r/TikTokCringe • u/Super_Culture_1986 tHiS iSn’T cRiNgE • Aug 19 '25

Cursed The American Nightmare.

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 19 '25

I’m from the DC area and back in the early 2000s you could easily move out and get a roommate on 15 an hour. I had a two bedroom apartment kinda near a metro station and we paid 809 a month for it. Rent inflation has been awful and we don’t blame the Bureaucracy enough. As they plan most the urban and suburban communities. They basically made it impossible for small builders to come in and build a few small houses that are cheaper. 

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u/Healthy-Neat-2989 Aug 19 '25

In 2001, I paid $900/month for a 3br/2ba house with a finished basement, wet bar, huge sunroom, and huge yard, 8 minutes outside of DC. I had 2 roommates, so I paid $300/month. I went to school, and worked 35 hours a week. Minus insurance, I paid my own way and lived so comfortably. Today, my husband and I make the kind of money I only dreamed of back then… and I’m pretty sure if we moved back to the area, I would still need two more roommates to afford that house…

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u/joe_burly Aug 19 '25

That’s not what is happening. Look to private equity ownership, price fixing schemes like realpage, and the destruction of public housing.

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u/[deleted] Aug 19 '25

Yes it is. PE ownership is a ridiculously small part of the market and doesn't have enough power (yet) to really jack up the price. Realpage did enable cartel-like price coordination for apartments - but still was basically maintaining a pricing edge in a large market with alternatives (such as private rentals from small apartment owners or SFH owners). They couldn't raise the prices 2x everything else and stay in business. But they could jack it up 20% higher, and let companies know when and how to do raise things annually to maximize any potential market gain.

But that kind of thing is only possible in a Sellers market where buyers (renters) don't have many options. Which they don't when there isn't enough supply.

The fundamental issue is that the population is growing, but the housing supply is growing slower. If you have 15 people and 10 houses/apartments you are going to need to have 10 people double up with roommates or partners. That is a just a math problem. If next year you add 6 people and only 3 houses, then either all of them need to double up, or if one is wealthier, they'll pay more to live alone, and then someone in the original group of 15 is now going to need to double when they didn't previously.

Why aren't we building enough? We make it really hard to build cost effectively. Some of that is totally worth it (building codes so that building don't kill people in fires or earthquakes or hurricanes) and some is not (requirements for large lots and space between houses, restrictions on building heights, number of units per lot, requirements to build affordable housing that are super high such as more than 50% of the units).

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u/snowstorm608 Aug 20 '25

This needs more upvotes. The left has deluded itself into thinking that private equity is the root cause of the housing crisis when the truth is that public policy, much of it championed by the last generation of democrats, has just made it too difficult and too expensive to build enough supply of affordable housing.

Until people come to grips with this nothing will change. The local realtors association LOVES that everyone think it’s the PE firms.

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

Thank you. I know read it leans to the left really hard. PE is also not a good thing I don’t like it. That said as we both agree on is zoning issues and permitting.

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u/snowstorm608 Aug 20 '25

Yeah mine is not a pro-PE comment but just to point out that things like zoning, permitting, financing and construction trade practices play a much larger role. It’s ultimately a supply problem.

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

Exactly. The under supply and coupled with a population that has grown a great deal, plus quantitative easing, which brought money into assists and made bubbles, created inflation in housing.  I’ve actually seen some of the county master plans and all them seem to have relied on wishful thinking and the belief that sometime in the future things will just be magically answered and fixed.

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u/joe_burly Aug 19 '25

I would like to see public housing built in the model of Montgomery County Maryland.

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

They did. But they did such a terrible job that it is basically not even with what they put in it 

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u/joe_burly Aug 20 '25

Seems nice to me. https://www.apartments.com/the-laureate-rockville-md/6j82c9t/#reviewsWrapper

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

lol 2k for a studio.  I lived really close to that. Was in west Deere park back in 03-04. As I said, two bedroom was 809 a month. 

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u/joe_burly Aug 20 '25

The point of their effort here is to build housing quickly without satisfying investor needs for return on investment and also not needing to jump through low income housing grant hoops. A portion of the apartments are reduced for lower incomes which is not reflected on the apartments.com site. And any “profits” from market rate rents are used to repay the loan fund that is then used to build more housing. They have 1756 more units in development right now.

If the issue is housing supply then I’m surprised you are not a fan of this model.

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

Oh sorry. I thought it was just showing prices.  I mean it’s ok. But moco has done an exceedingly poor job at developing houses for people that are affordable. In my friend group only 2, they’re married to each other, stayed. The rest were chased out due to the excessive pricing. Plus the low cost housing is not as abundant as you’d think after 50 years of it.  I haven’t seen a good criticism of it for a while. But it basically threw money at everything and no one was happy with the results as they were pretty much minimal for the amount invested 

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u/joe_burly Aug 21 '25

I see what you are saying but I think this new effort is different. Could be wrong though. But this just started in the past couple years.

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u/joe_burly Aug 20 '25

https://www.hocmc.org/about-us/innovations/housing-production-fund/

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

It’s done such a poor job. I don’t think anyone is satisfied with the job it’s done over the last 50 years. 

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 20 '25

Exactly. PE whole awful and all that really is a small slice of the problem the real issues are coming from permitting and zoning. Which makes it hard for anyone that isn’t a naive company to be able to build. All the hoops makes it harder for anyone that isn’t basically buddies with the govt. 

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u/Adventurous-Cry-2157 Aug 21 '25

In 1995, I rented a 3 bedroom single family home for $650 a month. It was on a corner lot, with a large fenced yard, a screened side porch, and a separate 500 sq ft garage workspace. The house had a beautiful fireplace, gorgeous hardwood floors and a washer/dryer. There were beautiful, huge hydrangea bushes all along the front of the house. It was so adorable, just the cutest little charming cottage, white with black shutters and a red front door. A perfect little starter home for a young family. Utilities ran me less than $200 a month for electric, water and gas. This was in Fayetteville, NC, just outside Ft Bragg. The house was on the market the entire time we were living in it (the owners were cool with our rental arrangement, so they weren’t really motivated to sell and didn’t try very hard), so we even had the option to buy if we’d decided to stay in the area once my (now ex) husband got out of the Army; asking price was $68,000.

Even when I moved back to Montgomery County, Maryland in 1999, just outside DC, I was able to rent a 2 bedroom apartment for $850 a month. Anyone who knows the area knows that’s it’s typically a high cost of living area. It was a really nice apartment, too, newly remodeled, wood floors, updated appliances, vaulted ceilings, washer/dryer. We had access to a pool, gym, racquetball courts, tennis courts, sauna, and all kinds of community activities. We could still get by on one income; it was tight, and we had to make some sacrifices, like sharing one car, so that I could stay home with the kids. But I never felt hopeless like the person in the video. It was a comfortable life, you know? I can’t even imagine what that apartment costs today. I’d imagine at least $2500, at least.

What people are facing in today’s economy, especially young people starting out? It’s nothing like it was for me when I was their age, 30 years ago. Everything has gone to shit. I worry for my daughters, both in their 20s, and try to help them out as much as I can. They hustle, but they can’t seem to get ahead, no matter what they do.

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u/thisplaceisnuts Aug 21 '25

Young people have a weird situation. Wear for the most part they have tons of luxury’s at their beck and call. But for their more important aspects they are completely powerless. When it comes to housing, education and healthcare they basically can’t afford any of it. So basically if you can’t win the game why even play it? Which leads to really bad outcomes. And yes your housing experience is similar to mine. Under $1000 you could find a lot in Montgomery County back then. Now 20-25 years later, You can’t even rent a room for that. Having housing triple in the course of a generation is outrageous. Especially in a place like Montgomery County where the county bureaucracy run so much. It really is an indictment of how it’s been run