Tag Archives: Housing crisis

Housing is expensive here in East Providence. It’s even more expensive in Boston, an hour from here. Some folks live in Rhode Island and commute to Boston. When we were house-hunting in the Providence area in the Spring of ’22, the real estate market was white hot. We were out-bid on three offers. Making an inspection a condition was an automatic reject. In the event, the house we bought never even went on the market.Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin...

This is a very short note, prompted by the increasing fears of the default and its consequences, which I think it's greatly exaggerated, and the relatively optimistic views about the effects of monetary tightening. Sure enough, as I noted recently, an adjustment, and lower spending, associated either with an agreement with Congress Republicans (very unlikely) or as contingency plans (14th Amendment of other solutions) are implemented, could certainly through the economy into a recession. But...

David Fields (Guest blogger)Rising housing costs and stagnating real wages are the primary causes of worsening housing affordability in Utah. The dismal wage growth is the result of a larger nationwide upward redistribution of wealth and income, which can be attributed to the following: a failure to adhere to full employment objectives; fiscal austerity; and various labor market policies and business practices allowing the higher social strata of a professional class to capture ever larger...

From the recent report, written to a great extent by David Fields: Rising housing costs and stagnating real wages are the primary causes of worsening housing affordability in Utah. From 2009 to 2016 real income only grew at 0.31% per year while rent crept upward at a rate of 1.03% per year in 2017 constant dollars. Now, more than 183,000 low-income Utah households pay more than half their income for rent, becoming more likely to be evicted and moving closer to homelessness. Housing has...

A new post by David Fields, long time contributor to this blog. From his post: At its most fundamental level, housing is more than a market segment or policy, it is a social relation that serves as the kernel of human survival, which can have profound consequences for the actors involved, the actions they take, and the outcomes that follow. As such, housing provides a set of meanings and values, a material form of emotional, cultural, political and economic significance. It is an...