[00:00:00] Eric Goranson: It's around the house when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home. There is a lot to know, but we've got you covered. This is around House. Welcome to the Around House Show. We help you get the most outta your home through information. And education. Hey everybody. Today's episode is brought to you by Root Quencher.

[00:00:34] Eric Goranson: If you've got trees and shrubs and bushes that are using a ton of water, you wanna put the water where the roots are, not where it's running down the hill. Check out root quencher. Well, we've got, uh, an interesting midweek special this week. I wanted to talk about some of the changes we're gonna see over the coming years here in housing affordability.

[00:00:54] Eric Goranson: And I think we are getting ready to see a major shift here. For people [00:01:00] that are struggling with, you know, housing and expensive housing, you know, it is hard, especially here on the West Coast. And of course places in the Northeast, out in the Midwest, it's not as big of a problem. But we've got some huge housing issues for people that are in college that are working, you know, minimum wage jobs.

[00:01:23] Eric Goranson: And I think we've got a multiple set of issues here. And I wanted to talk about those in a little more detail today of what I think the issues are. We'll talk about more of this than an upcoming show, but I wanted to really kind of set the stage of what some of the issues are. For instance, in my area here, you know, housing is expensive here in the Portland, Oregon area, and it doesn't matter if you're in Portland, Seattle, anywhere on the West coast, it's expensive.

[00:01:50] Eric Goranson: And part of these problems are put on by government, and that's not a shock, you know, it's the, it's the good intentions that have kept it [00:02:00] where it's very expensive to live. For instance, here in the west coast, we have these, um, urban growth boundaries. So these urban growth boundaries control how much land can be built on.

[00:02:14] Eric Goranson: So if you've got. You wanna put in five houses on a piece of property outside of that urban growth boundary, you might not be able to do it. And when you're looking at just the market demand of housing, that has really, one of the biggest things that has pushed prices up is availability. And then you have these other problems in West coast states that are different than other places.

[00:02:40] Eric Goranson: Many of the states, like Oregon, a majority of the land. Is owned by the federal government or the state. It is state forest, it's federal lands. There's a lot of that stuff. So majority of that is controlled by the government. So that is not [00:03:00] land that you and I could go buy because it's kind of being hoarded by the government.

[00:03:04] Eric Goranson: The good news is for the people out there that are worried about the environment, that is also areas that are not gonna get built over. However, we have a lot of other areas that really, we've got some problems in the Portland area as well, and there are some battles to be coming up, but that is one of the biggest problems we have is the urban growth boundary and it propping up prices to make land prices more expensive.

[00:03:34] Eric Goranson: You know, if you could go out and buy a small lot for $25,000 or $50,000, That's a big difference than buying it for $200,000. And where this is gonna even become more of an issue is that we have some great technologies coming out now where you're gonna see affordable housing being built [00:04:00] in a factory, and we are coming into what I would call the prefab revolution.

[00:04:09] Eric Goranson: This is coming around the corner. It's actually happening now you're just not seeing it yet, but in the next year or two, you're gonna see literally housing plans that you can get a house, get the building, you know, for a hundred, $150,000 or less. Some of it much, much less. And I know of a dozen companies doing this now.

[00:04:36] Eric Goranson: And I'm not gonna get into any secrets here because I've seen into the future a little bit of what multiple companies are doing, and, uh, I, I've been blessed with that, and we're gonna keep those secret secrets. But let me tell you this. Here's the cool thing. This is gonna drive housing prices down. Now, unfortunately, for the people that [00:05:00] have rental apartments and things like that, if this is successful, that will bring those prices down as well.

[00:05:06] Eric Goranson: You know, here in the Portland area, it's gotten a little better over the last few months, but you can't get a studio apartment that's livable. And I'm not talking with air conditioning. I'm just talking about something that's livable for under 1500 bucks, unless you're way out of nowhere, or it's in a really rough area.

[00:05:30] Eric Goranson: Now I know people in San Francisco and other areas are going, oh wow, this is. Three times that New York, big metropolitan areas. Yeah, I get it. But these are expensive for people that are making minimum wage. Now, here's one of the other problems that we have and let's, let's just call the spade the spade here.

[00:05:50] Eric Goranson: The other problem we have is we have people out there that are taking what we're meant to be jobs for college summers and for [00:06:00] people working part-time to supplement income. Working at McDonald's is not a career making fries and cooking burgers. I did this when I was 14. At no time was that really designed to be a livable wage.

[00:06:18] Eric Goranson: It's not. That should be for kids and students. I mean, when I worked back in the eighties and nineties at McDonald's, 90% of the people working there. That were regular crew members, as they called them. Then were kids anywhere from high school to college, and as soon as they got done with college, they moved on to a better job.

[00:06:43] Eric Goranson: Now you had people managing there that were paid decent. But that person working drive-through that was never intended to be a livable wage. And that's what some of our problems are is we have people going into these jobs thinking that, wow, I should be able to buy a new car and have an apartment. [00:07:00] Well, I'm working for minimum wage.

[00:07:01] Eric Goranson: And minimum wage is just a great place for you to learn how to deal with other people and you know, learn how to show up to work on time. That's what that should be. That's my personal opinion, but I, I think that's one of our problems is these, these entry level jobs should be taken by kids. They should be working.

[00:07:24] Eric Goranson: And I think that's part of the problem we see today that we we're not gonna be able to fix that because they were never meant to be that. And if we try to fix that, it just makes everything more expensive and it's a. You know, you're, it's, you're just chasing a tail in a circle. The more you raise prices to pay them, the more things get expensive.

[00:07:44] Eric Goranson: Now, that Quarter Pounder went from $2 to $12 and everything moves at the same rate. So it's a foolish chase to, to, to think that raising the minimum wage is gonna do it. No, we need to get people into better jobs and get them out of what [00:08:00] I would call the, the, the high school and college education stuff.

[00:08:04] Eric Goranson: But really when it comes down to affordable housing, we're gonna see a lot of housing options come out. But then that circles back to what our issues are, and that's gonna be land we can come up with. Let's say we came out with a, I'm just gonna make up a number. Let's say we came up with a, uh, a 800 square foot house for 50,000 bucks.

[00:08:26] Eric Goranson: Where're, you gonna put it, we need to start coming up with places. That we have zoned that is cheap, affordable land. And for us here on the west coast, that comes down to really having the state or federal government release land that we can build on or change those urban growth boundaries and make it so these, this, these places can be built.

[00:08:55] Eric Goranson: So we can have people have affordable housing. And that's gonna be one of the biggest things [00:09:00] that, that I think we're gonna have to change to get through there. We've got industry changing where they can build healthier, cheaper homes for us in a safer work environment. So let me, let me give you some facts here.

[00:09:14] Eric Goranson: I just pulled up a, uh, a map here that I found that really talks about what the issues are. I live in Oregon. And that was a little off in the numbers. Currently that is 52.3% of all land is, uh, basically owned by the federal government. And that's not counting the state. So we could be closer there. Go down to California, 45.4%, Nevada 80.1 Washington State, 28.6.

[00:09:44] Eric Goranson: A little more balanced. Get into Idaho, 61.9%. Look at. Utah, 63.1. It's absolutely amazing. But then you go into other states like Texas, 1.9%, [00:10:00] Oklahoma 1.5. So our biggest states that have federal land is Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Oregon. You have to get down to Wyoming to have less than 50% of land owned by the federal government then is California, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico.

[00:10:21] Eric Goranson: That's the big stuff there. So this is where I think we can do some changes. And I'm not saying we go down and tear the forest out, but I'm saying that I think we need to really make some changes here and show, you know, we gotta work it out. We gotta work out some things so people can have housing. And I think this is where without hurting the marketplace.

[00:10:47] Eric Goranson: This is where I think we need to open up some of these lands to be able to build and do some things and be able to create some communities that are affordable for people. And that really doesn't cost [00:11:00] the private landowner something else. And that's something we've gotta really think about because when it comes down to it, here in the United States, most people, their homes are their biggest investment.

[00:11:12] Eric Goranson: And if we go out and totally trash. The marketplace, then we've got some problems because now you're taking people's life savings and you're throwing it in the toilet. And that's not fair to them who have been homeowners. That's not fair to you as a homeowner. But at the same point, I think this might be the way that we could open up some of these areas and create more affordable housing and, uh, without really, I.

[00:11:39] Eric Goranson: Doing damage to the environment. So those are things to really consider. I think what we've gotta get outside the box a little bit, you know, and the other thing that I'm seeing too is, is the homelessness crisis which our governments have have created. And that started back in the eighties when we got out of rid of, of, [00:12:00] uh, mental healthcare facilities.

[00:12:01] Eric Goranson: And they were horrible, don't get me wrong. But instead of fixing that, we just. Tanked it. And now we've got a majority of these people that you see in homeless areas, like in Portland, for instance, Seattle, anywhere on the West Coast really. Um, the problem is, is that we have no mental health care for these people and a majority of them have some kind of mental illness that they're using, um, illegal street drugs to self-medicate.

[00:12:29] Eric Goranson: I mean, I was driving down I five yesterday coming back from a TV shoot. And I see in the median on the side of the road, right over the other side of the barrier, there is some dude putting together a Rubbermaid tough shed so he could live on it on the side of the freeway. Yeah. Walls were up. He was almost had the ceiling snapped in.

[00:12:53] Eric Goranson: So here's our problem. We, we, if we're gonna fix that housing issue out [00:13:00] there, then guess what we have to do? We have gotta get people, the majority of these people, if we get them into mental healthcare, and I have a way to fix that. And, uh, we don't talk politics here, but this is how I would see fixing this.

[00:13:15] Eric Goranson: And, uh, this is my solution. What I would do is I would absolutely kill the Veterans Administration and make that generally go away, get rid of the va, but. I respect our veterans very much. My grandfather was one, and I see what the problems were. What I would do is I would give all of our veterans a medical card that would basically be like a visa and they can go pick their favorite doctor, their favorite hospital, and it is covered at any medical institution that they need to go see, and it is covered and all they have to do at the doctor's office is run it through like a credit card.

[00:13:59] Eric Goranson: [00:14:00] Then we take all those VA hospitals and places around there. We now let you know the marketplace. All the private hospitals out there create those. And we take those doctors that we're working in there and we turn those over into the. The regular hospital system so we can deal with the P T S D and that kind of stuff and let that help the public as well as just the va.

[00:14:23] Eric Goranson: And then you take all the VA system and make that into those hospitals and turn those into mental healthcare facilities. And then we start, might, might start making some difference and the veterans will get a better service overall because they can choose in the open marketplace where they want to go and go see their favorite people.

[00:14:43] Eric Goranson: And those doctors and stuff that are working in the VA system will get more money, they'll get a better career working in the private sector. So that's how I would do it. That's my fix to homelessness out there. If you, if you wanna hear comments on that, feel free to, uh, send me a message over on [00:15:00] Facebook around the House show or if you want to, um, Send me a message head over to around the house online.com.

[00:15:07] Eric Goranson: All right, buddy. Well, that's, uh, my little rant on, uh, on where we are with, with housing prices. I think we've got some great things on the horizon, but, uh, the land issue is gonna be the biggest one that we're gonna have to figure out and, um, until we deal with this homeless issue. The city's putting up these little, little, uh, metal boxes in the middle of the city to house people is not gonna be a solution.

[00:15:31] Eric Goranson: Um, that's not gonna fix a problem. It might get people into one spot, but until we start giving them the treatment they need and treating them like humans. We're gonna have a continued problem that's just going to get worse. All right, we have a great show coming up this weekend. Uh, you don't wanna miss, we'll see on Saturday.

[00:15:50] Eric Goranson: But thanks for tuning in to Around the House