Letters to the Editor: Housing is a human necessity, not an investment vehicle. End housing speculation

To the editor: Though I appreciated Becky Nicolaides’ Sept. 28 overview of housing unaffordability in Southern California, I believe it did not fully address access to money and speculation.

In the 2000s, Wall Street discovered it could make money by lending money to home buyers, so it gave loans to anyone willing to take one. Buyers competed against each other. Prices doubled in many areas, and new neighborhoods sprang up only to sit empty when this scheme was found to be unsustainable.

After that crash, global money flooded into L.A. thanks to low interest rates. Now, it’s impossible for a local resident with a local income from a local job to compete with all-cash offers, algorithms, short-term rental entrepreneurs, investment funds and more. Residential areas are attracting commercial interest on a scale not seen before.

Now, population is declining in California, but so is housing affordability. Increasing worker pay will not stop this. Housing prices need to come down.

We need policies that protect housing for local residents. Other countries have passed laws to cool housing speculation or tax non-locals. California’s perpetual boom-and-bust housing market inflicts severe damage on residents, who deserve to be sheltered from investors who rapaciously take and then leave when the bubble bursts.

Anne Simoneau, Long Beach