LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month • Hacker News Board

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#141

Post by spfzero » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:39 AM UTC

narrator wrote: post #8

advisedwang wrote: post #2

> the per-tent cost covers services, meals, sanitation and staffing OK, so $2600 gets a fair bit. Also looking at the report [1] this rate is calculated by dividing the total cost of the pilot by the duration and number of clients. So that is including one-time set up, planning and evaluation in the cost, which is probably a decent fraction of the cost as it's only an 8 month pilot. The recurring cost for extending m…

As long as the local government has tons of money doing nothing in their budget, they are going to find a way to spend it, and they're not going to care if they overpay because what else are they going to spend it on? In coastal California, the rule is never ever give that money back by lowering taxes. Taxes only go up. If there's too much money being generated by the taxes to spend, start spending it on homelessness…

Boy those two certainly haven't gotten better, that's for sure, even though the money spent on "solving" them has skyrocketed.

It almost seems like the more money that gets poured in, the more expensive everything becomes.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#142

Post by onion2k » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:40 AM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #123

onion2k wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Only if people actually live in those houses, and they're bought by people living in the cheaper houses right now who then move up in to the new housing stock. If people buy the new houses as investments and leave them empty most of the year then it has no impact on the rest…

What concrete data do you have to suggest that luxury homes aren't being occupied at significantly higher rates than general housing stock?

https://www.actiononemptyhomes.org/pretty-vacant

"Wealth investment leaves an estimated 125,000 homes in London without anyone living in them."

There are 268,385 empty homes in England according to the government (people get a tax break in most parts of England if they own a property that is unoccupied and unfurnished so its quite easy to track empty homes), and half of them are luxury houses in London.

I'm not saying that's definitely the case everywhere, but I am saying it's worth considering.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#143

Post by EarthIsHome » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:41 AM UTC

dcolkitt wrote: post #78

0xB31B1B wrote: post #57

Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will b…

> one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing One pedantic quibble. It's not necessary to build cheap housing specifically. It's perfectly fine simply to build more housing of any type. Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Throughout all of American history, new h…

I'm all for building more housing for people. Ending homelessness, by definition, would mean to provide housing.

But the thing is, we don't even need to build more housing. There are more than 30 times more vacant homes [0] than there are homeless. It makes the most sense to redistribute resources more effectively and efficiently. We should be looking at our system as a whole when it clearly doesn't distribute necessary resources effectively (e.g. food insecurity, wealth inequality, homelessness when there are 30 times more vacant homes than there are homeless, etc.)

[0]: https://247wallst.com/housing/2019/09/30/there-are-over-17-m...

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#144

Post by Google234 » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:42 AM UTC

belenos46 wrote: post #105

brianwawok wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Pew survey found that the NPR audience tends Democratic (17% Republican, 37% independent, 43% Democratic) and centrist (21% conservative, 39% moderate, 36% liberal). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR_controversies

Yes. And "democrat" != "actually liberal". The guy in the white house, sending Israel billions of dollars in aid while the Israeli government massacres civilians is a democrat, for fuckssake.

Imagine supporting a terorist state in Hamas. Fortunately most democrats aren’t regressive leftist - yet.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#145

Post by onion2k » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:43 AM UTC

dnautics wrote: post #139

spfzero wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, buying a house and leaving it vacant most of the year doesn't seem like a very good investment. In my experience when people I've known bought an investment property the number one thing on their minds was occupancy, and if they thought it would lie vacant for more than a month or two, they wouldn't buy it. I do see your point about foreign investors though, they will view the house as a bank account, one that w…

If it's not occupied isn't it losing money at least by bleeding to property taxes?

Yes, but property values in London are increasing at a rate that more than pays for that (many times over actually).

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#146

Post by mikepurvis » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:44 AM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #116

mikepurvis wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes there are market incentives to actually fill the housing that is built. What about when buildings of hundreds of luxury condos are built and they just sit empty, either owned by disinterested "investors" or unwilling to be sold for the market-directed price? Someone who studied this in Toronto by overlaying nighttime photos to find units where the lights are literally never on: https://www.movesmartly.co…

That blogpost you cited says that there is a 5% vacancy rate. That's well within the normal range. So I don't see how it supports your argument. https://www.reddit.com/r/badeconomics/comments/musne8/dispro...

Fair— I kind of picked one at random. Obviously part of the point of that dude's effort is that this is a difficult thing to get numbers on. Here's some other coverage around responses to a planned vacant unit tax:

https://www.blogto.com/real-estate-toronto/2021/02/real-esta...

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#147

Post by Google234 » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

beervirus wrote: post #79

ravenstine wrote: post #44

Won't these programs just expand ad infinitum if we don't address the root causes of homelessness? I'm glad we're helping the homeless, but the lack of housing is a symptom and less so a cause. LA has way more homeless people than it used to. Why don't we address that?

What are you saying the cause is?

Drugs are a big part.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#148

Post by drewmate » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:45 AM UTC

BobbyJo wrote: post #89

Tiktaalik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but we have a crisis now which means that we need both regular market housing now and affordable housing now. We do not uh have the luxury of building luxury housing only then waiting 40 years for it to eventually become affordable.

Market housing creates affordable housing by displacing demand. No matter what kind of housing you build, as long as it gets built now it will lower prices now.

I think you're mostly right, but it's not as straightforward as 1 dwelling per household and everyone just moves up a rung. Market housing could get bought up by people who are currently living with roommates (but would like their own home) or one of the 52% of young adults currently living with their parents.[0] Those spots are then unlikely to become available for the homeless.

This is just another symptom of the major lack of housing in the US, and needs to be solved as well, but it highlights how difficult it is to alleviate homelessness when there are other casualties of the housing market as well. By all means, build as much housing as soon as possible, but some of it will probably need to be specifically targeted at homeless or poorer populations.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/09/04/a-majority-...

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#149

Post by sp332 » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:48 AM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #123

onion2k wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Only if people actually live in those houses, and they're bought by people living in the cheaper houses right now who then move up in to the new housing stock. If people buy the new houses as investments and leave them empty most of the year then it has no impact on the rest…

What concrete data do you have to suggest that luxury homes aren't being occupied at significantly higher rates than general housing stock?

Vancouver https://bc.ctvnews.ca/10-800-housing-units-sit-empty-in-vanc...

Manhattan https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/01/american-h...

Seattle https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/luxury-apartments-whos-bu...

Melbourne https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/ghost-tower-warn...

Boston https://bostonagentmagazine.com/2018/09/11/study-bostons-new...

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#150

Post by 0xB31B1B » Thu, May 27, 2021, 3:50 AM UTC

EarthIsHome wrote: post #143

dcolkitt wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing One pedantic quibble. It's not necessary to build cheap housing specifically. It's perfectly fine simply to build more housing of any type. Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Throughout all of American history, new h…

I'm all for building more housing for people. Ending homelessness, by definition, would mean to provide housing. But the thing is, we don't even need to build more housing. There are more than 30 times more vacant homes [0] than there are homeless. It makes the most sense to redistribute resources more effectively and efficiently. We should be looking at our system as a whole when it clearly doesn't distribute necess…

This is the worst possible take. Yes, there are vacant homes. They are by and large vacant because there is no economic opportunity near these homes. The vacancy rates in cities with high homelessness rates are at or below 1%. Yes, there may be more homes than homeless in these cities but "the homeless that currently reside in a locale" are not the total extent of the stakeholders that may want to move in our out of a city.