r/housingcrisis

In 1985, the average home cost 3.5x the median income. Today it's closer to 6x. In some markets, 7x. And here's what nobody is saying clearly enough: 65% of U.S. households cannot afford a median-priced home in 2026. Not the unemployed. Not just the poor. Two thirds of all American households — priced out of the median home in their own country. The numbers that explain how we got here: — Income rose roughly 10x since the 1980s — Shelter costs rose 17x — The mortgage lock-in effect has frozen supply — Renters at the bottom are left with just $210/month after housing costs — a record low This isn't a personal finance problem. It's a structural outcome. I put together a full breakdown of exactly how this happened, who benefited, and what the data actually shows. [link do vídeo] Curious what people here are experiencing in their own markets — are these numbers matching what you're seeing locally?

TD;LR: Our county council knowingly put my parents, both with COPD and other serious health issues, into a mouldy house. Last week, it took 4 minutes of aggressive CPR to bring my dad back to life in the A&E. Long read.

Two years ago my parents who are in their seventies got a small place after being on the list for a decade. The council had painted over the black mould on the walls. Within a couple of months the mould came through in every room but one. In some rooms, including their bedroom, condensation streams down the walls. My mam started buying dehumidifier bags every week as they fill up so quickly, has never dried clothes in the house, and keeps all the windows open.

After the mould appeared, dad started to get chest infections. This started a cycle for him of getting an infection, getting an antibiotic and steroids, and after a few weeks of finishing those, getting another infection. Over the last two years, those have got worse and worse, with him up half the night coughing and trying to clear out his lungs, feeling ill and exhausted. A nebuliser was added but gave only temporary relief. He even developed a hernia from the coughing. At one point he got a fungal infection in his stomach and was frequently complaining of a green tongue, a symptom of oral fungus.

Emails from the family, phone calls to the housing department and letters from doctors were sent in to no avail. They were told they'd have to wait two years for a transfer, even though medical problems are the one way for people to be prioritised on the housing waiting list. He also has late onset epilepsy, and has had an increasing number of breakthrough seizures. Research has shown that this, as well as his respiratory problems, can be negatively affected by mould. He has also got musculoskeletal issues and early stage dementia for which he is linked in with, and dependent on, local services.

Last week his breathing got so bad he was rushed to hospital in an ambulance. While waiting in the ER he was finding it harder and harder to breathe. Dad is an easygoing, positive and friendly person, not given to complaining, you know, old-school, but he begged for help. They put him in a cubicle and very shortly after that, some of the mucus broke away and completely blocked his airway. His heart stopped, cardiac arrest. If there hadn't been a doctor standing right beside him, we'd have lost him right then. This doctor worked aggressively on him, giving him aggressive CPR for just under four minutes and brought him back. We were so incredibly lucky and we are unspeakably grateful.

He was intubated and brought to ICU. He's now on a ward, on opiates for the pain resulting from the efforts to save his life. He is still not allowed to walk on his own,and his confusion is worse.

We were hoping they would find spores or fragments of the mould in his lungs but this didn't happen. It would show that he had a hypersensitivity reaction. He cannot return to his home as he will quickly get sick again and may not be so lucky the next time. Even without it being a hypersensitivity reaction and due to his preexisting COPD, the house environment is a threat to his life nevermind his health.

Our urgent issue now is getting him a safe home to return to. Three of us four siblings live away and the one who is in the town has a small house already overcrowded, she's the one who supports our parents on a daily basis. Moving away from the town, or into the countryside, would take them away from their community and the supports they so badly need and isn't an option for them.

The council are simply saying they have nothing, end of conversation. The medical social worker has written to them outlining everything, but has warned us that this council is the worst to deal with and often don't even reply to emails, even when very sick people have come into hospital off the streets. As he doesn't have anywhere to go, she may resort to blocking his discharge until he has a place to go.

We are realistic people, we more than understand the reality of the housing crisis, and as a poor working class family have first and second hand experience of it throughout our lives. We also know that they have in the past even bought properties for people with high needs in emergency situations.

Remember too that the council knew about Dad's health vulnerabilities before they were put in the damp and mouldy house - plus we have found out that at least two previous families moved out because a family member got sick. It's our view that their negligence directly caused his constant illness and led to the climactic heart attack.

I'm putting all of this down here in the hopes that some of you might have some suggestions or advice or knowledge that we don't currently have - Like I say, we appreciate they're not the only ones in similar, awful housing situations, so please be kind in your responses, thanks a lot fellow Redditors.

I've been developing a free community resource platform called Gather, and I'd love to get honest feedback before continuing to expand it.
Gather is designed to make it easier for people to find help when they need it most. Using your current location, it displays nearby food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters, emergency housing, healthcare and urgent care, addiction recovery services, crisis support, clothing assistance, and other nonprofit or public assistance organizations in one place.

But Gather is intended to be much more than a resource directory. One of its core features is helping reduce food waste while getting more food to people who need it. Grocery stores can subscribe to the platform and quickly post surplus food that would otherwise be discarded. Nearby food pantries, shelters, soup kitchens, and other aid organizations receive alerts so they can claim and coordinate pickup of available donations before they go to waste. All Subscription proceeds are intended to benefit Partnership to End Addiction.

Gather also includes a community support system that allows aid organizations to create public wish lists of the supplies they need most—everything from hygiene products and diapers to blankets, cleaning supplies, and other essentials. Individuals experiencing hardship can submit requests for needed items through participating organizations. When a donor purchases those items, they are shipped directly to a participating aid organization for local pickup, providing a simple and organized way to connect donors with people in need.
For people who simply want to help their community, Gather also provides an easy way to purchase essential supplies for individuals experiencing homelessness or financial hardship through participating organizations, allowing donors to contribute tangible items where they're needed most.

My goal is to build a platform that not only helps people locate assistance, but also strengthens connections between donors, nonprofits, grocery stores, volunteers, and the communities they serve.
The project is still actively being developed, and I'd really appreciate constructive feedback.

If you work with a nonprofit, grocery store, healthcare organization, or community program, would something like this be useful?

Whether you're a developer, someone who works in the nonprofit sector, or simply someone who wants to help others, I'd genuinely appreciate your perspective.

You can check it out here:
https://live-gather.org

Thanks for taking the time to look it over. Every piece of feedback helps move the project closer to becoming a genuinely useful tool for communities.

In light of the recent high costs of home ownership, it is interesting to find that the property tax rates have not changed in California or Washington State since the 1980's. Yet the amount that homeowners have paid to the government has increased dramatically. The problem is not with property taxes or tax rates. High property taxes are merely a symptom of a core problem, and that if you are having to eliminate an entire, major category of expense just to keep people in their homes, something else is very wrong.

The endless marketing of Florida as a sanctuary for nearly unlimited numbers of other people does not reflect a well-rounded understanding of the Florida economy, its culture and its actual needs. Instead, it is a flirtation with unconditional inclusion in the name of "compassion", which is very similar in principle to open borders. They have done this because they have used higher population numbers, the amount of housing and construction jobs, and growth in state revenue as the metric by which they judge a state's economic health. It does not work, because "growth" does not equal strength.

On the contrary, one of the main objectives of Communism is to make it more and more difficult for people to live independently in rural areas, and to own private property. To reach this goal, they use crises in other states and cities as an opportunity to bum-rush the more rural areas of the country, using population and unwanted development to raise the cost of living, inflate property values far beyond true market conditions, and "blow it up", both economically and culturally. Because of this, they don't regard private property or rural land, and they don't regard private farming or ranching, because they seek high density housing, limited travel, and the centralization and control of the food supply.

These goals are among the main, stated objectives of the Green New Deal, which was previously known as the "Comprehensive Blueprint for the Reorganization of Human Society". It is not new, and was first introduced into the U.S Congress by Nancy Pelosi in 1993. Its conception of "conservation" or "efficiency" is not that of preserving nature and the environment, but of packing as much human presence and activity as possible into as small a space as possible, which means dense housing, and controlling / limiting the aspects of nature that man uses for his own physical and spiritual sustenance - water, the lakes, rivers and oceans, the sky, the air and land zoned for agriculture.

Because of this, large areas of nature or undeveloped land, including county property, and large private property lots with only one home are seen by many developers as "a waste of land", not simply because they are greedy, but because many of them are operatives for the Green New Deal agenda. The goal of 're-organizing human society' necessitates the control of more and more land. To further this end, they have cited cattle itself as a "threat to the environment", while ignoring the real threats to the environment that they impose every day.

To gain this control, they seek to have as much land as possible put into the possession and control of a relatively few corporate entities, such as investors or developers, rather than in the hands of individual citizens, land lords or the county. This is also the main reason why the cost of beef is so high, and why China seeks to buy up land in the United States. These entities form an easy alliance with the political operatives in a given area who allow them to operate, whether they are Republican, Democrat or Independent, and they fund the campaigns of these politicians in exchange for favors or special allowances. These special allowances usually come in the form of rezoning, zoning "modifications", or the suspension of normal local and state regulations.

With the changes / additions that these entities represent comes property values that are inflated far beyond true market conditions, and out of proportion to the citizens wages. The ease of life for the 'migrants' from out of state is not worth the unrest and high turnover in both the housing market and the economy at large that these resettlement schemes have created, with record numbers of already existing homes held at auction because long-standing citizens could no longer afford the costs. The only sector of the economy that this benefits is the real estate sales sector, because the cultural and economic erosion, dislocation and dysfunction that this creates in every other sphere cannot even be imagined.

The fact that this pattern has been repeated across both Florida and the country, and the fact that it has continued despite its near universal rejection by long-standing citizens, means that it cannot be simply the incidental fumbling of an ignorant or incompetent group of "leaders" in one, or even a handful of locations. Instead, it is a deliberate, nation-wide war, with its foot-soldiers in local and state government positions across the country, all knowingly carrying forward the same battle plan.

One of the primary means they use for bringing about their desired 'change' is by the rezoning of land - land that was intended for industrial or agricultural use, but that with the use of zoning changes, is used instead for housing, or a Planned Development Project (PDP). Behind all such changes / additions is a disdain for both the elderly and the young alike - the elderly, who can no longer afford to own their home, and the young who would like to be able to own a home or own some other form of property, but due to these conditions, cannot do so.

These elderly citizens are often moved into some variant of a "senior center", where they can be overseen or "cared for" in one large facility. Other forms of housing are marketed for those who have been forced to consider the least expensive form of housing available, whether it is an apartment complex, a villa or a single-family home. They are sometimes marketed for elderly citizens, or those 55 and older, usually from other, already-dysfunctional areas or states. The euphemism sometimes used for such projects is "affordable housing". Yet much of this housing is rental, and the rent is often $3,000 a month, because the true objective is neither home ownership nor affordability, but the fake proliferation of homes and thus control over where and how people live.

In other words, this is a deliberate assault, which is why county commissioners who support such efforts do not want to listen to objections and the true market.

One way for the loyal citizen to address such plans is by looking in the newspaper or online, and taking note of any meeting / hearing on rezoning, as well as any activity indicating the sale of public / county property. Look up / research the entities who put in the rezoning request or who seek to purchase public property. Another approach is to take away the foundational reason for added housing, which is a added population. Republicans, sincere democrats and independents can all unify behind this issue in growing numbers, and communicate with all the candidates for governor, as well as candidates for local offices; Let them know that one of the defining issues for true Floridians is whether they will limit the amount of migration into the state and counties to the number of people either leaving or passing away. By keeping it a 1:1 ratio like this, you remove most, if not all of the reason for their existence, and such developments can be eliminated. Another way is to get on all the public discussion forums where people from other states are sharing their thoughts / questions regarding moving to Florida. Communicate with the prospects directly, as well as make original postings regarding the true conditions in the state, and let them know in your own way not to come.

There has been a recent tendency to think of and define America First as "pro-growth". This is wrong. We are pro freedom. This involves the freedom and the right to be heard, and to reject on the state and local level the things that do not comport with our values. In keeping with this, it should not be a challenge to get county commissioners to turn down a data center, a green energy project, housing project or anything else. A person or a group of long-standing citizens should not have to make long, thorough arguments, attend endless numbers of meetings or organize in large numbers just to prevent what would otherwise by an onslaught. If there is a real struggle in this regard, you are dealing with tyranny, not capitalism and freedom.

"Red" states are not obliged to be a sanctuary for every ailing citizen from every city and state, any more than the United States is obliged to be the sanctuary for every ailing "migrant" from around the world.

www.donaldjtrump.com

Instead of large scale suburban homes that are all over the nation, why can't we just build more dense Urban Housing like condominiums or in the urban areas. It can fit more people in smaller spaces and would not have lots of land use. It can also increase available housing which is well needed in this current housing crisis.

Why isn't this being done more?

Do we think this should be allowed to happen??
Why are young people going to work and trying the very hardest they can to get a deposit for a house.
The country is toxic at the moment and it’s very sad to watch it going down so quickly. Crazy times I’m afraid.

Genuine question. What happened to the initial hype around tiny houses?
And why are tiny houses or container homes so bogged down by regulations, bureaucracy and constant pushbacks?

I don't get it. It would help to solve and alleviate some of the crisis and help regulate the market.