The problem is that land costs, entitlements, materials, construction up to current code and market expectations, labor, interest rates, etc. all cost more money. The decision to build new units is based on the expectation that the market will pay rent at a level sufficient to recoup the costs to construct.
They can’t build a new unit and then rent it out for free (or below market levels) out of the goodness of their hearts. It would be like asking someone to just light money on fire. There are programs that exist to subsidize housing costs - and most developers utilize those.
This person is right it's supply and demand. It's immutable. Sure prices will keep going up for cheaper places but it wont go up as much as if nothing was built.
Once all the people who can afford to pay the higher prices have moved into newer/nicer places, the older housing stock will need to reduce their prices (or, at the least, reduce the pace at which they are increasing their prices) in order to attract people who can pay to live there.
Housing is still subject to supply and demand just like anything else. When you build more apartments, the supply is expanded, so the stable price point goes down. There’s really robust economic evidence for this:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-20/does-building-new-housing-cause-gentrification
For a specific look at Montana:
https://montanafreepress.org/2021/11/29/expert-says-montana-home-costs-driven-by-shortage/
What's the incentive for a person who can afford single family housing to move in to an apartment over a free standing single family home? I think for some people the ease and convenience of apartment living might be attractive but most people with the funds to purchase single family housing will likely continue to do so, and have done so even in the presence of upscale multifamily housing options.
Housing is a segmented market: there’s “tiers” ranging from old basement apartments to nice new apartments to single family houses to mansions. When someone can’t afford a fancy new apartment because there’s not enough of them, they will rent an old affordable basement apartment instead. Building more fancy luxury apartments increases the supply in that segment of the market, reducing demand pressure on the segments below it.
No they don't rent an old affordable apartment because they can't find anything nicer 🙄. They live out of state in their expensive homes and wait for the luxury stuff they are promised to finish being built and then move in.
Nobody decides to move to a place based on housing construction! Go talk to people who moved here, I promise not one of them will tell you they moved here because somebody built a new subdivision. They moved here because they wanted to live in the mountains or get away from California or whatever, and then they started looking for housing afterwards. They were going to buy whatever is available, and by increasing the overall supply we keep prices lower.
Sure they do! Ive talked to people who have done just that - working remote until their property is ready for them. And yes they move here to get out of California but also saw Yellowstone and want to be cosplay cowboys. There are plenty of other places that have mountains if they wanted mountains. Yes they are buying whatever is avaliable - along the lines of the existing decent homes that used to go for 250k but are now two to three times that amount. Its definitely not a lower quality rental. The only low quality rental theyre interested in is to buy the property it's on so they can kick the existing renters out to tear down the place and build their expensive home or a developer building expensive condos.This does the exact opposite of keeping prices lower if you're LITERALLY replacing the lower quality lower cost housing with expensive luxery housing while ar the same time the existing housing prices skyrocket. Increasing the supply need of that luxury market. Increasing the cost of living for the rest of us.
This is the stupidest thing ive ever heard lol. The rich out of state assholes move out of their expensive ass houses into Montanas new expensive ass houses and condos. This actually makes zero room for additional affordable housing and while driving up the cost of living for the majority.
Do people choose to move to Montana only because a developer built an apartment building, and they wouldn’t move here otherwise? Or do they choose to move to Montana first, and then they just buy whatever housing is available and convenient?
Don’t worry. They’ll quote the part where wages have risen 2% more than other than other states and leave out the part where COL went up 6-22% more than other states depending on area. (I.e kalispell and Bozeman)
Everyone is downvoting the people calling BS on the living wage theory but the last few years has proven it doesn’t do shit. 3 years ago everyone was screaming for a $15 an hour living wage. Now, in the Flathead at least, I don’t know of any place paying less than that but guess what? It’s not a living wage. Prices went up as expected. You want to point out the huge corporations that can afford to pay it (many already do) but totally ignore the fact that many smaller businesses can’t pay it without raising prices exorbitant amounts. All the little mom and pop shops, gone. Your favorite restaurants, gone. We see it every day in MT and you wonder why all we have left is Walmart and McDonald’s. There’s a lot not to it than just raising the minimum wage.
Prices have gone up more than a little due to corporate price gouging. Record profits across almost all industries. Working class buying power (wages adjusted for inflation) have been slashed continually for 50 years to drive up corporate profits, because if their profits aren't growing faster than inflation their stock price collapses.
It's not the wages, it's the investor class greed that has finally met the working class breaking point.
We've gone from one manufacturing job providing a family of 4 or 5 with a house, 2 cars, and yearly vacations to two parents working professional jobs may not even be able to afford a condo let alone vacations with their kids.
If minimum wage has kept up with inflation from the 60s it would be over $20/hour. That's where all other wages are compared from. CEO pay is up over 1500% in the last 50 years as they've shipped jobs over seas, slashed effective wages, cut benefits, etc. Higher wages are not the problem. Money being siphoned to the top so people can buy mega yachts so large they require support yachts because they're too big to function independently, is a problem.
They go to places like the flathead and Gallatin valleys, buy enough land for 50-100 homes, and then spend two weeks out of the year there, creating artificial scarcity for land to build homes. They also waste enormous amounts of money watering the grass and heating them, creating unnecessarily increased demand for those things and driving up the prices paid by the people who are further and further under paid every year.
I am not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and I hold no delusions about that. I'm damn sure not gonna lick that boot on my neck and claim it's comfy.
That’s a long thought out rendition of many talking points on this subject but just like most things you hear these days it’s full of half truths and us against them nonsense. There is a lot more to the complexity of the issues than that.
Price gouging, though it exists, is hardly the long term money making strategy large for corporations. In fact it’s quite the opposite. As prices go up with inflation, the large corporations are able to keep prices lower, feeding on the weakened dollar bringing in customers and pushing the local shops out that have to raise their prices in order to keep their doors open. It does no good to keep bitching about these corporations as everyone does and then continue to shop there. Most of them, btw, do offer better pay and benefits than the local small shops can afford, so their business model is actually opposite of what everyone complains about.
Greed of the “investing class?” What class is that? You want to give this vision of billionaires sitting around watching their stocks, but reality is if you have money in a savings account, a college fund, a 401k, or even a pension fund such as through a union, you are in the “investor class” and your investments rely on those as much, if not more than the rich.
There are a lot of factors in the housing market affecting prices such as average size and amenities that have changed since the 50s-60s as well as the desire for two income families that came before the need, but in MT it comes down to supply and demand. Greed here is not on the part of the buyers, but on the part of the sellers. Making a ton of quick easy money is what started the issue snowballing.
And lastly, any discussion of what the minimum wage should be, needs to address the fact that there is a national minimum wage as well as state minimum wages. This makes sense since every state has different costs of living. California minimum wage has been over $15 and yet people struggle to afford living there just as much or more than other states with lower wages. The more people make, the more they are willing to pay, and what people are willing to pay will always be the constant in pricing.
Price gouging is literally what's happening to create record profits. It's due to the quarterly and annual performance bonuses these CEOs are paid. They don't care what happens in 5 years because they get tens of millions of dollars for making crazy numbers this year. It's happening in huge swaths of corporate industry as we speak. They're literally bleeding people dry at any and every opportunity to get their fuck you money, because it won't matter what happens after they do.
And I don't shop there. I do support businesses that provide superior benefits and compensation to their workers whenever possible. I live my values as much as I practically can in the system we are currently existing in.
I don't have enough money to have a meaningful voting power in any company, so no, I'm not part of the investor class. I am a victim of the investor class when they conduct corporate raiding and tank companies I may have invested in indirectly. I'm their victim when they take massive gambles with my, and millions of other people's, money. Like in 2008. I lost everything I had built in my early 20s and was laid off 3 months from receiving my trade license.
National minimum wage directly forces local minimum wage. If the national minimum wage was $15/hr, you don't think California's would still be much higher due to their much higher than national average cost of living? People struggle because every time they get a leg up, prices increase to protect corporate profit margins, stock buybacks, and outlandish C suite compensation. The 1% need to hemorage money back into the economy for people to not struggle all the time. I make modern middle class money these days, but I've lived through multiple recessions and financial catastrophes. It's us against them because every time my life has been destroyed by massive financial malfeasance at the top, they got bailed out and I got told it's just a fact of life. People lose their 2 bedroom condo, but no one loses their 10 million dollar mansion and their yacht.
Lol. Been studying since 2008 oddly enough. It's how I know you're just hoping one day the rich guys you worship will let you be one of them and you're a class traitor because of it. Good luck though, keep it up and maybe one day they'll let you into the clubhouse to lick those boots.
Not sarcastic at all. The point is valuable help is worth it. I make sure my handful of good guys are paid better then they could find elsewhere in town.
Unfortunately, the continued increase of wages is feeding into the inflation of pricing as companies adjust costs due to decreased margins. It creates a vicious cycle of inflation. Most economists don't believe in increasing the minimum wage as a solution. Its more like twisting the knife deeper while trying to stop the bleeding.
I usually call it basic economics, not propaganda, but to each their own. At the heart of the issue, is how the overall market responds to environmental changes. Technically there are a few ways companies can respond to the change of profit margins caused by am increased labor cost. One is to cut the numbers of hours worked or even layoff employees to recoup the increased cost. The other option is to increase the cost of the product displacing the increased cost to produce onto the buyer. Largely the company decision will come down to the demand and supply elasticity. Most luxury companies will probably cut workers and produce less, because the demand is more elastic than the supply. Conversely with necessities, the price more likely to be what is increased. Demand for eggs doesn't change quickly but the price, like over the last year, can change rapidly. While most companies will still probably pick a solution somewhere in the middle, the undeniable truth is that your increased wages have to get paid for somehow and no company is going to accept having to pay for the increase alone. The burden is always split between the buyer and seller.
[Microeconomics of the Minimum Wage](https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_microeconomics-theory-through-applications/s14-03-minimum-wage-changes.html)
You mean egg producers that are currently being charged with price fixing?
Ford buying 4.2 billion in stock and lining shareholders pockets while saying they can’t meet union demands. GM with 14.2 billion in buybacks while saying they can’t meet union demands? You think the raises is what’s making the cost of vehicles go up?
The fact Walmart, soon to be Tesla, and other companies can’t setup shop in European countries cause their profits are based on fucking the American worker. McDonald’s can pay a living wage, vacation time, insurance, retirement in Europe and still sell a combo for $10. But in America they’d have to raise prices due to wages? The minimum wage as it lowest point in over 60 years but corporate profits are being set at record levels every quarter. You can blame inflation on a lot of things. But wages ain’t one of em.
Saying that McDonald’s can pay a living wage that can afford all these things and still sell a combo for $10 is implying that that $10 is super affordable a.k.a. cheap
That’s not at all what it implies. It implies that them saying if they paid more in the US they would have to raise prices makes them full of shit. They already provide more benefits, at the same price, in a more expensive market and turn a profit. In no way shape or form did I imply it was cheap or affordable.
In that case, I misinterpreted the direction of the text, and for that I apologize. I would like to point out that it seems very much that the raise in prices, and the raise in wages have gone hand-in-hand. to be fair, I don’t study statistics and I can’t give you anything other other than a general consumers view on the topic
Oh I don't doubt that there are other factors that make it worse, but our economy works on the invisible hand principle. In any economy with proper market competition will always split an increase in the cost of production between buyers and sellers. I am not saying that they are not potentially capable. Of eating the cost but that no company will ever choose to.
All I’m saying is runaway profits have more to do with inflation with wages. It’s high time for workers to get their share. And we all hear this tired narrative of “oh god we can’t raise wages or pay benefits without raising prices. Better keep people poor”
Yeah but our economic model is being based on wages not increasing nearly as much as the cost of living has in the last 15 years. Why do you think tipping culture is so cancerous and out of control? Companies don’t want to be responsible for paying their workers’ wages.
Try running the numbers of cost of living versus wage increases in the last fifteen years. It’s not sustainable living, nor is it enjoyable. Try that math.
Umm, no.
Our housing crisis would probably take a decade or more to solve. The bigger towns really need to build more housing, of all sorts. More apartments in bigger buildings, more condos, more single family homes. We can't meet our capacity already and we need more for the future with current growth trends.
I'm in the Flathead, and there's a plague of NIMBYism here. We desperately need high density, actually affordable housing, and there's plenty of space in the core of Kalispell city limits that could be infilled, but proposals get massive backlash because a 5-story building will "ruin the views!" or "character" of downtown. Even though downtown has been shit for 30+ years (although it has admittedly improved some the past few years), and it takes less than 10 minutes drive to be somewhere you can't see anything involving downtown or a skyline of any sort. Meanwhile single family and 2-4 unit townhomes keep gobbling up fields and sprawling to every corner of the valley.
A good example of this is the old Rygg Ford lot above woodland park. It sat vacant for years (decades?), rumored due to family disputes. It's finally being developed, but there were still myriad complaints. Because I guess vacant warehouses, with litter and drug paraphernalia strewn about is way better character than a multi-story, modern apartment building?
Do you remember the storage unit apartments that people swore up and down didn’t include bathrooms for whatever reason and so a bunch of people tried to get the construction shut down so people wouldn’t “shit in the street”?
That was when I knew kalispell was too far gone to ever develop affordable housing.
Really the only way things come down is we build so many apartments and condos that they are going unrented. Then prices start to fall.
That feels years away.
I agree completely, and with the 2021 GOP law where building companies don't need a portion of their build portfolios to be 'low-income housing', our laws are moving away from the solution. If every new place being built is a $450k ranch style home on an acre lot, we won't be solving this problem any time soon.
Correct. But major cities in Montana, and many voters think urban redevelopment and sprawl is "bad". So we are supposed to house more people without any construction.
Up here in the Flathead a two bedroom in one of these “affordable housing units” is over $2000 a month. It doesn’t pencil out that anything has been solved keeping young workers in this state…but just the opposite.
It's absolutely depressing that so many people rail about this issue and then completely overlook [the best solution](https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-costs-lower-rents-housing-prices-land-value-tax-2023-11?op=1).
Let me guess, the next step is to ban cars and force everyone to walk/ride those Bird scooters? What about parks, do we bulldoze those too and build houses so that the land looks like NY or CA? Maybe you just hate ranches and farms and want to bankrupt them… have you thought that maybe there’s a reason there’s open land around?
Uh, what? I like muscle cars and hunting, parks and ranches, public and private land. Not even sure what your comment about open land is implying. How about instead of terrible guesses you just read up on it?
Your link, in the very caption under the image, claimed that parking lots and “other forms of land” are wasteful.
How am I far off on where that slope leads?
Yes, every one needs housing that’s more affordable, however, the assumption than new housing would be somehow cheaper is gullible at best. Parking is a pain downtown town especially. Take the few lots away and it only exacerbates the issue. The push to force more development comes from , shocker, developers, and none of them are out for civic duty. They aim to make profits. We literally just had one push through buying the land that was previously a park, and built “affordable housing” on it. News flash, it’s not. It’s the same hiked rent as everywhere else.
There would be fewer empty lots and *more* parking downtown! People would no longer be punished for building on land, they could build a skyscraper parking garage, and their tax bill would be the same as if they left it as an empty lot.
Currently, any improvements you make to your property increases your taxes, discouraging you from making improvements. Currently, it's profitable to buy up valuable space in the city and do absolutely nothing it with. Less improvements is less tax burdens, so you can just sit on that high demand land for years, paying nothing in taxes, and then sell it for a huge profit down the road. This is called land speculation, and it's an abjectly bad thing. Developers actually love speculation btw, they make a lot of money from it.
https://www.wsj.com/video/series/wsj-explains/the-invisible-role-taxes-play-in-americas-housing-shortage/3B6959A8-71A5-4943-94C6-DE52E3AB8DD0
How so? Did you read the article? It literally starts out with a bullet point about parking lots and “other forms of land use” being wasteful and should be built up. If you no longer have places to park your cars, what’s the next option? Cabs only, like NY?
Where does that stop? What about parks where families go to play? They don’t add monetary value. Would it be locked to only urban areas, or written in such a way to include all open land,
Sure, it's just that simple /s. This would require a complete change to our whole tax structure in this state because it would leave local government and school districts with no money
oh they are. Home builders are building as many as they can as fast as they can. Home builders aren't the same contractors who build apartments. Those people are also as busy as possible.
I work state wide. There's both absolutely. Comparing home builders to apartment builders is comparing Ford to Harley. They both make modes of transportation but no one would argue that they make the the "same thing".
That’s my point tell me one large housing tract project anywhere near and or around missoula.
Zero. Only massively insane apartment complexes that will turn ghetto in 5 years.
missoula has always been the "special child". I'm not familiar with these projects, are they government sponsored? if so then yes, they will immediately slide towards "ghetto". If they are privately owned they might have a chance.
?, who said it was solved, ya, if you want to buy a house in Chester, Harlem, Judith Gap, etc, are about the the only places with affordable houses tha someone could buy on a Montanan salary, the problem is is that the commute to earn that Montanan salary will be killer as there is no real work in the dying small towns.
Some Montanaians have figured it out. They are moving to cheaper areas, so they aren't gonna be homeless and dragging their families with them . The dillusion that affordable housing is gonna truly be affordable. Is an overused political concept that has failed the citizens they are voted to protect and serve! IMO.
I don't think so. We just spent $5,000 getting into a decent one-bedroom outside Bozeman. This area needs to build workforce-priced apartments, townhomes, and family homes. I get the impression the techies with tons of money who flew in during the pandemic now want to shut the door on development so they can preserve their idea of a mountain idyl. In reality, these people are a plague of locusts who consume whatever place and resources strike their fancy and price our long-time locals and workers in any other industry or public service sector.
You mean Montanans? There's more than one group. I think the article really is fair in that it describes that some are frustrated that the housing task force is composed only of those that would benefit from high prices and codes/laws that strongly benefit developers on the high end. There's still quite a bit of that going on. I personally don't see any miracles happening and I have very low confidence that Gianforte and team are going to extend a hand to the majority of Montanans rather than lavishing tax cuts and rebates for the wealthy under the guise of trickle down economics. I don't know if this "Montana Miracle" actually offers anything practical for affordable housing for those who are now facing their first winter urban camping in Bozeman. There is a new initiative for tiny houses over by Walmart and the warming center/soup kitchen that has about 10 small residences. I would like to see more of that developed. I'd like to see a state sponsored long term camping area with utilities and a shower facility that is managed well.
Materials to build houses are more expensive and haven't corrected to pre-pandemic prices. Bozeman in particular (where I live) isn't a place families can afford to move unless they make bank. The inventory of available fixers and sub half million dollar houses is slowing starting to return.
I'm a teacher who struggled with housing during the pandemic. We tried to buy land or a house for 3+ years. We were always out gunned by someone from out of state who had a giant pile of cash to throw at it. My frustration is that though people complain about out-of-staters, there is no grass roots program or even willingness to match Montanan sellers to Montanan buyers. I'll never be able to afford to retire in Bozeman and right now I live in an old school subsidized house that is affordable to me. I'm very lucky. I'm looking for land outside of Bozeman to fulfill a dream of building my own house. It's a 15 year plan. Hopefully I can retire in small town Montana somewhere. As I see inventory starting to creep back and materials becoming less expensive it gives me hope that I can find the right fixer or land to build on.
Apartments don't do anything for rent or house prices. Rent won't decrease because people want houses. Cost of living doesn't ever go down. It may stagnate but never lowers.
Apartments don't do anything for rent or house prices. Rent won't decrease because people want houses. Cost of living doesn't ever go down. It may stagnate but never lowers.
No, it's just a fact. People don't want to live in apartments or condos for the restof their lives. You hear of anyone moving here wanting an apartment? It just is.
The actual good stuff from this past session isn't designed to take effect until after the next session. Right now it's all speculative how it's all going to play out and what it's going to look like once the next legislature is done with it.
Optimistically, things like low income housing requirements and density forward development don't get gutted.
To people complaining about wages; Here in Montana construction trades pay extremely high compared to the cost of living. Laborers here are making 52k+ a year, 1st journeyman plumbers 82k+…. Stop bitching and start working
I can’t wait to have a state with no teachers, service workers, bus drivers, restaurants, etc. when everyone becomes a tradesman and magically everything is fixed!
In Flathead they’re paying $22 for general labor will train. That’s $3500/mo. Decent labor to me. We also just had an apartment complex shot down. Not sure what else to do…
Fancy apartments that almost no one can afford does not a housing crisis solve.
They want 3 times the amount of rent per month of your income. Insanity.
It's filling a demand. The limited construction industry is filling the most profitable demands first.
The problem is that land costs, entitlements, materials, construction up to current code and market expectations, labor, interest rates, etc. all cost more money. The decision to build new units is based on the expectation that the market will pay rent at a level sufficient to recoup the costs to construct. They can’t build a new unit and then rent it out for free (or below market levels) out of the goodness of their hearts. It would be like asking someone to just light money on fire. There are programs that exist to subsidize housing costs - and most developers utilize those.
Fancy apartments suck up the wealty(er) people and leave more affordable housing for those who need it.
That makes no sense. The "affordable" places will just keep hiking rent, too.
This person is right it's supply and demand. It's immutable. Sure prices will keep going up for cheaper places but it wont go up as much as if nothing was built.
Once all the people who can afford to pay the higher prices have moved into newer/nicer places, the older housing stock will need to reduce their prices (or, at the least, reduce the pace at which they are increasing their prices) in order to attract people who can pay to live there.
Housing is still subject to supply and demand just like anything else. When you build more apartments, the supply is expanded, so the stable price point goes down. There’s really robust economic evidence for this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-11-20/does-building-new-housing-cause-gentrification For a specific look at Montana: https://montanafreepress.org/2021/11/29/expert-says-montana-home-costs-driven-by-shortage/
Is that based on logic or anger?
What's the incentive for a person who can afford single family housing to move in to an apartment over a free standing single family home? I think for some people the ease and convenience of apartment living might be attractive but most people with the funds to purchase single family housing will likely continue to do so, and have done so even in the presence of upscale multifamily housing options.
Housing is a segmented market: there’s “tiers” ranging from old basement apartments to nice new apartments to single family houses to mansions. When someone can’t afford a fancy new apartment because there’s not enough of them, they will rent an old affordable basement apartment instead. Building more fancy luxury apartments increases the supply in that segment of the market, reducing demand pressure on the segments below it.
No they don't rent an old affordable apartment because they can't find anything nicer 🙄. They live out of state in their expensive homes and wait for the luxury stuff they are promised to finish being built and then move in.
Nobody decides to move to a place based on housing construction! Go talk to people who moved here, I promise not one of them will tell you they moved here because somebody built a new subdivision. They moved here because they wanted to live in the mountains or get away from California or whatever, and then they started looking for housing afterwards. They were going to buy whatever is available, and by increasing the overall supply we keep prices lower.
Sure they do! Ive talked to people who have done just that - working remote until their property is ready for them. And yes they move here to get out of California but also saw Yellowstone and want to be cosplay cowboys. There are plenty of other places that have mountains if they wanted mountains. Yes they are buying whatever is avaliable - along the lines of the existing decent homes that used to go for 250k but are now two to three times that amount. Its definitely not a lower quality rental. The only low quality rental theyre interested in is to buy the property it's on so they can kick the existing renters out to tear down the place and build their expensive home or a developer building expensive condos.This does the exact opposite of keeping prices lower if you're LITERALLY replacing the lower quality lower cost housing with expensive luxery housing while ar the same time the existing housing prices skyrocket. Increasing the supply need of that luxury market. Increasing the cost of living for the rest of us.
I can’t believe this is so downvoted. More people should take an economics 101 class…
This is the stupidest thing ive ever heard lol. The rich out of state assholes move out of their expensive ass houses into Montanas new expensive ass houses and condos. This actually makes zero room for additional affordable housing and while driving up the cost of living for the majority.
Do people choose to move to Montana only because a developer built an apartment building, and they wouldn’t move here otherwise? Or do they choose to move to Montana first, and then they just buy whatever housing is available and convenient?
They wait in their expensive homes until their luxury housing property becomes available then move in.
How about jobs that pay a living wage also?
Don’t worry. They’ll quote the part where wages have risen 2% more than other than other states and leave out the part where COL went up 6-22% more than other states depending on area. (I.e kalispell and Bozeman)
I can’t find a position in Billings doing what I do with the salary I currently have. Thank God for remote work!
Everyone is downvoting the people calling BS on the living wage theory but the last few years has proven it doesn’t do shit. 3 years ago everyone was screaming for a $15 an hour living wage. Now, in the Flathead at least, I don’t know of any place paying less than that but guess what? It’s not a living wage. Prices went up as expected. You want to point out the huge corporations that can afford to pay it (many already do) but totally ignore the fact that many smaller businesses can’t pay it without raising prices exorbitant amounts. All the little mom and pop shops, gone. Your favorite restaurants, gone. We see it every day in MT and you wonder why all we have left is Walmart and McDonald’s. There’s a lot not to it than just raising the minimum wage.
Prices have gone up more than a little due to corporate price gouging. Record profits across almost all industries. Working class buying power (wages adjusted for inflation) have been slashed continually for 50 years to drive up corporate profits, because if their profits aren't growing faster than inflation their stock price collapses. It's not the wages, it's the investor class greed that has finally met the working class breaking point. We've gone from one manufacturing job providing a family of 4 or 5 with a house, 2 cars, and yearly vacations to two parents working professional jobs may not even be able to afford a condo let alone vacations with their kids. If minimum wage has kept up with inflation from the 60s it would be over $20/hour. That's where all other wages are compared from. CEO pay is up over 1500% in the last 50 years as they've shipped jobs over seas, slashed effective wages, cut benefits, etc. Higher wages are not the problem. Money being siphoned to the top so people can buy mega yachts so large they require support yachts because they're too big to function independently, is a problem. They go to places like the flathead and Gallatin valleys, buy enough land for 50-100 homes, and then spend two weeks out of the year there, creating artificial scarcity for land to build homes. They also waste enormous amounts of money watering the grass and heating them, creating unnecessarily increased demand for those things and driving up the prices paid by the people who are further and further under paid every year. I am not a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, and I hold no delusions about that. I'm damn sure not gonna lick that boot on my neck and claim it's comfy.
That’s a long thought out rendition of many talking points on this subject but just like most things you hear these days it’s full of half truths and us against them nonsense. There is a lot more to the complexity of the issues than that. Price gouging, though it exists, is hardly the long term money making strategy large for corporations. In fact it’s quite the opposite. As prices go up with inflation, the large corporations are able to keep prices lower, feeding on the weakened dollar bringing in customers and pushing the local shops out that have to raise their prices in order to keep their doors open. It does no good to keep bitching about these corporations as everyone does and then continue to shop there. Most of them, btw, do offer better pay and benefits than the local small shops can afford, so their business model is actually opposite of what everyone complains about. Greed of the “investing class?” What class is that? You want to give this vision of billionaires sitting around watching their stocks, but reality is if you have money in a savings account, a college fund, a 401k, or even a pension fund such as through a union, you are in the “investor class” and your investments rely on those as much, if not more than the rich. There are a lot of factors in the housing market affecting prices such as average size and amenities that have changed since the 50s-60s as well as the desire for two income families that came before the need, but in MT it comes down to supply and demand. Greed here is not on the part of the buyers, but on the part of the sellers. Making a ton of quick easy money is what started the issue snowballing. And lastly, any discussion of what the minimum wage should be, needs to address the fact that there is a national minimum wage as well as state minimum wages. This makes sense since every state has different costs of living. California minimum wage has been over $15 and yet people struggle to afford living there just as much or more than other states with lower wages. The more people make, the more they are willing to pay, and what people are willing to pay will always be the constant in pricing.
Price gouging is literally what's happening to create record profits. It's due to the quarterly and annual performance bonuses these CEOs are paid. They don't care what happens in 5 years because they get tens of millions of dollars for making crazy numbers this year. It's happening in huge swaths of corporate industry as we speak. They're literally bleeding people dry at any and every opportunity to get their fuck you money, because it won't matter what happens after they do. And I don't shop there. I do support businesses that provide superior benefits and compensation to their workers whenever possible. I live my values as much as I practically can in the system we are currently existing in. I don't have enough money to have a meaningful voting power in any company, so no, I'm not part of the investor class. I am a victim of the investor class when they conduct corporate raiding and tank companies I may have invested in indirectly. I'm their victim when they take massive gambles with my, and millions of other people's, money. Like in 2008. I lost everything I had built in my early 20s and was laid off 3 months from receiving my trade license. National minimum wage directly forces local minimum wage. If the national minimum wage was $15/hr, you don't think California's would still be much higher due to their much higher than national average cost of living? People struggle because every time they get a leg up, prices increase to protect corporate profit margins, stock buybacks, and outlandish C suite compensation. The 1% need to hemorage money back into the economy for people to not struggle all the time. I make modern middle class money these days, but I've lived through multiple recessions and financial catastrophes. It's us against them because every time my life has been destroyed by massive financial malfeasance at the top, they got bailed out and I got told it's just a fact of life. People lose their 2 bedroom condo, but no one loses their 10 million dollar mansion and their yacht.
You got a little boot polish in the corner of your mouth bud try not to suck it so hard
If you knew half as much about finance and economics as you pretend to on social media, you wouldn’t be a victim so often.
Lol. Been studying since 2008 oddly enough. It's how I know you're just hoping one day the rich guys you worship will let you be one of them and you're a class traitor because of it. Good luck though, keep it up and maybe one day they'll let you into the clubhouse to lick those boots.
jobs pay what they have too. If I could pay my guys $5/hr and get the same results I do now, I would.
Man that’s a lot of extra words to say “I’m a piece of shit”
And that woosh sound was the point flying over your head.
Yeah cause at no point in that did it indicate you were being sarcastic. Guessing I’m not the only one as it’s collecting downvotes.
Not sarcastic at all. The point is valuable help is worth it. I make sure my handful of good guys are paid better then they could find elsewhere in town.
Unfortunately, the continued increase of wages is feeding into the inflation of pricing as companies adjust costs due to decreased margins. It creates a vicious cycle of inflation. Most economists don't believe in increasing the minimum wage as a solution. Its more like twisting the knife deeper while trying to stop the bleeding.
You didn’t actually buy into that propaganda did you?
I usually call it basic economics, not propaganda, but to each their own. At the heart of the issue, is how the overall market responds to environmental changes. Technically there are a few ways companies can respond to the change of profit margins caused by am increased labor cost. One is to cut the numbers of hours worked or even layoff employees to recoup the increased cost. The other option is to increase the cost of the product displacing the increased cost to produce onto the buyer. Largely the company decision will come down to the demand and supply elasticity. Most luxury companies will probably cut workers and produce less, because the demand is more elastic than the supply. Conversely with necessities, the price more likely to be what is increased. Demand for eggs doesn't change quickly but the price, like over the last year, can change rapidly. While most companies will still probably pick a solution somewhere in the middle, the undeniable truth is that your increased wages have to get paid for somehow and no company is going to accept having to pay for the increase alone. The burden is always split between the buyer and seller. [Microeconomics of the Minimum Wage](https://saylordotorg.github.io/text_microeconomics-theory-through-applications/s14-03-minimum-wage-changes.html)
You mean egg producers that are currently being charged with price fixing? Ford buying 4.2 billion in stock and lining shareholders pockets while saying they can’t meet union demands. GM with 14.2 billion in buybacks while saying they can’t meet union demands? You think the raises is what’s making the cost of vehicles go up? The fact Walmart, soon to be Tesla, and other companies can’t setup shop in European countries cause their profits are based on fucking the American worker. McDonald’s can pay a living wage, vacation time, insurance, retirement in Europe and still sell a combo for $10. But in America they’d have to raise prices due to wages? The minimum wage as it lowest point in over 60 years but corporate profits are being set at record levels every quarter. You can blame inflation on a lot of things. But wages ain’t one of em.
That same combo used to be $6 within the last 5 years so pointing to that as “cheap” is absolutely blind to the bigger picture.
Show me where I pointed to that as cheap…
Saying that McDonald’s can pay a living wage that can afford all these things and still sell a combo for $10 is implying that that $10 is super affordable a.k.a. cheap
That’s not at all what it implies. It implies that them saying if they paid more in the US they would have to raise prices makes them full of shit. They already provide more benefits, at the same price, in a more expensive market and turn a profit. In no way shape or form did I imply it was cheap or affordable.
In that case, I misinterpreted the direction of the text, and for that I apologize. I would like to point out that it seems very much that the raise in prices, and the raise in wages have gone hand-in-hand. to be fair, I don’t study statistics and I can’t give you anything other other than a general consumers view on the topic
It's wild what European fast food workers get for pay and benefits while McDonald's sells their product for virtually the same price. Wild.
Oh I don't doubt that there are other factors that make it worse, but our economy works on the invisible hand principle. In any economy with proper market competition will always split an increase in the cost of production between buyers and sellers. I am not saying that they are not potentially capable. Of eating the cost but that no company will ever choose to.
All I’m saying is runaway profits have more to do with inflation with wages. It’s high time for workers to get their share. And we all hear this tired narrative of “oh god we can’t raise wages or pay benefits without raising prices. Better keep people poor”
Yeah but our economic model is being based on wages not increasing nearly as much as the cost of living has in the last 15 years. Why do you think tipping culture is so cancerous and out of control? Companies don’t want to be responsible for paying their workers’ wages.
It’s called math. Try it some time.
Try running the numbers of cost of living versus wage increases in the last fifteen years. It’s not sustainable living, nor is it enjoyable. Try that math.
Montana isn’t self sufficient. Increases all over the country impact goods and services.
Tried it a lot. Pretty decent at it. Maybe you should try some, maybe turn off Fox News while you’re at it. Dense fucking boomer.
Umm, no. Our housing crisis would probably take a decade or more to solve. The bigger towns really need to build more housing, of all sorts. More apartments in bigger buildings, more condos, more single family homes. We can't meet our capacity already and we need more for the future with current growth trends.
I'm in the Flathead, and there's a plague of NIMBYism here. We desperately need high density, actually affordable housing, and there's plenty of space in the core of Kalispell city limits that could be infilled, but proposals get massive backlash because a 5-story building will "ruin the views!" or "character" of downtown. Even though downtown has been shit for 30+ years (although it has admittedly improved some the past few years), and it takes less than 10 minutes drive to be somewhere you can't see anything involving downtown or a skyline of any sort. Meanwhile single family and 2-4 unit townhomes keep gobbling up fields and sprawling to every corner of the valley. A good example of this is the old Rygg Ford lot above woodland park. It sat vacant for years (decades?), rumored due to family disputes. It's finally being developed, but there were still myriad complaints. Because I guess vacant warehouses, with litter and drug paraphernalia strewn about is way better character than a multi-story, modern apartment building?
Do you remember the storage unit apartments that people swore up and down didn’t include bathrooms for whatever reason and so a bunch of people tried to get the construction shut down so people wouldn’t “shit in the street”? That was when I knew kalispell was too far gone to ever develop affordable housing.
Wow
Really the only way things come down is we build so many apartments and condos that they are going unrented. Then prices start to fall. That feels years away.
I agree completely, and with the 2021 GOP law where building companies don't need a portion of their build portfolios to be 'low-income housing', our laws are moving away from the solution. If every new place being built is a $450k ranch style home on an acre lot, we won't be solving this problem any time soon.
Well, yeah, that’s what we should expect from a legislature and administration full of out of state cosplay cowboys.
Someone had to say it.
The vast majority of them are from Montana though?
[удалено]
On that point i wont't argue on.
Not to mention that weenie Gianforte.
I’ll pass on the ghettos
You are correct on both parts. 3-5 years away unless there's some sort of "reverse covid" effect that makes all these transplants leave overnight.
Correct. But major cities in Montana, and many voters think urban redevelopment and sprawl is "bad". So we are supposed to house more people without any construction.
Apologies for the absurd clickbait title of this article.
No.
Shit is fucked
Up here in the Flathead a two bedroom in one of these “affordable housing units” is over $2000 a month. It doesn’t pencil out that anything has been solved keeping young workers in this state…but just the opposite.
What is the median income there?
$29k in 2020…
That is a dumb headline. I don't know anyone who works in the housing field who even remotely thinks our housing crisis is solved
It's absolutely depressing that so many people rail about this issue and then completely overlook [the best solution](https://www.businessinsider.com/real-estate-costs-lower-rents-housing-prices-land-value-tax-2023-11?op=1).
Let me guess, the next step is to ban cars and force everyone to walk/ride those Bird scooters? What about parks, do we bulldoze those too and build houses so that the land looks like NY or CA? Maybe you just hate ranches and farms and want to bankrupt them… have you thought that maybe there’s a reason there’s open land around?
Uh, what? I like muscle cars and hunting, parks and ranches, public and private land. Not even sure what your comment about open land is implying. How about instead of terrible guesses you just read up on it?
Your link, in the very caption under the image, claimed that parking lots and “other forms of land” are wasteful. How am I far off on where that slope leads? Yes, every one needs housing that’s more affordable, however, the assumption than new housing would be somehow cheaper is gullible at best. Parking is a pain downtown town especially. Take the few lots away and it only exacerbates the issue. The push to force more development comes from , shocker, developers, and none of them are out for civic duty. They aim to make profits. We literally just had one push through buying the land that was previously a park, and built “affordable housing” on it. News flash, it’s not. It’s the same hiked rent as everywhere else.
There would be fewer empty lots and *more* parking downtown! People would no longer be punished for building on land, they could build a skyscraper parking garage, and their tax bill would be the same as if they left it as an empty lot. Currently, any improvements you make to your property increases your taxes, discouraging you from making improvements. Currently, it's profitable to buy up valuable space in the city and do absolutely nothing it with. Less improvements is less tax burdens, so you can just sit on that high demand land for years, paying nothing in taxes, and then sell it for a huge profit down the road. This is called land speculation, and it's an abjectly bad thing. Developers actually love speculation btw, they make a lot of money from it. https://www.wsj.com/video/series/wsj-explains/the-invisible-role-taxes-play-in-americas-housing-shortage/3B6959A8-71A5-4943-94C6-DE52E3AB8DD0
Hey man, i dont know if you know, but all those guesses were incorrect in a really loud way.
How so? Did you read the article? It literally starts out with a bullet point about parking lots and “other forms of land use” being wasteful and should be built up. If you no longer have places to park your cars, what’s the next option? Cabs only, like NY? Where does that stop? What about parks where families go to play? They don’t add monetary value. Would it be locked to only urban areas, or written in such a way to include all open land,
Sure, it's just that simple /s. This would require a complete change to our whole tax structure in this state because it would leave local government and school districts with no money
If you consider housing renting. Forget about owning not enough of that getting built by far.
They are building as fast as they can. Demand far out weighs supply and construction worker capacity.
They are not building homes in general. Most contractors right now are locked up build North Korea style apartments.
oh they are. Home builders are building as many as they can as fast as they can. Home builders aren't the same contractors who build apartments. Those people are also as busy as possible.
What area? Are you not seeing massive apartment buildings getting built in your area?
I work state wide. There's both absolutely. Comparing home builders to apartment builders is comparing Ford to Harley. They both make modes of transportation but no one would argue that they make the the "same thing".
That’s my point tell me one large housing tract project anywhere near and or around missoula. Zero. Only massively insane apartment complexes that will turn ghetto in 5 years.
missoula has always been the "special child". I'm not familiar with these projects, are they government sponsored? if so then yes, they will immediately slide towards "ghetto". If they are privately owned they might have a chance.
?, who said it was solved, ya, if you want to buy a house in Chester, Harlem, Judith Gap, etc, are about the the only places with affordable houses tha someone could buy on a Montanan salary, the problem is is that the commute to earn that Montanan salary will be killer as there is no real work in the dying small towns.
“Lived in MT for 40 years” and never secured housing. Interesting
Some Montanaians have figured it out. They are moving to cheaper areas, so they aren't gonna be homeless and dragging their families with them . The dillusion that affordable housing is gonna truly be affordable. Is an overused political concept that has failed the citizens they are voted to protect and serve! IMO.
It's kind of like when W claimed mission accomplished at the beginning of the war.
Lets be honest. These aren't being built for Montanans to live in. They are being built for people from out of state to move into.
I don't think so. We just spent $5,000 getting into a decent one-bedroom outside Bozeman. This area needs to build workforce-priced apartments, townhomes, and family homes. I get the impression the techies with tons of money who flew in during the pandemic now want to shut the door on development so they can preserve their idea of a mountain idyl. In reality, these people are a plague of locusts who consume whatever place and resources strike their fancy and price our long-time locals and workers in any other industry or public service sector.
lol no
(R)eally?
You mean Montanans? There's more than one group. I think the article really is fair in that it describes that some are frustrated that the housing task force is composed only of those that would benefit from high prices and codes/laws that strongly benefit developers on the high end. There's still quite a bit of that going on. I personally don't see any miracles happening and I have very low confidence that Gianforte and team are going to extend a hand to the majority of Montanans rather than lavishing tax cuts and rebates for the wealthy under the guise of trickle down economics. I don't know if this "Montana Miracle" actually offers anything practical for affordable housing for those who are now facing their first winter urban camping in Bozeman. There is a new initiative for tiny houses over by Walmart and the warming center/soup kitchen that has about 10 small residences. I would like to see more of that developed. I'd like to see a state sponsored long term camping area with utilities and a shower facility that is managed well. Materials to build houses are more expensive and haven't corrected to pre-pandemic prices. Bozeman in particular (where I live) isn't a place families can afford to move unless they make bank. The inventory of available fixers and sub half million dollar houses is slowing starting to return. I'm a teacher who struggled with housing during the pandemic. We tried to buy land or a house for 3+ years. We were always out gunned by someone from out of state who had a giant pile of cash to throw at it. My frustration is that though people complain about out-of-staters, there is no grass roots program or even willingness to match Montanan sellers to Montanan buyers. I'll never be able to afford to retire in Bozeman and right now I live in an old school subsidized house that is affordable to me. I'm very lucky. I'm looking for land outside of Bozeman to fulfill a dream of building my own house. It's a 15 year plan. Hopefully I can retire in small town Montana somewhere. As I see inventory starting to creep back and materials becoming less expensive it gives me hope that I can find the right fixer or land to build on.
Who said they did?
All they do is build apartments and condos which do next to nothing for property values. Nobody wants shitty apartments, they want houses.
Every new apartment building has high rents bc demand is so high. Wtf r u talking about
Apartments don't do anything for rent or house prices. Rent won't decrease because people want houses. Cost of living doesn't ever go down. It may stagnate but never lowers.
Apartments don't do anything for rent or house prices. Rent won't decrease because people want houses. Cost of living doesn't ever go down. It may stagnate but never lowers.
Are you imputing your own preferences on others?
No, it's just a fact. People don't want to live in apartments or condos for the restof their lives. You hear of anyone moving here wanting an apartment? It just is.
I would rather keep the prices high, keeps the trash out
The actual good stuff from this past session isn't designed to take effect until after the next session. Right now it's all speculative how it's all going to play out and what it's going to look like once the next legislature is done with it. Optimistically, things like low income housing requirements and density forward development don't get gutted.
To people complaining about wages; Here in Montana construction trades pay extremely high compared to the cost of living. Laborers here are making 52k+ a year, 1st journeyman plumbers 82k+…. Stop bitching and start working
I can’t wait to have a state with no teachers, service workers, bus drivers, restaurants, etc. when everyone becomes a tradesman and magically everything is fixed!
In Flathead they’re paying $22 for general labor will train. That’s $3500/mo. Decent labor to me. We also just had an apartment complex shot down. Not sure what else to do…
Can’t afford shit
I saw a basment 1 bedroom apartment for $1,400/month. So No
Airbnb really messed up whole neighborhoods
Usually when a headline is in the form of a question the answer is no.
I remember when it used to be prolonged cold snowy winters would keep people away. Man has that changed…