A Guest on the Weekly, and Roots of the Housing Crisis

Good morning,

I’ve got treat for you. A good friend and mentor of mine, Josh Baxt, has contributed the first piece today. He has over 20 years of writing & journalism experience, with a control over the English language that I aspire to have one day. He’s written for many prominent health and life science news publications over his career, but today, he’s writing for us on a topic of his choosing.

Before we get to his topic, as always subscription link if you’d like to share with anyone: Subscribe.

Have a topic or story you’d like to see me write about and react to? Shoot me an email at [email protected] 

Ok, Josh is up!

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The Politics of Public Health

By Josh Baxt | @JoshBaxt

Former President Donald Trump doesn’t talk about the COVID vaccine. In December 2021, at a Dallas rally, he boasted about getting his booster and was booed by some in the crowd. Since then, Operation Warp Speed has left his stump speech.

The vaccine was arguably Trump’s most significant achievement, and he won’t even talk about it. In June 2023, when asked why, Trump said: “I really don’t want to talk about it because, as a Republican, it’s not a great thing to talk about, because for some reason it’s just not.”

Trump’s vaccine reticence is not unique in the GOP. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has taken a number of actions to undermine vaccination and other public health efforts, at one point calling for mask and vaccine mandates to be permanently banned.

This might be dismissed as populist posturing if it didn’t have real world consequences. A number of studies are showing COVID death rates for Republicans are higher than for Democrats. The red team is getting vaccinated at lower rates and is suffering as a result.

It may seem odd that Republican politicians are promoting policies that disproportionately kill their own voters, but that’s where the political incentives apparently lie. And while it would be easy to say this is a new, COVID-related issue, it really isn’t. The GOP has had an uneasy relationship with public health for years.

Looking at state-level infant mortality rates, the worst five are all deep red: Mississippi, Louisiana, West Virginia, Arkansas and Alabama. Mississippi’s rate in 2020 was 8.7 deaths per 1,000 live births. By contrast, California’s in 2022 was 4 per 1,000.

These numbers could get worse before they get better. Fearing new, draconian abortion statutes, some obstetricians are leaving red states entirely, which could be particularly harmful during complex pregnancies.

Taking a step back, average life expectancy is lower in southern red states and Appalachia, around 77 years. That’s about four years below the average in Pacific coast states. This is not a socioeconomic issue. People who live in economically privileged areas, with ample access to great medical care, are still dying younger.

Are red state policies contributing to this gap? They’re certainly not helping. The confluence of low investment in public health and the belief that unbridled freedom overrides even proven interventions is taking its toll.

Which leads to the truly bizarre reality that majorities are consistently voting for candidates who, through their actions or inactions, are doing those voters harm. It’s not a great look for democracy.

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A Quick Sidebar

My hope is to pull in guest writers more often. It keeps things fresh, while also incorporating different perspectives. If you, or someone you know is seeking an outlet for their writing, send them my way.

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Various Roots of the Housing Crisis

I have what is perhaps a controversial opinion I’d like to try and articulate: I find the concept of a professional landlord a bit, well, distasteful? Specifically, those people who own dozens or even hundreds of units, whose rent props up a lifestyle of leisure by profiting off of what is an essential human need. It feels a bit medieval, a bit feudal, and a bit unethical to me. Afterall, by renting a place out to tenants, you’re not necessarily providing housing, you’re actual removing a good from the market and renting it out at a premium while conserving the growth in the homes value. If this is abused, like I believe it is today, then it inevitably leads to a housing crisis, and increasingly unaffordable rents.

A home, whether that be an apartment, condo, or single family residence, is perhaps the greatest vehicle for wealth generation the average person has access to. They historically appreciate in value at a high, consistent rate, and are a physical asset everyone is in need of. But a home is more than just a financial investment. They are a shelter; a place of security for people to build families, build communities, and build wealth for future generations. But financial access to owning a home has dramatically dropped the last decade. There’s a massive housing shortage, and its global. And its slowly creating a generation of perma-renters.

In conjunction with this drop in housing ownership is also a steep rise in the cost to rent. So not only are a large percentage of people being quickly priced out of most homes on the market, but an increasing proportion of people’s income is going towards rent.

There are two major contributors to this housing crisis that I see (alongside many):

• First, and by far one of the greatest issues is that a number of major investor corporations and hedge funds, such as Zillow and Blackrock, are buying up huge proportions of homes at above market rates. According to Pew Charitable Trusts, corporate investors constituted 22% of new single-family home purchases in 2022 alone.

• Second, there’s been a large scale AirBnB-ification around real estate investment. Apps like AirBnB, VRBO etc. have made finding and advertising towards renters easier than ever, which leads to greater profits from rentals, and thus even more appeal to those seeking to make passive income through rentals.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not suggesting we outlaw buying multiple homes, or that renting is bad in every instance. Hell, renting in the short term provides a lot of flexibility to those on the move, and definitely has supported my own lifestyle this past year. But there must be a balance here.

Poland recently implemented an interesting potential solution: First time home buyers are exempt from certain transaction related taxes, while those purchasing their sixth (or greater) property pay increasingly higher transaction taxes. This feels like a happy medium. It creates accessibility for first time buyers to enter the market by removing some financial restraints, while de-incentivizing additional real estate investment by making it less affordable to do so past a certain extent.

My point with all this (really my hope) is that we should treat real estate investment with the ethical responsibility it deserves. Right now ~60% of the US population is living paycheck to paycheck, a bleak outlook for the financial health of this country, but an outlook home ownership could help solve.

Home ownership is a building block of community stability and prosperity. The nature of ownership is that we feel more connected, more responsible for the property and the land it sits on, and accountable for the community the home is a part of. It incentivizes people to take care of their communities, while simultaneously providing individuals a vehicle for wealth generation for themselves and their offspring. Access to this pillar of our communities should be a prioritized.

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Something Light

I’ll end on something funny I saw this week. Former NBA MVP Derrick Rose was at a Drake concert this week, but was hilariously caught playing a game on Chess.com instead of watching the show. I’m glad to know I have something in common with Derrick Rose, because I too would rather place chess than go to a Drake concert.