Just How Invisible are Renters?
INVISIBLE RENTER ALERT - STOP THEY NEW YORK TIMES FROM HURTING YOU
So as I began to feel increasingly invisible as a renter I decided to gather some facts about how stealthy I really am. I decided to go to the one oasis on the planet where renting is a normal and truly acceptable lifestyle choice, namely New York City, to see if even there renters were more visible.
Just for background New York City (across the five boroughs) has the highest percentage of renters of any urban area in the United States with a renter rate of 67.1% according to this study. That means that only 32.9% of New York City residents own a home. Compare that to the national average of 67.5% rate of homeownership at the end of 2008 and basically you see that New York City has TWICE as many renters (on a percentage basis) of the US average. Clearly this is a city that lives (and dies) on renters.
So lets look at the other pillar of New York City, namely the New York Times, which must be covering the affect that the collapse of the housing market might have on its majority (plurality actually) renter base of citizens. After all the reason why renting is so prevalent in New York is because it is so expensive to own. While New Yorkers claim to be different I can’t see them being immune to the contagion that is the American Dream to own a home. So, one would assume, that in a market of falling house prices there might be a flurry of stories about renters getting their chance to upgrade to be homeowners. After all two-thirds of the New York Times local edition readers are, in fact, renters.
To understand this I did a very simple test. I went to the New York Times web page and did two different searches of the archives over the past 12 month period. The first search was for the word “homeowner” and it returned 291 results. So then I tried, for the same period, the word “renter” and it returned only 106 results. Basically in a city with 100% MORE renters than homeowners it returned 64% LESS in terms of news coverage about them.
So I decided to broaden my scope and look across papers. For this I went to the Google News Search page. I did a one month search for “homeowner” (try it to see the latest) and found 15,637 articles. I then did the same one month search for “renter” (try it to see the latest) and found only 2,296 articles. Renters had 86% less coverage than homeowners and they, on a national basis, represent about 50% of all homeowners.
So renters of the world you may be getting screwed by public policy but the upside is you can feel free to walk into any bank and grab what’s lying around or through any locker room to grab a peek because YOU ARE INVISIBLE.
What can you do to return to the visible spectrum? Try the following three step plan:
- Understand how President Obama’s current “housing bailout” is hurting the invisible renter (all 100 Million of them) by reading this article.
- Email Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner to help him see through our rental cloaking devices and consider our perspective as well. After all homeowners are currently the problem and renters, who might eventually be able to afford those homes if given a chance, are the solution. Oh and make sure to explain to him the definition of affordable. Check out this Geithner classic from today when talking about the housing bailout, “It is imperative that we continue to move with speed to help make housing more affordable and help arrest the damaging spiral in our housing markets”. So what he is saying is that to make things more affordable we must RAISE prices. Somebody needs an economics refresher…
- Post a comment on this post telling us how you personally, as a renter, have felt invisible. Or better yet give suggestions on how we can become even more visible as this crisis continues (so I don’t have to rename this blog “reallyfuckedrenter.com”).
Oh and for extra credit tell us a story of a really fucked homeowner (RFHO) at the bottom of this post.
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This entry was posted on March 3, 2009 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Stories with tags bryan jung, homeowner, housing bailout, housing bubble, invisible, invisible renter, lawrence summers, mortgage, new york city, new york times, renter, renters, renting, timothy geithner. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
April 1, 2010 at 9:05 am
The web address of the American Tenants Association is http://www.americantenants.com. Thanks.
April 1, 2010 at 8:49 am
The American Tenants Association was formed to represent to 95 million residential renters in the U.S. We are taking direct action to unite tenants and increase our political clout. Join us!
August 22, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Renters like me who sat out of the housing boom continued to pay outrageous rents while our incomes sat stagnant. The disparity between pay and home cost has soared beyond imagining. There has been no opportunity to save like there was for older generations. We also had no opportunity to sell property that we bought cheap. We hoped and prayed the market would fall and rebalance to a place were we could hope to live the American dream of home-ownership. Since then everthing has been condo-ized and remains artificially inflated while also reducing the number of apartments –thus inflating rent and further reducing savings. The dream of my own yard and raising a family has been circumsized. What we once considered apartments have been converted to “condo’s” that are selling for the price of what used to get an entire house (condos for which we still can’t afford.) This is a generational issue – our elders and venture profiteers have sold out to greed and sold the American dream to flip a profit. What happend to buying a home to live in it? I say we limit the number of properties “property” corporations and developers can buy up in one town!!! Let’s not allow them to keep using housing as their new stock market! Let’s stop allowing the government to keep prices artificially inflated with home-owner bail-outs – Anyone with me ?
May 25, 2009 at 5:47 pm
We bought a Boston condo in 2005. My mortgage guy said he could lend me 3x what we took to buy our place – not exactly the hat in hand while visiting the bank image in the movies. We sold our place last spring when it became obvious to me the market was a bubble and our place was too small to handle our growing family.
One of the most annoying parts of transferring from a home buyer to a renter is there is no MLS equivalent for renting. If there was, I would have gladly paid a broker fee to find the right place, but in Boston (at least) rental brokers are useless. Since the buyer/renter has very little information outside of craigslist postings, you have to let a series of lowlife brokers drag you through the crappiest apartments while they slowly get nicer and nicer in the hope they can unload the bottom of the barrel on you. This, of course, is a small price to pay vs. the losing massive chunks of equity on a house, but humans are not rational and I certainly found myself considering buying a house where the process at least can be far easier.
Nice site. Keep it up.
May 26, 2009 at 7:16 am
Good move. I have seen some Craigslist/Google mashups that at least give you a good idea where apartments are.
True there should be an MLS but unlike an MLS it should be freely available and not controlled by a dying monopoly as is the current real estate MLS. Thank the lord for Trulia, Zillow, etc… Sure there price estimation data sucks but at least you can do more research on your own.
March 16, 2009 at 12:58 pm
You’re not from NYC, are you?
Everybody outside NY assumes New Yorkers read the NY Times.
They don’t. The Sunday edition is popular, yes, but for everyday reading, you’ll see people reading the Daily News or the Post, or one of the little freebies put out by the very same tabloids, or maybe the WSJ, but rarely the Times. The Times’ market is definitely more upscale, so it’s not so weird that they would write more about owners. And finally, renters aren’t causing a widespread global financial crisis, are they!?
March 14, 2009 at 11:14 am
[...] Does it make any difference that the money lost was in investments as opposed to a house? Technically it shouldn’t but housing has been given a special, irrational place in society as something different. True you don’t live in your investments but you can always rent, you don’t have to actually own a house (and if you hold a mortgage you don’t “own” your house anyway, you have an option to own in 15-30 years). But renters are the invisible detritus of society but that is a topic better covered here. [...]
March 9, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I have written to every government agency I can find and have been tossed one excuse after another and have been passed from one state office to another with no assistance real explanation. Just yesterday I watched a news program filmed on Feb 16th 2009 of Senator Bill Nelson going throughout the Tampa Courthouse displaying the mold there, (nothing compared to the mold left for me in the home I bought), and what the workers are experiencing health wise due to this mold.
What is it that makes those who work in the courthouse more worthy as human beings than myself? I pay my taxes, I educated myself in Florida colleges, and I suffer devastating health issues just as those courthouse workers do. The only difference is that my mold came in the form of mortgage and disclosure fraud and misrepresentation, perpetuated by the OFR.
I have been victimized not only once by the crooked mortgage broker colluding with the sellers to put me in the contaminated home with a forged signature and altered documents. I didn’t buy more than I could afford, nor did my finances warrant a predatory loan, I’m a veteran of the USAF.
Now I find I am victimized twice in finding that the OFR gave a brokers license to Art Seaborne, the mortgage broker, just 9 years after revoking his real estate license for mortgage fraud, oh and just one year after a chapter 7 bankruptcy… it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to see what is going to take place there does it??? (All this information took me years to find, not easily accessible to find out before a closing).
Those of us left with nothing by the mortgage brokers are again ignored and victimized by our Presidents mortgage assistance bill, which completely ignores those in my position who are the real victims of predatory lending and mortgage fraud. So it looks to me like its time the State of Florida stepped-up and took responsibility where it is most definitely due, they licensed the crooks after all.
I have moved from the house, which sits in Sarasota rotting to the ground from water intrusion and toxic black mold, with 2 liens on it for foreclosure. But I still pay each and everyday. I am awakening daily struggling to breathe. I take 2-4 pills each day just to get air in my lungs and go through a box of tissues daily before I can even start my day. It’s like getting a life sentence for a crime someone else committed, and no home to show for it. It is just plain wrong!
My court case has stalled because the sellers and the mortgage broker can afford high priced lawyers who just keep the case going to use up what little money I can make while they use the money they stole from me to fund their criminal activities and representation. This alone is where the States fraud victims fund is owed in assistance to those of us stuck fighting your hired criminals for our inalienable rights. After all OFR, you are supposed to be working through regulations to protect us from this type of crime.
I am a 48-year-old divorced woman who had so much promise for my future. I had planned to go back to UFS for my masters but can barely afford living expenses and a lawyer now.
I know through research that I am not the only one in this situation. That is why the victim’s fund must be brought back and used to assist us in our struggle, after all our funds are now paying for the high priced lawyers your licensed criminals are buying.
I would like the opportunity to address the legislature concerning the victim’s fund. We who are the victims are not just another situation we are human beings, tax-paying citizens who deserve to live and breathe and have our lives back.
Receiving assistance from this fund could very well mean the difference of living a full life or living a lifetime of sickness and financial disability to so many of your victims.
I was fucked out of my money, my home and my health at the fault of the FLORIDA OFFICE OF FINANCIAL REGULATIONS
.
March 5, 2009 at 8:45 pm
Im a reallyfuckedrenter, because I’m stuck here renting a “cheap” place here on Long Island that is nearly 20X as expensive as living in the place I *own*(free and clear) in another State(SC). If I thought I could find a job there I’d be gone in a heartbeat. I only stay here because I’ve lived here for so long I know a fair amount of people and can use my connections to network for a job, while I don’t know anyone in SC, and the unemployment rate is higher there than in NY.
March 5, 2009 at 7:18 pm
I’m a US Army Infantry vet who served in Iraq. I rent an apartment in Newark NJ. My wife and I were married in 2005 at the height of the market. We did the responsible thing and did not overpay for a huge McMansion, but decided to wait until the market corrected itself (meaning housing prices plumeted). Instead we saved and invested. We worked hard and paid our way through college and grad school and now earn about $370,000 a year combined. We lost over $400,000 in the stock market (our own fault, we don’t want help, sympathy or bailouts… we gambled and lost… its called capitalism). We now have 2 little babies. Now our taxes are being raised we are being forced to chip in for $75B to “help” people with their mortgages. Our country is being bankrupted by new tax deductions that do not apply to us because we make to much. I DON’T UNDERSTAND. What is the worst thing that can happen to these underwater home “owners”. They will lose their house end up renting an apartment in Newark NJ? That’s my life, and it’s not so bad. They will survive and probably be able to buy a similar house for half the price in 5 years and actually pay their mortgage. And for their current neighbors, don’t worry, my wife and I will buy the forclosured house from the bank and we will make great neighbors. We are more responsible than the last guy. Please don’t let them wreck this country that I fought for.
March 5, 2009 at 10:59 pm
Thank you for your efforts to save, not ask for a bailout and mostly for your service to our country.
March 5, 2009 at 5:55 pm
I searched the NY Times website for “tenant” and got 10,000 results.
March 5, 2009 at 11:01 pm
Actually the search function on NYTimes is a bit messed up and tends to show 10,000+ even for ones that aren’t. I found that when doing my original research. If you hit next a couple of times you’ll run out of search results and the header with the count will fix itself. At first I was being told that over 30 days renter only happened 100 or so times and homeowner was 10,000. That would have made my analysis that much more compelling but alas in reality its only 3-to-1 which is still compelling enough.
March 5, 2009 at 4:11 pm
[...] News And I thought lower prices meant affordable Just How Invisible are Renters? Obama’s Housing Plan Will Just Create Another Housing Crash Why don’t they send me one [...]
March 5, 2009 at 9:54 am
You nailed it. Renters have no voice, and no vote. We are disenfranchised and ignored. If ever there was a “populist” group that should band together and demand justice, it is the millions of renters nationwide!
March 5, 2009 at 9:43 am
CA renters are on top now ~ “owners” are upside down paying mortgages on properties half their old values + no mobility.
Everyone is hunkering down, saving their cash – not spending & not taking on new debt.
Widespread perception is we are only half way to the bottom of housing & stock markets with extended (10 – 15 year) flat markets to follow. Look for a 3200 Dow & median home price of $89,000 – buy then!
All government “help” comes with pesky strings & conditions. Keep the bailouts – I prefer my freedom. Renters have this advantage over owners.
One final thought. Events may move faster & on a scale never witnessed before. Prudence suggests preparing for these with a personal action plan. As a renter you have far greater flexibility to weather the coming storms. Good luck!
patrick.net is my source for up-to-date r.e. crash info.
March 5, 2009 at 3:45 am
Nothing quite like having your tax dollars used against you.
March 4, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Ask google trends: http://www.google.com/trends?q=homeowner%2Crenter