Mortgages in The Netherlands are insane

[Junkenstein]

Well, no. That's just the first step in the chain of losing all your shit and becoming homeless. You are effectively treated as if you'd be doing the world a favor by dying. Preferably elsewhere and not too messy. I can't stress how utterly fucked you are without an address in the UK and once you're on that heading everyone has incentives to fuck you so you'd better have a damn good support network. Part of the good old "Kick em while their down" mentality we have over here. 

Where would you end up living in the face of massive financial fuckup? I'm asking as it seems an almost assured way to end up dealing with the black market and cash under your laws. Any kind of other monitoring involved?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh you 1st worlders, i pay 45% of my check to rent a crappy apartment in the shady side of the city. 

Athough i will say that i dont work full time and its more for curricular/experience purposes, so yeah, it probably is worse situation for you guys, im not sure.

It is not at all unusual in the US for housing to be 2/3 or even more of the total household income. The standard of living is probably better (I don't know what housing code is like in Mexico City but from what little I know, I'm guessing it's not as rigourous there) but for most of the working poor in the US, homelessness is a paycheck away. And because of those housing codes, other than the mostly-illegal tent cities and shantytowns, there is very little available housing in between "full amenities" and "dying under a bridge".

It's sure as hell not the worst place to live, it's pretty fantastic if you're one of the people who can keep above water. But holy shit, we are not kind to the poor and an awful lot of us walk the fine line.

[Reginald Ret]

Well, no. That's just the first step in the chain of losing all your shit and becoming homeless. You are effectively treated as if you'd be doing the world a favor by dying. Preferably elsewhere and not too messy. I can't stress how utterly fucked you are without an address in the UK and once you're on that heading everyone has incentives to fuck you so you'd better have a damn good support network. Part of the good old "Kick em while their down" mentality we have over here. 

Where would you end up living in the face of massive financial fuckup? I'm asking as it seems an almost assured way to end up dealing with the black market and cash under your laws. Any kind of other monitoring involved?

I would probably end up with family or friends, preferably with friends. Without that social support network I think I would end up a squatter in a tent or something. Come to think of it I know a group of local mirgatory squatters constantly getting kicked off every piece of land they park. I could probably go live with them.
I think I would do horrible in the black market, I would be only good at guerilla farming and working in a drug lab. The second option is not very attractive to me because of the kind of people I would have to deal with.
From my experiences with the unemployment office the monitoring would be mandatory weekly meetings, pointless trainingsessions, and no say in what kind of job I get. This on top of the loss of control over my mail, income, and ofcourse the loss of all my property.

[The Johnny]

Oh you 1st worlders, i pay 45% of my check to rent a crappy apartment in the shady side of the city. 

Athough i will say that i dont work full time and its more for curricular/experience purposes, so yeah, it probably is worse situation for you guys, im not sure.

It is not at all unusual in the US for housing to be 2/3 or even more of the total household income. The standard of living is probably better (I don't know what housing code is like in Mexico City but from what little I know, I'm guessing it's not as rigourous there) but for most of the working poor in the US, homelessness is a paycheck away. And because of those housing codes, other than the mostly-illegal tent cities and shantytowns, there is very little available housing in between "full amenities" and "dying under a bridge".

It's sure as hell not the worst place to live, it's pretty fantastic if you're one of the people who can keep above water. But holy shit, we are not kind to the poor and an awful lot of us walk the fine line.

For about $120 i get 2 rooms which are about 5x5 (meters) each and a bathroom... great! right?...

Well, there is no cistern (water reserve deposit) so i use 2 water tanks... one for reserves and one for direct supply, one is on the roof, other is at ground level (electrical pump used to bring to the roof)... theres no incoming water because theres a huge debt to the company, so with a water hose i fill the ground level one (from a neighbour)... and the water is brown, but thats ok, because its dirt (so ive been told and so i pray, im 90% sure, because research)... the bathrooms walls dont have tile (but the floor does).

The internet i steal from a neighbour 3 houses away with a very much special antenna that i place on my roof, because the telephone monopoly's syndicate refuses to install any more ports (something about people not paying  )

We had free electricity with a diablito, but the electrical commission shut down the party for the entire sector (cut all them good cables, we kinda sad).

Everything is brick and mortar with no insulation, but thats standard practice nationwide... for some reason the walls have 6 differnt colors in patches (very bizarre) in forest green, puke green, goldfish orange, grey, white and algae green, and some retarded phrases written with permanent black marker (and everything is chipping off)... the ground is solid concrete.

Conclusion: in a nice zone which is by my work, a single room in a house would run me about 1.5x more... if i wanted something the same size as here in nice zone, it woudl run me about 3x more... so, yay (?) for crappy affordable housing! (?)

At least it sounds nicer than dying under the bridge, or having to pay 70% of income for a single room!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh you 1st worlders, i pay 45% of my check to rent a crappy apartment in the shady side of the city. 

Athough i will say that i dont work full time and its more for curricular/experience purposes, so yeah, it probably is worse situation for you guys, im not sure.

It is not at all unusual in the US for housing to be 2/3 or even more of the total household income. The standard of living is probably better (I don't know what housing code is like in Mexico City but from what little I know, I'm guessing it's not as rigourous there) but for most of the working poor in the US, homelessness is a paycheck away. And because of those housing codes, other than the mostly-illegal tent cities and shantytowns, there is very little available housing in between "full amenities" and "dying under a bridge".

It's sure as hell not the worst place to live, it's pretty fantastic if you're one of the people who can keep above water. But holy shit, we are not kind to the poor and an awful lot of us walk the fine line.

For about $120 i get 2 rooms which are about 5x5 (meters) each and a bathroom... great! right?...

Well, there is no cistern (water reserve deposit) so i use 2 water tanks... one for reserves and one for direct supply, one is on the roof, other is at ground level (electrical pump used to bring to the roof)... theres no incoming water because theres a huge debt to the company, so with a water hose i fill the ground level one (from a neighbour)... and the water is brown, but thats ok, because its dirt (so ive been told and so i pray, im 90% sure, because research)... the bathrooms walls dont have tile (but the floor does).

The internet i steal from a neighbour 3 houses away with a very much special antenna that i place on my roof, because the telephone monopoly's syndicate refuses to install any more ports (something about people not paying  )

We had free electricity with a diablito, but the electrical commission shut down the party for the entire sector (cut all them good cables, we kinda sad).

Everything is brick and mortar with no insulation, but thats standard practice nationwide... for some reason the walls have 6 differnt colors in patches (very bizarre) in forest green, puke green, goldfish orange, grey, white and algae green, and some retarded phrases written with permanent black marker (and everything is chipping off)... the ground is solid concrete.

Conclusion: in a nice zone which is by my work, a single room in a house would run me about 1.5x more... if i wanted something the same size as here in nice zone, it woudl run me about 3x more... so, yay (?) for crappy affordable housing! (?)

At least it sounds nicer than dying under the bridge, or having to pay 70% of income for a single room!

Yeah, it does, actually, and while I understand that the idea behind housing codes here is partly for public health reasons and partly to avoid slumlords renting substandard dwellings at inflated prices, it leaves this huge gap where if you can't afford $500/month for a room, there's nowhere for you to live except in a squat, which the police are constantly raiding and charging people with trespassing. My current housemates were living in a tiny RV and paying $400/mo to park it in someone's driveway (technically illegal, but hard to get busted unless a neighbor calls the cops) and now they're paying me $500/mo for their 10'x12' room. That's a little below the going rate. My house is pretty nice but a little dilapidated, and my mortgage is $1500/mo. If I was renting, the going rate in my neighborhood for a 5-bedroom house is $2800/mo.

With housing costs like this you would think incomes would be through the roof, but nope.

[The Johnny]

All this "protection" thru housing-codes in the USA seems to me the kind of "protection" my transit policemen have given me, which was giving me a fine for not wearing a seatbelt in a 40km/h zone... i was like "gee, i feel special for the judicial system to worry about my safety, i should feel grateful and loved" (  )

So all in all, its the same discourse of "safety/protection" but the end result is punishment.

Perhaps it would be interesting to convey to each other why housing is so expensive in their particular country or state - in my case, well, it does make a bit of sense because im living in 35km²ish capital with 20 million inhabitants, and there's a huge demand for living quarters just because population density per kilometer... but i guess we can all say that, for example, im living in the equivalent of the slums of New York, so if i went to live in the equivalent to say, Arizona (?) the prices would also be cheap, but who wants to live there?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

All this "protection" thru housing-codes in the USA seems to me the kind of "protection" my transit policemen have given me, which was giving me a fine for not wearing a seatbelt in a 40km/h zone... i was like "gee, i feel special for the judicial system to worry about my safety, i should feel grateful and loved" (  )

So all in all, its the same discourse of "safety/protection" but the end result is punishment.

Perhaps it would be interesting to convey to each other why housing is so expensive in their particular country or state - in my case, well, it does make a bit of sense because im living in 35km²ish capital with 20 million inhabitants, and there's a huge demand for living quarters just because population density per kilometer... but i guess we can all say that, for example, im living in the equivalent of the slums of New York, so if i went to live in the equivalent to say, Arizona (?) the prices would also be cheap, but who wants to live there?

You're spot on about the punishment. That's basically how we approach everything in the Western world; punish all the bad things away. And just see how well it's working for us!