USA TODAY: Apartment rents are rising at their fastest pace in years as the U.S. economy creates jobs and spurs demand for rental housing.
Nationwide, rents started edging up last year after several years of little growth or even declines, market researcher Reis says. It predicts apartment rents will jump 4.3% this year, marking the biggest annual increase in four years. MPF Research, which also monitors apartment rents, expects them to rise more than 5% this year, says Greg Willett, MPF Research vice president.
Job growth is driving much of the increase. As more people get jobs, people who doubled up in homes during the recession, especially younger workers, move out on their own, says Ryan Severino, Reis senior economist. Many of those workers are choosing to rent rather than to buy, because of dropping U.S. home values and tight lending standards that make it harder to buy homes, Severino says… (more)
Great! The working poor do not have it hard enough with food and gas prices, now rents are in a sharp increase (USA Today). Rental units being built this year are less than a third of what they have been (130,000 vs 40,000) so the great “invisible hand” of supply and demand is telling the landlords what their price should be. This instruction gets the same credibility as Moses did when he came down from the mountain with the ten commandments.
I would like to see a survey of rental rates in Lancaster city compared with renter’s income. What is the percentage of net income (after taxes) that people are paying for housing? What is the condition of these units? What are the utility costs?. Renters pay real estate taxes in their rental payments so the higher city are taxes are on them.
Related questions: Does poverty weaken family life? Does poverty encourage abortion? Is divorce rate higher among the poor? Are addiction rates higher? Crime? Violence? Incarceration? Stress? Single parenthood? Is it God ordained that the poor live in misery while those that feed upon them live in increasing luxury?
If our religion was Christian or Jewish or even the vilified “secular humanism” we would not tolerate these conditions. But our real religion, which trumps them all, is our nationally enshrined, and universally accepted, voodoo religion of laissez faire capitalism, with all its bitter, simplistic, and jungle ethics. Our one true god is Money, and we daily pay it homage with human sacrifices on a scale never imagined by the most primitive religions in history.
This is why we tolerate the wretchedness of so many millions of our fellow citizens . ..god has ordained that this be so! And all the people cried out Amen, Amen . . . . . while the high priests passed the baskets and carried them off to their tabernacles.
And people wonder why we are in so much trouble.