Homesick
Why Housing Is Unaffordable and How We Can Change It
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
Nobody who sits in traffic on Sedona, Arizona's main stretch or stands shoulder-to-shoulder in its many souvenir shops would call it a ghost town.
Neither would anyone renting a room for $2,000 a month or buying a house for a half-million dollars. And yet the people who built this small town and made it a community are being pushed further and further out. Their home is being sold out from under their feet.
In studying the impact of short-term rentals, Brendan O'Brien saw something similar happening in places ranging from Bend, Oregon, to Bar Harbor, Maine. But it isn't just short-term rentals, and it's not just tourism towns. Neighborhoods in Austin and Atlanta have become rows of investment properties. Longtime residents in Spokane and Boston have been replaced by new, high-salaried remote workers. Across the country, a level of unaffordable housing that once seemed unique to global cities like New York and San Francisco has become the norm, with nearly a third of all US households considered housing cost burdened.
This situation has been abetted by the direct actions of developers, politicians, and existing homeowners who have sought to drive up the cost of housing. But it's mostly happened due to a society-wide refusal to see housing as anything more than real estate, another product available to the highest bidder. This trend of putting local housing on a global market has worsened in recent years but is nothing new. Housing in the United States has always been marred by racial and income inequality that mocks the country's highest ideals.
Deeply researched and deeply felt, Homesick argues that we can be so much better. And we can start where we live.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Housing is expensive because of Airbnb, snowbirds, and the profit motive, according to geographer O'Brien's impassioned but underwhelming debut. Investigating the high cost of rent and home-buying in three cities—Flagstaff, Ariz., where he lives; St. George, Utah; and Bozeman, Mont., O'Brien argues that by converting housing into short-term rentals, Airbnb and its competitors shrink the supply of houses for sale or long-term rental and thus drive up their price. (Vacation homes that stand unoccupied most of the time also fuel this problem, he contends.) O'Brien also points a finger at the swelling numbers of remote workers leaving Silicon Valley and Wall Street to bid up home prices in scenic towns; developers and municipal officials who cater to well-heeled tourists and newcomers while locals get priced out of their hometowns; and a society that views housing as "a real-estate investment, not a human right." He links it all to the country's history of white supremacist property and housing law, including European settlers' conquest of Native American lands, 20th-century redlining, and present-day homeowners' associations that disadvantage nonwhite home buyers by raising property values. Meanwhile, he only lightly touches on zoning rules, red tape for permits, and other regulatory burdens that hinder the construction of inexpensive housing. The result is a book that falls squarely on the antigentrification side of the polarizing housing debate. It's a familiar take on a hot-button issue that clearly articulates its case, but might not change any minds.
