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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

#241

Post by Griffinsauce »

londons_explore wrote: post #114
spoonjim wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see someone who is quite clearly very recently homeless I give them as much money as I can afford to, like $50-100, because I feel like it can get them out of homelessness. When I see someone completely out of their mind I don’t feel like anything I can do will make a material difference, just get them different levels of stoned for the next 3 hours.

When you give $50-100, please employ them to do a task. Ie. "Here's $50. Go and buy me some ice cream. You can have another $50 when you bring it to me". It discourages begging and encourages an entrepreneur mentality.

This is completely asinine. You're working on the assumption that these people have the opportunity and bandwidth for entrepreneurship. Guess what homelessness takes away from you?

Take a quick peek at Maslow's hierarchy of needs please and map both their situation and what you're asking of them.

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

#242

Post by umeshunni »

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

You mean, "for very specific political and cultural reasons". There's nothing in San Francisco's geography that most world cities haven't solved.

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

#243

Post by Griffinsauce »

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.

Aside from the things already mentioned about safety, these things don't take pride into account. Just see how some comments here view homeless and the general attitude towards anyone accepting welfare.

This is also an often missed point of UBI, it will help people that are unwilling to accept help otherwise. Either due pride or safety concerns (see the Dutch tax authorities mess right now that has ruined families that were dependent on child care support)

Whatever you think of specific solutions (please don't start debating UBI... ) it's quite obvious to me that we need to change quality of life safetynets from a pull to a push system.

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

#244

Post by nasmorn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #238
xbar wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wo…

No way would homeowners lose money long term if San Francisco turns into Hong Kong. They are land owners first and foremost

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

#245

Post by mamurphy »

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…

Another comment in this thread prompted me to research a bit. While building expensive housing is probably fine, it seems that the cities with the most success have adopted a housing first[0][1][2] policy. Building cheap housing (and housing homeless there) is a major part of what is seen by many as the most effective solution.

[0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-07-06/why-is-ho... [1]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/... [2]https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-46891392

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

#246

Post by JumpCrisscross »

nasmorn wrote: post #244
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wo…

No way would homeowners lose money long term if San Francisco turns into Hong Kong. They are land owners first and foremost

> No way would homeowners lose money long term if San Francisco turns into Hong Kong

In the short term they would. And in the long term, they would gain wealth but lose their iron grip on the city. Never underestimate the seductiveness of power. As long as San Francisco’s renters believe density is impossible or will price them out, homeowners (specifically, about half a dozen families) will retain their lock on the city.

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

#247

Post by slg »

stickfigure wrote: post #231
slg wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm not sure your point anymore. According to Trulia that is a 11 bedroom, 10 bath, nearly 6k sq ft home. Was it switched to 9 apartments because the place fell down market as it aged or was it retrofitted because there is very little market for a single family house like that in SLO? Also are we even sure those individual apartments are truly down market? Like you said, the house still looks great from the outside. It certainly doesn't look like a "slum" like you mentioned in your first comment.

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

#248

Post by mamurphy »

browningstreet wrote: post #209

Last year I went from making $20K/mo to I’m 50 years old. I had no one to draw from, I had no more debt I could create, aside for obscene %APR credit card options. Now imagine that I can’t draw 6 figures, I still pulled $2K in my worst months, I still had to move out of my home and live in my car and visit my partner who crashed on couches from friends who could only reasonably accommodate one of us… my ex- let me vi…

This comment, including the part about Europe, prompted me to research this issue a bit. I Googled 'European homelessness' and came across articles[0][1]that suggest that while there are a few cases of success in cities like Helsinki (or Salt Lake City[2]) with 'Housing First' policies, homeless is getting worse in Europe. Denmark and Finland seem to be doing well[1][3], and could serve as a model.

I'd like to learn more about if Europe overall is doing better than the United States. I couldn't find comparative numbers with solid data. Thank you for sharing your story, I am glad you found a light at the end of the tunnel.

[0]https://www.euronews.com/2019/03/22/homelessness-in-europe-a... [1]https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-46891392 [2]https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-homelessness-housing/... [3]https://archive.thinkprogress.org/four-countries-the-united-...

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

#249

Post by devwastaken »

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…

Owning a home in LA is like investing in microsoft stock in the 90's. Now that it's so inflated, you don't want it to go down. More houses = less value to your house. When people are looking at having to lose a quarter million or more they're the ones showing up and running the city council.

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

#250

Post by Seattle3503 »

dcolkitt wrote: post #198
slg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This generally doesn't happen for two primary reasons. First cities are not closed systems. Places like LA and the Bay Area have a built up demand that exceeds housing. The new housing would have to be added at an extremely high right to keep up with that demand otherwise the city just grows rather than becomes cheaper. When a city simply grows, the cheaper units never flow down to the bottom of the market as someone…

> someone else will move in who lives outside the city I don't really see this as a gotcha. Those would-be new arrivals to the city don't materialize out of thin air. Presumably they left some other place behind, and their migration is freeing up housing stock wherever they leave behind. The underlying dynamic is still the same. New housing increases low-end affordability by soaking up mid-end demand for old housing…

> But that migration will free up housing stock in Ohio.

You don't need to go as far as Ohio, just a commuter suburb.

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