond just the existence of contracts and rule of law.

FWIW the federal government and state and local governments intervene more directly in the rental markets as well through all kinds of tax credits and incentive programs for rental housing, through section 8, etc. I have no idea whether the overall economic intervention is greater in the rental or mortgage markets, although I guess an analysis must be out there.

modern finance could not exist if inside trading weren't policed on some level sterling