And we can survive on rat burgers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEyBsh1sNlU
Extremely interesting.
The Mieterverband/Asloca/Swiss tenant association made a survey for tenants (34k participants) and published the results today:
- 39% of tenants pay more than 30% of their household income in rent.
- 5% of tenants pay more than 50% of their income in rent.
- Using a lot of income for rent puts people at risk of poverty. Objectively, itâs not an opinion.
- 23% of tenants is worried about getting a termination notice over the next 2 years.
Report in DE
Report in FR
The 5% paying half income while ugly could be normal. At any given time, thereâs people in problems, hopefully short-term challenges.
The 39% paying more than 30% of income in rent is the worrying one. This is not a short-term thing. Why do people pay money they donât have?
On the plus side, salaries in Switzerland are high so if you are left with half, it is still not too bad.
I suspect itâs people lured here with relatively high salaries compared to their home countries but really working rather low-end jobs like hair-dresser or so.
Or self-employed.
I pay more than 30% of my income in rent. Why? Because I donât have a choice if I want to stay in Switzerland. Fortunately I do not have to support anyone else, so it is money that I have. People do what they have to in order to get by.
Life in Switzerland is, by international standards, pretty good for almost everyone.
Our flats are just being renovated. The reasons for and the financing of the renovation are opaque. Rents are not going to go down but we can be happy there was no eviction notice - this is the current scandal here. General tenant protection is good but renovations can be misused by landlords.
Careful with that measure.
The ânot more than 1/3 of the incomeâ rule is meaningless if you mostly live off your savings, which applies to a large percentage of the 20% retirees.
If they wanted to be fair theyâd include employees only, because self-employment often comes with large swings.
this, plus the fact that in many EU countries itâs a norm where thereâs no strong tenants rights so rents are always steadily increasing. In Switzerland even if you get a high rent, itâs at least long term guaranteed
Think again! There are a lot of working poor in CH.
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Sounds plausible. But, who in Switzerland shares that much?
This family is basically unique: ages, places of origin, jobs, ages of children. It should be not that hard to pinpoint them. No interest about doxxing them. But if the guy is so worried about people finding out, why give so much info to a journalist?
Either fake, or the guy made the right assessment: I failed. Not the brightest one.
What an awful, condescending post.
Shame that people on this forum think like this.
You can find examples of poor people everywhere, but it doesnât change the fact that the median wage is around 90k - a phenomenally huge salary.
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So fifty percent are earning less than this. Many, much less.
It seems to me that this family fell into the same pattern that many US ex-middle-class families haveâŠthat pattern seems to be spreading to other countries. They used to have a good life, made good money, spent it all (holidays, Nikes, etc.). Then when the hard times came they had nothing to fall back on. Itâs just happened harder and faster in the US. I would be a lot more frank with the kids; they need to understand how finances work, and they wonât learn when shielded. I went to uni with some poor kids, but they were proud of what their parents had done to keep the family together in hard times, and each had his/her part.
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Brought the car to the dealership for maintenance. The morning was perfect, so I walked back home. I started in an industrial area, passed by modest (even rundown) single houses, then nice single houses, modern apartments, 1960s apartments, until getting back home to the area of newly built apartment buildings. Brightly colored cranes everywhere.
A 1 hour stroll of basically of what Switzerland has in terms of real estate. Of course, there are places with nicer lakes or mountains, but the houses and their design and technology are about the same.
Iâm sure youâll want to slap me in the head for the truism butâŠthe last time 1960s apartment buildings were built was during the 1960s. I mean a 10+ level building without balconies, probably washing machines in a single room, scarce parking, etc. All the new buildings are spacious apartments, 20 m2 balconies/loggias, spacious underground parking, underfloor heating, great windows, etc.
Itâs nice to have all the comfort of modern building technology and the space of new builds, but what happened to the modest apartments? Of course, only 1 hour stroll around Aarau, but I did not see the construction of new apartments targeted to people with lower income. Building nicer buildings donât make lower income people disappear, they still need somewhere to live.
Along the way I passed by a company that repairs roads, literally laying asphalt. They have an apartment building which seem to be dedicated to their workers. It looks like 1950s, but if the rent is lower, itâs great.
As low income student I lived in 18th century house split into 5 apartments. But, that was in a small town where population has barely changed in 2 centuries. Old houses can be converted to low rent apartments and that allowed me to pay less than 30% of my low income at the time. I canât complain, at least we had a washing machine in the apartment, only the drier was shared among 4 apartments. After some time, I learned that I was in one of the nice apartments because toilet in the apartment. Other converted old houses only had 1 toilet per floor, shared among the apartments in the floor.
That was the small town almost frozen in time. In areas where population has increased a lot, thereâs simply not enough old buildings. In more economically active areas, buildings designed to be lower rent have to be built and thatâs not happening. Immigrant workers with lower income are a reality. Even Swiss with roots here from centuries can have accidents of life, or bad choices, and need a cheaper place to live.
Of course, it would be great if anyone could live at least in a spacious, apartment with lots of sunlight and fresh air. Even better in a single house. But, low income and other problems are there. People is being left behind by housing units that keep going up in quality forever. Housing units designed for their incomes are not build anymore.
Low salaries are not the issue, it is the ridiculously high ones that are pricing normal earners out of the market.
Proffesional sportpersons, bankers, techâŠall earning crazy money whilst not actually producing anything for the foundational tiers of Maslows heirachy of needs. Those that do, like farmers, butchers, etc earn a pittance.
Add increasing population and limited supply and spaceâŠwell, here we are.
In the 1970s, C-suite didnât earn 100-1000x multiples of the salaries
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