Why Housing Is Unaffordable for the Bottom 90%

And yet, (almost) all people that can't afford to buy their own home, still live in one. And pay to do so.

In other words: in theory, they do have the means to afford the home they live in. Just not the bag of $$ required for an initial purchase.

Conclusion: they're still paying for the home they live in. It's just not their property they're paying for, but someone else's (aka landlord).

"Landlord" used very generic here. Entities which own real estate & rent it out, come in many shapes & sizes.

This is the sneaky bit of wealth inequality, as applied to housing: all the money needed to build, buy & maintain housing is still extracted from the population. But the advantages that come with owning those properties, winds up in the hands of a small minority. The rest do pay, but don't get those ownership advantages in return.

If gains made by different classes are unevenly distributed, _every economic or financial improvement across the economy_ increases the disparities. The last thing that helps the poor is to have the economy do better, relatively speaking. In the economic arms race, anything that gives them a bullet gives their competition 100 bullets and a hand grenade.

Some may do better in some ways, but some will do worse in the same ways, and all of them fall further behind the classes that accrue more.

Refreshing to see some decent analysis of the demand side (as opposed to the usual supply side debate that typically just leads to simple calls to 'just build more').