A global housing crisis is suffocating the middle class

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 453 points – A global housing crisis is suffocating the middle class
english.elpais.com

Prices have risen by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and nearly 15% in the European Union between 2015 and 2024. Though policies have been implemented to increase supply and regulate rentals, their impact has been limited and the problem is getting worse

Housing access has become a critical issue worldwide, with cities that were once accessible reaching unsustainable price points. Solutions that have been proposed, like building more houses, capping rents, investing in subsidized housing and limiting the purchase of properties by foreigners have not stemmed the issue’s spread. Between 2015 and 2024, prices rose by 54% in the United States, 32% in China and by nearly 15% in the European Union (including by 26% in Spain), according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

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Salaries have not grown apace with real estate prices. In the EU, the median rent rose by 20% between 2010 and 2022, with rental and purchase prices growing by up to 48%, according to Eurostat. Underregulated markets are wreaking havoc, and in the United States and Spain, 20% of renters spend more than 40% of their income on housing, while in France, Italy, Portugal and Greece, that percentage varies between 10% and 15%, according to the OECD. Many countries have created programs aimed at increasing the future supply of public housing, but their effectiveness has yet to be determined and analysts say that results will be limited if smarter regional planning decisions are not made.

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But some who has earned a penny in interest has spent time as both worker and owner.

I'm not talking about people who only make a small amount of interest or investment return over the course of their lifetimes. I'm talking about people who are already unambiguously middle class (between 25th and 75th percentile incomes), who end up relying on investment income to provide most of their retirement expenses.

I'm talking about people with half million dollar 401(k)s that return hundreds of thousands over the course of a retirement. Some of it is principal but most of it is gains/return/interest.

Basically if you're able to retire in America, you're an "owner" for those decades. Yes, there are people in America who can't afford to retire, but most people in the middle class can.

Also, its not the conventional way. You 100% made that up and what you're describing is petite bougouise.

Defining the middle class as middle incomes is pretty conventional. I think you've misunderstood my description of the middle class (people who fit the definition generally have income from both work and from investment) as a definition.

So let me be perfectly clear:

  1. The American middle class, defined as those with middle incomes, earns significant amounts of money from both wages/salaries for their work and on return on their investments, especially in their primary home (with a 60+% homeownership rate) and retirement accounts (401(k)s, IRAs, 403(b)s, even multi employer or government pension funds that are paid for through investment in publicly traded securities).
  2. The worker versus owner definition you proposed near the top of this thread is insufficient to describe class, because of the large, large number of people who rely on both and could not support their existing lifestyles without both.

And hey, I was gonna let it go but it's clear your autocorrect has now adopted it as a new word it will happily let you spell wrong repeatedly: it's spelled petit bourgeois, or petit bourgeoisie for plural.

Again, if you want to make up your own definition of middle class, then you're right.

By everyone else's, you're not.

The rest is just noise.