The old adage used to be that an empty rental was costing you money. Landlords would work for around 75+% occupancy, and to achieve that the price would also stay lower, to keep it occupied.

Then the price fixing of airlines happened, and the guy responsible (whose name I can't recall at the moment - maybe someone else does?) went into real estate with the same software approach. The theory? If you can charge enough off of a few to pay for all the others, then occupancy doesn't matter.

Let's use the numbers from the OP - $700 and $3600, with a 20 year gap. The post is from several years back, but let's use 2004 and 2024 for inflation calcs. $700 in 2004 is just a hair under $1200 today, so with a cost of $3600 - triple - that would mean one tenant has the same value to them as three. So if you have 6 units and have 3 tenants, you're now making a LOT more money overall, as those two tenants provided the same as six under the older model.

TL;DR: Shitty people and shitty companies trying to get the most money they can, with zero regard for the impact of these decisions.

3 lawyers and 1 teacher (who can only afford a corner in the kitchen) as roommates.

Rental prices are very possibly not determined by the market these days. RealPage and other companies like it may be colluding to fix prices at artificially high levels.

This ProPublica article covers the practice fairly well: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent

EDIT: apologies, that was the wrong article. This is the one I wanted to link: https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-lawmakers-collusion

Someone who has normalized paying upward of half their salary in rent.

Otherwise, they'd lower the price to whatever someone can pay.

Not necessarily. You'd have to look at vacancy rates. But even a city-wide statistic won't be very useful because it looks at low- and high-income units alike. Fancy new buildings have higher vacancy rates due to higher prices. If you had some way to isolate the vacancy rates of high-income buildings, I think you'd see there are quite a few vacancies.

So if a lawyer cannot afford the rent, who can??

Lawyer salaries are not universally high. The idea that lawyers make a lot of money comes from the top lawyers. Don't look at "average" lawyer salary, as the mean of a set of data can be heavily skewed by outliers.

With vacancy and short term rental rates rising that's just not true. They're raising prices because it makes sense for their business model and because they're operating in price cartels. The business model works because there's enough people who can afford it to cover costs on the rest of the units and have a profit still. The cartel works together to make sure there's no one undercutting with enough units to affect the market price.

Then they can go back to wall street and say they have x number of units worth y amount. Which is worth millions to the large rental corporations.

The idea of a million rental units all operating at market cost is outdated. It's more like 126 blocks of units with 8 of them at 100,000 and the rest spread between small landlords. It's the 8 blocks that set the market. Working together they're effectively a monopoly.

Renting black lists are another example of this. If you've ever taken your slum lord to court there is a chance the big corporations will never rent to you again. Which is like 90 percent of the market.

It's because housing became an investment. Like money, the majority of property will soon be owned by the 1%. The only ones who can afford it are those who are seeking to profit from it, or rent it. Suck everyone dry.

Not really. There are a lot of apartment complexes in places that are barely occupied because of the price. Or fit 3 people in an efficency.

It’s why there is a surge in homelessness in this country. Especially in big cities like LA and San Francisco

I've worked through servers, on servers, and in servers but never knew I could work as a computer server!!!

The price of monthly rent is being weighted by the value of a month's worth of AirBnB day-rentals. That's a big part of what is driving this. Everything is becoming ad hoc hotel space.

What is crippling depression?

I have never received a dime of support from family, so I’m hell bent on getting her every advantage possible.

I feel that. My parents ruined their finances and have been unable to support me in adulthood, so I make sure I set aside money for my kids and set them up to have options when they're adults

I don't know how my sister is keeping her nose above water at all.

I don't either, but I bet she feels like she's drowning.

What's criminal is being required to pay a landlord for access to a basic human right

What server these days is taking home $3500/month? (i.e. $21+/hour)

It's the second.

Have you considered investing in 1996?

/s

I wouldnt come to America until we see how our next election goes

If the Democrats win, you might be okay in a couple years

but if not, moving to California in 2024 is gonna be like moving to Poland in 1938

We are on the precipice of launching into fully unchecked fascism, or starting twenty years of the hardest repair work conceivable in order to make this country worth living in again

Yeah but now you have to live in Alabama

There are homes available in blue states for $100k, in the same place you can find them in Alabama.

Anywhere but a city.