| The solution is immigrant families cram into old (50 years+) apartments and/or sublet couch space. It’s a miserable existence. |
And jobs? |
Rural areas and small towns are desperate for family practice physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals. There's also a big need for skilled tradespeople, mechanics, machinists, etc. |
Rural areas and towns are closing their hospitals, and the local doctors and nurses don't make much money if they are just a country doctor (with no hospital). Why do you think they are desperate? If it was lucrative you would be able to find people willing to relocate. In terms of skilled tradespeople...where? The oil fields of ND need those people as example, but they have a massive housing affordability crisis. |
Not to mention it takes anywhere from 2 years at the minimum to become an RN to 7+ years to become a doctor. "Sure, just quit your job, take on a 1-2 punch of massive debt and no income for years then move to a depressed (and depressing) area all just to be able to afford a house" is not exactly a reasonable suggestion. And you're exactly correct about the skilled trades being highly location-specific. What all the blue-collar-boosters fail to mention is that their promises of making 6 figures as a tradesperson are very cherry picked. Most welders are making like $20 an hour. Machinists maybe a little more. Sure, in the oilfields or in highly specialized jobs you're making a ton, but for Joe Whitecollar thinking about moving to Ohio to become a machinist as their ticket to the good life? Think again. |
And here's a large part of the problem. Americans believe they are entitled to a SFH, and living in a condo (particularly with kids) is impossible and/or makes them a failure. You know what? Get over it. This isn't the 1950s, SFHs aren't affordable in certain areas for everyone, and that's OK. Housing is a series of tradeoffs for everyone but the most affluent - size/age/location/schools/neighborhood/etc. You can have some, but not all - you choose. |
This is exactly what happened in Loudoun late 1990s to early 2000s. All the locals were openly angry about those of us who moved out from more expensive, crowded areas. |
A condo is a perfectly acceptable place to live for a family. You don't need a yard. There are parks. You can walk there or drive there. Sure, your neighbors might be annoyed when your kid is crying or running around but they can deal with it. And you can have a condo in the suburbs. You are packing more people into a smaller space. And then have one parking area for all the cars. Why does every family need their own SFH, 2 car garage, front street parking, a yard, and a backyard? Give people options. |
Don't ruin the suburbs with your Density Bro condos for childless people. We don't need those here. Build them in DC or somewhere that actually wants them. |
| Condos would be more family friendly if they built them family size. Instead 2BR is like the biggest you will ever see. Actual space in a condo that had more rooms and space to spread out would make them a more viable solution for families. |
People do have options, but you can’t force people to want what they don’t want and building more of what exists isn’t going to magically make people want it. People who like Arlington like that it’s a mix between city and suburb, that you can have a SFH so close in to transit and amenities. If you eliminate the SFHs, you take away the thing that people like about it that makes it unique and desirable. At that point, why would you want to live in a condo here vs. a condo in the city itself? Doesn’t make a lot of sense. |
As you’re posting this there’s someone on a neighborhood forum lamenting that they’re coming stateside for a duty station and being downsized from a 5bdrm to 2, and are looking for a second entire condo to have enough space to live/work from home. They’re a family of 3. People don’t want what you want them to want. |
| There is plenty of evidence to support a thesis that this “crisis” is artificial and we actually have a lot more housing units than you would think and in the future, the proportion of housing units to working age people will start going higher and higher due to declining birth rates. |
Yes. I have a family member who became a nurse at a rural hospital in part because the local nursing school offered a bunch of incentives including tuition reimbursement if you worked at the hospital for a certain number of years after getting your degree. Turns out it is actually hard to make more than poverty wages at times because of how the hospital staffs. It's common for her to have 4 scheduled shifts in a week but be "called off" of two of them because they will adjust their staffing last based on bed occupancy numbers. Her income is extremely variable and it's been hard to figure out housing even though though in theory housing is very cheap there because some months she barely makes enough to pay for food and gas. Her goal was to be able to buy a house there after a few years in this job but she's struggled to save. It's not as steady as she thought it would be and I think it won't get steady until she has at least 5-7 years of experience. |
Wow, great! Problem solved. Links please? |