The United States is currently undergoing a serious housing crisis.
There's a crisis with affordability, there is a crisis with availability.
And how is Kansas reacting to it?
Well, the city of Shawnee has decided, let's ban roommates.
Which is one of the only ways people can afford to put a roof
over their heads with exploding rents.
So the Shawnee City Council voted unanimously, 8-0 to ban co-living,
becoming among the first Kansas City area municipalities to prevent the practice.
Which has gained popularity in recent years as rent and
home prices have soared, so, why do they think people do this?
You think people like living with random strangers?
Could it be that they're desperate and literally have no other option?
Let me continue.
The new ordinance defines a co-living group as a group of at least four
unrelated adults living together in a dwelling unit.
The new ordinance stated that if one adult is unrelated to another adult,
then the entire group will be classified as unrelated.
Okay, so how did they justify this insane decision?
And by the way, really there's nothing else going on in Shawnee, Kansas.
Everything is so hunky-dory that this is what the city council is focusing on.
I'd like to look into their finances.
I'd like to look into who their donors are.
And why it is that they've decided to target people who are so
desperate to put a roof over their heads,
that they're willing to live with all sorts of strangers.
I'd love to know, but here's how they're justifying it.
City staff received input and concerns from residents and
city council members regarding a relatively new trend where single family
homes are being purchased and converted into rental units with multiple
individual tenants, the memorandum of the ordinance said.
In this arrangement, individual tenants have leases of varying lengths,
have separate secured access to their rooms, and often do not know or have
relationships with others who are also occupying the same single family dwelling.
The memo continued saying, the rental arrangements are not typical of common
rental uses in single family districts that are occupied by family units.
So, I'm sure there is an element of people living in these
neighborhoods who don't like the fact that there are multiple
people who are unrelated living into these houses.
Which, by the way, mind your own goddamn business and shut up.
But again, the real goons here at the end of the day,
are the individuals who are elected in positions of power.
And what are they doing?
Are they actually serving the best interests of their constituents?
Are they looking out for their voters?
Are they trying to alleviate the economic issues that lead to people not wanting to,
but literally having to rent a place with various roommates
in order to be able to afford it.
No, they're not focusing on any of those root causes, instead,
they decided to outlaw living with roommates.
So what are people supposed to do if they can't afford housing?
Live on the streets?
And if they live on the streets, what happens then?
Do you then advocate for the cops to round them up and throw them in jail, even
though you're offering them no housing, is that what you're planning on doing?
This country is a joke.
And people lose their minds, especially on the right when you criticize this country,
but how could you not criticize it?
One of the richest countries in the world and
we treat people like they're trash, even though we have the unlimited
resources necessary to make sure that everyone here is made whole.
>> Yeah, you're supposed to spend at most 30% of your income on housing,
otherwise you won't be able to live and afford everything else like food, right?
And if you've got kids diapers, etcetera, right?
They just did a recent study in this exact area, and
it turns out that over 48% of renters in Shawnee, pay more than 30%.
That's nearly half the renters in over their heads, why?
Because the housing prices constantly go up.
By the way, we've done many stories here that you'll find almost nowhere else in
mainstream media.
About why private equity groups are buying real estate all across the country, and
they're not just buying commercial estate, they're buying residential real estate.
And then they're driving up prices.
The idea is to grab all the stuff first and
then create an artificial market where they can get more money out of you.
And then the houses become harder to buy and
then they have to pay more to get housing.
But a lot of people can't afford it, so then they get driven into rent, and
then they get desperate.
And they're gonna have to live eight people in a single house, right?
To just to be able to afford the rent cuz the rent is impossibly high.
And is anybody doing anything about it?
No, because the private equity guys are untouchable.
Those are the rich financiers.
I mean, we did a story about the Gilded Age a minute ago on the show.
And that's exactly what happened in the Gilded Age.
The bankers grabbed everything and
squeezed the life out of people until there was fury.
Part of the reason that FDR did social security and
all those other things is because people were going to literally turn to communism,
because they're like, well, look, if we have nothing.
If the great majority of people have nothing, and
we got to take it from us through unjust laws passed by Congress, etcetera
to help the richest people in the world, well, then there's gonna be a reckoning.
And here we are again.
And the only law they passed is telling him you can't do that.
Well, then what do you want him to do?
Why don't you go after the bankers who did this in the first place?
No, they're too powerful, and we're all getting greased by them, right?
Not at the local city council level at Shawnee, but
certainly at the congressional level.
And since there's nothing that your government is doing to help you,
now they're gonna come and crack down on you,
I should say, to make sure that I don't know what, that you're homeless?
Cuz you can't afford living by yourself.
Hey, do you think that if they can afford living in one house by themselves that
they would do it?
Yeah, of course they would do it.
Think they wanna live with seven other random people?
Have keys within the house while you can't go into that room,
that's a separate house because that's somebody else's.
It's so awkward, they're not doing it out of choice.
They're doing cuz they have no choice.
>> Let me give you the numbers.
Let's go to graphic six here.
I mean, look, our audience is smart, we live in reality, and
we see it with our own eyes.
But for anyone who might have missed this.
Okay, let's focus on the Johnson County, Right?
This is where the City Council is making these changes.
The City Council's vote came despite a presentation from
a Johnson County organization where housing studies showed that
the average home price in the county rose 37%.
>> [LAUGH] Come on, men.
>> From 2017 to 2021 in just a few short
years it rose 37% climbing, from let's keep it up.
Climbing from $324,393 to $443,700.
The study, wow, shockingly also showed that wages did not rise at that same rate.
>> [LAUGH] Really, they didn't rise 37%?
And by the way, you turn on cable news and all their nonstop talk of inflation,
what do they say is the real problem?
They said your wages went up too much, that's the problem?
>> No, you've got economic stimulus.
Those Biden bucks and those Trump bucks though.
1000 here,
maybe 2000 there, that economic stimulus really screwed up the economy, didn't it?
Private equity firms, they can do whatever they want.
Federal Reserve, keep printing that money.
Artificially low interest rates, keep it coming.
Yeah, CNN, MSNBC, Fox, doesn't matter.
It's all the same garbage.
They lie to you, okay?
They provide cover to corporate interests, that is all they do day in day out.
That is their role, they know it, and they fulfill it perfectly.
>> [LAUGH] The City Councils' like,
how dare you not be able to afford a $443,000 house in the middle of Kansas?
[LAUGH] Is that normal?
That doesn't sound normal.
37% increase in housing in four years is not normal.
They are slowly and really subtly robbing you blind.
They're taking all of the money out of the economy and moving it to the top.
And all the politicians that they bought are helping them do that.
You won't ever hear that in mainstream media, because they're corporate media.
They're protecting those same corporate interests that are robbing you blind.