WTF?? When did apartment rents become so unaffordable that a full time working person could hardly afford to put a roof over their head? Oh, wait, that excludes the illegals and the unmentioned families who stuff eight and ten people in an apartment, and each chips in a couple of hundred for the rent, while they collect welfare and live on the dole! Forget about those losers!
I'm talking about the single income man or woman, or single parent, who works their tail off, full time, and maybe overtime, at a decent job, and tries to live in a decent place. They go to an apartment complex and are told the rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $1200 a month! Plus they pay for their own gas and electric as well.
Lets do the math here. A person makes $14 an hour times 40 hours is $560 a week. After taxes, Social Security, health insurance (they don't get it free like the losers do!) it's probably around $475. That comes to $1900 a month and when you soak them for $1200 for rent, they now have $700 to live on the rest of the month. Subtract utilities ($50) gasoline ($100 at least!) car insurance ($60) laundry and cleaning ($20) Medical and Prescriptions ($30) it leaves them with $440 or less than $110 each week. That's with no credit card bills, no car repairs, no car payments, no doctor bills that are not covered by insurance, nothing else. They have to eat, pay all their other bills, and survive on a hundred and ten bucks a week. Folks, three meals a day at Carls or Mickey D's will blow most of that money, and that's junk food! You won't see the people from the apartment complex owners families living on the cheap!
We lived in a condo rental in Carlsbad, California about ten years ago and in the sixteen months we lived there, the rents went from $1200 to $1500 a month; we moved out as they were increasing to $1800 a month, and I understand they are now $2200 per month for the same 2 bedroom unit. That's insanity!
I believe the apartment complex owners are preying on those who cannot afford home ownership, and that it will continue to get worse. They all decry rent control, but I believe it will come. Those who have lost homes are now renting and have no choice but to move into apartments. The number of available, decent apartments is just not that great, and the owners are getting a premium price for the units. It seems to be whatever the traffic will bear.
Same with rental homes that can't be sold, yet are renting for obscene prices. I understand some might be high, as the owners need to make the high mortgage payments. But what about the speculators who buy homes simply to rent? In Harbor Pointe in Carlsbad, homes that originally sold for less than $200K are renting for over $2000 per month. Why? Because many of the homes in what is known as the Village were apparently purchased simply to rent as income properties; the owners are able to rent for that amount to people who can't afford the down payment to purchase a house, where their monthly payment would possibly be less than rent.
The shame is that a good portion of Harbor Pointe is turning into a community of renters with a significant turnover. Not good for the resident owners. Nor for the renters who move in and out trying to find the ideal place to live, moving children from school to school, and losing friends along the way. Were housing more affordable, regardless of apartment or single family homes, maybe people would settle and find roots in a community.
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