Supply and Demand, A House Costs How Much??? – It's Not a Tiny House Podcast

Wyatt: [00:01:12] You you cranked me up this morning for this podcast, which is which is probably fine, but I think for podcasting purposes. Yeah. Yes. The producer is back there cranking me up like a chainsaw. Right. Wind me up, here we go. So here's why I'm pissed. And here's what started this whole thing, right. Housing, affordability of housing and who's currently in control of the housing market. Now, when I walked out of college student loan debt. Right. And then you got to go. I got housing debt because, you know, cost of living has has rose exponentially. I don't know if housing is down exponentially, but it's dramatically increased right at the same time. Employment. Like like quality of employment, I should say, or quality of pay and employment relative to these costs has not risen.

Barna: [00:01:58] No

Wyatt: [00:01:58] You got credit card debt. You got health care costs. I'm pissed off because I can't afford to have the life that I was told I would have by a generation bought and paid for going you got to go to college, you got to get you a job. you got to get you a white picket, you got to get this, you got to have insurance, you better have some kids, you better do all this stuff. Only then to go to a housing meeting and be told you can no longer be what you want to be when you grow up, fit inside the box. Dude, I got two fingers on two hands and that's where I'm coming from you today from minus, of course, the fact I'm sitting on a bucket on two blocks of wood. That's actually right. So I'm pissed and and trying to contribute to a solution and trying to bring logic and trying to bring mathematics and trying to help people understand that we're all responsible for for this. And that does include the generation that raised us and told us we could be what we wanted to be when we grew up. And when we tell them the math of, hey, I want to fuck in smaller house because I don't want to heat it all the time and cool it all the time and clean it all the time. And by the way, I just want a smaller house. Is that going to be OK with you? And what was the answer that we..

Barna: [00:03:07] No.

Wyatt: [00:03:07] Yeah, no.

Barna: [00:03:08] That's the answer to everything. So what was I don't know, we our producer chime in here. What was the movie just came out.

Sage: [00:03:16] Yeah. Enola Holmes.

Barna: [00:03:18] Enola Holmes and the line in there was why change anything when the status quo.

Sage: [00:03:23] Why change a world that suits you so well?

Barna: [00:03:25] Why change your world that suits you so well? Yeah. So these people have already gotten everything. I'm not saying they didn't work for it. They worked for it when I thought the playing field is different. When you were when you could give birth for two hundred dollars, you know,

Wyatt: [00:03:42] Now its ten grand.

Barna: [00:03:42] That's seventy 70 years ago and now it's ten grand when you could buy a house for five thousand dollars and now the two fifty is.

Wyatt: [00:03:54] Those are real is those of you who don't believe that.

Barna: [00:03:57] the low end in a tiny town an hour from a major city in Colorado. So in Florence, Colorado, Canyon City, Colorado, Penrose, we're looking about $250000 is the minimum. Now, when they moved here, I moved here five years ago that the minimum was fifty thousand dollars. So you say it's not exponential in five years.

Wyatt: [00:04:20] That is. It's close enough.

Barna: [00:04:21] I mean, yeah, that's five hundred percent. So we're, so here it is. Five years minimum doubled if not quadrupled for prices. Wages did not go up. Education costs didn't go down. Labor costs, you know, did not increase along with that.

Wyatt: [00:04:39] Yeah. Let's just say let's just pick a dollar amount that that most people can't even live on. Let's say five years ago, ten dollars an hour. Right at fifty thousand dollars.

Barna: [00:04:49] Colorado. Yeah, Colorado. Ohio. Minimum wage is still like eight, between eight and nine bucks. So different world.

Wyatt: [00:04:54] Right. So I'm just going with like zeros that it's going to be basic math. Right. So if a house is fifty thousand dollars and the wages are ten dollars an hour. Right. It's that fifty thousand dollar house goes to two hundred and fifty. That ten dollar an hour job relative is fifty dollars an hour. It's a five X and and they've gone up maybe five dollars. Right. So it's, it's completely fucked. Everything is fucked when you look at it that way from a mathematics standpoint. Yet when you present this information from the people who are, you know, delving out these whopping fifteen, thank you, dollar an hour jobs, by the way, to work inside these businesses. You're not doing anybody a favor, man. You've got the ability to work. I can't fucking live on that because because of how this works, because of the housing costs.

Barna: [00:05:44] But it's but it's supply and demand. So demand went up in Colorado due to legalizing marijuana. It didn't go up in, you know, because I know, Bucyrus, Ohio.

Wyatt: [00:05:54] Sure.

Barna: [00:05:55] They just legalize pot a couple of years ago. All the rules are designed, so you can't actually grow it or sell it or anything. So they don't actually want it. But there you can buy a house for thirty five thousand dollars. But you're in Ohio.

Wyatt: [00:06:09] Yeah, right. No offense to Ohio.

Barna: [00:06:11] We're here for a reason. And that it's not Ohio, it's not Minnesota. That's why we're here. Yeah, well, that's also the reason a not great house, or shitty houses, are two hundred thousand dollars. Two hundred fifty thousand dollars. So here's so you can't you can't afford that. And it's supply and demand. So demand's up. In order to balance the price, you got to increase supply, and that's why we went to a housing meeting to talk about how do we increase supply. We have an idea. We have a plan. I think the next part, next thing we record will be what our actual plan is, what we're currently doing. But right now, we just need to increase supply. And I don't care how I don't think you care either.

Wyatt: [00:06:57] Fuck no.

Barna: [00:06:57] Doesn't have to be us. We're talking to Habitat for Humanity owns lots. So I was on the phone last night with or yesterday morning with the city planner going like, hey, do you have you talked to Habitat? Because they're not building anything, but they own four lots. Can you just put it on the market? Hey, there's a builder who's got 14 lots locked up on an improved street. Open it up, put it on the market, because currently there are zero lots on the market so builders can't build and the builders that have the land aren't building. Now, material costs go into that. Lack of labor goes into that.

Wyatt: [00:07:35] All of it does. But that's and that's literally the next bullet point, right? Well, that's actually part of the same one we've got to be responsible like and you are contributing to the problem. And I also understand that I must be contributing to the problem in your eyes as well, because I'm, you know, like trying to do things differently. We're trying to do things maybe a little bit differently than your than your status quo. Right. Like but. I'm not the only one contributing to this conflict of interests between these two groups of people who think we can only we can only have housing grow this way versus us or like we need housing to grow any fucking way actually possible. And this is a very simple thing about responsibility, right? I always, not always, and I'm going to be careful-ish here, but I hear parents. I hear older parents, I should say, of a younger generation going, you know, kids today and youth today and nobody wants to fucking work and do this and do that. And I always go back to the same question, who raised them, right? If I have a dog that comes into the house or somebody else's house is better, is a better example, somebody else's home and pees on the carpet. And I don't reprimand that and I don't correct that. And I don't create a dog that everybody wants to be around. I am responsible for that. Well, guess who I am. I'm your dog, and you're mad at me for not figuring out how to not pee on the carpet when you didn't teach me how to do it right. You are in this with us. We're here together. And that's that's all I'm going to say angrily, because that was a little charged.

Barna: [00:09:09] Yeah, but this is not a parenting podcast.

Wyatt: [00:09:12] I'm saying they were in this together now.

Barna: [00:09:15] We are.

Wyatt: [00:09:15] It's so, so help me fix this now because we're here and present.

Barna: [00:09:19] Ok, well that's that's what pissed me off at the meeting is we're here with solutions. So I do this crazy thing where I get all the data and all the facts and I read the reports and I listen to the podcasts and I read the books and I talk to the people who are in it to get the data, to get the facts. So in front of me, I mean, I've got the Florence Master Plan, I've got the county report on housing. So we'll have links to things like that in our show notes. But there's also a nationwide report. You do not have to read all of it. It's like three hundred, two hundred some pages. The name of the housing report that came out early 2020 is Out of Reach. If that doesn't tell you.

Wyatt: [00:10:04] That's the title.

Barna: [00:10:05] That I'm that's the title because that is the conclusion. Go to your state (page) and that is what you can present at planning and zoning. There's what you can do. This is the ammunition that you can have.

Wyatt: [00:10:24] You're supposed to have.

Barna: [00:10:25] You're supposed to have. You can have. You can use. But it will be ignored, especially if you're in...

Wyatt: [00:10:34] In our in our example. It doesn't matter how much information you've shown up with, how much work you've done up until this point, what your portfolio looks like, I mean that from a building portfolio or a financial portfolio like this is...

Barna: [00:10:47] If you're at least ten years younger, you're a baby.

Wyatt: [00:10:50] You better bring up an army.

Barna: [00:10:51] You don't know anything.

Wyatt: [00:10:52] Which is great, which is great. Like like that's the motivation. And here's something that we found out. We went to this meeting and I'm in my 30s, Barna's in his very early 40s. Right. So we're not that far apart from each other. There was one person that I know actually was in her 50s. Everybody else was 60s and older. And I actually saw a Facebook post yesterday. And they're like, you know, the average person in the Senate is 67 or 70 or whatever. That's all well and good presidents, you know, are the nominees are 78 and 74 respectively. Great. The average person on the planet is thirty seven. So unless you're willing to remember what it was like when you were thirty seven and what your life was like, or more likely, ask people who are in that age range because I have a thing on the board says ask us about our future. If you're an elderly person listening to this by chance if you made it through the F bombs. My apologies on my unbelievable amounts of disrespect. If you can get your, if we can get our heads wrapped around this idea that that we are all perishable goods. Right. We are only going to live so long. And mathematically speaking, I am closer, or further away, from average age of death than you are means we're going to be here a little bit longer. So instead of telling me about the future, you're not going to be here for, you could consider asking us about the future that we want. Just a thought like, gee, I don't know. I mean, you guys are going to be here for another forty fifty years.

Barna: [00:12:18] Is it going to be a four hour long podcast? Because you're like reminding me of all these things. I'm trying to go back to..

Wyatt: [00:12:22] I'm going through the bullet points. I'm half way home.

Barna: [00:12:25] I'm trying to get to my point. OK, so I brought all the facts, brought all the facts. And we were sitting at this meeting that ran probably around two hours.

Wyatt: [00:12:34] I think I am contributing to to that...

Barna: [00:12:36] What just bringing me all this like all this new new new things that are in my head that I'm trying to stay focused. But anyway, so I bring we're the a housing meeting and and it went into basically a complaint session about grass and how the new pavement is too high from the curb and how somebody's car got dinged and I'm literally sitting there going. Right now, people are living on the street, I have a friend who has been couch surfing for two years, there's a single mom who was working two jobs before this COVID thing hit with a six year old daughter who's out on the street. She's doing a GoFundMe. But even after doing a GoFundMe, you have a pile of cash, you can't get a house. You can't rent an apartment.

Wyatt: [00:13:29] You can't find one.

Barna: [00:13:30] There's nothing available. And we're just like anything. Let's help that person. I'm literally yelling at this point at the meeting like there's a six year old living on the street.

Wyatt: [00:13:42] But they're worried about paint colors.

Barna: [00:13:43] They're worried about why isn't the house four blocks down painted and we need to clean up the street before we get investment like all this shit. That doesn't matter. Yeah, I get it. Second Street sucks. I agree with you 100 percent sucks more being six and living on the street.

Wyatt: [00:14:03] Yeah.

Barna: [00:14:05] What kind of environment are they getting into and we can't pass ADU code that allows your neighbor to build some housing for their family members or, I don't know, a single mom with a six year old that they can afford and be safe and have a roof over their head. You guys, this is what we're fighting.

Wyatt: [00:14:21] Yes. Jail and prison can't be a better alternative to your current life. And that's what it would be with meals and a roof. I'm not I'm not even joking when I say that going to jail or prison is an improvement in their life.

Barna: [00:14:36] And we wonder why jails are full.

Wyatt: [00:14:37] Yeah. And you and you sit and go, well, you know, we spend too much money on this and incarceration and then taxes are too high. And I'm like, again, we are all in this together. And instead of you are emotionally charged bullshit. Come in here, bring the math, bring the facts. Barna's doing it. We are there. We are again wonderfully outnumbered like generationally in these conversations. And it's like, hold on, we shut down businesses to be a part of this. Right. Like on a personal level, we had to shut down our businesses. That means we had to shut off money coming into our lives to go be present, participate in this. That's the reality. But also, like, at what point are you like, oh, OK, well, at least these guys, you know, doing some they care about it enough to to literally take time out of their lives. So that's.

Barna: [00:15:22] Yeah and we've been taking the time out of our, you know, schedules to go to these meetings.

Wyatt: [00:15:27] So we learn this, so you guys know how to save time.

Barna: [00:15:31] This is ammo for you. And also,

Wyatt: [00:15:33] You got to save time.

Barna: [00:15:33] We're trying to help you out.

Wyatt: [00:15:35] You've got to save time.

Barna: [00:15:36] Because you're you're going to if you want to do anything, there are rules. And I think I signed off with if you don't like something change it. Well changing it is hard. That's why most people don't do it. But if you want housing or you want the future to be like what you want it to be, you got to you got to put in the work.

Wyatt: [00:15:57] And you have to start now because it's not going to happen tomorrow. Like we've we've been here now. Well, well, north of a year. Well, we're at a year of consistently. You know, banging this stuff down and there's obviously no end in sight and neither one of us really expect there to be one, because as soon as this happens, the future is still there for us, or we'll find another thing to fight, guaranteed.

Barna: [00:16:21] There's another project coming up.

Wyatt: [00:16:22] Fuck yeah, and that's the fun part. And then as we move into our last, you know, solutions, facts, emotions, numbers. Well,

Barna: [00:16:29] Well, yeah. So that's the thing. Yeah. So I brought the facts and, you know, this housing meeting devolved into a complaint session and I'm trying to draw the focus back into solutions. And I don't have to make this up like I'm I'm not some housing genius or whatever. But you know what the county did at the end of their their 100 or 80 page report on page sixty eight starts the list of solutions to the housing crisis. It's almost like, you know, the work is already done. No writing stuff down pretty easy. Actually implementing them is hard. So I just read one of the things that was on the list, completely ignored. So facts don't penetrate. OK, emotion, six year old on the street..

Wyatt: [00:17:18] That didnt work.

Barna: [00:17:19] Dont work.

Wyatt: [00:17:20] Which is like, oh, if we have to, you know, we'll go the emotional route and start bringing them.

Barna: [00:17:23] We'll shed a tear.

Wyatt: [00:17:23] Crickets, dudes, crickets like.

Barna: [00:17:23] Crickets, nobody gives a fuck about you. Except you and maybe your parents or small group of friends. But at these meetings, there's nobody there to represent your interests. You have to represent your interests and maybe you can help represent other people's interests who can't make it to that meeting.

Wyatt: [00:17:53] There's a really easy thing inside of that, right? You must be active in your own rescue. Right. So responsibility is huge. If if you're going to not complain about the things that were taken away or you didn't get to do or whatever, you have to be active in your own rescue. That starts like now, you need to be active in getting things accomplished and what you want now, because in two years you could maybe have that thing even become an option. But like tomorrow it won't be one. Right. So talk about that. Like you can't rescue you are a swimmer. You were a lifeguard, right? Like they have to be willing to accept help.

Barna: [00:18:36] Yeah. So here's here's what happens if I'm a lifeguard and I go to rescue you. You're not taking part in that rescue, whether that's being passive or actively trying.

Wyatt: [00:18:50] Maybe kicking my feet a little.

Barna: [00:18:51] Whatever.

Wyatt: [00:18:52] And shutting the fuck up.

Barna: [00:18:53] But that's not where we're at. Were people who are you know, you're trying to rescue them. Usually they're putting up a fight. They're scared, crazy, whatever. Yeah. You knock them out or you let them drown and then you pull them out.

Wyatt: [00:19:05] This is real. That's real.

Barna: [00:19:07] That's how it works.

Wyatt: [00:19:07] Because the person the person fighting you when you're trying to rescue them, if they're fighting you, they'll drown you both and you're both fucking dead. But which is where we are currently right now.

Barna: [00:19:16] So we're we're trying to, you know, help people like, you know, that's crazy.

Wyatt: [00:19:22] Right.

Barna: [00:19:23] And a lot of people don't agree with that.

Wyatt: [00:19:24] And this is not a threat. We are not going to start knocking people out. I'm just

saying that, its a metaphor.

Barna: [00:19:31] But anyway, so we try emotions. We were trying the wrong emotions will try a new tactic at the next meeting or I'll tell you my idea.

Wyatt: [00:19:39] What do they want me to do, you know, do some bloodletting in the fucking room, just they understand that I am serious.

Barna: [00:19:43] Yeah set yourself on fire, man, for the cause.

Wyatt: [00:19:46] Go full Gandhi, right.

Wyatt: [00:19:48] What it comes down to is the solutions we're working on and proactively. We have some we have some thoughts. We have some plans. Oh, and also we have some action. Right. So like you said. Writing stuff down. This is another clever one. Right. Like a ton of theory is worth an ounce of action. You got to get there and become involved. You got to build something to kind of create it. We've been working on that facts, clearly, deaf ears, emotions, whatever. What we found out inside of the meetings thus far, we are wonderfully outnumbered. Get your friends together, build yourself an army. It doesn't matter if most of them are quiet in the room. You bring the numbers. This is how our system works. You bring the majority, you win. You guys, this is local government. This isn't the Electoral College isn't involved in this one. So we won't go into how that actually works in the bigs here. But but you need numbers straight up. If you can fill the room more than they can fill the room because you have more passionately charged people who want to change...

Barna: [00:20:46] Well, I'm going to disagree with you on that. You know, it's like they can be quiet. Well, they can't. They definitely have to bring that point of view and speak up. Now, they don't have to yell like we do. Yeah, not everyone is going to be telling their own story is is part of the deal. So we had the time we moved something down the line was when we invited four realtors, a banker and several other individuals, local business owners who are on the side of, well, we think is the right thing to do and just in case we need the backup, it's actually in the city's master plan. So we're not fighting for anything that the city isn't expecting, isn't wanting. It is a small group that has the money and the time and the and the energy to walk down the street because it's a small town and show up to every one of these meetings to push their agenda and their agenda is do nothing and improve my property value. So we're there to kind of talk about the other side of it. Not everybody already has a house.

Wyatt: [00:21:58] Not everybody's got money.

Barna: [00:21:59] Not everybody wants a big house.

Wyatt: [00:22:00] Not everybody's out of debt. Not everybody's, you know, already worked their lifetime. Not everybody can find the job. Not everybody can provide the job. Not everybody can...

Barna: [00:22:08] People just need the first step. And we're we're not letting them do that.

Wyatt: [00:22:12] And it's interesting. Right? So we've been there making our attempts to be the voice for this young mother that's got a young child in there on the street. So she doesn't have the time to be present for that case to be made. Right. And there I think the thinking is, is that, well, that's the exception, not the rule. But if you talk to our realtors, which we've talked to and they were at the meeting, they literally said our housing inventory is like dangerously low. Right. Like, we need we need more housing. So we need more housing now and and that's that's our belief, right, and and some of that with our idea and stuff moving forward is like, well, you know, what's it going to look like? And this and that. And it's like it's going to look like people are not homeless. We can always make the aesthetics improve. What we need are the structures and the infrastructure in place. We can always reside it. We can always repaint it. We can always do these things. What we need are safe, secure places that someone can actually afford to live inside of. And so on the bottom one, you know, fuck your paint color problem. I mean that, you need to help us figure out how to get people indoors and we can solve that problem.

Barna: [00:23:27] And it doesn't have to be pretty.

Wyatt: [00:23:28] No, we can say we can solve that problem later, guys. We can.

Barna: [00:23:32] Lipstick on the pig, right? Oh, yeah, we got to we got to make it so much prettier. No, you need to have four walls and a roof and.

Wyatt: [00:23:39] Guys, a place like you can have a child sleeping in a bed where they can have some heat when it's cold. Winter's coming. For the record, those of you who, you know, have never gone without, never had to figure out what it's like to to build a fire and hope like hell it doesn't fucking go out before you wake up from from being cold. Like, if you never done that, you're you're not coming from the same place I'm coming from. Right. So understand real desperation does exist. And I think it's going to get I think it's going to get harder before it gets easier. So like, please just help help us by understanding the fact that we are in for a struggle, we're in for a fight. Ok?

Barna: [00:24:16] And yet you're in this. If you're, well, if you take it on, you're in it. But so the takeaway is, well, we'll try new things. But so far, the one thing that works is numbers. Get your realtors, get your friend's.

Wyatt: [00:24:32] Numbers and people for sure and have your facts correct. Like your stuff's going to be localized. Right. We're talking about we're talking about a big problem in the country we know exists. But the numbers are a little more close to home. So you're going to need to do like if you're in another state, like we have Colorado's information because it's relevant more to our eye of Ohio's information, too. And I can share that you're in a different world. It is. And if you're in Minnesota and if you're in Arizona and if you're in California or whatever, like, you know, just do a little bit of your due diligence. What we're saying is that this is the stuff you need. These are the places you need to go and look. But almost more than that, you need to activate powers of people that are on your side so that you can actually it doesn't have to be a fight like, you know, you yelling in the streets like we've seen of late. You need to be able to show that people are on your, in the same camp as you, perspective, living condition wise, future outlook wise, these kind of things.

Barna: [00:25:29] Well, I'm going to I'm going to bring that up, too. I've been saying this a lot with all the protests going on not to get overly political, but if you've gone to more protests than city council meetings, you're doing it wrong.

Wyatt: [00:25:42] Sure.

Barna: [00:25:42] You know who decides your police budget? City council. You know, who decides housing code and rules, whatever. City council.

Wyatt: [00:25:51] Your city council is where it starts.

Barna: [00:25:52] All that stuff. So, I mean, we didn't, we're not taking on the police budget fight here. We're doing the housing one.

Wyatt: [00:25:58] Not yet.

Barna: [00:25:58] But that is where you take, that's where you take the fight. You go to city council and that's where you got to have your facts straight. You got to bring your own army because there's already people in the trenches. You got to get in.

Wyatt: [00:26:14] This is the political system that we've inherited thus far. And the only way to change it is going to be with people that can actually do it. And that's that is right now there. So I get protests. I mean, I think we all understand the value and.

Barna: [00:26:27] Fundamental right.

Wyatt: [00:26:27] And the right to be able to do that. But from a dollars to donuts standpoint, if I have if I have 30 minutes to contribute to one or the other, I think that you'll find more density in those 30 minutes with city council versus, you know, making a sign and going to protest. I think.

Barna: [00:26:47] If you had one hundred people at city council meeting, that would be about a hundred, ninety nine, people more than is usually at a city council meeting.

Wyatt: [00:26:57] You want to protest? Protest there, inside.

Barna: [00:26:59] Show up, man.

Wyatt: [00:27:01] With facts, with people, with information, with an actual with an actual demand. Right. Like this is what we want. Here's the bullet point and then they'll go, hey, OK. Well, you know, these hundred people want this. Who's opposed?

Barna: [00:27:16] Well, you get three minutes each. You can go by yourself and you get three minutes,

Wyatt: [00:27:20] I say you run it back.

Barna: [00:27:21] Or you get 100 people got three hundred minutes.

Wyatt: [00:27:25] Do it.

Barna: [00:27:26] Right. You're taking over the meeting.

Wyatt: [00:27:27] You just took over the meeting.

Barna: [00:27:29] They'll give up.

Wyatt: [00:27:30] You can go all the way back to the old school tactics, guys like Alexander Hamilton right, Fucking, he goes to the constitutional convention and runs it back for six hours himself. And people are like, who fuck is this guy?

Barna: [00:27:42] That's why they limit to three minutes.

Wyatt: [00:27:44] Yeah, yeah. Be those guys.

Barna: [00:27:46] But there's no limit on the number of people. So just keep that in mind.

Wyatt: [00:27:50] Here is how our system works. Do with it what you will. I said what I said.

Barna: [00:27:54] Follow us, like us, share and subscribe. Follow on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or wherever you consume your podcasts.

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