If you scroll to the bottom of the article, they post their sources, including studies published in peer reviewed journals. I’m sure most of us see this headline and go, “Duh,” but here we have hard data. Every time our billionaire and political overlords wring their hands about birthrates, the collective response from all of us should be, “fuck you, pay me, or kick rocks.”
What do they even mean by commodification? There’s literally houses out there but the prices are ridiculous and others are just holding onto property without listing them. The housing is there. They’re just rigging it and gatekeeping the rest of us.
Commodification is not the right word here. Financialization is the usual one.
Commodification implies that housing is being mass produced and prices are dropping as profit margins fall. That’s clearly not what’s happening.
Financialization implies that housing has become an investment that is increasingly targeted by the finance industry. This is actually happening a lot more than people think. Finance companies have full time real estate staff who are out there buying up housing on a daily basis.
Instead of people buying a house because they need a home, they are purchasing the house as a way to make more money. Instead of living in the house, they rent it out, and the renters just end up paying the mortgage. The owner holds the property for a certain amount of time, then sells the house after it appreciates and makes a profit. Houses that they already own can be used to leverage for more loans to purchase even more. Houses are no longer seen as a place to live, or a home, they are now seen as a way to generate income. If people that have money keep buying more and more houses without living in them, they end up creating scarcity, which drives up prices. Commodification is the process of turning something, such as a good, service, idea, or cultural artifact, into a commodity that can be bought and sold in a market. This often changes the item’s original meaning or significance by transforming its social or cultural value into an economic one based on supply, demand, and price. Now, the very things we need just to survive, food, shelter, water, and medical care are being comodified to pump as much profit from it as possible. Juxtapose this with wage stagnation despite increased productivity in the past century and inflation, it’s pretty clear that corporate entities would rather see us dead for short term profits than keep us as customers.
What you said. They’re rigging it against us. They’re literally gatekeeping us from getting anything.