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I Used to Be Homeless

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Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#101

Post by seanmcdirmid »

jaredklewis wrote: post #68
diablerouge wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're underestimating the real estate market. A significant reason new developments cost so much is that the land they are built upon costs so much. For example, in Portland Oregon, where I live, most new developments are being built on expensive real estate in central areas. As a result the apartments built there, even if they aren't particularly nice, end up going for high amounts. This is due to non-physi…

I have friends in Tokyo renting 1 bedrooms in the city center for $500 ~ $900 month. Those buildings were not built as affordable housing. They became affordable housing when other developers built newer, nicer buildings somewhere else in Tokyo. Older buildings had to lower prices to keep tenants coming. Unless there is a literally infinite supply of rich people, I don’t see how increasing supply cannot create more a…

How big is a Tokyo 1 bedroom renting for $500/month? Are you sure it isn’t a < 50sqm micro-studio with shared bathrooms?

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#102

Post by nradov »

nyghtly wrote: post #93
dumbfoundded wrote: post #37

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

"How should we spend it?" Give people money. Unfortunately, you could only do this effectively on a national level. In San Francisco, $40k isn't even enough to cover cost of living. You could also give people housing vouchers, but you need to have available affordable housing for that to work. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/how-expensive-is-san-francis...

Giving people money can work well for those who are just down on their luck, but it's pointless and counterproductive for those who are addicted and/or seriously mentally ill. Those people need active interventions, not passive hand outs.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#103

Post by nyghtly »

megaman8 wrote: post #48

To live in, In SF. your choices are a 1.5 million dollar condo or a 50$ dollar tent. Seriously people, we need to allow for more choices than that. I'm sure builders and entrepreneurs would line up around the block to build solutions that are cheaper and more cost effective, but you first have to make it legal (get rid of the mountains of regulations and zoning headaches that make this problem so insurmountable), wit…

I agree that removing restrictive zoning requirements from suburban neighborhoods (which prevent the construction of apartments, for example), would go a long way to address the lack of housing, but it wouldn't fix everything. To assume so is to oversimplify the problem. You still need antipoverty programs and a social safety net.

Not to mention that trying to change zoning laws in suburban neighborhoods is to fight a losing battle.

"The researchers combed three years worth of meeting minutes from 97 cities and towns in the region, and found nearly two-thirds of residents who stood up to speak about proposed housing developments did so to oppose them, while just 14 percent spoke in support."

[1] https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2018/08/30/researchers-...

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#104

Post by nkurz »

gpm wrote: post #83
wolfgang42 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!

If there's one homeless person and you're spending millions of dollars on them, perhaps you should stop?

How do you distinguish between A) unnecessarily spending millions of dollars on a single homeless person and B) spending millions of dollars to reduce the otherwise large homeless population to only one?

The best approach is probably not to cut spending to zero and then wait to see what happens. But perhaps it's reasonable to cut spending by 10-25% and then monitor the results?

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#105

Post by ska »

nroets wrote: post #16
josh_p wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "high minimum wage"? Federal minimum wage in the United States is still $7.25 which is not enough for someone to live on, especially in a high cost of living area. I don't understand. https://www.minimum-wage.org/federal

I recently toured for 5 months in the US on my bicycle. My average cost was $30 per day. That included sightseeing, an airline ticket every month and a bus ticket every month. I used Warm Showers and wild camping, so I rarely paid for housing. $7.25 per hour is enough to live on. You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.

   You just need to work enough hours, do long commutes and be very, very disciplined in all your purchases.
This is an old idea, but it's never been a good or accurate one. I think it appeals to some people because it allows them to dissociate from any feeling of collective responsibility, by placing that on the individuals alone.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#106

Post by jki275 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #101
jaredklewis wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends in Tokyo renting 1 bedrooms in the city center for $500 ~ $900 month. Those buildings were not built as affordable housing. They became affordable housing when other developers built newer, nicer buildings somewhere else in Tokyo. Older buildings had to lower prices to keep tenants coming. Unless there is a literally infinite supply of rich people, I don’t see how increasing supply cannot create more a…

How big is a Tokyo 1 bedroom renting for $500/month? Are you sure it isn’t a < 50sqm micro-studio with shared bathrooms?

50 square meters would be very large for a 1 bedroom in Tokyo. My 3 bedroom two hours outside Tokyo was 85m^2 and cost around 2500/month.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#107

Post by beginningguava »

alistairSH wrote: post #87
megaman8 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF just passed 300 million/year measure that's supposed to help the homeless and that's in addition to the 240 million/year of funding that's already there. Both of those combined exceeds the budgets of most cities. First I would say, let's figure out how to use that money so that it's actually working. 540 million/year is enough to give the 7000 homeless in SF 77,000$ per year. Let's put that to good use and make su…

Are those numbers correct? If so, that's insane. For $77k/year, SF should be able to house every single one of them with money to spare.

There's a lot of bureaucrats and cronies taking their cut, I'd be surprised if 10% of that actually made it to the homeless

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#108

Post by ksenzee »

nyghtly wrote: post #71
wjossey wrote: post #25

I live in Central LA (near LACMA / La Brea Tar Pits), and share my neighborhood with dozens of homeless. Most of the homeless in my area are what I would deem "regulars", as they tend to sleep / hang out in the same spots day in and day out. I can't tell you how they landed in the situation they are in, but I can safely say that 9/10 appear (and I'm not a doctor, so I can't obviously say for certain) to have at minim…

Homelessness != Substance Use Disorder Moreover, why does treatment have to come at the expense of self-determination? The reality is that people want to receive treatment--if they don't, it is because they encounter a barrier to treatment. Barriers to treatment include: lack of treatment facilities (hospitals do not count), poor quality of existing treatment facilities, unwillingness of treatment facilities to take…

> Homelessness != Substance Use Disorder

True. But the Venn diagram overlaps a _lot_. If we magically solved homelessness for everyone with a substance-abuse problem, the people still left homeless would be the ones cities are already able to help.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#109

Post by manfredo »

nradov wrote: post #95
jaredklewis wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends in Tokyo renting 1 bedrooms in the city center for $500 ~ $900 month. Those buildings were not built as affordable housing. They became affordable housing when other developers built newer, nicer buildings somewhere else in Tokyo. Older buildings had to lower prices to keep tenants coming. Unless there is a literally infinite supply of rich people, I don’t see how increasing supply cannot create more a…

It's counter intuitive but sometimes adding supply actually increases demand. Of course at some point you do run out of rich people, but there are a lot of rich people now so that can take a long, long time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Induced_demand

This pertains to traffic, not housing market. This does not seem relevant to the dynamics of supply and demand for housing.

Re: I Used to Be Homeless

#110

Post by dumbfoundded »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #49
dumbfoundded wrote: post #37

In San Francisco, nearly $40K is spent per homeless person. How much money do we need to spend and how should we spend it?

Measuring "dollars per homeless person" is, IMO, worse than useless. The problem is that the better you do the job, the worse the number looks. If you manage to house all but 1 person, suddenly it rockets into millions of dollars per remaining homeless person!

This $40K doesn't include emergency medical services, private programs, federal & state programs. It's just the city budget for the homeless.

Any project should have metrics to judge its success and a reasonable budget to accomplish the goal. If you were given a budget of nearly $300M for 7,500 homeless, how would you decrease the number of homeless? If you really think outliers take up the majority of the cost, how many homeless could you house with what budget?

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