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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

#331

Post by idontpost »

docker_up wrote: post #130
md224 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noah Smith's perspective on the necessity of a federal approach to homelessness: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-05-21/ending... Key graf: > About 3.5 million Americans will experience homelessness at some point in time, but only about a half-million are homeless at any given time, and roughly 87,000 of these are chronically homeless. By some estimates, housing a homeless person and providing them wit…

This is poppycock. $10,000 a person is a lie unless maybe if you moved all the homeless from the West Coast to the middle of nowhere in Midwest, but then you would have homeless activists and Midwest NIMBY activists saying that the government is shipping people out to solve the problem. The activists have politicized every direction of this issue to the point where it's easier to just forget about the homeless rather…

> Most homeless need mental health care and should be forced into mental wards but then you have mental health activists that will protest against this.

Because conservatives destroyed mental health care in this country.

Not that it was ever good, but it used to exist, until it was systematically dismantled in the 1980s and all the patients were sent out to become … take a guess … that's right … our current chronic homeless population!

Start by (re)building an actual mental health care system if you want to go that route.

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

#332

Post by idontpost »

com2kid wrote: post #287
cutler wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're thinking purely within a capitalist framework. There is no capitalist solution to this problem. The solution is unprofitable. I encourage you to think outside this framework as humanity itself is at stake not just profits.

Capitolist solutions exist to this problem, democracy keeps voting them down. Remove the majority of zoning, and the free market will solve the housing problem quite quickly. Sure houses will be up next to each other, and they'll be smaller, and the yards will cost even more than they do now, but housing will be affordable.

> Remove the majority of zoning

Sure, factories with toxic waste in residential neighborhoods are a great idea!

> Sure houses will be up next to each other

And we learned nothing from the massive urban fires othe 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries apparently.

All these onerous regulations you whinge about exist because thousands of people DIED from the conditions they outlaw.

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

#333

Post by all2 »

thoughtexplorer wrote: post #328
all2 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people do science. We bring our bias, limited vision, and our politics and opinions.

Which is why there is the scientific method. Good science is reproducible and provable regardless of what your opinion is. Facts are facts regardless.

'Facts' bend to the funding available. Money (can) drive conclusions. Interpretation is a matter of prior experience and available terminology. Even our hallowed logic stands on unprovable axioms.

That and there is an incredible shortage of reproductions and garbage publications that are difficult or impossible to replicate with the available information.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Replication_crisis [1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170411104516.h...

These point to soft sciences, so I suppose my point doesn't stand so much for things like climate change publications, or evolutionary biology.

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

#334

Post by axilmar »

nostrademons wrote: post #325
axilmar wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it seem to you that the problem is those regulations that can allow the exemptions rather than rent control? I mean, if it wasn't possible to exempt a building from the regulations, there wouldn't be an issue with rent control.

When you don't allow exemptions from rent control, you get something like the Bronx in the 1970s, where landlords set fire to their own buildings to collect insurance money rather than rent them out. [1] There's always an exemption - if you don't provide a legal one, people will find an undetectable illegal one. [1] https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/30610...

The article you posted does not say anything about fire (I searched for the word 'fire').

Even in that case though, what was the percentage of buildings burnt because of rent controls? if it was extremely low (as in less then 0.01%), then there is no real problem.

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

#335

Post by nostrademons »

axilmar wrote: post #334
nostrademons wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you don't allow exemptions from rent control, you get something like the Bronx in the 1970s, where landlords set fire to their own buildings to collect insurance money rather than rent them out. [1] There's always an exemption - if you don't provide a legal one, people will find an undetectable illegal one. [1] https://www.crainsnewyork.com/article/20100610/BLOGS01/30610...

The article you posted does not say anything about fire (I searched for the word 'fire'). Even in that case though, what was the percentage of buildings burnt because of rent controls? if it was extremely low (as in less then 0.01%), then there is no real problem.

Search for "arson" instead.

There was a photo-essay of the devastation (seriously, it looked like a war zone) posted on HN about a month ago. I can't find the link now, but if you Google "pictures of 1970s Bronx", the Image Search links give you a sense.

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

#336

Post by anigbrowl »

booleandilemma wrote: post #201
anigbrowl wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irredeemable? Have they committed some awful moral transgression? Certainly some people are chronically incapable of looking after themselves, but please avoid such prejudicial language.

I’m talking about the people who will never be functioning members of society, no matter how much support we give them (monetary or otherwise). If you don’t understand what I mean you haven’t met enough homeless people.

I have met plenty of homeless people, and yuor objection is not responsive to the criticism I made.

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

#337

Post by com2kid »

idontpost wrote: post #332
com2kid wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitolist solutions exist to this problem, democracy keeps voting them down. Remove the majority of zoning, and the free market will solve the housing problem quite quickly. Sure houses will be up next to each other, and they'll be smaller, and the yards will cost even more than they do now, but housing will be affordable.

> Remove the majority of zoning Sure, factories with toxic waste in residential neighborhoods are a great idea! > Sure houses will be up next to each other And we learned nothing from the massive urban fires othe 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries apparently. All these onerous regulations you whinge about exist because thousands of people DIED from the conditions they outlaw.

Majority of the rules, not all.

Remove set backs, get rid of minimum yard requirements, loosen height restrictions.

The rest of the world has houses right next to each other, as do America's most prosperous cities.

Manhattan, the dense parts of SF, Boston, Chicago, etc.

The regulations about minimum grass and 4 foot of set back and no more than 1 or 2 stories, have nothing to do with fire regs and everything to do with long disproven ideas about suburban design that hark back to 1950s ideals.

Visit a modern dense city, Tokyo and London don't have massive fire outbreaks (sprinklers and modern fire codes still work even at density), but they do have an insane about of economic activity in the dense neighborhoods.

Want to solve the housing crisis and get people off the streets? Dump 50% more houses on to the market, heck have cities subsidize their construction if need be, and watch housing prices plummet. Watch mass transit become the life blood of a city, and watch entire new types of jobs become available. (People in NYC may be annoyed at bike messengers, but it is a job created by density!)

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

#338

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

dr_dshiv wrote: post #184

Living in Amsterdam, it is very rare to encounter homeless people or panhandlers. It wasn't always this way -- so I really credit the policy designers. They build these really cute social housing centers for a range of subsidized apartments -- and always include a petting zoo in the middle because, I guess, it saves money in the end. Doing nothing is way more expensive.

When I was in Amsterdam a few years ago I faced pretty aggressive panhandling / scamming; it was that fine line between panhandling and robbery. On the way from central station to my airbnb, I had someone try to follow me and get my address. Another night I had someone waiting outside of my place.

I live in Denver, Colorado and although we have a huge homeless population, I've never had a problem with them. It's mostly just people sitting around asking for money, but I've never been followed or aggressively approached like I have in European cities (Italy was awful).

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

#339

Post by CryptoPunk »

sinker wrote: post #323
CryptoPunk wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Your idea that these laborers are victims of "homeless crack addicts manipulatively employing the victim narrative" is such an extreme miscalculation that I wonder if you even looking at the data honestly. I didn't say the homeless crack addicts are manipulatively employing the victim narrative. It's the taxpayer funded social support network around them that does that. >>The amount of money that actually goes to h…

What would you suggest? Homelessness is not a punishment society forces onto people. It's an issue for all of society and affects everyone. Pointing fingers and shunning and saying that these people are worthless and deserve everything that get, even if true, isn't a solution to the issue. It seems that if it were possible you would prefer to just eradicate every homeless person out there. Of course that's not possib…

The solution is to end social welfare programs, institute anti-vagrancy laws that force the drug addicts to work for a living, and end illegal immigration to create jobs for unskilled legal residents.

There will still be aid to the poor, but it will be in the form of charity, which is more sensitive to those abusing the aid.

Ending all unconditional government safety nets will undoubtedly cause more suffering for the poor in the short run. But in the long run, it means fewer single women having childen that they need government aid to support (welfare is a major contributor to increasing rates of single parenthood), and who are far more likely to end up in poverty as adults.

It also means fewer people who are able-bodied becoming a drain on society from a life of irresponsibility (partying with their friends while living on welfare). Forcing a structure and discipline on these people's lives is in the interest of society, because it means they become contributors to the economy instead of a drain.

The long term effect of a more efficient economy is a substantially higher standard of living for all classes, including the poor.

There are countries in the world that have much lower levels of homelessness and drug-abuse, and much higher rates of economic growth, than the US. You're pretending there is no alternative to the current path except genocide (which you accuse me of supporting), and that's very disingenuous.

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

#340

Post by 51lver »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #121
51lver wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they should call it something more real like "Rent you can afford with two weeks of minimum wage work".

I have no idea. But I welcome suggestions, no matter how silly sounding, as a means to help me mentally sort this out. So thank you for replying.

How about "Starting wage housing"? Something that implies a financial beginning rather than a financial slump or misfortune.
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