I would like to see more pro-active steps taken to provide access to appropriate rental housing for people of various ages. I don’t mean necessarily by the government– private developers can have at it too (of course). There’s a good market for people who would rather pay $XXXX in rent for a well maintained urban home instead of the same amount in mortgage, plus maintenance costs, plus property taxes, plus upgrades, for a home further out. Hey, I’m one of them! Take my money!

Really? Where?

This blog is for people who are interested in promoting livable streets. What is your commitment to this issue? Because if you’re just here to repeat the same tired lies and misconceptions, we can do without you.

I think you’d have a very hard time making that case. Transit use has fallen dramatically despite aggressive government efforts to encourage people to use it because cars are simply so much more practical. Faster, more comfortable, more convenient. The same trend has occurred in Europe and throughout the developed world. It’s starting to happen on a large scale in China and India too, as incomes are rising and more and more families are able to afford to buy a car.

The government has done far, far more to encourage the exact opposite over the last 100 years. In fact those massive subsidies you decry are largely a result of the recognition of the damage that was done by the government pushing the American Dream so hard for decades. If the government didn’t have its fingers in every little corner of life, we would all be paying the “fair” cost of travel and the train would be a better deal than the car, by far.

(Of course I am assuming free market rents)

Telecommuting & flexible work hours can and should be a major part of this discussion. I see the hours of 7-9am and 5-7pm as the some of the most environmentally damaging and economically unproductive hours of the day.

And regarding owning vs renting, its really easy to jump on the “owning sucks” bandwagon right now…There are pro’s and cons to both, but the ability to have your housing cost relatively fixed for 30 years, followed by it being relatively nominal, makes it a win over renting IMO for the long term, provided that you buy within your means while factoring in related costs (transportation, energy, maintenance, etc – which many people hardly consider until after moving in).

After completing this thought experiment you should now be able to understand why housing never appreciates relative to wage inflation in the long term.

Actually, over the long-term owner-occupied housing is a very competitive investment. Not through price appreciation alone, but through the combination of appreciation and the value the owner gets from living in the property. And because the cost of selling is relatively high, homeowners are discouraged from the kind of short-term trading that causes so many stock market investors to do poorly.

False, wrong, absolutely completely bogus, please stop repeating this.

A renter rents his house, and a buyer rents his money. There is no underlying moral/ethical difference between the two. And there are many confounding factors that complicate the buy/rent decision. Buying a house involves the opportunity cost of the down payment, while renting does not. For example, you pay a $100,000 down payment on a $500,000 house and you lose all potential investment returns from the $100,000 (e.g. returns from starting or expanding a business, investing in stocks and bonds, etc). If the other investments have better returns than housing, then you lose.

And then there’s the small matter that, over the long term, housing is the worst investment you can make. Housing never, ever, ever outstrips wage inflation over long periods of time. The whole idea of a house as an investment is bunk. A house is a cost. You live in it, and presumably you find some value in that. But it’s not an investment.

With all factors considered, renting has been a better deal than buying in all major American cities for the last five years.

I somehow doubt you’d like the results. That bus ride for which you pay $1 actually costs more like $4. The government pays the difference. If the government did not encourage people to use transit via massive subsidies, transit use would probably fall dramatically.