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Is the Housing Crisis Radicalizing Young Voters? · The Missing Middle Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Canada isn't the only country in the world where younger generations are struggling to buy a home or rent an apartment they can afford.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: As over the past two decades, many countries have seen rents and home prices rise faster than wages.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Over the past 20 years, home price to income ratios, one measure of housing unaffordability, rose by over 30% in Sweden, Australia, Norway, New Zealand, Austria, Switzerland, and a host of other countries.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to being the worst, Canada was the best as we had the biggest rise in price to income ratios of any high-income country in the world.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: Today on Demographics, we're examining how reduced housing affordability is reshaping the political views of young people across the globe.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Demographics, hosted by Mike Moffitt and Kara Stern.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: So naturally, I worry about what a lack of housing affordability means at the family level.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, how we're seeing couples have fewer children or having to move far away from family and job opportunities in order to find a place to live.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, I fear that our lack of attainable housing is going to lead to an ever-increasing number of talented Canadians to move elsewhere.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: Though, you know, that concern is diminished somewhat.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: The places that they're likely to move to are also getting more expensive.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Kind of sad, the big hope for people's choosing to stay here is that other places are gonna be bad too.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so maybe it's like relatively okay to stay here.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what we should be counting on to retain our talent, to have other countries uh doing poorly.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Rather, Canada should be doing well.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: You know, at a societal level beyond uh this migration, I think my biggest concern is what a lack of housing affordability might be doing to our politics.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: In particular, I'm worried that the uh housing crisis could lead younger voters to understandably lose faith in the system entirely or go down some pretty dark roads.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: You're not the only person concerned about that.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: The pollster Nick Nanos recently had a piece in McLean's discussing the issue both globally and in Canada.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he gave a number of worrying examples and noted a 2024 poll that showed that over one quarter of Canadian adults under the age of 35 either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that violence is sometimes needed to achieve social change.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that was uh a really worrying piece.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I'd probably be less concerned about the potential political impacts if we heard politicians talk about this issue more, or if we saw more policy put into place in order to try and help out young people.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_01: I also think it's an issue that academics haven't studied nearly enough.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: There has to be some research out there, at least, though, that could maybe link housing affordability issues to changes in political views.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: There absolutely is.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, not as much as I'd like, but it is out there, and what is out there is is worth discussing.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So let's do that today.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And instead of simply citing a bunch of studies at UKRA or our audience, I thought today we would try something a little bit different.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to give you uh six statements related to the intersection of housing and politics in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I'd like you to tell me if you think the statement, you know, based on the research, is probably true, probably false, or give the Avril Levine answer of it's complicated.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll respond with what the current evidence seems to show.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: Sure, let's do it.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Although, can we start with defining what young people means?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, fair, fair question.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: Most of the research kind of cuts it off at uh age 35.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So voters or non-voters between the ages of 18 and 35, though obviously different uh research studies will define things differently, but roughly that's what we're talking about, people in their their 20s and early 30s.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, fair.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: So first statement is declining housing affordability is likely increasing the political divide between older and younger voters.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Is that probably true, probably false, or is complicated?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: I would think that's probably true because it like kind of pits people against each other.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can look at like how NIMBYism has played out, and a lot of people see it as like the incumbents have prevented newcomers to the market from getting in.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: And usually that does have a bit of an age divide just because of the, you know, birth lottery of when you're able to be in a position to buy your home.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm not sure if it's a real political divide in terms of like political parties, because it does seem like there's mostly like consensus on tackling housing affordability, at least in Canada, in a way that doesn't drop prices too much, at least as much as the government can control it.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: So at least in Canada, I'm not sure about like in the rest of the world, but it doesn't seem like you get too many places where you get these big parties that are like, you know, we're gonna represent the young people who don't have a home and we're willing to do what it takes, even if it sacrifices the equity of people who have.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: You don't really hear that.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I would guess it's not by political party, but there is a generational divide.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, it turns out in polling data across North America, Australia, and Europe, it seems to be likely true.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: Polls taken uh over time in a variety of countries show an increasing political divide between older and younger voters.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that divide is is based on priorities, with younger voters tending to prioritize a different set of issues, housing being an obvious one than older generations.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I want to make clear about that, like none of that's to suggest that generational divides are anything new.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, obviously there were quite massive ones in the 1960s.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: And a generation ago, there were divides on issues like climate change and same-sex marriage.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: But it does seem to be, based on the polling data, that this old young divide has increased in relatively rich countries over the past 10 to 15 years.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I would put this one in the probably true bucket.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like I guess as wealth inequality has grown and you see like, you know, middle class people becoming fairly wealthy on paper, at least because of their homeownership versus people who don't have any hope of getting in, that has changed a lot over the last 10 to 15 years.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that makes total sense to me.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and you raise an interesting question uh a couple comments ago when you said, okay, you know, how is this kind of necessarily manifesting itself into uh voting behaviors, right?
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's one thing to prioritize different issues, but it's another thing for for parties to cater to those issues.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: So let's investigate this in statement two.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Declining housing affordability is likely increasing political polarization among young people and reducing their support for mainstream centrist parties.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Is that probably true, probably false, or it's complicated?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's complicated because you can look in the states where there's like a lot of people voting for candidates in the Democratic Party, for example, who are Democratic socialists.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: They hold positions very much outside the status quo of the party.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we saw it here with younger Canadians kind of moving to the right and breaking with status quo ideals on things like immigration.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But as long as we have a first possible system, I don't think it's necessarily pulling them away from voting for the mainstream parties.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So my guess is they're like, they're more likely to just not vote than to vote for a non-mainstream party in a system where like there's really only two parties that have a chance of winning, maybe three.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: In places where there are more political choices to choose from that could actually win, I would suspect there that people are moving away from the center and looking for parties that have those kind of tear-it-down solutions.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I would say that this one is likely true, uh, though, as you point out, geography matters.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also a little bit complicated because sometimes it's hard to divide out what is kind of anti-centrism versus what is anti-incumbency, particularly in in countries where the centrist parties usually win.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: But we do see in exit polling data, particularly in Europe, reduced support uh for centrist parties.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there's an academic article with a title that I just love, and it's called How to Lose Friends and Alienate People: The Social and Political Consequences of Europe's Housing Crisis.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the the article notes how voters under the age of 35 have largely abandoned centrist parties in Europe.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And now, that same author has another academic article called Three Inconvenient Truths: How to Stop Housing Radicalizing the Young and Killing the Political Center.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I gotta say, like, man, does this guy have a talent for titles?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because those are academic uh articles usually have really boring titles, but those are fantastic.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: And his third inconvenient truth is that the center, particularly the center rights most important voter group, tends to be older homeowners without a mortgage.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's who the party caters to.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: And his inconvenient truth is that those parties need to contribute to ensuring a more sustainable economic model for younger generations, or else, you know, they're not going to be able to uh attract uh voters uh across a political spectrum.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And finally, I'll say, you know, you're right that we haven't seen this play out as much in Canada.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: I suspect, uh, and there's not really great research on it, that I think it's more kind of a Trump effect, uh rally around the flag effect than anything else.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: It could have to do with the electoral system, but I would say in the UK that has a very similar electoral system, you are seeing abandonment of the center from younger voters and them voting for more extreme um parties or at least less mainstream parties.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really hard to tell what's going on in Canada, how much of it is uh kind of Trump effect, how much of it is the electoral system.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't seem to be seeing that kind of partisan change as much as in other countries.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess if there are more parties like in the UK, you see a party like the Reform Party having a chance of actually forming government.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if the election was held today, they are, I believe they're the front runners or neck and neck.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it's making parties that were never viable in the past more viable, which is like, yeah, yeah, Kiki wanted to watch their system to see if they change it given how disproportionate the last election was for them and how different the next one might be, depending on, you know, if which party ends up winning.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I totally agree.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that's something I'll be watching as well.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it's actually a very nice segue into statement three, which is the following uh declining housing affordability is likely causing younger people to increase their support for left-wing parties.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: Is that probably true, probably false, or it's complicated?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: I would think this one's complicated too, because like when you think about it, yes, left-wing parties tend to push for more social safety nets, which more people need as wealth inequality grows.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So you'd think it would push people to the left.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: But what I think we're seeing more of is an anti-incumbency effect.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: So in Canada, we've had liberals in power for so long.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And for a long time, we had a very progressive liberal government.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: And that pushed people to the right, especially when they wanted to be kind of against the status quo, wanting to see major change in the country.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it took an outsider to pull the party back to the center to keep them from losing here.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: So even though the incumbent won, it's a party with very different priorities than the last one.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: And in other countries, like we saw the opposite if their incumbents were to the right.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, like I think it moved people against whatever the status quo was in their own country for the most part.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I would put this one under uh it's complicated as well.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a 2021 article in the journal Economy and Space, which makes it clear that while the housing crisis increases radicalization of younger voters, there doesn't seem to be any predetermined pattern to which direction people will become more radicalized, particularly at the population level.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sometimes that does disproportionately help uh parties uh more on the left, but other times it helps parties more on the right.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, in a number of countries, including Portugal, Belgium, Finland, parties on the far right of the political spectrum outpull every other party, particularly uh among men under the age of 35.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Now, there is somewhat of a gender divide here with younger men more likely to go right and younger women more likely to go left.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: Those differences are real, but they can also be kind of overstated.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you'll often hear like, well, it's making women go left and men go right.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And that tends to be a bit of an oversimplification.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Part of this kind of political nexus between younger voters, whether they go left or right, is that there's also a strong correlation between views on the housing crisis and views on immigration among younger voters, uh, particularly but not exclusively, younger male voters.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: In that uh piece, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People, uh, which I cited earlier, it quotes one Dutch voter who says, I'm really not racist, but you know, whenever a sentence starts that way, it's never going to end well.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: But he says, I'm really not racist, but when it comes to my own country, I think I should get priority access to a house.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of a thing that I think a few years ago people would look at and say that's racist.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the culture has changed so much that a lot of people would hear that and go, eh, maybe that's reasonable.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: The data bears that out.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, absolutely.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: That has become more of an accepted uh political view.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not necessarily that the case that a housing crisis turns young voters more left-wing.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_01: And in part, it really is determined by political actors and you know, which politician can really capture the imagination of young voters rather than kind of an ideological shift.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that makes a lot of sense.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: So let's pivot to statement four, which is the following declining housing affordability is likely causing younger people's political preferences to be more polarized among economic lines as affordability issues hit the well-off young people differently than the less well-off young.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is that probably true, probably false, or it's complicated?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that's probably true, maybe complicated in Canada at least.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: I think that has been true in the last few years, although then things like tariffs and Trump's childish threats to Canada have united people as kind of Canadians in supporting the government.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you see less of a political divide.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think when you zoom in, you'd see people worrying about like how it would affect them in different ways, depending on if they make their money off of work or off of wealth.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: Globally, I do think you see young people split between those who will inherit property and have access to their parents' wealth and those who don't.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: It just makes sense.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: My guess would be you're seeing a split in the younger generation more than in the past few decades, even though I'm sure that this has happened in the past where like wealth does play a role as maybe as much or more than age does.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: But I suspect that amount that it plays a role has grown.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and the the research bears that out.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: So I would put this under probably true.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_01: We could say complicated, because it's the research probably isn't as robust as we'd like it to be.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: But there is interesting research out of the UK that does show that there seems to be a divide between younger voters.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: So for those who have access to inherited wealth, they have parents who can help them with a down payment or will just, you know, gift them a home, or they have a high income uh relative to the cost of living of where they live and are able to purchase a home, they're gonna have more kind of mainstream political views.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're not gonna want to burn down the system because the system's still kind of working for them.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: They're not wanting to see necessarily radical changes.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's those who have been left behind who want to burn down the system more.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is where some of the kind of left-right uh divide comes in.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: When you have a younger voter who's left behind and kind of goes, I can't possibly ever see an opportunity for me to own a home, they tend to pivot more left politically.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: They tend to start to support more redistribution, rent control, uh, social housing, you know, those types of policies we, you know, often associate with the mainstream left, not necessarily the extreme left.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: But when it comes to folks who are kind of like, I haven't given up that dream, or I still think it's it's possible if we make a number of changes that maybe one day I will be able to own a home, they tend to pivot to more policies on the right, more supply side reforms, more things like first-time home buyer programs, which can be either on the left or the right, lower taxes, uh uh savings incentives, that kind of thing.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: In essence, there is this divide between um the sort of haves and have nots when it comes to younger people.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: Those have-nots can be split between uh supporting kind of left-wing solutions and supporting right-wing solutions.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think even the people who are on the right that you say there, where they maybe are looking for uh supply-side solutions, probably also still would rather have an economic system that works than one that where they have to get help from their parents.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I understand that if you know, if they see a path forward, then you kind of go, okay, well, at least, at least it might work for me.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe if we can fix things, we can get it back to that versus the people who are like completely hopeless at this point and they just like they have no hope left of being able to own a home that yeah, they would want to see a lot more redistribution.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: That makes sense.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it a lot of it has to do with kind of identity, right?
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: That you have folks who go, okay, like I'm just I'm a forever renter, either uh, you know, then sometimes that's by choice, and sometimes that's by circumstance.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: That tends to uh create different support for a different set of policies than folks who see them as kind of a potential uh renter.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: Let's let's pivot to uh statement five here.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: So statement five is the following declining housing affordability is causing young people to be more disenchanted and disenfranchised from the political system than they were a decade ago.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Is that probably true, probably false, or it's complicated?
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that's true.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know that in Canada, none of our main parties seem to be really wanting to burn the system down.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're all kind of variations on the status quo.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And when you're locked out entirely, it seems like there's no one going to bat for you.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I can see how it's very easy to disengage.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: I know that in Canada, voter turnout has dropped with pretty much every election in the last, in the past decade, but I don't know if that's because of housing affordability or not.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_00: But we can see the turnout has dropped elsewhere too.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like the UK, for example, had an election with its lowest turnout in the past century.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: Historically, buying a home has been the sort of like trigger point for people to get more engaged in the political system because you start to realize things like how political decisions affect things like your mortgage rate and your property taxes.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so without that milestone, there's less of that like moment where they become engaged in the same way as people in the past have.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: So the current research does show that it's probably true that there is less engagement, but there's a really important distinction to make here between less likely to vote and less politically engaged.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because a lot of the engagement that we're seeing from young people takes on different forms than voting, which kind of makes sense.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you believe that the system is rigged against you, then participating in that system is a waste of time, but you still might try to affect change uh other other ways, you know, through social media, through getting kind of like-minded groups together and and and so on.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it it tends to be a little bit complicated uh that you know, you we can't completely infer disengagement from the sort of politics of it with just disengagement from from voting.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: There is a important distinction to be made there.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Fair.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: We've seen a lot of young people get involved in movements that uh are asking for political change.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's too bad that a lot of people feel like it's not worth showing up to vote, but I can understand how they get there.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm glad that there are alternative outlets for them to get involved politically, even though it's still important to vote.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Speaking of of decisions or ability to make decisions, that takes us to our last statement, statement six, which is the following declining housing affordability has reduced the desire for young people to own a home.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is that probably true?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: Probably false, or it's complicated.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: That one rings very false to me.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think there's a decreased desire.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are decreased expectations.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people like they expect to rent forever at this point.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: They just see home ownership as out of reach.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And some have just resigned themselves to that reality.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But there are a lot of people still hopeful they'll be able to afford something, even if they don't think they'll be able to reach what their parents had or anything close to it.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: But I don't think there's any data out there that I've ever seen that shows that people are wanting it less.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: So this one is probably false, that poll after poll across countries show that there's been no meaningful drop in people's desire to own a home over the last 10 or 20 years.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I often find, you know, we we talk a lot with policymakers and politicians, and I find that they often confuse desire with expectations.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: That, you know, there's this belief that if younger voters start to believe that they'll never be able to afford a home, that they'll somehow end up desiring it less, that they'll be okay with that.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Human nature doesn't work that way.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: And both you and I are parents, and we kind of see that with our own kids, right?
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like, if anything, the more you can't have something, the more you want it.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've done that with with my kids, right?
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: But sometimes I'm like, this this vegetable is only for grown-ups.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um you can't have it.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, no, no, no, no.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: I won't I want to try the broccoli.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's a little kind of Jedi mind trick that uh parents use because there is this human nature thing that the more you can't have something, the more something's not an option, the more attractive it starts to look.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're being denied that option, this is gonna breed resentment because you're being denied that thing.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And in my view, politicians, they're they're playing with fire if they're thinking that younger people will simply get used to the idea that they'll never have an opportunity to purchase a home so long as we make renting a pleasant enough experience.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And to be clear, renting should be a pleasant experience.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: Renting is a fantastic option uh that is the best option for a whole lot of people.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: You should have a diversity of options that you can choose from.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: And right now, we are seeing younger people still want the option to buy a home, but are often denied that option.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I'm worried that politicians will listen to this and then be like, oh, the solution to the housing crisis is reverse psychology.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just convince people that it's not something they want.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just we'll do the same thing we do with kids and broccoli.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: It'll work great.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Wonderful.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: I hope that's not the takeaway from this episode.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for watching and listening.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Our producer is Meredith Martin, and this episode was edited by Canadian Sybil.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have any thoughts or questions about Jedi mind tricks you can use on your children, please leave a comment in our YouTube comment section.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll see you next time.