Renting and ownership can be fairly similar in larger cities (but costs more than owning a house in my state), but when you’re in the rural America, there tends to be a fairly sharp decrease in quality of life despite the fact that rental prices adjust up with housing prices anyway.
I mean, I can still get a half-acre of land and private house for a mortgage payment that’s about the same as the rent on a 2 bedroom apartment. Without having to worry about a landlord, an upstairs neighbor with toddlers. I can do what I want with my yard, even have any pet without an additional “pet fee”.
And rental houses (the happy medium?) in my area are going for exactly what the mortgage would be to buy one today. We’re talking $3000, even $4000/mo. Yeah, current rates are shitty, but that still gets you a $550,000 mortgage (used to get you closer to $700,000). And rent isn’t going down any time soon, but one can likely refinance to a lower rate in 5-10 years
What it means to me is that I’m not selling my house, with my 3% APR mortgage any time soon despite the $200,000 in equity I have from the price skyrocket.
Okay? I mean we live in two entirely separate worlds. $550k in my area gets you 850 sq ft with added condo fees.
There’s not many “worlds” with those price points, so you’re probably in Boston, NYC, SF, or somewhere similar. I, too, live in one of the highest cost-of-living areas in the US, so I get it more than you think.
But rent in those areas… 1 Bedroom apartments in Boston $4000/mo for 800sqft. Same thing, actually a bit more expensive to rent than to buy.
you’re locked in (trapped?) at 3% you’re not going anywhere. You can’t go anywhere even if you wanted
How so? If I actually were willing to rent, I could pocket a couple hundred grand and just pay apartment prices.
If that’s worth the advantage of doing your own landscape maintenance on the weekend, and having to drive everywhere for the simplest of errands, then head on.
In fairness, on the price difference I can afford a landscaper and use delivery services for errands. But I don’t mind mowing my lawn or driving, so I don’t do those things. But I don’t grok your point here. Are you suggesting nobody would actually want to live outside of big cities “because lawns and driving”? I understand some people love cities, and I respect that. I had a starry-eyed coworker who GUSHED about his visits to Boston. I like leaning back and chillin in my yard, swimming in my private pool, without anyone bothering me.
There was a famous case where a single person was rejected, and the cited reason was his high IQ. The particular location had a policy of rejecting extreme IQ because evidence showed that IQ is correlated with job turnover. He sued them and lost because IQ is not a protected status in the US and because there was a cited non-prejudicial reason.
But of note, it doesn’t appear to be common enough that anyone has researched it as a statistic. It’s just that despite being run by the government, police departments have enough autonomy to set their own hiring policies as long as they are legal.
There’s a lot of genuine criticisms about the police. We should focus on those. Like their half-ass training and the laws/policies that lead to harmful behavior by them and garner well-earned mistrust.
I think the format of system, as framed around obedience to particular elite interests, and detachment from broader social interests, is completely a valid target of criticism.
I’m not sure what you mean in this sentence. Are you talking about the system of police applications and how they hire/train cops? Or are you talking about the overall problem where police serve laws which (not coincidentally) protect corporate interests?
If the former, I’m not sure I’d agree. If the latter, I agree 100%.
Housing market affordability is so bad that Zillow says it will take you 13.5 years to break even on a purchase from July onward ( finance.yahoo.com )
De-escalation ( lemmy.world )