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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

#301

Post by tylerhou »

slg wrote: post #296
tylerhou wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Your logic is present in a lot of economic thinking, but it is flawed as it assumes people are purely rational actors that make decisions at the margins. That is a classic Economics 101 assumption that turns out to only be true in theory. In reality people are stubborn. We chase sunk costs and we repeat inefficient behavior because it is habit. People therefore won't necessarily choose to drive based on an evaluation…

You're right that basic econ doesn't always hold, but in practice, it often does. In this case we actually have data on how road expansion affects transport times, which show that transport times slightly drop (as econ 101 predicts).

https://www.thecgo.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Can-We-Bui... (Pages 8-10)

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

#302

Post by texaswhizzle »

ultrastable wrote: post #284
texaswhizzle wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

so you're saying you wouldn't rent to someone purely because they were homeless? w/ attitudes like this it's not surprising there's so many people living on the street

Well with that attitude I expect you’ve opened a room in your house to a homeless person. Otherwise you’re just a NIMBY hypocrite.

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

#303

Post by guntars »

alisonkisk wrote: post #127
GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're misunderstanding the fundamental function of modern government. That $2600 goes to a contractor (political crony, friend, or relative) who then mostly pockets the money through salaries, sub-contracts, and such. This is the purpose of the spending and there was never an intent to help anyone in the first place.

This is completely baseless.

Agreed. It's unsubstantiated, cynical and I think meant to provoke a reaction and say something about the poster (it does). Downvote and move on.

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

#304

Post by jollybean »

koolba wrote: post #297
jollybean wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title of the piece is: "One Author's Controversial View: 'In Defense Of Looting'" To the extent that they identify that the view is labelled with the editorially appropriate moniker: 'Controversial' - I'm glad that people have a chance to speak their minds. 'Covering' a book or a perspective is not overtly 'promoting' it. If they're drawing from a wide perspective (they don't quite though), then this would be a g…

Even NPR had to admit that it was wrong to publish that story, or at least do so without calling it out as factually inaccurate: > This Q&A with a provocative author did not serve NPR’s audience. You and several other NPR fans pointed out that NPR’s own prior reporting contradicted some of the things this author was saying. On top of being wrong about recent events, the author’s characterization of the Civil Rights M…

The issue with the piece is not 'facts' - it's the characterization of 'looting' as effectively a form of 'legit revolutionary behaviour', actions which are necessary to invoke change.

That's not a completely irrational idea and is worthy of some discussion.

The bigger issue with NPR is not that they carried the piece, it's that they likely would not have carried too many alternative viewpoints. They are 'sided'.

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

#306

Post by jjav »

andy_jensen wrote: post #229
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?

>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. Where I live the housing prices are expected to go up roughly 15% this year. So someone buying a house for 600k can expect to sell it for 690k making 90k. That is 7500 USD a…

> If you wanted to make that much money from rent

It's not either/or, which is why I'd assume the parent poster called it weird. That investor could make the appreciation and of top of it could make the rental income. So it is weird, from their perspective, to leave it empty. If they're flipping real estate for profit (as opposed to buying a home to live) why reject the extra income.

Also, selling a rental property with a solid history of rental income tends to be better than one with a history of sitting empty. Although that probably doesn't apply to mansions.

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

#307

Post by BurningFrog »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #295
BurningFrog wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you build enough luxury housing it will become cheap right away. San Francisco has ~400k housing units. If you build a million more, prices will go down very sharply. When there is more housing units than people who want to live there, prices go towards zero, whether they're "luxury" or not.

This is all true if we're talking about supply demand lines on a graph, but when on earth in real life is a for-profit company gonna whoops accidentally build so much that they have to take a loss and then keep building ? lol. I mean the idea is correct, but I don't think we can depend on the private market to deliver on this concept. Don't get me wrong SF badly needs more housing and needs to approve tons more, I'm…

I was arguing against the idea that adding "luxury" housing won't lower prices.

Most people understands it does it if you add a million units, but for some reason they can't grasp that each new unit contributes.

I was not predicting anyone would build a million units overnight, certainly not accidentally.

> At some point for profit developers will not build because they can't make a return.

SF has been very near this point for decades. Because new construction is mostly illegal, and if not extremely expensive and slow. Because of explicit policy from the SF BoS.

If housing construction were legalized in SF, say by adopting the regulations of Houston or Tokyo, there would be an enormous construction wave in the city. No one can predict to what level, but after that has transformed the city we can take stock and see if any other measures need to taken.

But I don't see SF doing anything of the kind without at least a decade of hesitation. The city is far too conservative to change.

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

#308

Post by paulcole »

lightgreen wrote: post #298
paulcole wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much of this comment is based on data and how much is you extrapolating from a single person you know? This article seems to suggest that giving out access to housing is in fact effective: https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housi...

I'm extrapolating it from various personal encounters, but I have no data. Vox doesn't have data either. They are stating that government spends money very inefficiently at homeless and assumes it would be more efficient to hand out homes. This is wrong because: * government will hand out homes also very inefficiently * handing out homes might be cheaper than policing homeless people, but it does not guarantee that i…

> I have no data.

This is my surprised face lol.

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

#309

Post by browningstreet »

Kneecaps07 wrote: post #286
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…

When you were making $20k/mo did you not put some aside in an emergency fund? What were you doing with all of that money while you were making it?

I had an emergency fund, but I’d also been underemployed for some time when I went out on my own. Took a while to get up to that MRR and when the clients went away, we drained it as slowly as possibly. I kept enough in the trough to not miss any of my car payments, for instance. My credit never faltered. But the inbound cash dried up hard, and applying to jobs became my full-time job.

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

#310

Post by browningstreet »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #262
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 s…

It’s been a few years now. I think a lot has changed in 5 years. I won’t name the places I was frequenting, as I’d like to stay anonymous under this username, but state support in those places, at least in terms of housing-you-had, was way more than we can expect here.
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