THERE IS NO HOUSING CRISIS !! (as long as you don’t insist on living near the beach.)

Photo above - will the owner of this California mansion please return home at once? It's about to fall into the sea, and there will be a multi-million-dollar cleanup needed.

The link below (MSN.com, picking up the “Markets Insider” report) does the best job I’ve seen this year of explaining why some people are NEVER going to be able to buy a house.

First, the good news. US homebuilders DID complete 1.4 million new homes in 2023. That’s the highest in several years. The bad news? Almost none of these were in the cities with the biggest housing crises. You know . . . Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, San Jose, Portland (actually an island between the Columbia and Wilamette rivers). Austin is the only crisis city that doesn’t brag about water views.

That’s the problem. Everyone seems to want to live near the beach. Close enough to drive there on the spur of the moment. This is ESPECIALLY attractive if you’re some tech entrepreneur, because you can afford to live any damn place you please. The wage slaves? Not so lucky. They HAVE to scramble to find a crib in America’s most expensive cities, which for decades have been seeing more and more companies set up headquarters there. And these cities are now addicted to the taxes generated by those companies.

The non-coastal exception on the list – Austin – appears to be going bonkers because Elon Musk flipped California the bird, and moved Tesla nearby.

Evidently if you want to live in any of the “flyover states” which progressives mock, there ISN’T a housing shortage, and you have a bunch of affordable options. THAT’s where most of the 1.4 million homes were built. Not adjacent to Beverly Hills, Bel Aire, or Nob Hill.

But the flyover states ARENT where people like Oprah, Bezos, Zuckerberg, and their insider circle of corporate elites want to live. They’re all at the shore.

There’s another problem. 1.4 million new homes may SOUND like a lot. But America saw 3.4 million illegal migrant “encounters” last year. What happens after an encounter? A Venezuelan gang member is handed a piece of paper with a hearing date and turned loose. Or put on a bus to some other city. So twice as many aliens are showing up here as new homes being built. If you’re confused on why this is a problem, NYC Mayor Eric Adams would like to chat. He’s spending $2.2 Billion annually (with a “B”) to feed, clothe, house, and investigate the crimes that migrants in his city commit.

No, Mr. Smart-Aleck. The solution is NOT to send illegal aliens en-masse to some other random city. They will just turn around and head back to the shore, because that’s where their friends and relatives are squatting, camping out, or in a migrant shelter.

You’d think with all the global warming discussion, people would be more cautious about living at the shore. I mean California IS going to “tumble into the sea” sooner or later (tyvm, Eagles). Florida’s home insurance rates are tripling because of hurricanes and flooding. New York City was supposed to have water 6 feet deep on Park Avenue by now, according to a 1985 NASA projection. Delayed, but for how long?

There was ANOTHER article recently. The new hot spot is (allegedly) Appalachia. Evidently you can buy land – lots of land – in former coal country and build your dream house there for about 10% of what it costs in a coastal state. Great if you’re a tele-commuter, or a retiree, I guess. Remember President Obama's program to retrain all the out of work miners as software coders? It didn't work. Maybe he should have offered them trade school instead – carpentry, electrician, plumbing, and HVAC. They’d be getting paid now, for sure!

I’m just sayin’ . . .

~Why America's housing shortage is getting worse, even as construction sees its biggest boom in 16 years (msn.com)~

~FACTSHEET: Final FY23 Numbers Show Worst Year at America’s Borders—Ever – Committee on Homeland Security (house.gov)~