It's weird how in one of the richest countries in the world, many people even couples with 2 full time incomes can't afford a house?
It's extra weird, since it seems to me many American homes are built with rather cheap materials compared to Denmark where I live.
What makes even weirder, is that USA is a country with a lot of room on average for building and expanding living spaces.
Seems to me this may be a case of lacking political planning.
this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
257 points (97.4% liked)
News
23300 readers
4360 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
It's weird how in one of the richest countries in the world
Not that weird when most of the riches are held by a handful of people. The rest of us are just trying to get by.
Yes that's a problem, still Americans have higher average pay than most countries. With lots of room and cheap materials, it should be relatively easy to afford a house. And AFAIK it used to be that way. People could afford a house, car, children and health insurance on one income.
It's a mix of outdated zoning laws, investment firms buying up all the available housing and car centric infrastructure
load more comments
(5 replies)
With lots of room
Country size is irrelevant. People like clustering together in cities.
load more comments
(3 replies)
It's not a lack of political planning, it's a lack of political power for the working class.
It’s done by design to drive people into poverty and subservience.
Can you expand on the superior Danish building materials? Genuinely curious.
Basically that many houses in USA are made of wood, we can't do that here, because the climate is too wet. So wood doesn't last very long. That means we need to make brick houses. Brick houses are way more expensive to build than wood.
Also many places in USA don't require the same level of isolation.
In large parts of Sweden they can make wood houses too, and their house prices are way lower than here.
I'm not saying American houses are bad, but the climate in large parts of USA allows for more and cheaper options.
Not the person you're asking this from but as a Finn who watches a lot of construction related videos on YouTube I too get the feeling that houses in the US are built to a lower standard than here. It's not so much that the materials are worse quality but more that the building code is much stricter here.
I'm a plumber by trade so my area of expertise is quite narrow but couple things that come to mind is how copper pipes are often soldered in the US where as here they're always brazed which is a much stronger joint. We also don't allow any connections to be made inside walls but in the US they're common. Toilets there also tend to clog up quite often because of the way they operate which almost never happens here. Another thing I've noticed is that in the US they use a lot of wood and plywood even on bigger structures which poses a fire hazard as well as there doesn't seem to be as much thought put into the insulation and vapor barriers.
load more comments
(1 replies)
not op but i find it weird how you guys build houses mostly out of wood instead of brick and mortar. why is that?
load more comments
(1 replies)
The other 60% have already accepted it and aren’t worrying about it anymore.
Thanks for confirming I won't be having any original thoughts today :D
the other 60% are just delusional about their chances
I'm about to buy a home, but it's taking 4 employed adults combined to afford a 3 bedroom house. It's insane.
Have you tried pulling yourself up by the bootstraps, surviving on the interest of your invested wealth, and forgoing toast with healthy yet expensive toppings? /s
Ah shit you know what? That's a great idea. I was actually just throwing that interest money away because I wasn't sure what to do with it.
Have you tried asking your rich dad to buy it for you?
He actually is helping (but not rich) he is taking out a personal loan to gift me some money, enough for a portion of the down payment. Even with that, (and I am very grateful and priveliged to receive it) it's still almost unaffordable. (I'm still not actually sure we can afford it.) Which, considering most people aren't so lucky, is fucking insane.
Just buy some money.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Heyo! It’s me!
I figure that since every single house costs the same, I might as well just jump into a new-build for the same price and move on with my life.
I’m 100% certain that once I get really going with this process, I’ll find out that it’s still out of realistic reach range, but it’s fun to dream for a bit. 🥹
load more comments
(1 replies)
Oh it's not a worry, it's a reality.
How does this compare to renters in previous decades? Are there similar surveys from those eras?
view more: next ›