In fact, as long as you don't over-leverage yourself or do dumb things (i.e. sell when the market is down) RE seems quite a bit less volatile than the alternatives -- I say this as someone who weathered the 2007 crisis. 

But now because of the whole housing crisis there seem to be a lot of markets with good cash flow and probably lower property taxes than NY.

Unfortunately, that was the pre-financial crisis standard.If you haven't done this before/ don't have an immaculate credit score, the required DSCR is going to be like 1.5

A common theme with your generation is that you grew up during the financial crisis and may have seen more of the direct impacts at home.

The amount of red tape and hoops Sec. 8 often makes you jump through to house these tenants seems really counter-productive to solving the affordable housing crisis that they seem to be pretty in tune with.With interest rates still as low as they are and the amount of people that are still moving into the bigger metro areas on a daily basis coupled with the sheer amount of investors in these regions descending in immediately on anything even resembling 'affordable', renovating, and reselling for top dollar - it's hard to imagine the availability of affordably priced rentals increasing any time real soon.Again, RHA could help itself (and the people they are supposed to be charged with helping) by reassessing and increasing rental rates, as well as reducing or streamlining the arcane bureaucratic processes that discourage landlords from wanting to rent to S8's.Once the market finally cools and the banks are flooded with what I'd bet will likely be massive amounts of short sales, and properties can be bought again on the downswing then I think we'll start to see a noticeable increase in the availability of affordable rentals.

Adjusting to life in the real world but optimistic.Age 27-30 - Quarter life crisis time.

The financial crisis created (and continues to offer) great SF opportunities.

He lent outside his area of expertise and got clobbered in the 2007/2008 housing crisis. 

Many people assume ARMs are bad because they were blamed for the housing crisis, but if you plan well an ARM saves a ton of money.  

It would be interesting to try to evict someone or collect a judgement with diplomatic immunity in play .