Episode 1982
The Great Housing Debate: Solutions for Our Pricey Homes
Housing prices are skyrocketing, and in this episode, we’re diving deep into the chaos of the housing crisis and what’s driving those costs through the roof. I mean, seriously, if you blink, you might find yourself priced out of your own neighborhood! Our buddy Eric G breaks down the nitty-gritty of why homes are becoming less affordable and what we can actually do about it. We’re not just here to complain—oh no, we’re also cooking up some spicy solutions to this mess. So, grab your favorite beverage, kick back, and let’s get to work figuring out how to tackle this housing conundrum together!
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Housing prices are a hot topic, and trust me, it's not just idle chit-chat! In this episode, we dive deep into the intricate web of factors fueling the housing crisis. Eric G. takes us on a rollercoaster ride through the current housing market, where he breaks down the staggering mortgage rates hovering around 6.78%. It’s a bit of a rollercoaster, folks! He emphasizes the role of the Federal Reserve, explaining how their decisions can either pump up those interest rates or give them a friendly little squeeze downwards, depending on economic conditions. Buckle up, because we’re not just talking numbers; we’re talking about real people—your friends, your family, maybe even you—who are feeling the pinch as homeownership slips further from reach.
Eric doesn’t just stop at the numbers; he digs into the nitty-gritty of urban growth boundaries in Oregon, which are like those annoying roadblocks that make getting to your destination a real hassle. He’s got a point—while we all want to protect farmland and forests, we also need to address the desperate need for affordable housing. He paints a vivid picture of the housing landscape, where demand is skyrocketing, yet the supply is stifled, leading to prices that can make your jaw drop. And while we’re on the topic of affordable housing, Eric challenges us to think critically about the solutions. Are we simply throwing money at the problem, or are we innovating and finding smarter ways to tackle the issue?
As we move through this episode, Eric shares personal stories about young adults struggling to find homes and the bureaucratic hurdles they face. It’s a wake-up call, reminding us that the housing crisis isn’t just a statistic—it’s a reality affecting real lives. So grab your headphones and get comfy; this isn’t just another podcast episode. It’s a call to action to rethink how we approach housing in America, ensuring that everyone, from millennials to retirees, can find a place to call home without breaking the bank.
Takeaways:
- The housing crisis is fueled by urban growth boundaries that limit land availability for new homes, driving prices up significantly.
- Mortgage rates fluctuate based on economic conditions, affecting affordability and access to housing for first-time buyers.
- Labor shortages in the construction industry contribute to rising costs, as skilled tradespeople demand higher wages amidst a lack of workforce.
- Government regulations and development fees in cities like Portland can add tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of building a new home.
- Addressing homelessness requires mental health support and treatment options rather than simply providing housing without addressing root causes.
- The current housing market lacks adequate inventory, preventing a significant crash but keeping prices uncomfortably high for many buyers.
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Monument Grills
- Champion Homes
- Skyline Homes
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker B:The House with Eric G.
Speaker B:Your go to source for everything home improvement.
Speaker B:Whether you're a DIY enthusiast or just looking to make your space shine, Eric G.
Speaker B:Is here to guide you through the latest tips, tricks and trends.
Speaker B:Coming up.
Speaker B:In this week's first hour of the.
Speaker A: aving a housing crash here in: Speaker A:Let's talk about some of the issues that we have right now.
Speaker A:As of today.
Speaker A:Last time I looked, mortgage rates were about 6.0.78%.
Speaker A:And as we know, when the Fed meets, these are things that can always change.
Speaker A:And depending on where the economy is, if it's growing too fast, they're going to raise those rates.
Speaker A:If they think we're going into a recession, they're going to lower those rates.
Speaker A:But really, mortgage rates this week at the time that we're recording right now.
Speaker B:So grab your toolbox, put on your thinking cap and let's get to work right here on around the House with.
Speaker A:Eric G.
Speaker A:Welcome to the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker A:This hour is brought to you by my friends at Monument Grills.
Speaker A:Check them out@monumentgrills.com they have this brand new MNS and series.
Speaker A:They have the MNS and 605, the 405, the 425.
Speaker A:If you're looking for technology where it'll help you come up with the best grill for the best cooking experience that's affordable, check them out@montymcgrills.com There are some crazy good grills here that can make your barbecue the best on the block.
Speaker A:Today I wanted to talk a little bit outside of home improvement a little bit, but talk about our homes in the housing crisis we're facing out there and some solutions that we might have that could make things a little bit better.
Speaker A:So I thought let's today dive into a little bit of this to maybe spark some discussion of some things that we can do as homeowners, as voters to get some of these, these issues taken care of.
Speaker A:Now, this is a different issue in different parts of the country.
Speaker A:I'm out here in Oregon.
Speaker A:We got a ton of issues.
Speaker A:You out in the Midwest probably have a little bit less than we do, but there are still some similar things going on there, but maybe a lot less than us out here.
Speaker A:Us on the coast have really got some problems we're going to have to figure how to handle.
Speaker A:And I think there's some solutions out there, but we got to Fix some things first.
Speaker A:Now let me start out with some definitions here that might help us maybe get on the same page for this discussion.
Speaker A:First off, yes, we have a housing problem for affordable housing for people, my kids, that are in their 20s.
Speaker A:One of them has a house he bought, him and his wife.
Speaker A:They had to move out to North Dakota to be able to afford it.
Speaker A:But in many places out there, people under the age of 35, it's almost impossible for them with a decent job, being a professional, to afford a house these days.
Speaker A:And that's a severe problem.
Speaker A:Now on the west coast.
Speaker A:Out here we've got some issues where government gets in the way of affordable housing.
Speaker A:But let's talk about that a little bit.
Speaker A:And there are certain areas in the country, Oregon is one of them.
Speaker A:And I can talk about this because I see it here every single day where I live.
Speaker A:So we have what we call urban growth boundaries.
Speaker A:And what this is, the state of Oregon has forced every city to come up with a 20 year plan of how to keep the city dense and of course not build outside of it.
Speaker A:And this is the land of good intentions.
Speaker A:They're trying to keep urban sprawl, keep the farmland, keep the forests, I get that.
Speaker A:But a majority of our land in the state of Oregon is forests and federal or state land.
Speaker A:So it's really interesting when you go out to other states, there's an interesting mix of that can be saved, should be saved.
Speaker A:And let's talk about those numbers for just a second.
Speaker A:I found a really cool list.
Speaker A:I think it's over at ballotpedia.
Speaker A:And it talks about federal, so not what the state owns, but what federally owns, like national park service or U.
Speaker A:S Fish and wildlife, U.
Speaker A:S Bureau of land management, which is the BLM or department of interior, and the U.
Speaker A:S Forest service, basically the land that they own in each state.
Speaker A:So in Oregon here as a great example, we have 52.3% is owned by the federal government.
Speaker A:So guess what, you're not building houses on that.
Speaker A:That's going to be federally managed.
Speaker A:And so that is a significant amount of land.
Speaker A:You go to rhode island, that's 0.7%.
Speaker A:Or if you go to Maine, we're talking sheesh, again, we're talking little stuff.
Speaker A:1.5%, Alaska 60.9%, California 45.4.
Speaker A:So you start to see how these things happen here.
Speaker A:Nevada 80.1, New Jersey 3.6, New York.8%.
Speaker A:So you start to see how this stuff bounces around.
Speaker A:Washington state is interesting.
Speaker A:They only have 28.6%, but Wyoming is 46.
Speaker A:So you start to get where we're going with this.
Speaker A:So really we already have a ton of protected lands in our area over the half the state we can't be building anything on because that is going to be federal land that is managed, not going to happen.
Speaker A:So this is a law of supply and demand.
Speaker A:So what we see with these urban growth boundaries is, yeah, we're maybe protecting farmland.
Speaker A:But the problem is like in our area here, I've got a lot of area out there that's land that's not being farmed.
Speaker A:It hasn't been farmed for decades, but people aren't able to build on those homes.
Speaker A:So what happens now is when I jump online in my area and want to look for a lot, I'm 3, 4, $500,000 for a lot.
Speaker A:If they didn't have that urban growth boundary, this is a supply and demand thing.
Speaker A:In my city right now, I think there are three buildable lots.
Speaker A:That's it.
Speaker A:And so the problem is though, is that there's a lot of places that aren't that are part of the urban growth boundary, especially when you got outside of the city or the urban growth area of Portland as a whole.
Speaker A:And these are not things that people vote on.
Speaker A:This is unelected.
Speaker A:That usually runs this stuff.
Speaker A:So this is where the issue is.
Speaker A:And so what happens is it creates with supply and demand.
Speaker A:If there was a hundred lots out there, we might see Maybe prices down $150,000 or 200,000, not 4 to 500,000.
Speaker A:So easily just on the price of the land because of the urban growth boundary and the limit of supply in areas that have this urban growth boundary, that is one of those things that artificially raises the price because you've got a hundred people looking at four lots.
Speaker A:Guess what?
Speaker A:That gets more expensive when you have a bidding war where if you have 50 people looking at a hundred lots, it's a different program.
Speaker A:So that's one of the things that I think we need to modify out there in some states that do this because we need to find a better balance between protecting farms, which I'm all about, and of course building homes and having affordable houses for people out there.
Speaker A:Now another thing that's really raised up our prices out there, labor.
Speaker A:We are short what, 450,000 jobs out there right now across the country, blue collar jobs in construction.
Speaker A:These are jobs that people, electricians, H Vac, carpenters, framers, go down the list.
Speaker A:We have not filled those yet.
Speaker A:Now trade schools, we're starting to get this turnaround.
Speaker A:I'm seeing more and more areas in states all of a sudden figuring out, wait a minute, we've got a shortage.
Speaker A:We've had a shortage for 30 years.
Speaker A:We're 30 years behind on that.
Speaker A:What we're seeing, though, is that this is causing rates to go up for what you pay.
Speaker A:You're not going to get that plumber out there or that H Vac technician out there for under a couple hundred bucks now for most people.
Speaker A:So you look at what electricians and carpenters, you're seeing people now all of a sudden, especially in H Vac, plumbing, electrical, you're seeing people out there making six figures a year that are journeymen.
Speaker A:So this is where we're starting to see where this stuff starts to get expensive.
Speaker A:Now that you've got all these trades working on that house, it's great that they have jobs, but we have a shortage.
Speaker A:There's not enough crews out there building.
Speaker A:And that's an issue now in my state right now.
Speaker A:We're seeing a really huge slowdown of homes right now because of interest rates, tariffs, the economy, all that stuff right now.
Speaker A:It has been slowing for over a year now.
Speaker A:We're starting to really see that right now.
Speaker A:So I hopefully we'll get some stuff changed around and I wanted to talk a little bit about some of these fees of what we're seeing out there for some people to build homes.
Speaker A:If you're going to build a new home in certain cities, I want you to listen to this because you might be surprised at what they're going to charge you to just get the building permit.
Speaker A:Don't change that dial around the house.
Speaker A:We'll be right back after these important messages.
Speaker A:We're just getting started.
Speaker A:Should I be allowed to be so hot, so many people without.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me today.
Speaker A:This hour is brought to you by our friends at Monument Grills.
Speaker A:Check them out and their new Omni Pro evanescence series@monumentgrills.com if you're looking for that brand new barbecue that'll tell you when your propane tanks empty.
Speaker A:Or maybe you want to use it on propane until you get the gas over, but you want to convert it.
Speaker A:Or if you want to have that really cool open glass, you can look to see without opening the lid to see if things are cooking well, check them out@moneymcrills.com we've been talking about our housing crisis and what we can do to get things back on track.
Speaker A:And there's a lot that we can be doing out there.
Speaker A:And I wanted to really dive into the education part of this because there are so many people out there that can't afford homes that have really good jobs.
Speaker A:But the housing prices have just gone over the top.
Speaker A:And it's been a serious issue that I want to really address here.
Speaker A:Maybe we can all team up together and make a difference out there for people.
Speaker A:Now one of the big things I'm seeing out there when it comes to fees out there are certain places in the country that are just heavily contributing.
Speaker A:And if you saw my post last week on the around the house Facebook page, I really talked about it there because our development fees here in Oregon and specifically in the city of Portland is completely out of control.
Speaker A:I have seen those fees get up to 60, $70,000.
Speaker A:Should just be able to sit there and get a building permit to build your house in the city limits.
Speaker A:And it is absolutely crazy.
Speaker A:As an example, these system development charges can be absolutely crazy.
Speaker A:So let's dive into this.
Speaker A:These are some serious numbers when you start looking at stuff.
Speaker A:So when I start looking at sanitary sewer system development charges.
Speaker A:So they have this basically when you start out for residential, this is the cheapest one here.
Speaker A:So rate per drainage fixture, not going to get into the weeds on this.
Speaker A:$327.
Speaker A:But stormwater system development charges $507 per thousand square feet of storm water billable area.
Speaker A:So they're talking about areas that you have cover buildings, rooftop patios, driveways, all that stuff comes up.
Speaker A:So it is absolutely crazy.
Speaker A:Now that's not even where it gets bad.
Speaker A:If I'm going to build a 2,300 square foot house, I'm not in the central city area.
Speaker A:My residential fees here for park and rec to Pay for parks, $17,000.
Speaker A:17,016.
Speaker A:So $17,016 for non Central city.
Speaker A:Now this also goes for commercial buildings.
Speaker A:So we see that.
Speaker A:So we see that when we're getting into affordable housing units, that kind of stuff.
Speaker A:Now let's go over to transportation.
Speaker A:So if we start looking at that, this is where this stuff adds up.
Speaker A:Residential, Single Family House, $6,356 for the transportation development charges.
Speaker A:So you're paying for the buses, you're paying for all that stuff.
Speaker A:That's what that is.
Speaker A:Now it gets pretty crazy from there, but that's where that is.
Speaker A:Now the other stuff is the water system development charges.
Speaker A:So if I have a 3 quarter inch water meter pretty common.
Speaker A:$7,186.
Speaker A:If I decide, hey, I want to have a sprinkler system in the house, or I've got some other stuff, I need to go to a 1 inch to make that work, that is $11,977.
Speaker A:Now, if you had to go to a big one, maybe they're forcing you to put in a sprinkler system or you've got some other stuff where you need it.
Speaker A:This would be really big for a large house at one and a half inches.
Speaker A:That's $23,955.
Speaker A:Now, this is not for that.
Speaker A:This is just them taking the water meter out, putting it in, and that is the system development charges.
Speaker A:You can see on top of the 11 pages of permit fees that they have that we're not going to get into of how this stuff can be 50, 60, $70,000 for a single family residents.
Speaker A:Now, I will say that the light bulb turned to dim in Portland and in at the Oregon governor, they decided, even though I've been saying for a decade that these fees are really hurting homeowners trying to get into places, they are decided that they had a goal that they set for new homes to cut the batlock, the shortage of homes out there.
Speaker A:They just came out last week and said, hey, we're gonna, we're gonna maybe try to see if we can waive these fees for three years until we hit the goal of what, three or four thousand units that they want to have out there.
Speaker A:That's all in good.
Speaker A:But that adding $70,000 to a house, even if it's $50,000, that's a lot.
Speaker A:Having the urban growth boundary, adding 150,000 to $200,000 to the price of the property to go in there, this starts to add up really quickly.
Speaker A:And that's where I think we're really losing it as far as common sense to get people into affordable housing.
Speaker A:The government has got their hands so deep in the piggy bank here by stopping the growth but requiring it because they have their goals.
Speaker A:And of course, these development fees, this is how crazy it used to be.
Speaker A:And it's still that same way.
Speaker A:When I was a kitchen and bath designer working in Portland, I'd roll up to somebody's house and if we were spending over $25,000 at the time on a remodel project, we had to meet with the forestry commission, and they would come out and tell you where you were forced to put two trees in your yard because you were going to Help the canopy of trees in the Portland area.
Speaker A:So as part of your kitchen model, you had to put in thousands of dollars of the trees exactly where they told you now where you designed it, but where they told you they wanted your trees put.
Speaker A:Now this could be over.
Speaker A:I've had this happen.
Speaker A:They put it over and that's right over the top of my sewer line.
Speaker A:I don't want a tree right there.
Speaker A:Didn't matter.
Speaker A:That's where they wanted it.
Speaker A:So there was a lot of these things right here that really caused some serious issues and it just keeps adding up.
Speaker A:Now I know all of our friends out in the Midwest, all the ones out there, from Texas to North Dakota, up to parts of Michigan, all of you guys out there in the south are absolutely laughing, is laughing at us out here in the west coast because we've got some serious problems.
Speaker A:Now you guys have different issues down there.
Speaker A:Lack of skilled trades.
Speaker A:Some areas are lack of actual licensing for builders.
Speaker A:That's a problem.
Speaker A:If I look in Arizona and Texas and see some of the problems that we're having with house inspections and builders putting out low quality work and really having the homeowner having to fight them just to get warranty stuff done, Arizona's big on that.
Speaker A:They've got some serious, big issues with that.
Speaker A:Those are things that you have to be careful with.
Speaker A:But there's plenty of issues out there all to go around on making sure that, that we have housing for people out there.
Speaker A:You think about it, if someone's going to be living in a rental house for 20 years, wouldn't it be nice if they had a 20 year loan and they were paid off so when they get farther in life that if they stayed there, everything be paid for, how cool would that be?
Speaker A:I just see that we're going to have a serious issue here if we keep going down the same road where we have the landowners and the renters.
Speaker A:And I think that's where we're going to end up if we don't turn this ship around.
Speaker A: oing to be a housing crash in: Speaker A:Is that going to be a big deal?
Speaker A:We're going to talk about that when we come back.
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Speaker A: oing to be a housing crash in: Speaker A:Just as soon as we return.
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Speaker A:Welcome back to the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Speaker A:ERIC G.
Speaker A:Thanks for joining me today.
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Speaker A:And this hour is brought to you by our friends at Monty McGrills.
Speaker A: aving a housing crash here in: Speaker A:Let's talk about some of the issues that we have right now as of today.
Speaker A:Last time I looked, mortgage rates were about 6.78%.
Speaker A:And as we know, when the Fed meets, these are things that can always change.
Speaker A:And depending on where the economy is, if it's growing too fast, they're going to raise those rates.
Speaker A:If they think we're going into a recession, they're going to lower those rates.
Speaker A:But really, mortgage rates this week, at the time that we're recording right now, they're slightly down a little bit.
Speaker A:But really we're just waiting to see how the Fed does on their next meeting.
Speaker A:But there's the May Federal Reserve meeting.
Speaker A:I always hope that they reduce stuff and get us dialed in a little bit.
Speaker A:But that's one of our problems right now because that interest rate can add thousands of dollars to monthly payments for bigger homes or hundreds of dollars to more affordable homes.
Speaker A:These are things that add up.
Speaker A:But it doesn't just stop there.
Speaker A:If you're looking at builders out there that are wanting to borrow money.
Speaker A:And now when you're talking small businesses, whether you're a construction company or a builder or anybody else out there, many times for them to get, we have a serious problem with small business financing right now to get money.
Speaker A:Some of these people are paying 30 or 40% their own personal credit card has a better rate than what some companies are charging for this.
Speaker A:And so we've got a really pro.
Speaker A:Big problem with small business loans out there.
Speaker A:So the electrician, the plumber, the H vac people, if they're having to buy materials up front or they're carrying that until they get paid for stuff that happens in construction, they're paying a massive amount, and that adds to the cost of everything else.
Speaker A:So it's not only the interest rate that we see for the home, it's the interest rate for everything else that starts to add up and it compounds.
Speaker A:So that's where it is now.
Speaker A:That is one little part of this whole thing.
Speaker A:Now, the big issue that I really am worried about, this is the one that I shake my head and go, okay, this is where, you know, are we gonna have that crash, that real estate crash that we've seen in other decades, where things crash?
Speaker A:Usually what happens when we see a real estate crash means that it's a hot market.
Speaker A:Houses are selling, selling, and then when it crashes, people stop buying.
Speaker A:And so what happens is there's a lot a glut of inventory.
Speaker A:There's a lot of inventory.
Speaker A:We end up seeing builders that are overextended.
Speaker A:They kept building, building, and all of a sudden they got stuck with a bunch of houses that aren't sellable or sellable at the rates that they needed to pay the bills.
Speaker A:That's traditionally what causes a real estate crash.
Speaker A: here is that gonna happen in: Speaker A:First, we don't have a hot market nationally right now.
Speaker A:I know companies out there that there are specific little marketplaces, like in my area here in Lake Oswego where I live.
Speaker A:But there are plenty of places out there that people aren't building.
Speaker A:They are not convinced that they're gonna sell those homes.
Speaker A:So we're seeing building go way down.
Speaker A:And nationally, we're seeing those numbers down double digits usually right now.
Speaker A:And so that's really where we're at.
Speaker A:So really, we don't have the market conditions, in my opinion, for us to see a big crash here.
Speaker A:We're not gonna see houses lose $200,000 in price unless you're up in the millions of dollars.
Speaker A:But you're not gonna see a 20% loss or a 30% loss in homes out there, because there's not the inventory out there.
Speaker A:I have a buddy who's a realtor trying to sell houses and trying to have.
Speaker A:There are people out there, and he's told me these stories.
Speaker A:There Are people out there that have put in 4, 6, 9 offers in on properties and they're the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th offer in and on a 6, 7, $800,000 home.
Speaker A:They're offering $75,000 over selling price and they're still not getting it.
Speaker A:Now the problem is when we see those kind of situations, those are usually more cash buyers because you could offer $75,000 over, but when you go to get your loan and the bank looks at and goes, you're $80,000 over what the value is.
Speaker A:They're not gonna loan you on that because they're upside down $80,000.
Speaker A:So that's where the cash buyers come in and really can change that out.
Speaker A:Now of course, people here quickly go to blame California for that.
Speaker A:But that's not really the big part of the problem here.
Speaker A:It's just that we don't have enough houses on the market and we're seeing people out there pulling out of retirement, things like that to be able to afford these homes.
Speaker A:And that's a really big issue and that's gonna really keep.
Speaker A:It's great if you're selling, but if you go to turn on and buy it and you can't buy a house.
Speaker A:I was looking at houses in my area in my price point.
Speaker A:When I went online and looked in my city here I had 11.
Speaker A:So that's why I'm trying to get my house up, finished and get it up for sale so I can do that and move on to different things.
Speaker A:But that's one of those things that you're seeing out there.
Speaker A:It's really interesting.
Speaker A:So we don't have builders extended out there.
Speaker A:We do have some builders extended in an interesting way I think that we see.
Speaker A:I've got some higher end builders out there that I know that are going out there and buying up properties.
Speaker A:And they've been buying up a lot of properties.
Speaker A:And these are four or five six hundred thousand dollar homes, mostly five and six hundred thousand dollar homes that they're buying that are perfectly good homes.
Speaker A:They're buying them to tear down to put a 1.5 to 3 million dollar home on there because they've got the people to buy it.
Speaker A:Now part of that reason is that I live in an area that's got killer schools.
Speaker A:There's people coming in from all over the country, good sports teams, good schools.
Speaker A:And so we are a little donut hole in the Portland area of that.
Speaker A:And it's not a bad place to be.
Speaker A:But those houses are gone.
Speaker A:But are some of those builders Extended?
Speaker A:Yeah, they could be.
Speaker A:And there's a lot of people out there that are seeing the stock market, they're seeing interest rates, and they just don't want to pull the trigger on it.
Speaker A:I know on the remodeling side, kitchen and bath remodeling, all the big projects, those have slowed way down for many people.
Speaker A:People are not out there with the price of things going, ooh, I want to go spend $150,000 on a remodel.
Speaker A:It's just not happening that way.
Speaker A:So those are conditions that I worry about.
Speaker A:Are we going to see less builders out there because things are slow?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Are we going to see less contractors out there?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:I know some of the people out there that run non profits, they take used building materials and help people to stay in in their homes and they're selling them and they're doing stuff kind of like what Habitat for Humanity does.
Speaker A:A lot of these people are saying, man, people are so tight on money that they're selling those products instead of taking it by the store and donating them.
Speaker A:So there's a lot less there.
Speaker A:I went into one of my used places looking for 100, what, 125 square feet of shiplap for a project.
Speaker A:Couldn't be found.
Speaker A:So these are issues that we're seeing out there that are really starting to add to that.
Speaker A:So we're just going to have to see what happens here on this with the economy.
Speaker A:So in a nutshell, are we going to see a housing crash?
Speaker A:I don't see how that could happen without having some kind of a much bigger economy issue.
Speaker A:Like, we would have to have the economy crash, stock market crash, and people be out of work.
Speaker A:We'd have to see like Great Depression type stuff to see that happen.
Speaker A:And I just don't see that coming right now because we've got.
Speaker A: e bit more than we did in the: Speaker A:So things to consider when you're looking at it, but I don't see that there's going to be a crash.
Speaker A:I know there's a lot of people that are saying it, but I think they're hopeful to see that we've got that.
Speaker A:Now when we come back here in a minute, we're going to talk a little bit more here about how do we deal with the houseless homeless, how do we deal with people that can't afford to even get into an apartment out there.
Speaker A:What can we do to make that affordable, affordable for people?
Speaker A:And I've got some great answers for this.
Speaker A:This is something I'm going to put together here in a future episode of Roundtable of a bunch of stakeholders in this because I'm seeing some fraud, waste, abuse, things like that that I think are not helping people and it's making some people rich.
Speaker A:And I want to talk about that when we come back because there are some big dollars getting spent out there with no results.
Speaker A:And I think we need to, as people out there in the community say, wait a minute, let's rethink how we do it.
Speaker A:Because there's some easy answers.
Speaker A:You just got to make the hard decisions to do it.
Speaker A:We'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.
Speaker A:Don't change that dial.
Speaker A:We're going to wrap up here in this next segment our housing crisis and what we can do to get it back on track just as soon as we return.
Speaker A:Don't go anywhere.
Speaker B:To find out more information, head to aroundthehouse online.com don't change that dial.
Speaker B:Around the House.
Speaker B:We'll be right back after these important messages.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.
Speaker A:I'm Eric G.
Speaker A:You know, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker A:If you want to find out more about us, head to our website, aroundthehouse online.com and there's a lot more over there as far as our YouTube channel and everything else.
Speaker A:And we've got all our social media so you can follow us right there.
Speaker A:If you want to comment on this episode, send me a line over there.
Speaker A:There's a Contact Us page that'll send right over into my inbox.
Speaker A:Now today we've been talking about our housing crisis and what we can do to get it back on track.
Speaker A:And by the way, this episode is brought to you by our friends at Monty McGrills.
Speaker A:If you're looking for a brand new barbecue, Mother's Day, Father's Day.
Speaker A:Mother's Day's a little tight with that being this weekend, but Father's Day's around the corner as well.
Speaker A:And you could get it early next week if you go over to montymcgrills.com so here's the thing.
Speaker A:We've been talking about the housing crisis and what I think we could do to get back on track.
Speaker A:One of the biggest ones we haven't talked about is the homeless population that we've got out there.
Speaker A:Now, I'm not much into using all the kinder, gentler terms of the houseless or whatever else we want to call it.
Speaker A:Let's just call it what it is.
Speaker A:I'm all about calling the spade is paid.
Speaker A:But here's our problem.
Speaker A:We don't have a housing shortage.
Speaker A:For those people.
Speaker A:The first thing we need to do with a majority of them needing mental health care, not all of them drug addiction.
Speaker A:Many times there's mental health issues from previous trauma or whatever the mental health issue came from, and they self medicate.
Speaker A:Now there are a lot of people out there that are in a bad situation, that are working jobs still and are intense and they're clean.
Speaker A:I'm just saying a majority, majority can be 51%.
Speaker A:But there's a lot of people out there that I talk to, a lot of people out there that are helping people.
Speaker A:And a lot of the people out there that are camping, that aren't staying in shelters are there because they don't want to follow the rules, Tom and we're going to have to deal with that.
Speaker A:Now, one of the issues that we see in my area here is that we see tons, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars depending on where you want to count and how big of an area spent on dealing with the issue.
Speaker A:The problem is, is my guess is there's probably 15 cents on the dollar that actually makes it to the problem.
Speaker A:There are so many dollars that are being spent that are going to private nonprofits that aren't putting the money where it should be.
Speaker A:There are people getting rich off the problem.
Speaker A:And if you fix the problem, then you can't get the more money and guess what happens?
Speaker A:We don't fix the problem.
Speaker A:Now I've got a lot of ways that we could do this.
Speaker A:I think we need to turn around and my opinion is, is we need to sit there and get some mental health care and drug treatment for these folks, for the ones that are out there that are drug users.
Speaker A:I think if we get them help, get them the mental health care they need now, they're going to be able to maybe get a job, get some job training, and maybe we can then put them in a house that they're not going to trash or burn down.
Speaker A:Can't be putting meth heads in a house and expect it not to get trashed when they're actively using drugs.
Speaker A:It's just not going to happen.
Speaker A:So this isn't a shove them in a house situation.
Speaker A:This is a we need to fix the root cause of this.
Speaker A:And unfortunately we haven't had a proper Mental health care system since the 80s.
Speaker A:And we got to come into a, a new way of dealing with that.
Speaker A:The problem is, is that that's going to be like trying to create the VA again.
Speaker A:Now I have an idea with that too.
Speaker A:Some people call me crazy for this, but if I could wave a magic wand, what I would do is put out to bid hospitalization and the medical care for the va.
Speaker A:Find out what company's gonna cover what, whether it's, you know, Blue Cross.
Speaker A:Just name a company out there.
Speaker A:Whoever it is could be Kaiser for us out here on the West Coast.
Speaker A:Whoever it is, put her out to bed.
Speaker A:And then you just give all our veterans that have busted their butt for everybody out there that have served our country, you give them a visa like credit card that they can walk into.
Speaker A:Any doctor they want to go see, it's the one up the street.
Speaker A:They shouldn't have to get in the car to drive for two hours to go to the va.
Speaker A:Why not go to the doctor down the street that they know, hand them the card, take care of it.
Speaker A:Then we take the existing VA hospital system, turn that into our mental health care system for our homeless, our drug treatment centers, then we might have a good system going and we've got to hold those people accountable as well.
Speaker A:If they don't go in there, we're going to have to lock people down and get them, to get them help.
Speaker A:And that's something that we could do with our legal system.
Speaker A:There's ways to do this that is kind and gentle and a little forceful.
Speaker A:They're like 8 year old kids out there.
Speaker A:They're throwing tantrums sometimes.
Speaker A:You got to get it under control.
Speaker A:And that's what I think we need to do to solve this problem.
Speaker A:Then we can start talking about affordable housing.
Speaker A:I'm seeing cities build in affordable housing units that are 7, $800,000 a piece.
Speaker A:And I'm shaking my head going, if you wouldn't have built that as a city, you could have turned around and built that privately maybe and built twice as many units.
Speaker A:It's absolutely crazy.
Speaker A:There are so many dollars being wasted out there and there are so many things we can be doing.
Speaker A:You know, they're building right now Skyline Homes.
Speaker A:I had them on a show earlier, you know, earlier this year.
Speaker A:Champion Homes is the parent company.
Speaker A:They're building manufactured housing this duplexes.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:You could go in there and spend a hundred grand maybe and put two units in.
Speaker A:Why are we getting crazy with this?
Speaker A:We could be building these things.
Speaker A:Take an area of the port district that they aren't using.
Speaker A:Take that big piece of land, put some utilities in there, drop a bus line in there, and guess what?
Speaker A:You could put folks in there in nice, affordable houses to be living in.
Speaker A:Way cheaper than having a city build it and support, support the local economy.
Speaker A:You know, maybe you got 60, $70,000 per unit.
Speaker A:There's answers here, guys.
Speaker A:Especially when we've got land out there that could be used that the city already owns or the county or the state already owns.
Speaker A:There's answers.
Speaker A:No one's trying to work hard on it because they're making money for themselves.
Speaker A:And that's where I got a really big issue.
Speaker A:There are answers.
Speaker A:I was, if you were listening on this show here, eight, nine years ago, I spent a lot of time because the city of Portland here had built this whole, whole big, huge Wapato jail center.
Speaker A:They were going to farm it out and sell it out so other people could send their inmates here.
Speaker A:Well, guess what happened?
Speaker A:That didn't work out.
Speaker A:They got it built.
Speaker A:By the time they got it built, the need was gone.
Speaker A:They were trying to tear it down.
Speaker A:And a local entrepreneur bought it at auction for pennies on the dollar and worked with a local nonprofit to turn it into a shelter for people to get help.
Speaker A:Now they were going to tear that down.
Speaker A:They wanted to make it into a, into a, you know, an office, retail.
Speaker A:They were going to take this brand new, full access, ready to roll, fully stocked jail that never had an inmate, had the hospital beds, had everything in it, and they were going to tear it down and sell off the property.
Speaker A:And they fought to do that.
Speaker A:And that's the insanity.
Speaker A:There's a lot of things we can be doing.
Speaker A:I know of a lot of hospitals out there since we've had all these medical issues out there on the, on the doctor front.
Speaker A:I mean, it can take you two months to get in to see your doctor.
Speaker A:Now, a lot of hospitals out there in rural areas that have closed up, lot of them.
Speaker A:We should be using those spaces.
Speaker A:They've already got the systems there.
Speaker A:Little update.
Speaker A:Those would be great places for, to put people into.
Speaker A:If we got to put a fence around the outside because it's a lockdown, so be it.
Speaker A:But there's a lot of answers, guys, that we could be doing.
Speaker A:Those empty hospitals that are sitting there falling apart, we could be fixing those up and putting people in there and helping them out.
Speaker A:And right now we're just shuffling them around, hiding them.
Speaker A:You know, when a, when a big event in a metropolitan city happens they shove them all to the other side.
Speaker A:We're just moving around the shells here in the shell game.
Speaker A:We've got to figure this out.
Speaker A:So there's a lot of options out there in affordable housing.
Speaker A:There's a lot of options out there of getting people the treatment they need.
Speaker A:We just haven't had a leader that's been trying to work on it yet that has gotten any traction with it.
Speaker A:So I hope that as people, as humans, I'd love it if we could put our heads together and find some solutions to this.
Speaker A:So we're talking a little bit more about this, about how we can do this, because guess what?
Speaker A:Use a homeowner and the.
Speaker A:The homeless people that are sleeping on the side of your house or stealing stuff off your porch or whatever else.
Speaker A:We're going to reduce crime by getting these people the help they need and make your city that you live in more enjoyable, safer for the next generation.
Speaker A:So I think there's a lot of great answers out there that we can chase down.
Speaker A:We're just going to have to do it and make some hard decisions and, yeah, spend some money.
Speaker A:But that doesn't mean a blank check.
Speaker A:That just means that we got to do something smart instead of letting a handful of people get rich off of this whole thing and not help people.
Speaker A:It's absolutely insane.
Speaker A:It's just as crazy as the city of Portland when they went through and decided that they were going to make drugs legal in the city and then wondered why everybody was dying from overdoses.
Speaker A:And everybody pointed at each other and went, huh, we better change that.
Speaker A:And they finally did.
Speaker A:But that was a horrible experience experiment that killed a lot of people.
Speaker A:Let's see if we can help everybody out, guys.
Speaker A:Let's think about it.
Speaker A:If you got suggestions, love to hear them.
Speaker A:Send them over to aroundthehouse online dot com.
Speaker A:Thanks for tuning in to around the House.
Speaker A:We'll see you for the next one.
