#þposts

I feel as though the commodification of housing has been a detriment to US American society as a whole. For some arbitrary reason—or really no reason at all—it's one of the only goods that doesn't depreciate in value, contrasting every rule and guideline of capitalism that we grew up with. Across the entire United States, neighborhoods are being built just to sit empty because builders and contractors get tax write offs if they don't sell, so for them it's a win-win. But also all the housing that's being built is basic suburbs where the cookie-cutter houses are all made with such low quality that they fall apart.

Meanwhile, all of the actually good houses are being bought up, renovated into greige (gray beige) boxes with no personality or color, and then rented out at an ever increasing market value—that is also definitely artificially inflated. It ties in with the trend of nearly every other good and service becoming a subscription model, where you now own nothing and the quality of everything is getting worse while the cost gets higher and higher.