EP 748 Affordable Housing A Troubling Reality in Today’s America

There is no silver bullet when it comes to fixing the crisis we have in providing affordable housing for those who need it.  You can look to rising demand with limited supply, foreign ownership of properties in desirable urban areas, restrictive zoning laws, the cost and regulation put on new construction or a myriad of other factors.  One thing is for certain the rents and the cost of becoming an owner of a house today are, in the words of a former candidate in New York City, ‘too damn high.’  If the rule of thumb is that 30 percent of your income should go into housing, in many cities it can be as high as 50 percent.  In this podcast we can point to some initiatives to address the problem, but city by city, state by state, the problem’s origins may be different. Good housing stock that’s affordable does exist, but not necessarily in the locales people gravitate to.  In fact there are some states and localities trying to coax mobile knowledge workers to move from, say, Austin, to Missouri and get a subsidy to do so.  It’s a complicated housing landscape.  While we might not settle on solutions in this podcast, you will come away understanding the problem better after listening to Vijay Marolia the Chief Investment Officer of Regal Point Capital.

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