WFH - “Work from home,” as in: COVID-era policies of (mostly tech jobs) being administered outside of a central office building.
I was entirely in favor of WFH and the struggle of office workers up until recently. Although my career is functionally incompatible with the idea, I had sympathy for members of my class and supported them fighting against an archaic and unnecessarily authoritative policy of office attendance.
BUT.
WFH-ers and West/East Coast refugees have decimated historically low income communities by flooding to parts of the Southeast and Midwest with salaries that were meant to be competitive in an urban environment, where COL is always going to be higher, and pricing out/displacing local (oftentimes minority) populations. Anecdotally, I’ve seen rental prices more than triple in my hometown within the past four years, with no real wage increases for local groups in what can only be called gentrification.
This isn’t my wording, see:
VICE | Digital Nomads Are the New Gentrifiers
You can’t have your cake and eat it, too, as the saying goes, and I just can’t defend the people who have destroyed local economies. Even if that animosity goes against class solidarity, which I do agree with, the damage WFH has done is too direct and too severe for me to support it.
Edit: I’ve spent the past hour thinking about this post and have thought of a more succinct way to express my argument:
If I want the best for historically low-income communities, and the following are both true:
A) Gentrification is bad for historically low-income communities, and
B) WFH policies have facilitated gentrification, then
it logicially follows that WFH is bad for historically low-income communities and that I should be opposed to WFH policies.
This is the process rationale behind my argument.
You seem to attribute the housing affordability crisis the last few years to WFH-ers, but isn’t it more fair to say that there are multiple other factors contributing to it?
Not just the post COVID appreciation for housing, but things like historically high percentage of investor owned homes (including corporate and foreign buyers), and historically low building rates compared to projected need, to name a few.
So then the question becomes, which of these should we focus on? For me, that means what gives you the most positives, and least negatives.
Let’s look at three options:
- Banning corporate and foreign non-occupying homeowners from owning American residential real estate
- Rezoning low density areas (particularly single story commercial/retail in smaller cities and towns’ downtowns) into vertical dense mixed use residential and commercial/retail development
- Ending work from home
1 and 2 accomplish our primary goal of reducing home prices across the country, both by increasing supply (1 would too, since those investors would need to sell, increasing supply), and 1 would also reduce demand. 3 does not, because any price reductions in rural areas will be offset by higher rates in urban one
2 also gives us positive secondary benefit of encouraging walkable cities, which leads to health improvements, less traffic, and reduced climate impact. 1 would also increase business investment, encouraging long term growth, if the “money printer” option of buying US residential properties and collecting rent is not available.
3 gives us no positive secondary benefits, and since it does essentially the opposite of 2 in terms of walkability, it also is the only one with a high negative cost.
So pretty clearly that idea is the worst one for solving housing affordability. So why support it when their are other much better options available to accomplish your goal?
Why would you think I don’t support the other two already? Number one is a no-brainer. With option two, I think there needs to be consideration for historically/culturally significant building preservation, but I agree on the whole.
But, neither of those are relevant to rural/historically low-income communities, which are the main topic of my post and are only somewhat related to my overall message that WFH has created a pipeline of destabilization to these economies.
What data do you have to say neither of those options are relevant?
“Mid-priced homes are becoming more popular with investors, making up 32% of investor purchases in the fourth quarter, a record high. Low-priced homes are still most popular with investors, making up 37% of purchases.”
Low cost homes, exactly the ones in rural/historically low income area you described, are the most purchased category of residential real estate.
Also, the downtowns of those areas, which are almost all single story commercial/retail, are exactly the places most in need of walkable, dense development I’m describing, especially if there’s a housing shortage and most of the surrounding areas already have built up residential developments.
So both of those options are actually more relevant for your example then the US as a whole.
https://www.redfin.com/news/investor-home-purchases-q4-2021/
You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries, but put none on your employer, your local government, your states, or anything else. There’s a plethora of things your own government could do to help out. Why blame the people who obviously left the west coast due to cost of living (the same thing you’re complaining about), and not blame the system and people who allowed it to happen in the first place?
Adding on the whole literally calling them “refugees” like they’re leaving some barron hellscape behind while literally just exposing the same problems in capitalism as a whole. Just because you were isolated from these problems before doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.
I just don’t get it. You claim to be left leaning and working class - but the second these issues we fight for literally start affecting you you don’t like them anymore? What do you think we’ve been fighting for this whole time. The ironic thing is that those who probably moved in are probably more left leaning and in more of support for policies which your politicians refuse to enact. (Higher taxes for higher earners, more safety nets, rent control, etc)
Blame the system that allows it in the first place and those who uphold that system. Blaming them just comes off as pure envy to me.
Simply put, if I have to choose between homelessness and standing up for people who want to make urban-adjusted wages in rural, historically low-income areas, I’m going to look out for myself first.
EDIT: You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries, but put none on your employer, your local government, your states, or anything else.
EDIT: Genuinely curious if you’d say this to a person facing homelessness in a city like Mexico City or members of the black community in New Orleans who are voicing their concerns with gentrification. It would take years or maybe decades of economic/social infrastructure for historically low-income communities to be able to offer competitive wages for locals who are being priced out of living right now. This isn’t the immediate solution you’re proposing it to be.
You blame a lot of people who make decent salaries
Except these salaries are far more than decent in the communities I’m describing. Six-figure salaries, even low ones, usually place these gentrifiers in the top 10% of earners overnight.
Why blame the people who obviously left the west coast due to cost of living
Where do you see me blaming the people specifically? I worded by title very carefully hoping to avoid people making this assumption. I don’t blame people for taking advantage of a system that obviously benefits them, but I do want that system - which is causing harm to other causes more relevant to me - to be abolished. Those concepts aren’t contradictory.
You’re against policies that allow them to live where they want working for a company they enjoy. The policies work in favor of them, it’s clear you’re just resentful that they are doing alright and found a way to live comfortably.
I’ll switch this around. A hypothetical. You have a nice lake next to your town. Randomly tomorrow it’s featured on “Boating Monthly”, a blog for rich kids who own boats. The come in, buy the land around the lake, and do the exact same thing. The cost of land goes up, it becomes a tourist stop overnight where rich tourists come and stay, they buy property and start charging exorbitant amounts for rent. Small grocery stores and dollar stores can’t stay open and are replaces with Trader Joes, Whole Foods, and Amazon Go stores so food and goods go up in cost. Cost of living as a normal person is suddenly 3 or 4 times as high.
Is this not the same argument your making, that people who came in drove up the cost of living? You just don’t have your scapegoat of WFH policies this time. So I say again - is there a policy you want to blame while being envious of those people - or are misplacing the blame that should be put on local politicians, landlords, and others in charge locally who should be putting in place protections?
That is where I want you to really think about your views.
You’re against policies that allow them to live where they want working for a company they enjoy.
I’m against policies that have been shown to displace historically impoverished peoples, yes. Your weird defense of neogentrification is showing how much you actually hate the lower-class. You haven’t even denied that that’s what it is: gentrification.
I’ll switch this around…
I don’t even understand how this is a relevant proposition. We’re talking about (I’m going to say it again) historically low-income people having their generational communities bought out from them overnight by foreign (regionally) people who want to have their cake and eat it too. Where does a lakeside property, which is a luxury item no matter where you are, come into this?
Consider this
Imagine you’re a poor member of a community whose society was based around fishing from a lake. You’re not rich, but no one in your community is, and that’s okay because your local economy is scaled down to accommodate this. Randomly tomorrow it’s featured on “Boating Monthly”, a blog for rich kids who own boats. Rich people come in, make offers for lakeside property that’s worth 10x more than it was a year ago. Not even a lifetime of saving your wages, that were once fair, has prepared you for what your town is now like.
In both examples, the conclusion is the same: Gentrification is bad. My overall argument is based on my interpretation that WFH has facilitated gentrification. If you disagree with me, you need to counter this interpretation.
That is where I want you to really think about your views.
I physically cringed when I read this boomer-core paternal text.
Alright, we’re done. I tried in good faith to show you another way of thinking about this and you’re just refusing to see another point of view, and you’re resulting to insults.
Just to really nail it in, I never said gentrification was not bad. You missed the entire point of what I was trying to say. I can tell because your rewording of it is literally saying the same thing, you just can’t see it. I’ll try to make it painfully obvious what I’m trying to say.
The cause of the rise in costs is irrelevant. The response by local politicians is the crucial factor.
Some examples of things that have been tried and have worked
- Low income housing
- Rent control and rent protections. (Many cities have rules like rent can only go up by 10% a year, for example)
- Lowering taxes for low income individuals
- Free transit for low income neighborhoods to work
- Building transit in general is a great-equalizer, suddenly it doesn’t matter if you’re in a cheaper area or more expensive. Doesn’t have to be trains, a great bus system can make all the difference
- Raising the minimum wage (if business owners aren’t doing this themselves)
and if they do it right, raising taxes on those moving in to help pay for these new services.
If your local government is not doing these, then they have failed you. That is literally their job. I would be going to town hall meetings and demanding change. You can’t just be mad your town is growing. Literally every city originally started as a small town. You just need to demand they start acting like a city, or you need to choose a different small town.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with this. My hometown went through the same thing. My mom lost her house. We were forced to move. We went on foodstamps. We went on unemployment. It was not the people who moved there who caused this. It was taxes going up on low income earners, it was safetynets being removed, and wages remaining stagnant. You know, what I’ve been fighting for ever since.
and just so you know, I’m a millennial, but hey thanks thanks for resolving my point down to some generational gap issue that you have. Don’t expect another reply, I have no interest in you just insulting me so you don’t have to see my point.
Rage quit, okay I’ll take that as a W
Jesus Christ take some personal responsibility.
“Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” He said, without a hint of irony
