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The answer is: cash flow. Self-storage businesses are the almost perfect solution for someone with a good size (but not enormous) bucket of money that they want to put to work generating cashflow:
1. Cheap build out (cheap land, cheap facilities) 2. Almost entirely hands-off (no employees, automated entry) 3. Low liability (low risk of customers suing you) 4. Low overhead (just pay for taxes, electricity, minimal maintenance) 5. Reliable monthly cash flow
The abundant supply of these businesses, I suspect, tends to generate demand: it's easier to pay $80/month to store your junk than spend the time and emotional labor of picking through what you want to keep and what you want to get rid of. That ends up being captive long-term revenue.
My local town gives you two free visits to the garbage transfer station per year. Choosing storage over that seems harder.
When I've had storage units and spent time there, and saw open doors and what people had in theirs, I stand by my take.
The whole point of the article posted above was that it's a bit weird how numerous and prevalent self-storage has gotten in the US.
Dealing with renting a storage unit vs deciding to throw away your Pokemon cards feels like kind of a wash.
Like you shove your winter PPE, your emergency stash of spare parts for process equipment, etc, etc, in some self storage lockers and get the same job done using less square footage with extensive compliance burden (or get more job done using same square footage).
I also have all of the family antique furniture, some of which goes back three or more generations. I have no heirs and no idea what I'll do with it all, but I don't want to leave it for my executor to deal with. At least it's in the house and not in an expensive storage unit.
https://www.thespruce.com/swedish-death-cleaning-4801461
tl;dw - As far as businesses go, they require low capital to construct, have low operational costs, and also operate as a way to hold real estate/land while also generating revenue.
The people that use them are usually dealing with some life event such as moving, a death in the family, divorce, and just want some solution to house possessions.
If you have anything in storage you should look at it at least once a year to decide if it is worth saving. It is okay to say that "I love this thing from Grandma even though I don't have room for it", but you need to decide it is still worth it.
They just recently cleared out the attic and unloaded my childhood stuff on me, and I gladly took it all back.
I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.
Until the kids figure out where their life will take them they can't know. I have some heirlooms that I'm really glad to have now, but when I was in college living in dorms I wouldn't have had space for them.
You have no clue what somebody else finds important and will throw the wrong things.
75 y/o MIL is still fighting my wife to take her middle/highschool 'stuff' back to this day. She won't throw it out though.
Once they are out of college and on their own though they need to figure out what to do about their stuff.
I'm at the age where a lot of friends are starting to deal with parents passing away, and it is very stressful for the next-of-kin to not only have to deal with the grief of loss, but then have to figure out what to do with houses and storage units full of junk. Some attempt to pick through the crap to find the 0.1% with legit sentimental value, others have more energy and try to do yard sales / estate sales, but most just call the truck and haul everything to the dump.
I don't know where people get this idea that their children are going to appreciate garages full of falling-apart furniture, "fine china" and 1970s era stereo equipment. If you want to pass on something to your children they will appreciate, pass them a cleaned-out home or pre-arrange a junk hauler.
We live in an era of immense wealth and convenience relative to them.
Some of what glitters _is_ gold!
Kinda legit: Most people who lived through the Great Depression learned a "never throw any possibly-useful thing away" ethos as a survival skill. And they often taught that to their own children. And stuff became obsolete far more slowly back then, and furniture repair was a normal things, and ...
More commonly - "leave it to my children" is an excellent self-delusion...er, I mean psychological dodge, if you don't want to deal with the physical work, time required, or mental grief of proper sorting and disposal. But note that the "mental grief" may not be internal to the person deciding to procrastinate. If some of their family really don't get along with each other, then paying rent to put off the angry family drama may be their least-bad option.
They had beautiful, carved wooden dressers and wardrobes from their parents that they, naturally, did not appreciate and take care of, so they turned into garbage and were thrown away when they became too dilapidated to move to another building. They were replaced with the standard fare particle-board-and-laminate Ikea-type trash that I definitely do not want. It's falling apart already and they've only had it a few years.
If they had maintained the furniture they were given by their parents, I would love to keep them around in my home and give them to my children when I pass, too. But I don't want cheap, mass-produced garbage from my parents simply because it belonged to my parents.
I'm in my 40s. Both my parents are alive, and have a house full of stuff. I live in a different house, 3.5 hours away at highway speeds, full of different stuff. It doesn't really matter to me if my parent's dining room table is a nicely crafted table - I have a nice table, and I don't need two dining room tables. Getting it to my house is a tremendous hassle. Picking between them is a tremendous hassle. And then I still have all the other stuff - the hutch, the chairs, the couches, the beds - and only one sibling to split them with.
"Rampant, commoditization consumerism" didn't cause this, longevity, freedom of movement, and independent living caused this, and I wouldn't trade those away for an heirloom table.
My wife and I are both the youngest in our families, and all of our extended family uses us as a dumping ground for stuff to they're too guilty to throw away or donate. About 10% of the time it's something actually useful, 90% we already have a better version of whatever it is or simply don't want or need it.
No, I'm not taking my father in law's perfectly good TV. I have a TV, and the one he bought was mediocre at best when it was new.
Look, I'm not saying there aren't reasons for it. Obviously the economic value of a TV is now low. If you're posting on HN, chances are you can afford a new TV in a day's work, which may be less overhead than storing a TV for when you or someone else might need it in the future. At the same time, this is a historical abnormality. A television is a miracle device made with extremely advanced, relatively speaking, technology. 50 years ago, it would have been insane to snub your nose at that. To you it's a disposable good, to an older generation there is no reason to view it as such (and, I'd argue, this cultural value of disposability that is being forged is extremely bad and not actually sustainable for our society long-term).
By and large the kids already have perfectly useful goods but no room for more.
Do you need and can afford to keep somewhere another 6 creaky chairs, a big worn out dining table, bags of old clothes that don't fit anyone, outdated and broken electronics that probably don't work anymore, and so on? Even memories like pictures and videos are sometimes too much. They used to be a couple of photo albums, half with people you wouldn't even recognize, now there are TB of digital ones.
Go to any warm state in the country and ride through the parking lots at night. If you are the observant type, you should see an astonishing number of folks living in their vehicles.
And home ownership is not only downward, but no longer part of the American dream for most people now. Storage facilities for many, are a place to lay down, or rent hope that things won't always be "this way".
We need to fix this. It's not just drugs and mental problems anymore.
When people are falling into homelessness, they keep the car for longer because (a) it generates income, either directly through something like Uber or by getting you to a job on time, (b) lower cost of ownership and (c) it serves as shelter in a pinch.
Additionally, rent can easily be inaccessible for the employed. And for those who don't have vehicles, 'just moving to a cheaper area" is not a practical option.
For example, if I’m living out of a car I’m more likely to use EBT to buy some bags of chips I can toss in the car rather than some cheap chicken and fresh veggies or eggs. How would I store chicken or cook any of it if I live in a car?
Yes, I know there are solutions here like small fridges and hot plates. But those cost money and require time and effort. Again, scenario is living in a car or the streets.
When you say “we need to fix this” no one can agree what “this” is. There is no one “this” and it becomes a morass of generational systemic issues, localized problems, competing views on economics, morality, government and more. It reminds me of when tech people show up to “fix” education. It just isn’t a single issue.
I agree we need to fix something, but as soon as I think about the big picture it feels futile and I have been involved in efforts for decades.
https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-every...
IMO high housing prices are destroying civilization.
It's like a game of musical chairs. There aren't enough houses to go around. You go around and the music stops. Everyone scrambles to their nearest chair. Obviously the person on crutches will be the first to fall out of the game. The rest then talk about laziness, drugs, bootstraps, and all the rest. But add 1 more chair and there's no problem, even the dude with the broken leg can sit.
Also the chair, if actually built, would be so expensive that one legged guy can’t afford it. His best hope is someone with a worse chair takes it, then he tries to take their seat, but there’s already a dozen two-legged guys in front of him.
I have no clue what the overall balance of housing looks like, but surely it doesn't help that big chunks of the housing market are being deprecated at the same time.
Actually, there are. In Germany for example, we have millions of units left empty... the catch is, these are in (extremely) rural areas. Areas that used to be populated, but no longer are because the government has let them fall extremely behind in modern amenities. Some even do not have cellphone service.
Normally, you'd expect people and companies to do a pricing arbitrage and move where housing is cheap, but unfortunately, when there is no local employment or the infrastructure does not support remote employment, or other crucial requirements (safe potable water, electrical grid, grocery stores, schools, some sort of entertainment) are lacking, this does not work out any more.
It's infuriating... I dump stuff all the time... I probably have like 50 things in my life including t-shirts, which obviously contributes to my enragement.
I think more than anything this is the ooze you get out of the sides of societies that focus so terribly much on consumer culture. Advertising nowadays is absolutely incredible at driving the creation of what feels like "needs" in people. In my thirties I started transitioning to a woman, full time, and as a result I've bought and donated shit tons of clothes. This experience has made me realize how bizarrely attached I am to those clothes, and also to so many other things I own that I wouldn't have remotely called sentimental. Yet between growing up in a heavily consumerist society, and my environmental side, I feel so much regret and shame when simply throwing things away. Worthless things. Things my rational mind knows damn well I have no use for, that have no reason to exist in my home.
Mind you I'm someone who is familiar with facing down my inner demons. I can't fathom trying to deal with this if you're not someone like me who has gone to lengths to educate myself, to get therapy, and not only gone those lengths but had the resources to do so!
Then I watch hoarders and I see these old, broken down people who have massive, beautiful homes I would love to have, and they've stacked every room to the ceiling with... shit. Sometimes literally shit, but more often it's just junk. Things that were on sale. Each thing advertised to them, promised that it would make them the person they were meant to be, or to help them lose that weight they've been trying to lose for 50 years. That piece of furniture that would finally complete the room. And they did that on, and on, and on, and now their beautiful home is ruined, and most of the stuff is too. And oftentimes the person themselves are harmed too, with early onset illness and injury.
America needs to get our shit together. And worse still we've exported our disease in great quantity to the rest of the world, both as trash, and as the vacuous hollow culture that consumerism drives.
I also hate junk. If anything I own doesn't get used for more than a year, I'll sell it or trash it (with a few exceptions).
So even the thought of paying a monthly fee to store junk gives me real anxiety.
Yes, one should donate/dispose what's never going to be needed, but the criteria have to be more discerning than a simple one year limit. I think ten years is a better limit, although I easily have worthwhile unused items going back further.
While there are good use cases -
> The United States is the world leader, with roughly ninety per cent of global capacity. [...] there are more self-storage facilities in the U.S. than there are Starbucks, McDonald’s, Walmart, Home Depot, Domino’s, Dunkin’, and Costco locations combined. Annual revenues are estimated to be more than forty billion dollars.
> I asked a Welsh facility manager I met in Las Vegas what his customers keep in their units, and he said, “It’s . . . it’s . . . rubbish.”
> My wife and I have a friend whose mother died in 2006. She and her siblings decided to sell their mother’s furniture and donate the proceeds to a charity that she would have approved of. “We put everything in storage temporarily, and it’s all still there,” our friend told me. She figures that they’ve spent at least fifty thousand dollars in rental fees so far—more than they could get from selling the furniture.
That probably doesn't even consider inflation, $1 in 2006 was worth $1.60 in today's money. People are really bad at long term financial planning but also get really attached to objects with some sentimental value. So this is a market where it's even easier to exploit that poor financial education.