Latinos in California increasingly priced out of homeownership as rents soar
Home values in California rose dramatically over the past two decades while household incomes have not kept pace — a gap having a profound impact on the state’s Latinos, which make up almost 4 in 10 residents.
While household incomes rose by about 23 percent from 2000 to 2019, median home values increased by roughly 180 percent, according to a new report by the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.
San Joaquin County, where Latinos make up over 40 percent of residents, saw a significant drop in affordable homes for middle-income families: In 2010, 91 percent of homes sold were affordable to middle-income families. The number has dropped to 58 percent, with similar trends in other counties, including Alameda, Santa Clara and Riverside.
“These areas that used to be affordable to working-class families, middle-income households, are increasingly becoming out of reach,” David Garcia , a policy director at Terner Center who co-wrote the report, told NBC News. “I think what a lot of people don’t always realize is that these [people] are essential parts of our workforce. These are people who are gainfully employed, and pay a percentage of their income towards their rent to stay […]
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The biggest cause of this is investment houses buying up unprecedented numbers of homes and putting them into rental as prices go up and up and up.
Investors don’t BUILD homes anymore——They just buy ’em up and wait for price appreciation. They make MORE money faster that way. And people wonder why there’s a housing shortage. Sheesh!
Wealthy foreign buyers are doing similar stuff thru their own investors. Regular folks cannot out-bid all these cash-laden investors who now dominate the market.
Late-stage capitalism at its most raw.