• McNasty@sh.itjust.works
    8·
    10 months ago

    I’m solid GenX.

    My grandparents bought a house on a corner lot in the northwest suburbs of Chicago for $6000. Which was about a years salary for Grampa, who worked as a welder. This was in the late 60s.

    ETA: Their mortgage was around $50.00 a month.

    • BigNote@lemm.ee
      4·
      10 months ago

      I’m GenX as well and I will straight up admit that my wife and I got lucky, purchased a house in a “distressed” neighborhood in Portland because it was all we could afford, and now, 20 years later, the neighborhood is fully gentrifying and our house and property is worth way more than what we owe on it.

      I’m conflicted as to how to feel about it. While on the one hand we very innocently bought the place because it was in a shitty neighborhood and was all we could afford, on the other hand I now know that we were what the urban studies people refer to as “bohemian colonizers,” meaning that without knowing it, we were, by moving into the neighborhood as poor artist types, part of a much longer process of gentrification.

      Again, I am of several minds regarding how I feel about the whole thing.

      • garden_boi@feddit.de
        5·
        10 months ago

        be poor

        move to a poor neighbourhood

        I really don’t think that you should feel bad about this personally :)

      • trashgirlfriend@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        Yeah, I don’t think you should feel bad. You can’t really individually control processes like this and well… you needed a place to live.

      • 31337@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        10 months ago

        Meh, gentrification is the result of bad policy, not personal, individual choices (except maybe for people flipping houses and landlords). Neighborhoods, and the people in them, should not stay poor forever. Rent controls, grants for people to start businesses or coops or whatever, allowing mixed-use zoning, and stuff like that can reduce the harmful affects of gentrification.

      • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
        1·
        5 months ago

        What were you supposed to do live in a tiny apartment to make housing more available for the poor fuckers nearby who just happened to have started slightly closer?

    • michaelmrose@lemmy.world
      2·
      5 months ago

      This is actually worse than it sounds 1 year of salary can be paid off in 2.5 paying the same amount someone pays for rent on their apartment. In 2.5 years you wont pay much in the way of interest. Over a 30 year mortgage paying the median home price of 388k means paying almost 3x the face value or roughly 1.1M or roughly 17 years of median income.

    • BastingChemina@slrpnk.net
      0·
      10 months ago

      Today a the median yearly salary for a welder is a bit less than $40,000.

      For this price you can maybe get a camper, not too big though.

      • merc@sh.itjust.works
        1·
        10 months ago

        So, welders today make about 30% less, while houses today cost about 5x as much.

        Progress!!