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LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

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

#231

Post by stickfigure »

slg wrote: post #212
zuminator wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't provide a counterexample to the specific 3br luxury->SRO scenario, but it certainly does happen on occasion that previously expensive units wind up getting subdivided into cheaper units. I knew someone who lived in a low-end furnished room (with shared bathroom) that had previously been part of a larger unit.

I'm not sure that is an equivalent example. The previous example was housing falling into a lower tier of the market through lack of maintenance. Your example is actively retrofitting a place to be in a different tier of the market. That isn't really the same thing because your example requires new investments and is actively creating new housing at the bottom of the market rather than just allowing a place to deteri…

You're thinking too specific. Retrofits can be expensive or they can be cheap. The point is that housing stock drifts downmarket as it ages. Sometimes quickly.

I used to live in San Luis Obispo, CA. There's a house in the middle of town that clearly used to be an enormous beautiful mansion. It looks like it belongs on a plantation. It's still beautiful, but it's now 9 funky apartments.

Street view: https://www.google.com/maps/@35.2749914,-120.6611941,3a,75y,...

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

#232

Post by sp332 »

tylerhou wrote: post #216
sp332 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

None of the articles support a narrative that there is an epidemic of vacancies among high-end housing. Vancouver: The article claims that there is ~5% vacancy rate. This is actually below the normal rate for vacancies in the US. Condos have a higher vacancy rate, but the article offers a reasonable explanation. Manhattan: Ultra-luxury home vacancies aren't the same as luxury apartment buildings. Most people are not…

Vancouver: "condominiums that are owned and not available for rent had a whopping 12.5 per cent vacancy rate"

The Manhattan article links to https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/realestate/new-york-decad... which says "Nearly half of new condo units in Manhattan that came to market after 2015... remain unsold, according to a December analysis of both closed sales and contracts" and "7,050 new condo units available for sale in Manhattan in January [2020]"

Melbourne: "Docklands... 17 per cent consuming no water in 2013" and "12.4 per cent of Cardinia and Clyde homes reported no water use."

Boston: "12 of Boston’s newest and biggest luxury developments could remain largely empty despite having sold most of their available condo units to buyers."

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

#233

Post by throwkeep »

DevKoala wrote: post #40
sib wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... I have a hard time imagining anyone in the US describing today's NPR as "nice polite Republicans"... Perhaps Bernie Sanders would possibly describe them as centrist?

People with extreme views believe that everybody who doesn’t pursue the extreme is against them.

The us vs them mindset. With us or against us.

Not good. It'll send us back in time if we let it.

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

#234

Post by JohnBooty »

chmod600 wrote: post #221
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…

"[transient homeless] generally refuse to get services" Is this because the services don't really offer effective help for this group? I understand why mental illness or addiction might keep people from using services. But if someone is just down on their luck and won't accept any help (assuming they need it), something seems wrong with that picture.

Homeless shelters are often not safe or pleasant places.

I don't have a definitive article or source to link to, but there are myriad accounts of theft, violence, and sexual violence at homeless shelters.

If I was homeless I would almost certainly prefer to sleep in my car (if I still owned one) or couch-surf with friends/family if possible.

    Is this because the services don't really offer 
    effective help for this group?
What the transiently homeless want/need is are jobs that pay a living wage so that they can begin paying for their own housing once again. That is what really breaks the "cycle" of homelessness. It's difficult for anybody, much less a homeless shelter, to place people into those sorts of jobs.

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

#236

Post by xbar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206
slg wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are disputing a point I never made. I didn't say "no units ever get cheaper". I said when growth outpaces new housing "cheaper units never flow down to the bottom of the market". You said yourself that the new construction had slightly higher pricing meaning your unit was in the same basic market as the new construction and also implies you likely were not shopping at "the bottom of the market". Do you think you…

> Do you think you would have been able to negotiate your rent down if the new building was in an entirely different class and was charging 2x or 3x your rent? Yes. What do you think people bidding for ultra-lux housing do if they don’t have supply? In New York, the ultra-wealthy have penthouses. In San Francisco, they have rows of townhouses. Which one do you think displaces more affordable housing?

I think you are saying San Francisco should embrace greater density in order to solve its problem. That's pretty short-term thinking.

Start here: San Francisco, for very specific geographic and regional reasons, will not have sufficient housing in the next century, and it will continue to have growing homeless populations. Solve for a 50-year horizon.

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

#237

Post by Griffinsauce »

wnevets wrote: post #112
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…

> They may have gotten into drugs or developed a mental issue in the first 12 months that they became homeless. These people are the "out of their minds" camp dwellers we think about when we think about the homeless. The biggest risk factor for being in this group is becoming homeless in the first place, One of the things that took me along time to realize was simply not having a safe, quiet and stable place to sleep…

Yes. It is not their default state, these are just people like you and me that we have completely failed as a society.

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

#238

Post by JumpCrisscross »

xbar wrote: post #236
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you think you would have been able to negotiate your rent down if the new building was in an entirely different class and was charging 2x or 3x your rent? Yes. What do you think people bidding for ultra-lux housing do if they don’t have supply? In New York, the ultra-wealthy have penthouses. In San Francisco, they have rows of townhouses. Which one do you think displaces more affordable housing?

I think you are saying San Francisco should embrace greater density in order to solve its problem. That's pretty short-term thinking. Start here: San Francisco, for very specific geographic and regional reasons, will not have sufficient housing in the next century, and it will continue to have growing homeless populations. Solve for a 50-year horizon.

> San Francisco, for very specific geographic and regional reasons, will not have sufficient housing in the next century

Some of the densest cities on the planet are on islands. San Francisco is on a peninsula. It is a low density city with tons of infill potential. That densification potential, together with slow population growth in the developed world, makes the problem perfectly tenable. (That said, homeowners would lose money. So not holding my breath.)

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

#239

Post by mactrey »

vxNsr wrote: post #194
BurningFrog wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fascinated by how widespread this weird idea is. Even if we buy the exotic premise that investors would buy houses and leave them empty - generating zero rental income for these greed driven people - as an investment, we still have to explain why they would only do this with new housing stock. Why can't you do the same trick with existing housing?

I’ve heard of it too, apparently foreign money (mostly China) needs a legit way to pull the money out of their country and real estate is a good way to do it that doesn’t alarm regulators. Can’t say why it doesn’t make sense to rent it out. But I do know that Vancouver passed laws to limit this type of purchase.

Did Vancouver pass limits on foreign purchases because that was the underlying reason for the high cost of housing, or did they pass limits because that was easier than actually building new housing?

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

#240

Post by alsetmusic »

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…

Apologies for reposting, but I think it matters and should be highly visible:

"In 2013 the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 per year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0]

Obviously, the numbers will change with the area. The cost of an apartment in the Bay Area or LA would be much greater, for example. But the book makes a good case that it'd cost society less overall to just take care of people than to ignore rampant homelessness. I'm inclined to believe it.

Related, there's an eye-opening limited series podcast on homelessness called "According to Need" that I found very compelling.[1] The host lives in the Bay Area, so there was a lot focus [t]here. I strongly recommend checking it out to learn just how stacked the system can be against people trying to overcome homelessness. For example, did you crash on someone's couch in the last thirty days? Doesn't matter if you've got nowhere to crash tonight, you don't qualify for a bed.

[0] The End of Policing, by Alex S. Vitale first edition pg 97

[1] https://99percentinvisible.org/need/

Edited to format

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