Unpopular Opinion

You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries, but put none on your employer, your local government, your states, or anything else. There's a plethora of things your own government could do to help out. Why blame the people who obviously left the west coast due to cost of living (the same thing you're complaining about), and not blame the system and people who allowed it to happen in the first place?

Adding on the whole literally calling them "refugees" like they're leaving some barron hellscape behind while literally just exposing the same problems in capitalism as a whole. Just because you were isolated from these problems before doesn't mean they didn't exist.

I just don't get it. You claim to be left leaning and working class - but the second these issues we fight for literally start affecting you you don't like them anymore? What do you think we've been fighting for this whole time. The ironic thing is that those who probably moved in are probably more left leaning and in more of support for policies which your politicians refuse to enact. (Higher taxes for higher earners, more safety nets, rent control, etc)

Blame the system that allows it in the first place and those who uphold that system. Blaming them just comes off as pure envy to me.

You seem to attribute the housing affordability crisis the last few years to WFH-ers, but isn’t it more fair to say that there are multiple other factors contributing to it?

Not just the post COVID appreciation for housing, but things like historically high percentage of investor owned homes (including corporate and foreign buyers), and historically low building rates compared to projected need, to name a few.

So then the question becomes, which of these should we focus on? For me, that means what gives you the most positives, and least negatives.

Let’s look at three options:

1. Banning corporate and foreign non-occupying homeowners from owning American residential real estate
2. Rezoning low density areas (particularly single story commercial/retail in smaller cities and towns’ downtowns) into vertical dense mixed use residential and commercial/retail development
3. Ending work from home

1 and 2 accomplish our primary goal of reducing home prices across the country, both by increasing supply (1 would too, since those investors would need to sell, increasing supply), and 1 would also reduce demand. 3 does not, because any price reductions in rural areas will be offset by higher rates in urban one

2 also gives us positive secondary benefit of encouraging walkable cities, which leads to health improvements, less traffic, and reduced climate impact. 1 would also increase business investment, encouraging long term growth, if the “money printer” option of buying US residential properties and collecting rent is not available.

3 gives us no positive secondary benefits, and since it does essentially the opposite of 2 in terms of walkability, it also is the only one with a high negative cost.

So pretty clearly that idea is the worst one for solving housing affordability. So why support it when their are other much better options available to accomplish your goal?

I mean, I'll grant you that this is an unpopular opinion, but the other side of it is that it doesn't really make sense.

Oh no. Humans are taking advantage of a situation. How unlike them.

I don't look at this (or much of anything really) from a left or right side sort of situation. I look at the simple logic of it.

If one's job is processing documents, then yes they should be equally able to do their work from home if they so choose. But if their job is construction, well obviously they need to be present on the jobsite to make it happen.

People should be less polarized and more logical. It's not about left or right, it's about forward and what should work best for everyone.

LMAO people are downvoting an unpopular opinion in c/unpopularopinion

OP, have you tried having a REAL unpopular opinion like "Media piracy is morally justified" or "Billionaires don't really deserve all that money"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LTLuzkqpZc

This is the process rationale behind my argument.

Love it! Everybody should do this! You even put your argument in thy form of a syllogism. swoon

Anyway, that's fair. I wfh but the city I live in has already been gentrified by rich people to that point that even I can barely afford the market. There's a whole side of the town that has homes that go for at least $1 million just because it's that side of town. We can't do that.

I think gentrification should be opposed in pretty much every form. Wealthy people should do more to preserve historical communities and their demographics by being wealthy elsewhere. Go to North Dakota and buy a $300k mansion there

If the demand for high-priced housing is going down, then the price of high-priced housing will also go down, and when that happens you will see low- and lower-priced housing free up again. I'm also not surprised that this is negatively affecting low-income populations because they are always affected the hardest and least financially able to adapt when there is instability or when the situation suddenly changes. One solution is low-priced housing with income limitations.

Finally a genuinely unpopular opinion.