There’s No Housing Shortage
There’s just a shortage of housing where you want it, buttercup.
I’m just having fun here!
I’m sick and tired of watching homeless people complain that, though they have $250,000 in the bank, their employment status stands in the way of getting a loan. Get a job, you bums! Get back in your tent and fill out the paperwork. There will always be some other passerby to scream at.
I’ve also had it with people who aren’t happy where they currently live. Stop wasting our time bidding on homes you can’t afford. Your roof is as good as any other. It’s not the house you want it’s the location.
In my generation we owned our failings. We took responsibility and rightfully blamed our parents for not buying the home we wanted back in 1987.
Okay, enough of would of, could of, should of.
I know what you’re thinking. “C’mon. Get it out. Let’s smoke your Zillow stash!”
In the past year around 1,000 homes were sold in Cambridge, MA, where I live.
Two percent of Cambridge’s housing inventory comes to market every year. Factoring in student housing at Harvard, MIT, etc., let’s call it 5% a year.
Why so low?
You’d know why if you lived here. Everyone is selfish, liberal and entitled. They either graduated Harvard or MIT, or know someone who did. If they care about anything real estate related, it’s providing 12-and-a-half affordable housing units to the 157,432 people who deserve it, who commute into Cambridge from Everett to clean toilets.
Want some statistics? There are 54,000 housing units in Cambridge. Unlike data about how the planet is dying from CO2 emissions, people chug real estate data faster than a frat pledge at a beer keg. They’ll do it until the last fire, flood and drop of water is licked by the last living human.
According the Cambridge Community Development Department, as of June 30, 2020 single family dwellings accounted for 6.8% of housing units, two family buildings for 12.5%, three family buildings for 11.1%, four to six unit buildings for 9.1%, buildings with over six units up to 50 units 18.7% and buildings with 51 or units 41.8%. Condominiums, regardless of their building type, included for 27.1% of the housing stock. Units located in mixed use buildings were 12.2% of the stock.
Did you read that paragraph? Seriously. You need therapy.
Though I know you like my stash of stats, and you’re willing to stay up all night, let’s keep it local. Like fifteen miles up the road:
I bet you saw this coming. That’s right. Half price! You can get a place for half the price in Lynn that you can get in Cambridge? And only 15 minutes away.
Even better, there are three times more homes to choose from in Lynn. The residents of Lynn don’t worry about people who clean toilets, no matter how deserving. You want 1987? They’ll give you 1987! And if you can’t find 1987 prices keep moving inland.
That reminds me. In addition to those homeless whiners and light-wallet bidders, I simply can’t watch another news segment where some expert says there aren’t enough houses being built in Lynn!
Stop it Lynn! Be your own town. You didn’t go to Harvard and you don’t know anyone who did either.
Seriously, no one is clamoring for more homes in Lynn or Massachusetts in general.
Sure, house prices have doubled in Cambridge in the past five to seven years. But so what. More people want to get into Cambridge but can’t.
There is never a shortage to people who have more money than you.
How is that different from anything else people want to buy, but can’t afford — for as long as money has existed. When did affordability in Town X become some human right?
When has working class families lived next door to Scarsdale, Park Avenue or Amagansett? When we hear “not enough housing” what we’re really hearing is the squealing tires of economic growth breaking on the dying productivity of an aging nation.
What? Read this again. Wait don’t read it. You know. We all know.
The rich are back and they don’t care where we live.
