Category: Local / Living

The Housing Crisis – Denver

Housing prices for renters and owners are sky high, while homes are in short supply. According to the latest Census, over 115,000 newcomers moved to Denver over the past decade and more are coming every day, putting even more stress on the housing market

Where should all these people live?

The need for new housing for people making less than the area median income — which is $94,320 for a three-person family and $73,360 for a single person — is extreme. In Denver, the median home price was around $545,000 in December, and median rent is currently $1,798, according to Apartment List’s February rent report.

Denver must build more than 50,000 affordable homes a year to meet demand. The city’s largest affordable housing developer can build around 300.
The city’s largest affordable housing developer can’t keep up with the need.
Kyle Harris
Denverite

Lack of Housing – Massachusetts

Build up or pay up.

That is the message Massachusetts is sending to 175 cities and suburbs in the Boston area, as a bill passed last year to boost housing production begins to take effect. Almost every jurisdiction in eastern Massachusetts, from the New Hampshire border to Worcester to the Cape Cod Canal, will have to do its part zoning for 344,000 new units of as-of-right multifamily housing—or lose access to some state grant programs. That means allowing apartments in many tony subdivisions currently reserved for single-family homes.

For perspective, all of Massachusetts currently builds just 15,000 new units a year—a huge drop-off from the 20th century and one reason that the Boston area has some of the highest rents and home prices in the country. “Massachusetts is the first state to actually get a policy like this,” said Jessie Grogan at the Cambridge-based Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. “Are the incentives strong enough? Probably not. But it will have some impact, and more than the other housing tools we’ve tried.”

Can You Force the Suburbs to Build Apartments? Massachusetts Is Trying.
Even if some towns “have to go kicking and screaming.”
BY HENRY GRABAR

NOTE –
The estimated population of Massachusetts is 6,984,723

Getting By in Denver

The_Raji
I was living with roommates when I was making 40k a year.

PandaKOST
Notice, too, “roommates” and not “a roommate.” The housing situation out here is bonkers.

Lonely-Criticism1419
Fiancé and I both work full time and we have a studio apt, no kids

ashrnglr
… I make decent money but a house still seems like a dream. Maybe one day

TheAbbott418
… I make good money and a house in this state just is not happening. Remote life is about to be for real…plan to move to a place that hasn’t gone insane.

throwawaypf2015
i make 50k. union job. on a good year maybe 55k with overtime and differential. have my own place. no debt, no kids. i’m struggling tbh.

UBsamsongz
Roommates. 3 bd 2 bt house in the Westminster area. $2200 a month. It goes up in February though

NOTE –
If you’d like to see similar discussion pertaining to any particular city, google something like this:
reddit afford living San Francisco
Results:
1 How do you guys afford to live here? : San Francisco … – Reddit
2 If “nobody” can afford to live in SF – who exactly inhabits all …
3 Is this enough money to live and save in San Francisco – Reddit
4 What do a lot of people in San Francisco do for a living to …
5 How can people afford living alone in SF? : r/AskSF – Reddit
6 I can’t afford to live in SF. : r/sanfrancisco – Reddit
7 How do people afford to buy in the Bay Area without rich …
8 How Do People Afford to Live in the Bay Area? We Asked …
9 Can someone from SF explain to me how people afford to live …

Run Off – Losing a Job on the Oil Field

No one gets fired from the oil field, except for a failed drug test. If you show up and work, as far as dispatch cares, you can keep your job. No one will call you into the office and give you a talking to for bad behavior or laziness. They don’t give a shit how bad you are. Dispatch put the bodies in the field and the field can take care of itself. And the field does. Because in the oil patch, on a job location, sixty miles from the office, a different set of rules apply, and they are about as kind and as fair as nature’s. If men don’t believe you can do a good job, if they think for any reason that your ignorance, laziness, or ineptitude will put them or anyone around them in danger, or even if they just don’t like your face – just for the fun of it – they will run you off. They will do everything in their power to make your life such a living hell that you will go home one day and you will not come back. They will replace you with someone else and good fucking riddance. We do not want you, we do not need you. You are a worm, you always were and you always will be. So, go home and worm, you fucking worm.

The Good Hand
Michael Patrick Smith

See also: Safety Tips from the North Dakota Oil Field

Supporting the King Soopers Strike

I live maybe a mile from a King Soopers store and have been shopping there for years. I went to Safeway this weekend instead of King Soopers, out of support for the strikers. Noted that the Safeway store was extra busy. Great minds think alike.

Denver Home Price Average Over $700,000

As documented by the January 2022 market-trends report from the Denver Metro Association of Realtors, the red-hot real estate scene in Denver has defied expectations, with the average price for a detached home in greater Denver rising above $700,000, a mark associated with the eye-popping peaks registered during the spring and early summer.

Denver Home Price Average Over $700,000 — Again
Westword
MICHAEL ROBERTS