WE WILL END THE HOUSING CRISIS AND HOMELESS CRISIS WHEN WE PUSH 40 MILLION MEXICAN FLAG WAVERS BACK OVER OUR OPEN BORDERS!
Rental
costs rising beyond reach in Nashville
By Warren Duzak
11 January 2018
Rent increases that have made life almost impossible for working
class families nationwide are a serious problem in Nashville, Tennessee. The
rise in rental costs, which out-distance incremental increases in wages, can be
traced to the financial feeding frenzy of investors, hedge fund operators and
real estate speculators following the 2008 crash.
“Locals
complain that the rents are taking a bigger bite out of their paychecks,”
the Wall Street Journal reported, as far back as 2014, on
rent increases in Nashville.
The real human costs—homelessness, lack of money for food,
clothes and heat—were trivialized under the headline, “Nashville rent increases
have residents singing the blues.”
“While apartment rents are up 18% since 2009,” the newspaper
reported, “median household income in the Nashville metro area has grown by 5%,
to $53,671, according to Moody’s Analytics. More than half of renter households
in the Nashville metro area are considered cost-burdened, meaning they pay more
than 30% of their income to rent.”
In its
January 8 story, “Rising rents put low income US
renters in severe jeopardy,” the WSWS outlined the plight of renters
nationwide. “A December report on the housing crisis that appeared in a
publication of the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve, called FEDS
Notes, reports on the distress for families in the lowest US income
quintile brought on by a squeeze in monthly income from rising rents and
stagnant or falling wages.
“In general, these families earn under $25,000 annually. The
lowest-paid fifth of US households includes workers making more than minimum
wage (and) rent increases have rapidly and relentlessly outstripped stagnant or
declining annual wages for workers at the lowest income levels.”
Written by researchers from the US Federal Reserve and the
Brookings Institution, the December report notes that the portion of monthly
income that low-income households must spend on rent has been rising through
the last several business cycles. “Rent burdens have increased over the past 15
years, due to both increasing rents and decreasing incomes,” the WSWS reported.
In Nashville, the rent increases have been most dramatic. For
instance, according to online RentJungle.com, rents in Nashville (with minor
fluctuations each month) rose from about $648 a month for a one-bedroom
apartment and $872 for a two-bedroom apartment in 2011 to $1,214 for one
bedroom and $1,460 for two in December 2017.
Compounding
the problem is Tennessee’s regressive tax system .
The Chattanooga
Times Free Press reported in 2015 that it was the poor and working
class who were paying for the “business friendly” atmosphere state and
Nashville officials love to tout.
A study by the Federal Reserve Bank found that Tennessee had the
most regressive tax system in the nation, forcing “poor and middle-class
taxpayers, in most instances, to pay a bigger share of their income than do
wealthy individuals,” the Chattanooga newspaper reported. “Tennessee boasts some
of the lowest overall tax rates of any state, but its heavy reliance upon the
sales tax for the biggest share of the state revenues means that a
disproportionate share of the taxes paid comes from low and middle-income
taxpayers.”
Nashville has seen an incredible boom in residential development
in and around the downtown area. For months, on any given day, the Nashville
skyline was dominated by dozens of giant 200-foot construction cranes. What is
being built are not affordable apartments for the working class who wait on
tables, clerk the high-end clothing stores, teach school, or provide patient
care in one of the many Nashville hospitals.
Even in
2014, the Wall Street Journal focused on the upscale nature
of “Music City’s” development. One building, at 1505 Demonbreun, the Wall StreetJournal reported,
“advertises amenities such as a saltwater pool and ‘Zen Courtyard with FirePit
Lounge.’ Monthly rents for one-bedroom apartments in the building range from
$1,450 to $2,000; two-bedroom apartments range from $2,200 to $4,000 a month.”
According to a 2015 Brookings Institution analysis of Census
Bureau data, Nashville ranked sixth out of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in
the US for income disparity. Residents in the 95th percentile have an average
annual income of around $170,000, 7.9 times more than those in the 20th
percentile, who earn little more than $21,000.
But Nashville is a town whose leaders love to give money away to
business.
The ABC television program “Nashville,” before it was cancelled,
received more than $33 million from the city and the state over four years in
tax incentives and outright grants.
When Ryman Hospitality Properties Inc. announced plans last
summer to build a $90 million, 217,000 square-foot water park at its Gaylord
Opryland Resort and Convention Center north of downtown, the city provided
$13.8 million in tax breaks for a facility that will only be open to hotel and
resort guests.
The city will likely spend more than $477 million over the next
two decades to renovate Nissan Stadium, home to the NFL football team, the
Tennessee Titans, and Bridgestone Arena, used in part as home to the NHL hockey
team, the Nashville Predators.
Nashville’s Democratic Mayor Megan Barry, a former corporate
official and darling of liberal and pseudo-left circles for her promotion of
gender and identity politics, is prepared to spend $225 million on a soccer
stadium to get a Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise here.
At the same time, Barry is proposing turning Meharry General
Hospital, traditionally the city’s “charity” hospital for the poor, into a
day-patient clinic to save money; no doubt for further tax breaks and grants
for rich corporations.
While the well-to-do prosper, Nashville’s homeless population
only seems to increase year after year. This past year in the “It” city—for
previously being named “one of best cities to live in” by various national
media outlets—more homeless died than ever before. As rents go up and many
homes are snapped up by investors, so will the homeless population, one
advocate for the homeless said.
“The lack in affordable housing, I think, is the main reason
we’re seeing this,” Samuel Lester, street outreach and advocacy coordinator for
Open Table Nashville, a nonprofit that assists the homeless, had said
previously.
In Williamson County, the richest county in the state, which
borders on Nashville/Davidson County, the lack of affordable housing has been a
chronic problem. Workers in service, restaurant and hospitality jobs could
never afford to work and live in the county. Even some of the upper-middle
class people who hoped to inhabit the county with the highest median income in
the state are finding it a struggle.
That can
be traced to institutional investors buying up homes and turning them into
rental property, Lisa Wurth, president of the Williamson County Association of
Realtors, told the Tennessean newspaper.
“The challenge becomes the people renting those homes many times
would have bought homes if they hadn’t been competing with these investors.
They end up renting from the investors who bought the homes.”
The percentage of renters nationally has climbed to a 50-year
high, with more than one in three Americans (37 percent) renting, while home
ownership is the lowest since 1967, according to a 2017 Joint Center for
Housing Studies of Harvard University.
Investors and hedge fund parasites have gleefully noted that the
process will only pick up speed as they pick up property and take homes off the
market.
“Across Middle Tennessee, Progress Residential has bought at
least 1,200 homes and converted them to rentals. A handful of other
out-of-state investment groups—American Homes 4 Rent, Starwood Waypoint Homes,
Streetlane Homes and Main Street Renewal—have also targeted the Nashville
market.
“Together,
they own at least 4,900 homes in Smyrna, Murfreesboro, Antioch, Spring Hill,
Mt. Juliet and several other fast-growing neighborhoods,” the Tennessean reported
in August last year, under the headline, “Investors scoop up Nashville Area
Homes, add to competitive market.”
In a
recent report on the investment groups’ growing presence in middle Tennessee
and nationally, the Tennessean reported “the tally of homes
owned by the four largest investment firms was close to 700 homes in Spring
Hill alone.”
American
Homes 4 Rent owns 2,500 homes in the Nashville market, which comprises more
than 5 percent of the market, according to the company’s financial statements.
Its national portfolio includes 48,000 homes, according to the Tennessean.
“On
Hardwood Drive in Murfreesboro, the company owns three homes and Progress
Residential owns three. On Calderwood Drive in Antioch, American Homes owns
five, and Progress has three. The scenario plays out on cul-de-sacs, courts and
drives throughout Davidson’s neighboring counties,” the Tennessean concluded.
STAGNANT WAGES and
the Dem Party’s obsession with open borders, amnesty and no damned legal need
apply!
THE LA RAZA
SUPREMACY PARTY for OPEN BORDERS, AMNESTY, NON-ENFORCEMENT, NO E-VERIFY and no
Legal need apply!!!
The Democratic Party used to be the party of blue
collar America- supporting laws and policies that benefited that segment of the
U.S. population. Their leaders may still claim to be advocates for
American working families, however their duplicitous actions that betray American
workers and their families, while undermining national security and public
safety, provide clear and incontrovertible evidence of their lies…. MICHAEL
CUTLER …FRONTPAGE mag
VIDEO:
THIS AMERICAN LIFE
NPR PROGRAM ON
AMERICA UNDER LA RAZA OCCUPATION – GRIM!
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