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The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

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Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#211

Post by CryptoPunk »

jahaja wrote: post #92
sien wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's difficult to fix housing supply because NIMBYs have so much power on local political activity. It's not just a US problem either. In Australia, Sweden, the UK, Germany, France and many other places housing is more expensive than it should be. If you want to do something go and get active in the YIMBY movement. https://www.yimby.wiki/wiki/YIMBY_movement

NIMBY/YIMBY arguments seem just too convenient an excuse for me. It's almost if one has actively tried to find something that can plausibly explain the housing crisis but does not challenge the status quo of structural/systematic problems in any way shape or form. In Sweden the seemingly prime effect of these movements is to remove democratic influence to the benefit of construction companies, even though that only r…

I recommend you look at the economic research on the issue of zoning restrictions on housing supply:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images...

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#212

Post by lubujackson »

Alex63 wrote: post #104
spookthesunset wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> endless money pits The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area. The most effective way for a city or state to "solve" the local homeless problem is to simply pay for one-way bus tickets to somewhere else. But…

I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

There aren't good solutions, only ugly ones that we've gotten rid of in the name of free will and self-reliance.

To start, Reagan gutted the mental health system so that people who need life-long mental health support were more or less dumped on the streets. It also meant people who could get jobs and have a normal life with some support began to end up on the streets when things broke wrong for them.

So bringing back mental health services would take a lot of stress off of police and hospitals and ultimately cost taxpayers much less and help many people. The negative is that there are no clear boundaries around who should be involuntarily admitted to a mental health facility. But having zero services clearly isn't a great solution.

Secondly, drug users are either criminalized (very expensive) or minimally-aided to avoid immediate problems (with things like clean needles and safe spaces). Detox can be expensive and require considerable long-term support on top of personal will. There really isn't a good solution to tackle this, but there are some obvious solutions. Like a voluntary detox program where at the end you are enrolled in the military for 2-4 years. That starts to get some "indentured servitude" vibes but it is hard to find a decent way to deal with such a difficult issue.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#213

Post by CryptoPunk »

Tokkemon wrote: post #154
paxys wrote: post #147

The only way to fix the housing crisis is to build more houses. It isn't rocket science, but every conversation or debate about this issue seems to go on and on in every direction without people actually facing this fact. The same people who vote to increase taxes to fix homelessness will simultaneously vote down every new housing project. Just seems so bizarre to me.

You can build them all day long, but then you have to have people who can live in them and pay for the cost of building that house, either through mortgages or taxes to the government. And we all know how well the public housing projects went and still go to this day...

Prices always reach their market clearing level. More housing == lower prices, when all other factors are controlled for.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#214

Post by tropo »

spookthesunset wrote: post #95
crooked-v wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> suddenly we get very "every person for themselves" the second homelessness has a price tag. A confounding factor involved here is that many government strategies for dealing with the homeless are endless money pits without noticeable results. I think a lot of people would be more comfortable with their tax dollars going to that purpose if they didn't feel like nothing was actually happening from it.

> endless money pits The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area. The most effective way for a city or state to "solve" the local homeless problem is to simply pay for one-way bus tickets to somewhere else. But…

The argument you made against the city or state solution applies equally well to the federal solution. People cross borders for housing. It takes a very strong deterrent to stop this. You can choose to help people and enforce borders, or you can choose to let people suffer and be lax about borders.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#215

Post by intralizee »

The majority of people in society have a herd mentality. Thinking patterns such as one adopts the social norms and never questions them. These people observe homeless, subconsciously consider them outsiders, and treat them as not part of the herd with disconnecting from the problem belonging to everyone. Nothing will change until people stop seeking to blame Government or the Rich. Everyone has to take the blame for something to get done. I personally think everyone has become sociopaths to some degree compared to previous generations when it comes to people down on their luck.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#216

Post by jakelarkin »

negativez wrote: post #162

Since this a crazy hard problem that won't be solved in a comments section, how about playing with a completely silly idea instead: > Outlaw rental housing - force everyone to own their residence The people we're most interested in helping are those pushed out by rising rents. Rents can't rise if they don't exist. New migrants can't drive rent up if rent doesn't exist - to the contrary, they would be increasing prope…

so instead of rent you pay interest, various property taxes, and hoa, maintenance, or property management. Most of which are still subject to inflation and price/wage disparity.

a better high level discussion would be how to reform the policy goal of owning housing as saving mechanism and store of personal wealth, since it can't be both a great investment for the prior generation and affordable to the next one at the same time (if wages are stagnant)

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#217

Post by jahaja »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #211
jahaja wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NIMBY/YIMBY arguments seem just too convenient an excuse for me. It's almost if one has actively tried to find something that can plausibly explain the housing crisis but does not challenge the status quo of structural/systematic problems in any way shape or form. In Sweden the seemingly prime effect of these movements is to remove democratic influence to the benefit of construction companies, even though that only r…

I recommend you look at the economic research on the issue of zoning restrictions on housing supply: https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/whitehouse.gov/files/images...

I'd think it would be good manners to at least provide a summary that puts the report into the discussions context when linking to some pdf report.

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#218

Post by endtime »

cwkoss wrote: post #98
endtime wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality isn't the right measure unless you make some assumptions that have, historically, not held (e.g. fixed total amount of wealth). All you care about is that the poorest people can afford somewhere to live. Toy example: If everyone can afford a home, and then Jeff Bezos increases his wealth by 1000x, inequality goes up but no one becomes homeless. I'm not saying wealth inequality is meaningless, but I think m…

We should measure and optimize for the the growth in wealth of the bottom X percent of citizens. Who makes up that portion may change, but that portion will consistently be the one that needs the most help.

That seems like a better metric to me as well. Though solutions which maximize this and also increase inequality are often unpopular (e.g. free markets).

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#219

Post by TaylorGood »

Orange County, CA is not a city per se, but a runoff river trail that leads to the ocean quickly became a community of homeless. When the tent area was finally disbanded (1), here are the stats:

– 700 - 1,000 homeless

– 215 tons of trash or debris

– 1,165 pounds of hazardous waste, including human and pet feces

– 5,115 needles

– 1,000 stolen bikes (2)

(1) https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/01/see-before-and-after-p...

(2) https://www.ocregister.com/2017/11/16/a-half-loaded-gun-an-u...

Re: The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities

#220

Post by lubujackson »

cutler wrote: post #164
Alex63 wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

Simple. Put a ceiling on rents. Allow no-one to own more than one home and insist they live in the one they own. In the UK we have a "bedroom tax" but it is aimed at the poor, not the rich as it should be. Make it illegal to discriminate against anyone based on their income source or the state of their health. Build housing exclusively for low-income occupants instead of throwing everything onto the insidious propert…

This is so illogical.

For one, who is going to build these properties for low-income people only? Costs will be almost the same, profits will be way less. So why would a developer bother?

In fact, the recent change to require a higher percentage of low income units in new structures has killed the pipeline for new building starts.

Even if it seems counterproductive to the goal of helping low income people, historically new building starts have always been aspirational. Which makes sense - everyone wants a new car, but if you have little money you are better off getting a reliable used car. It is exactly the same for housing. When someone moves into a new condo that opens up a unit (and lowers the price incrementally) for someone who has less to spend.

Would it make sense to force carmakers to build cheap cars that only low-income people are eligible to buy?

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