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    The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think
    The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think
    The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think
    Ebook81 pages1 hour

    The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think

    By Matthew Yglesias

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    From prominent political thinker and widely followed Slate columnist, a polemic on high rents and housing costs—and how these costs are hollowing out communities, thwarting economic development, and rendering personal success and fulfillment increasingly difficult to achieve.

    Rent is an issue that affects nearly everyone. High rent is a problem for all of us, extending beyond personal financial strain. High rent drags on our country’s overall rate of economic growth, damages the environment, and promotes long commutes, traffic jams, misery, and smog. Yet instead of a serious focus on the issue, America’s cities feature niche conversations about the availability of “affordable housing” for poor people. Yglesias’s book changes the conversation for the first time, presenting newfound context for the issue and real-time, practical solutions for the problem.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateMar 6, 2012
    ISBN9781451663297
    The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think
    Author

    Matthew Yglesias

    MATTHEW YGLESIAS is a columnist for Slate, writing regularly for that site's "Moneybox" feature. He is a former fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and holds a BA in Philosophy from Harvard University. His first book, Heads in the Sand, was published in May 2008 by Wiley. Matt has previously worked as an Associate Editor at The Atlantic, a Staff Writer at The American Prospect, and an Associate Editor at Talking Points Memo. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Monthly, and other publications. Matthew has appeared on Fox News and MSNBC, and been a guest on many radio shows.

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    • 4/5
      The Rent Is Too Damn High: What To Do About It, And Why It Matters More Than You Think does not deserve the disparaging ratings/comments posted on Amazon. It is a fine book written by a market urbanist who explains basic supply and demand very well.

      I can sum the book up with a few quotes:

      "The point is that there are many ways in which expensive land can contain large numbers of people. The question is whether we’ll adopt rules that permit this rather than sticking with rules that often ban row houses and multifamily structures, generally require low buildings and large amounts of parking, and typically prescribe minimum lawn sizes—even minimum apartment sizes...This directly reduces real wages by increasing the cost of living for people in high-income metro areas. It indirectly reduces real wages by preventing people from migrating to places where job opportunities are most robust...infrastructure improvements can and should be tied to a demonstrated desire to increase population density...Progressives and urbanists need to move beyond their romance with central planning and get over their distaste for business and developers. Conservatives need to take their own ideas about economics more seriously and stop seeing all proposals for change through a lens of paranoia and resentment. Last, politicians of both parties who like to complain about “regulation” and “red tape” ought to spend some time looking at the specific area of the economy where red tape and regulation are most prevalent."

      Yglesias advocates deregulation of housing and zoning, and even hypothesizes that such regulations are what is contributing to the "Great Stagnation" popularized by Tyler Cowen (my review). He aims to convince Progressives that this deregulation will lower rent in cities, shorten commutes, and improve the standards of living for people in the bottom end of the income spectrum. He criticizes conservatives for hypocritically opposing this deregulation. He explains ideas taught by Adam Smith and David Ricardo very clearly for the lay reader. In a perfect world, Yglesias would be appointed to be HUD commissioner.

      4.5 stars. The only thing keeping this book from five stars is the lack of a bibliography for the economic studies Yglesias cites.

    Book preview

    The Rent Is Too Damn High - Matthew Yglesias

    ALSO BY THE AUTHOR

    Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats

    Simon & Schuster

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    Copyright © 2012 by Matthew Yglesias

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

    First Simon & Schuster ebook edition March 2012

    SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

    The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

    Designed by Paul Dippolito

    ISBN: 978-1-4516-6329-7

    ISBN: 9-781-4516-6329-7 (eBook)

    Contents

    Jimmy McMillan’s Good Idea

    The Trouble with Rent Control

    Renting and Buying

    Investing in a House

    Location, Location, Location

    The Land of the Free

    The Price of Sprawl

    The New American Geography

    The Great Backward Migration

    The New Rentiers

    The Virtues of Density

    The Mirage of Gentrification

    The Politics of Urbanism

    Reopening the American Frontier

    About the Author

    Jimmy McMillan’s Good Idea

    For a brief, shining moment in October of 2010, the attention of the nation (or at least that portion of the nation that spends an unhealthy amount of time on the Internet) was riveted by the cost of housing in America’s most desirable places. The occasion was the 2010 New York gubernatorial debate. It was a snoozer. Carl Paladino, the Republican nominee, was a bit nutty and was consistently hopelessly far behind Democrat Andrew Cuomo, even in the best year for Republicans in a generation.

    What’s more, the local cable TV organizers didn’t just put together the customary Democrat-versus-Republican clash. Instead, we got a seven-candidate battle royal featuring contenders from the Freedom Party, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, the Anti-Prohibition Party, and—best of all—Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party.

    McMillan, as it turns out, is a lovable crank born for the era of YouTube and Twitter. The sixty-four-year-old martial arts instructor, former mailman, and self-proclaimed Black Hulk Hogan was a sensation. With his silver mane, wild beard, black gloves, and concise, disciplined message (The rent is too damn high!), he was an instant star. Clips of the debate went viral on the Web the next day, McMillan was featured in a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch, and months after the debate, the memory of McMillan was resuscitated in WPIX local news promos as the man himself proclaimed, The weather is too damn cold, before touting the station’s weather broadcasts as a potential solution.

    Unfortunately, the package, the eccentricity, and the hoopla tended to obscure McMillan’s core point. Rent in New York City is, in fact, too damn high. It’s too high in Manhattan, too high in fashionable parts of Brooklyn, and too high in neighborhoods adjacent to subway stations throughout the city. And it’s not just a New York problem. Nor is it just a city problem. Renting a home with any kind of convenient commute into Manhattan will cost you. It’s the same on the west side of Los Angeles, throughout the bulk of the San Francisco Bay Area, and in the metro areas of Boston and Washington, DC. Indeed, the rent is too damn high across entire American states. To be sure, you can find a cheap place in New Jersey or Connecticut if you’re willing to live in a high-crime city with bad schools. But who wants that? Off the coasts, the problem is less widespread (though it still exists in select neighborhoods). Finding a place in a declining former industrial hub is downright cheap. Moving to the suburbs of Houston or Phoenix or other Sunbelt boomtowns is affordable, and indeed that’s a large part of the reason their populations are rising so quickly. But even though the rent is too damn high in only a minority of the American landscape, these areas are very socially and economically consequential parts of the country.

    We’re so used to the idea that living in a desirable location should cost dramatically more than living elsewhere that complaining about it seems eccentric and naive.

    Instead of a broad focus on the issue, America’s cities feature niche conversations about the availability of affordable housing for poor people. Expensive housing does pose unique problems to poor people—they don’t have as much money—but the phenomenon is a general one that afflicts middle-class and rich households and businesses large and small. The housing cost problem is largely obscured by the predominance of owner-occupied housing among middle-aged middle-class people who think of expensive housing as wealth and investment profits. That perception is a mistake. In order to sell your house, you need to find another place to live. Higher overall house prices can’t really make you richer unless you’re willing to move into your car or your parents’ basement. If you own a home and the price of buying a house rises faster than the price of renting one, then you can make money by selling your home and renting a new place. But as we’ll see, this is a telltale sign of a bubble rather than a national strategy for wealth creation. Your house

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