A view from our farm; the river is just beyond the trees.
The activists wanting to fight global warming climate change have long said that increased urbanization is part of the solutions they seek:
Huge gains, in terms of reducing harmful gases, can be made by changing how we plan, build, manage and power our cities and towns. Well designed, compact, walkable cities with good public transport greatly reduce our per capita carbon footprint and are key to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals of which climate action is a key part.
Good public transportation, huh? We have already noted how a well-funded public transportation system, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Agency, SEPTA, has admitted that they have lost control of the train cars as the heavily Democratic city has lost any semblance of control over crime, drug abuse, and homelessness, and SEPTA’s ridership is still below that before the panicdemic. Having the homeless and the junkies using SEPTA trains and train and subway stations for shelter and shooting galleries will cause decent people to avoid the system.
But there’s another problem with promoting increased urbanization:
The Philly area doesn’t have enough homes available for low- and middle-income buyers
In the Philadelphia metro area, households making $50,000 faced the largest shortage of available, affordable homes for sale, according to the National Association of Realtors and Realtors.com.
by Michaelle Bond | Friday, June 9, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT
More than one million homes nationwide were available for sale in late April. But high prices mean that what’s out there doesn’t match what people at various income levels can afford, according to a new report from the nation’s Realtors.
Basically, home listings affordable for middle- and lower-income households are missing. The country needs more homes that households at all income levels can buy to chip away at the problems of low affordability and low housing supply, according to a report that the National Association of Realtors and Realtor.com released Thursday.
“Ongoing high housing costs and the scarcity of available homes continues to present budget challenges for many prospective buyers, and it’s likely keeping some buyers in the rental market or on the sidelines and delaying their purchase until conditions improve,” Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist, said in a statement.
The report breaks down the number of homes missing for each income level by comparing the number of listings available in April to the number that would need to be available to accommodate buyers. Realtors said they hope local and federal governments can use their analysis to ease the twin problems of affordability and housing supply.
According to the story, households with a $50,000 income level can afford homes that cost up to $163,440, but if the Philadelphia market is short 3,440 homes listed for sale at that or lower prices, there’s also the obvious question: what can someone buy at those prices? We previously noted the home at 4931 Hoopes Street, listed for $125,000 in April, but down to $75,000 now.
Kitchen at 1829 North Bucknell Street, via zillow.com
For just $69,750, you can buy this 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom 870 ft² fixer-upper at 1829 North Bucknell Street. That’s North Philadelphia, not exactly a great neighborhood!
Now, why did I pick that listing? In December of 2021, we bought a small, detached house, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1,344 ft², with a detached one-car garage, in a small town in Kentucky for $70,000. My nephew and I had to remodel the bathroom and redo the plumbing, but, doing the work ourselves, spent less than $2,000. The house is perfectly neat and clean and livable — and is rented out to my sister-in-law — yet was virtually the same price. What we spent in a small town for a decent, if not modern, house, will buy you an absolute dump in North Philly.
716 West Allegheny Avenue, photo via zillow,com.
$70,000 will buy you this boarded-up, barred-in porch, 1,260 ft² rowhome at 716 West Allegheny Avenue, in the Fairhill neighborhood in the Philadelphia Badlands. Sorry, no interior pictures in the listing. The realtor probably figures that interior photos will scare off more prospective buyers.
114 South Cecil Street, photo via zillow.com.
The story stated that a household with a $50,000 income could afford a home of up to $146,440. For $145,000, you can buy this home at 114 South Cecil Street, in West Philly.
And with all of that, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was one of only four major metropolitan areas — the others being Detroit, Houston, and Cleveland — in which buying a home was less expensive than renting.
The global warming climate change activists want more and more people to move into densely-populated urban areas, and to use public transportation, to reduce CO2 emissions, but one thing is very clear: doing so will make people, especially people at the lower end of the economic spectrum, poorer than ever. Housing prices for even modest homes are hugely inflated, and mortgage interest rates have increased significantly.
It’s really quite simple: the activists live in urban areas, and that is the life they see as their baseline good. Those of us who live out in the sticks are just a bunch of unedumacated rubes. But the activists also have money, and have been able to afford living in the cities, and living reasonably well. They have to be economically secure, simply to have the time to be activist. What they seem unable to grasp is that there are a lot of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, people who can’t afford the inflated urban housing costs.