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

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

#261

Post by circlefavshape » Thu, May 27, 2021, 9:04 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…

The vacancy rate in Dublin (in Ireland) is 1.6%, but I was there 2 weeks ago and there are so many empty buildings - some of them empty at least since I lived there back in the 90s/00s. I'm not sure that vacancy rate reflects the reality of a city's unproductive building stock

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

#262

Post by jokethrowaway » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:45 AM UTC

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…

Have you been to Europe recently?

Homeless is getting worse and illegal immigration compounds the problem. The more advanced countries (like the UK) have center for homeless who are not drug addicts. That means the majority of homeless on the street are either ignorant or drug addicts. I always remind them there are tax funded centers.

Other countries are not so lucky (especially in Southern Europe) and you see all sort of homeless, from drug addicts, to youngsters without a job, to illegal immigrants.

A professional making 200/250k in Europe is also incredibly rare but you could live with 2k/m in a lot of places (which is true in some places of the USA as well - certainly not SF). Real estate is also more expensive in Europe, so getting your own house is generally easier in some places in the USA (certainly not SF).

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

#263

Post by texaswhizzle » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:46 AM UTC

ultrastable wrote: post #259

sida wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Way too risky. It would have to be significantly above market rate before I would consider it. Risk of damage to the property.

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

#264

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:49 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…

>We see the same type of thing when designing transportation systems in a city.

I don't know how to describe this but sometimes people say things that drive an agenda which from a first glance support the agenda but when you dig deep down into the details you realize that there is a second message that completely contradicts the actual agenda the comment pushes.

For example, "induced demand" is something that happens on roads because they are free to use by any road user. By building wider roads you make it very cheap to drive both in terms of congestion and money. Public transport costs money, is space efficient and slow. Driving a car is inefficient, convenient, fast and when you consider the "better service" it is worth the additional cost. Therefore people will stop using public transport and start driving cars, because roads are free.

This almost contradicts the agenda because housing isn't provided for free, you have to pay for it and you have to pay a huge premium for inefficient but convenient housing (single family homes). Of course, the problem is that there is a subsidy that encourages inefficiency similar to free roads, namely property tax freezes. An old single family home may have a lower tax burden than a new apartment. It's effectively a subsidy to homeowners that haven't moved out. However, the real contradiction lies in the fact that the argument hasn't been against property tax freezes, instead the criticism is aimed at new construction, which does not suffer from the subsidy problem.

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

#265

Post by texaswhizzle » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:52 AM UTC

I cannot believe so many cities in California allow camping anywhere in public. No wonder people are fleeing California cities.

I cannot imagine what the exodus in NYC would look like if the next mayor allowed these tent cities in Central Park.

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

#266

Post by texaswhizzle » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:58 AM UTC

anthony_romeo wrote: post #14

The title of this post has been editorialized to be more provocative. The NPR article is actually titled “High Cost Of Los Angeles Homeless Camp Raises Eyebrows And Questions” and is far less inflammatory than this title suggests.

I would argue that this title is less editorialized. This title plainly states the main fact and subject of the article. Whereas the NPR title leaves the cost nebulous so that we can all wonder, and then click. I would further argue that that ambiguous “high cost” is meant to imply to that reader that the “cost” is extremely high.

In short, this title is more accurate, less editorialized, and less click-baity.

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

#267

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 27, 2021, 10:59 AM UTC

tylerhou wrote: post #257

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…

> 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…

The problem with wider roads is a shift away from walking, cycling, public transport to car driving but that isn't what the comment complained about, considering the car (the single family home) is already there and anything you do can only increase efficiency. Building apartments it is the exact opposite and can only help over the long term.

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

#268

Post by c22 » Thu, May 27, 2021, 11:11 AM UTC

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…

We're already there. The US has 15.6 million vacant homes [0] and only around 567,000 homeless people [1]. Unfortunately people skirting homelessness often don't have the resources to pick up and move half way across the country so you're going to need a radical proposal for moving the homeless to where the homes are.

[0] https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf

[1] https://endhomelessness.org/homelessness-in-america/homeless...

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

#269

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 27, 2021, 11:17 AM UTC

slg wrote: post #247

stickfigure wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

I criticised a previous comment of yours because of incorrect implication of "induced demand" as the situations are very different but I like this comment.

>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?

Definitively, I would have to invite my extended family to fill the building.

>Also are we even sure those individual apartments are truly down market?

They definitively cost less than renting the entire building, which is what stickfigure's anti-apartment stance would mandate.

> It certainly doesn't look like a "slum" like you mentioned in your first comment.

Of course not, it can't look like a slum because the exterior hasn't changed. We are running into a problem here. The classification or living arrangement is apparently the deciding factor behind the "character of the neighborhood" and whether it is a slum. How can that be? Well, maybe it's not the building or the architecture or the zoning and so on, maybe it's the inhabitants that turn the place into a slum? You certainly can't see them from the outside.

We also run into another problem, if there are "evil" people that turn neighborhoods into slums by their mere presence then how do you distinguish between slum people and non slum people? It should be impossible in practice. Of course, there is a reliable(in the sense that it is self fulfilling) visual proxy for that.

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

#270

Post by imtringued » Thu, May 27, 2021, 11:22 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #106

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…

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…

When people buy housing and leave it empty, they are buying the land, the house is a bonus. People never buy housing as an investment unless they use it to reduce the cost of living (pretty much never) or rent it out (happens a lot). Buying land works fine because of rent seeking.