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

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

#251

Post by redis_mlc » Thu, May 27, 2021, 6:47 AM UTC

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 think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor"

Your info is out of date - that's exactly what's happening.

One police officer dealing with homeless in Portland or Seattle recently said 100% of the people he dealt with were on drugs and living in tents.

In SF, rents are so high that you won't be "transiently homeless" - you're priced out of the market without already having a pretty good job.

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

#252

Post by onion2k » Thu, May 27, 2021, 7:06 AM UTC

maddyboo wrote: post #171

onion2k wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sayin…

What is the rationale for giving such a tax break? That seems ridiculous.

The current UK government is full of people who believe rich people keeping their money is how you stimulate the economy in to growth. It's not a completely unreasonable position according to economic theory but there are plenty of reasons to disagree with it.

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

#253

Post by onion2k » Thu, May 27, 2021, 7:08 AM UTC

stale2002 wrote: post #185

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…

> If people buy the new houses as investments and leave them empty most of the year Fortunately, this is already a metric that is tracked, called the vacancy rate. And what we see is, that in in-demand cities, that have high rents, the vacancy rate is pretty low. So, if the vacancy rate is 5%, that means that if you build 100 houses, then 95 of them are going to be lived in. Yes, it sucks that those other 5 houses ar…

A quick Google will also show that the vacancy rate for high end property is higher, and that builders are building more high end property, so logically there is less useful housing stock being added than the overall vacancy rate would imply.

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

#254

Post by tylerhou » Thu, May 27, 2021, 7:24 AM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #232

tylerhou wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Vancouver: "City housing planner Matthew Bourke said there doesn't appear to be a correlation between empty homes and housing prices, given that the vacancy rate remained flat while prices skyrocketed.... Bourke told council that about 70 per cent of single-family homes marked as vacant in 2014 were found to be waiting for a renovation permit." 12.5 * 0.7 = 3.75% (this can't be directly compared to other vacancy numbers, though).

Manhattan: Unsold != unoccupied.

Melbourne: Now we're cherrypicking districts that have less than 15,000 residents total in a city of 5 million in one specific year? This is essentially p-hacking to support a non-existent narrative.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinia,_Victoria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde,_Victoria

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands,_Victoria

Boston: "could remain largely empty." This is speculation. Where is the data?

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

#255

Post by marnett » Thu, May 27, 2021, 7:38 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #246

nasmorn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which half a dozen or so families are you referring to here?

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

#256

Post by tylerhou » Thu, May 27, 2021, 7:56 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #142

tylerhou wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sayin…

The actual report says that there are 125,000 homes in London without permanent residents. Those homes aren't unoccupied; they're often used for AirBnB or temporary rentals. That's not a vacancy. In reality, only a fifth of those homes are empty most of the time.

Also, the report doesn't tell us how many non-vacant homes there are in their survey area, so we have to guess. London reportedly has 3.59 million dwellings, so 25,000 vacant homes would only represent 0.7% of homes being vacant. Even if you use the higher 125,000 number, that's still only 3.5% of all homes. That's a fairly low vacancy rate, and about right for a city.

Even after the pandemic, housing officials report a 3.4% vacancy rate, which is the highest in eight years. https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/london-apartment-vacancy.... Before that, it was only at 1.8%. That's extremely low.

You can tax vacant homes, but in general, those taxes have a very small effect on housing prices. It's far, far more effective to allow people to build more housing, including luxury housing.

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

#257

Post by tylerhou » Thu, May 27, 2021, 8:06 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #124

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…

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…

> Adding in a new road can actually increase traffic as it ends up encouraging more people to drive who otherwise wouldn't have.

You're alluding to "induced demand," which does not claim that adding a new road increases traffic. When it becomes "cheaper" (in terms of time) to drive, more people will start driving, but the cost of driving (time to get from A to B) still goes down.

This is basic economics, except with time instead of money. Adding a new road is a positive supply shock, which causes demand to rise until equilibrium, but the new price is going to be below the old price.

See: https://youtu.be/6dwSIO_Slhc?t=236, except imagine the supply shock is in the other direction.

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

#258

Post by ultrastable » Thu, May 27, 2021, 8:58 AM UTC

Auracle wrote: post #161

ahelwer wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why people believe NPR to be progressive. The joke name "Nice Polite Republicans" exists for a reason. Liberal news coverage of homeless issues rarely takes a progressive framing, anyway.

There’s an easy litmus test for news organizations - words. Do they use Latino or Latinx, for example? Illegal alien vs. undocumented immigrant vs refugee. Sex vs gender assigned at birth (usually when talking about a trans person). NPR used to be fairly centrist, but these days they’re far to the left. If I turn on my car there’s about a 9/10 chance my local station will be talking about some form of identity politi…

"undocumented immigrant" isn't necessarily the same as "refugee", likewise sex vs assigned gender. if you're going to critique word choice you should know what those words mean

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

#259

Post by ultrastable » Thu, May 27, 2021, 8:59 AM UTC

sida wrote: post #46

darth_avocado wrote: post #35

I think the main takeaway here is government, as usual, thinking short term and spending more money on bandaid solutions. Yes, the $2600 gets you services, meals, sanitation and staffing. But in reality, you can get a decent 1BR apartment for $1500 that is waaay bigger than a tent, sanitation for free since it is an apartment, and have almost $1000 for groceries left over. And, you can fit more people in the apartmen…

As a landlord, I would definitely not rent to this program though. I mean, would you? But yes looking at this, the program cost is indeed insanely high

why wouldn't you rent to it?

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

#260

Post by ultrastable » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:03 AM UTC

klondike_ wrote: post #122

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #59

So digging into the report that is linked from the article and other commenters here (link below, search for "Pilot Safe Sleep Site" in that article), some relevant points: 1. The "$2600" number is calculated from the $1,491,410 total cost / 70 spaces / 8 months. 2. Regarding staffing, "The staffing plan Urban Alchemy recommends for a successful program is a minimum staff-to-participant ratio of one (1) to 12." So in…

Deinstitutionalization was a mistake. While the advent of psychiatric drugs in the 60s reduced the need for these massive long term care facilities, there are still (and always will be) mentally ill people who require long term care. The community mental health facilities that were to replace asylums never materialized, and now a majority of these people now spend their life on the street. Some will argue that these…

I don't think we should fall into the trap of thinking it has to be one or the other. people shouldn't be kicked out onto the street & the asylums absolutely were inhumane. reestablishing them is not a decent solution, & "requires long term care" doesn't necessarily mean "needs to be locked up"