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Housing's hidden crisis: Rural Americans struggle to pay rent

joko104 said:
I had read that. However, what I am coming up with now is 20,000,000 live in trailers/mobile homes and another 1,000,000 in RVs. In S. Carolina 18-20% live in trailers.

Why do so many Americans live in mobile homes? - BBC News

https://www.washingtonpost.com/busi...vs-meet-modern-nomads/?utm_term=.3cb39992554b
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Thanks!

If one puts in the same category mobile homes and trailers, then the 20 million number sounds reasonable.

As for the trailers in specific states, I can believe this too.
 
pamak said:
Thanks!

If one puts in the same category mobile homes and trailers, then the 20 million number sounds reasonable.

As for the trailers in specific states, I can believe this too.
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If single or just a couple, living in a large travel trailer makes a lot of sense if income is limited. Even with small 1 child. How much time does a person spend at home - and when at home how much space does a person really need to be online or watch TV? Being mobile the person/couple can't get trapped by lot extortion. If needing to relocate for work - away they go. USED travel trailers, even late model ones, are cheap. For about 1 year's rent a person can buy a very good one and for 2 years rent a person could be a fantastic used travel trailer. Then the trailer is paid for. Not only does a person pay rent forever gaining no equity, but rent always goes up, not down.

If a person can pull off a tiny piece of land with electricity and water? A septic system? Housing becomes almost free. Travel trailers in moderate climates, particularly if parked under a tree, use virtually no electricity. Boats in the water use very little too as the interior is small and they can use the water it is in for the condenser/evaporator, which is far more efficient than in the air.

Probably another 100,000 to 200,000 live on boats - which can be THE cheapest if staying out of Marinas, though there is the challenge of electricity. Particularly in California there are boat cities of thousands of boats basically tied together where to get to your boat you walk across other people's boat. But a person can just drop anchor about anywhere. Picking the right climate reduces electricity needs, which can be provided by small solar and wind power plus a small generator. If you aren't planning to travel around, boats no longer suited for travel (bad motor, bad sails etc) are almost free.

A person needs shelter from the elements. A person uses a bed, bathroom, shower/bath, kitchen and otherwise is sitting looking at a screen (TV, Internet of Iphone.) How much space does a person really need? If a person is REALLY tight on money, there are ways to have shelter CHEAP.
 
Being mobile also allows careers otherwise problematical. The power plant(s) here just finished a new 1.5 billion dollar natural gas plant in addition to the 4 coal burning plants. For the project they hired over 1000 people. Probably 75%+ had travel trailers or motor homes. No skill or degree was required for most work, just willingness to do physical work and outdoors. Minimal pay was $25 per hour plus a generous housing per diem allowance. There are some VERY nice trailer parks here with water frontage to the Gulf Of Mexico and very community oriented. Others are for seniors.

Many of those people move around the country from job to job as their career. When one job ends, they just tow their trailer behind their truck - or tow their vehicle behind their motor home - and they have their housing at their new location the day they arrive. Some have children. Most don't. Some are married. Most aren't. So somewhat they move from party community to party community. It seems a better life than living in a crummy city apartment working at a fast foods place for which the person is constantly having to count dollars just to avoid eviction.

Of course, in an extreme situation with a travel trailer a person can eliminate housing expenses or at least limit it to a few dollars a day, moving it just enough to get to the next WalMart, Home Depot, or truck stop. This is particularly true for motor homes. I never seen a truck stop that runs off a motor home parked in the back with the semi trucks for the night. When I used to do a lot of solo traveling I never bothered with a motel. I just slept in my car back with the semi-trucks. Not one time was I run off. That also gave me a store, restaurant, bathroom and shower. I saw that as MUCH safer then sleeping at a highway rest stop.
 
AmNat said:
I generally agree when it comes to investors. The investment market works best when they can make (or lose) as much money as they can. But sometimes regulation is necessary for the good of the general public.

I agree in principle with the idea behind the auto bailout (using government investment to prevent mass layoffs), though I don't know enough about the details to form an opinion.
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So in your mind the government can pick and choose who it wants to bail out. In the GM case we the people lost 11.2 billion, how did that benefit the people that paid taxes and lost 11.2 billion?

As for mass layoffs, you have no idea, GM should have been left to fail and it would have been broken up and the factories would continue as always. GM made thousands of cars a week or more and those cars would still be in demand if GM was gone. Existing auto companies would increase their production which in turn requires more employees. The existing GM plants would be brought up on the cheat and the buyers would not miss a beat in producing cars / Jobs. No one working for GM would be out of work, and if they were it would be for a very short time. And the best part the taxpayer would not be out 11.2 billion.

I'm more confident saying that funding Solyndra was a bad idea. It created a minimal number of jobs (which would've been the case even if it didn't go bankrupt).
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In the end it did not create anything. Zip Zero. Again we taxpayers lost 535 million on a deal where the government decided to invest in private startup companies.

Under Obama he closed down all the banks making student loans and let the government take over the loan program.

You’ve probably heard another scary statistic: Americans owe over $1.56 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 45 million borrowers. That’s about $521 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt.

U.S. Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2019 | Student Loan Hero

And now they want to forgive, all this government control is out of control

U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced a new bill Thursday, which would rework the current Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a federal program that forgives federal student loans for borrowers who work in public service. The goal is to expand the number of people who can qualify for the program and receive student loan forgiveness.

New Student Loan Forgiveness Bill Could Help Millions

And if the government wants to subsidize alternative energy research (something I'm ambivalent about to begin with, nuclear is more effective and cleaner), it'd be better to subsidize existing research institutions and companies, rather than start-ups with a high probability of failure.
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I like the nuclear option but there are so many critics at this point, that industry is in a death grip.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
My 110 sf bachelor pad had a kitchenette built into one wall.
It wasn't luxurious. Two burner stove, sink and mini-fridge all in one unit, and a wee bit of counter space, and cupboards above.
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Fine, now go and live in it with a family of four.
 
joko104 said:
The way the Democratic Party is causing terrible affordable housing shortages is by demanding always bringing in more and more millions of poor illegal immigrants who compete for available housing. Throw another 100,000 illegal immigrants into L.A. or any other city and unless there are tens of thousands of available rental units it will push rents upward.
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It's most certainly enlightening to learn that there has never been a single "illegal immigrant" enter the United States of America when the Republicans held power.
 
Born Free said:
So in your mind the government can pick and choose who it wants to bail out. In the GM case we the people lost 11.2 billion, how did that benefit the people that paid taxes and lost 11.2 billion?

As for mass layoffs, you have no idea, GM should have been left to fail and it would have been broken up and the factories would continue as always. GM made thousands of cars a week or more and those cars would still be in demand if GM was gone. Existing auto companies would increase their production which in turn requires more employees. The existing GM plants would be brought up on the cheat and the buyers would not miss a beat in producing cars / Jobs. No one working for GM would be out of work, and if they were it would be for a very short time. And the best part the taxpayer would not be out 11.2 billion.
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As I said, I don't know enough about the details of the auto bail out to form an opinion. I only said that it could be justified, if the situation was really as the supporters of the bailout said it was.

In the end it did not create anything. Zip Zero. Again we taxpayers lost 535 million on a deal where the government decided to invest in private startup companies.
Click to expand...

Agreed. Government investing in private startups is a very dumb policy.

Under Obama he closed down all the banks making student loans and let the government take over the loan program.

You’ve probably heard another scary statistic: Americans owe over $1.56 trillion in student loan debt, spread out among about 45 million borrowers. That’s about $521 billion more than the total U.S. credit card debt.

U.S. Student Loan Debt Statistics for 2019 | Student Loan Hero

And now they want to forgive, all this government control is out of control

U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) introduced a new bill Thursday, which would rework the current Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, a federal program that forgives federal student loans for borrowers who work in public service. The goal is to expand the number of people who can qualify for the program and receive student loan forgiveness.

New Student Loan Forgiveness Bill Could Help Millions
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The student loan industry is predatory. It should be abolished and the debts written off.

I like the nuclear option but there are so many critics at this point, that industry is in a death grip.
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Nuclear energy is the clearest example of the insincerity of environmentalists. They should be all for it, but they aren't because the word "nuclear" scares them.
 
joko104 said:
One out of eight Americans live in a trailer.
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That would be 12.5%, wouldn't it?

That's 2.25 times as many as in June of 2018.

That's an increase of around 22,125,000 people (to a total of around 39,825,000 people) ALL during Mr. Trump's presidency.

The mobile home building industry must be absolutely booming.

Well, either that or you simply don't know what you are talking about - and no one would give that possibility the slightest bit of credence.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
Fine, now go and live in it with a family of four.
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I am not saying that the accommodations are luxurious, and if there are two working parents then one could imagine an apt for maybe 650 a month with 250-400 sf. Again, maybe not the best but more livable than Skid Row, tents or life in a car.
I lived in one of those sardine can 110 sf apts in the 1970's in Minneapolis. It sure beat literally freezing to death in winter, which is a reality in Minnesota.
I was working part time as a dishwasher in a greasy spoon and going to school. It was no bigger than a dorm room but I managed pretty well.
My point is, a dishwasher could never hope to live in an apt today, even full time.
 
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TU Curmudgeon said:
WOW!!! I didn't know that I owned CBS. Whoodathunkit?



Would Americans be interested? I think not.



You appear to have suffered terminal lip fatigue so that you stopped reading before you reached the "[The above officially approved and endorsed by "Devoted Online Lovers of Trump" Inc. a non-partisan, independent, research and analysis organization exempt from federal taxation that is dedicated to bringing you the true truth and not the false truth that anyone who doesn't believe 100% of what Donald Trump says tries to tell you the so-called "facts" are.]" bit.

BTW, I do NOT consider the fact that the US is suffering from a "housing crisis" to be anything even remotely like approving the fact that Canada is also having one. That would be classic "Whataboutism" in action, just as it would be if someone were to take the position that it is absolutely horrible that Canada has a "housing crisis" and that means that it's OK if the US has one.

So, is it your position that


  1. "It is a "bad thing" for the US to have a "housing crisis" REGARDLESS of whether some other country has one."; or
  2. "If no other country was having a "housing crisis" then it would be a "bad thing" for the US to have one, but since other countries are having a "housing crisis" it's just peachy keen for the US to have one too."?
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Yep life is tough....I guess you don't like your BS exposed....it'll be the day when I take a sarcastic, rude Canadians opinion as worth a warm bucket of spit.

Sent from my SM-T587P using Tapatalk
 
joko104 said:
The way the Democratic Party is causing terrible affordable housing shortages is by demanding always bringing in more and more millions of poor illegal immigrants who compete for available housing. Throw another 100,000 illegal immigrants into L.A. or any other city and unless there are tens of thousands of available rental units it will push rents upward.
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Definitely part of the problem.

And virtually no affordable housing is being built in LA, with older units - which have traditionally been a catch-all for people of lesser means - either being renovated for much higher rents, converted to expensive condos, bulldozed or seeing massive rent hikes w/o renovation.

It's a serious fustercluck.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
I am not saying that the accommodations are luxurious, and if there are two working parents then one could imagine an apt for maybe 650 a month with 250-400 sf. Again, maybe not the best but more livable than Skid Row, tents or life in a car.
I lived in one of those sardine can 110 sf apts in the 1970's in Minneapolis. It sure beat literally freezing to death in winter, which is a reality in Minnesota.
I was working part time as a dishwasher in a greasy spoon and going to school. It was no bigger than a dorm room but I managed pretty well.
My point is, a dishwasher could never hope to live in an apt today, even full time.
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In order to afford the "median rent" in the US today, a person has to earn around $8.63 an hour (of course that would mean that 100% of their gross income would have to go for rent, so they probably should make a little bit more than that).
 
j-mac said:
Yep life is tough....I guess you don't like your BS exposed....it'll be the day when I take a sarcastic, rude Canadians opinion as worth a warm bucket of spit.

Sent from my SM-T587P using Tapatalk
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Did you know that the "C" in "CBS" does NOT stand for "Canadian"?

So, once again I ask you


So, is it your position that

  1. "It is a "bad thing" for the US to have a "housing crisis" REGARDLESS of whether some other country has one."; or
  2. "If no other country was having a "housing crisis" then it would be a "bad thing" for the US to have one, but since other countries are having a "housing crisis" it's just peachy keen for the US to have one too."?

PS - I don't actually expect that you will actually provide an actual answer to the actual question that was actually asked - but I do feel compelled to give you the opportunity to state your position clearly.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
From CBS News

Housing's hidden crisis: Rural Americans struggle to pay rent
​

Housing has been famously unaffordable in expensive cities such as San Francisco for a while. But now in tiny towns and counties across the country, an increasing share of rural residents are struggling to pay their rents and mortgages.

The housing affordability crisis is spreading to rural communities such as Aroostook County, Maine, and Malheur County, Oregon, where the share of residents who are severely burdened by housing costs has surged since the housing crash of 2006 to 2010, according to the County Health Rankings. Other researchers are also calling attention to the issue, with Pew's Stateline finding that one of four of the country's most rural counties have seen a rise in severely cost-burdened households -- those that spend more than half their income on housing.

Fifty years ago, the most urgent issue for rural communities was substandard housing, such as whether residents relied on outhouses rather than indoor plumbing, noted Lance George, director of research and information at the Housing Assistance Council, a nonprofit focusing on rural housing. But affordability now ranks as the top housing concern among rural residents, he said.

"You think it's often just with big cities," he said. "Housing costs are lower in rural areas, but incomes are pretty low too." Housing affordability is a "simple equation," George added. "It's incomes related to housing costs, and incomes in the lower quintile have not increased at all, and maybe even declined."

COMMENT:-

You know, if those people hadn't chosen to live where they can't afford to live, then they wouldn't be having any problems paying their rent - would they?

[The above officially approved and endorsed by "Devoted Online Lovers of Trump" Inc. a non-partisan, independent, research and analysis organization exempt from federal taxation that is dedicated to bringing you the true truth and not the false truth that anyone who doesn't believe 100% of what Donald Trump says tries to tell you the so-called "facts" are.]
​
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Part of the problem was the bailouts given to the banks. The correction in the housing market wasnt as big as it should of been. Taxpayers subsidized the finacial losses and allowed the banks to hold the houses rather then sell them off at a loss.

Now the wages are still playing catch up on real estate prices and i would not expect to see a president who is a real estate mogul to do anything significsnt to try to mske housing vslues decline.

Congress made a big mess by insisting lenders give loans to people who could not afford them. I hope they dont repeat their same mistakes again.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk
 
AmNat said:
As I said, I don't know enough about the details of the auto bail out to form an opinion. I only said that it could be justified, if the situation was really as the supporters of the bailout said it was.
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OK so you take the word of the supporters of the bailout makes it justified. That sounds like Mob Rule, it surely is not capitalism. I don't see you taking into consideration of the people against the bailout. Like us taxpayers who lost 11.2 billion, and those of us that are totally against government bailouts. And your surly did not take into consideration what I posted.

"Quote Originally Posted by Born Free View Post
So in your mind the government can pick and choose who it wants to bail out. In the GM case we the people lost 11.2 billion, how did that benefit the people that paid taxes and lost 11.2 billion?

As for mass layoffs, you have no idea, GM should have been left to fail and it would have been broken up and the factories would continue as always. GM made thousands of cars a week or more and those cars would still be in demand if GM was gone. Existing auto companies would increase their production which in turn requires more employees. The existing GM plants would be brought up on the cheat and the buyers would not miss a beat in producing cars / Jobs. No one working for GM would be out of work, and if they were it would be for a very short time. And the best part the taxpayer would not be out 11.2 billion."

The student loan industry is predatory. It should be abolished and the debts written off.
Click to expand...

So now because of the mishandling of the student loan program by our government, you want the taxpayer to eat. 1.56 TRILLION. I see you have no concern for the people paying for all this, just like the GM bailout. Write the debt off of 1.56 trillion and add that the our national debt. I'm thinking some screws are a little loose.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
From CBS News

Housing's hidden crisis: Rural Americans struggle to pay rent
​

Housing has been famously unaffordable in expensive cities such as San Francisco for a while. But now in tiny towns and counties across the country, an increasing share of rural residents are struggling to pay their rents and mortgages.

The housing affordability crisis is spreading to rural communities such as Aroostook County, Maine, and Malheur County, Oregon, where the share of residents who are severely burdened by housing costs has surged since the housing crash of 2006 to 2010, according to the County Health Rankings. Other researchers are also calling attention to the issue, with Pew's Stateline finding that one of four of the country's most rural counties have seen a rise in severely cost-burdened households -- those that spend more than half their income on housing.

Fifty years ago, the most urgent issue for rural communities was substandard housing, such as whether residents relied on outhouses rather than indoor plumbing, noted Lance George, director of research and information at the Housing Assistance Council, a nonprofit focusing on rural housing. But affordability now ranks as the top housing concern among rural residents, he said.

"You think it's often just with big cities," he said. "Housing costs are lower in rural areas, but incomes are pretty low too." Housing affordability is a "simple equation," George added. "It's incomes related to housing costs, and incomes in the lower quintile have not increased at all, and maybe even declined."

COMMENT:-

You know, if those people hadn't chosen to live where they can't afford to live, then they wouldn't be having any problems paying their rent - would they?

[The above officially approved and endorsed by "Devoted Online Lovers of Trump" Inc. a non-partisan, independent, research and analysis organization exempt from federal taxation that is dedicated to bringing you the true truth and not the false truth that anyone who doesn't believe 100% of what Donald Trump says tries to tell you the so-called "facts" are.]
​
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Why can`t the local , state or national governments simply build more houses_ It would boost employment and its not like you guys have a shortage of cheap land.
 
Born Free said:
OK so you take the word of the supporters of the bailout makes it justified.
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I'm not sure how what I said was so hard to understand. If the supporters predictions were right, it was justified. I don't know if they were right so I don't know if it was justified.

So now because of the mishandling of the student loan program by our government, you want the taxpayer to eat. 1.56 TRILLION. I see you have no concern for the people paying for all this, just like the GM bailout. Write the debt off of 1.56 trillion and add that the our national debt. I'm thinking some screws are a little loose.
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No. Simply write it off. It doesn't add to the national debt.
 
TU Curmudgeon said:
In order to afford the "median rent" in the US today, a person has to earn around $8.63 an hour (of course that would mean that 100% of their gross income would have to go for rent, so they probably should make a little bit more than that).
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Nothing to argue here. We appear to be on the same page, mostly.
I'm only saying that, despite my early accommodations being less than stellar, far as I was concerned back then I felt I was doing rather well. I was able to move to much nicer accommodations in the space of a year, by the way.
If the despair quotient is eased, poverty becomes a place where marked churn is evident, namely the poor, the working poor, eventually "churn themselves out" of that strata and move up.

The bottom rung isn't the ideal place to be but by far the worse place to be is where the two bottom rungs have been sawed off.
 
Checkerboard Strangler said:
Nothing to argue here. We appear to be on the same page, mostly.
I'm only saying that, despite my early accommodations being less than stellar, far as I was concerned back then I felt I was doing rather well. I was able to move to much nicer accommodations in the space of a year, by the way.
If the despair quotient is eased, poverty becomes a place where marked churn is evident, namely the poor, the working poor, eventually "churn themselves out" of that strata and move up.

The bottom rung isn't the ideal place to be but by far the worse place to be is where the two bottom rungs have been sawed off.
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I've watched this thread with fascination as people struggle to fit this real world situation into their preconceived notions/political silos. In my lifetime I have lived in/rented "modest" accommodations in both rural and inner-city communities (the cockroach infestations were consistent). I lived a decade in a suburban "starter" home, and have, for 25+ years lived in a modest suburban "family home." ("4 br/3bath") I've been overseas in developed and "developing" countries (now there's a great euphemism!). All of that to say, I've seen multiple aspects of "the housing crisis." It is a common denominator in urban, rural and suburban communities around the world, and something that crosses political divides.

The pressures on land prices and wages are similar in each, too. The point of the OP, in my view, is that rural problems tends to be out of sight, thus not dealt with. Poor are poor everywhere, but some are less visible. Most of us never see, for example, the stark poverty in Indian country. It's an eye opener. I've been in third world countries that are very similar.

I'm glad we're discussing this here because having a decent place to live is a common human problem that crosses political lines. It's just the most obvious aspect of The Range of Poverty in America (U.S. News). "39.7 million people were poor in 2017. This works out to 12.3 percent of the population or 1 in 8 Americans." But the problems it generates affect every income strata. Gentrification affects urban, rural and suburban communities alike and creates "affordable housing" problems everywhere.

That's the primary measure, I think: what's "affordable"? Individually, locally, and nationally. Whatever it is, we need more of it. How do we get there? Housing "projects"? Subsidized housing? Universal basic income? All of the above? In a nation as rich and diverse as ours, why have we not found solutions yet? I've got more thoughts coming.
 
tres borrachos said:
By the way - in case anyone is wondering, Aroostook County, Maine went for Trump 55% - 38%. Why isn't he up there helping them? Those are his people.
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And the plebes will most likely go for him again.

Affluophilia is strong.
 
NWRatCon said:
It's just the most obvious aspect of The Range of Poverty in America (U.S. News). "39.7 million people were poor in 2017. This works out to 12.3 percent of the population or 1 in 8 Americans." But the problems it generates affect every income strata. Gentrification affects urban, rural and suburban communities alike and creates "affordable housing" problems everywhere.
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One in eight people in America being too poor to afford a place to live is a very high despair quotient.
Yes, I keep pimping that phrase..."the despair quotient". I think it's an important phrase and I think it translates on many different levels. Societies with a very high despair quotient are societies that make unhealthy decisions about their future, their political future, their economic future, their environmental future, their foreign policy future.
Societies that have a very high despair quotient take reckless gambles on unsavory people and they tend to form an unhealthy addiction to their own insular circles of confirmation bias.
You could almost say that, for the last few years we have been running ourselves near the RPM redline.



Simply put, it is not healthy for a society to spend years acting like Jules and Vincent in the back of a blood soaked car.
 
Red_Dave said:
Why can`t the local , state or national governments simply build more houses_ It would boost employment and its not like you guys have a shortage of cheap land.
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Possibly because those local, state, and national government are already running deficits, and they don't have the money to buy the materials and labour required to build those "more houses" and supply them with the necessary services?

Cheap land, alone, would, I suppose, solve the problem IF you could plant a "house seed" and then let the house grow without doing anything else. Unfortunately there is no such thing as a "house seed".
 
Did anyone watch Representative Katie Porter's brutal takedown of Jamie Dimond? It was brilliant and directly relevant to this topic. At ‘Megabank’ Hearing, Freshman Rep. Katie Porter Takes on Jamie Dimon—and His $31M Salary (National Law Journal).

According to Wallet Hack's "7 Important Money Ratios to Remember", the 20-30-50 – Budgeting Ratio should be:
20% should be immediately saved (goals or retirement) or put towards paying down debt.
30% should be the maximum you spend on housing.
50% should be spent on everything else.
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What does 30% mean to someone at or near the poverty line? Well, the poverty threshold for a family of four is currently $25,750 (similarly, see Poverty Line Calculator). That's $643/month for housing. What can you get for that? Anywhere?. For an individual with half that income, that's $322/month.
 
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