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Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

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Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#101

Post by freen »

epistasis wrote: post #77
freen wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are enough empty houses to house every homeless person in the country: there are ~ 19 million empty houses in the country. (in 2019)

Shipping people to other states against their will, and away from their connections, support networks, and whatever else they say need, is both unethical and counterproductive. Who the hell cares about homes nobody wants to live in? Build homes where people want them, don't let a few wealthy assholes hoard the best climate from everyone else. Why defend the interests of rentiers and landlords like this? It helps no o…

I wholeheartedly agree.

I never meant we should ship people places, just that “supply” exceeds “demand”. Capitalism is an inherently inefficient mechanism for the distribution of resources. It favors the aggregation of capital over efficient distribution.

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#102

Post by effingwewt »

Sebguer wrote: post #62
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Bezos can afford it, the government can afford it. So why don't they do it?

Mainly because our government is entirely captive to people like Bezos.

Very true.

Or, you know, if rich people and corps actually paid taxes.

So disgusting the people that defend the rich/super-rich (here its not rich- 'I only make 150k+ stock/yr, so I'm not rich!'). Min wage is what 15k/year, but yea 10x that isn't rich.

Reminds me of back in the 'everyone make a startup' days where CEOs got away with murder and some people on HN would just hand-wave it all away, because they wanted to be that CEO one day.

That's kinda gone now and its s/CEO/Rich asshole.

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#103

Post by aaomidi »

rlp wrote: post #33
sp332 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is in the part you quoted - when you get them off your property, they don't stop existing. Where do you want them to go to ?

The property owner should not be responsible for answering that question.

I do like how we think owning property is like a natural right that just exists.

Apple only owns that property because our social contract says they can, that social contract can be broken if we feel like they're abusing that "right".

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#104

Post by epistasis »

freen wrote: post #101
epistasis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shipping people to other states against their will, and away from their connections, support networks, and whatever else they say need, is both unethical and counterproductive. Who the hell cares about homes nobody wants to live in? Build homes where people want them, don't let a few wealthy assholes hoard the best climate from everyone else. Why defend the interests of rentiers and landlords like this? It helps no o…

I wholeheartedly agree. I never meant we should ship people places, just that “supply” exceeds “demand”. Capitalism is an inherently inefficient mechanism for the distribution of resources. It favors the aggregation of capital over efficient distribution.

When you write "there's enough empty homes to house every homeless person," the only possible interpretation I can come up with is that you're saying that capitalism has provided enough housing already, and that we should use those existing houses.

Is there another interpretation that you can provide me, that I'm not understanding? Because I see that claim repeated all over the place, and I only see it in response to the idea that we should build homes where people want them, as a reason for not building homes.

I would be greatly relieved if there was an interpretation of that statement which was not just a defense of the status quo.

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#105

Post by edgyquant »

Sebguer wrote: post #59
fortuna86 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, most societal problems are complex and solutions are not easy, if at all possible. But buying people homes wouldn't literally fix the homeless problem.

I'm only asking this because it drastically changes the tone and meaning of your message, but you did mean would literally not wouldn't, right?

No, it wouldn’t. Because the homeless crisis is not due to a lack of homes most homeless people have other issues and homelessness is just a symptom.

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#106

Post by edgyquant »

freen wrote: post #44
edgyquant wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you believe Bezos buying everyone a house is a solution to the homeless crisis you are so naive and ignorant of the situation that your views aren’t even worth a rebuttal. Do better.

~500k homeless in the country. [0] Average monthly rent in the US:~ $1000 [1] Bezos net worth: $213 billion [2] Average return on investment for DJIA for the past ten years: 10.6% [3] Paying rent for all homeless folks is $6 billion a year. Bezos, if he makes average returns, makes $21.3 Billion a year. He can afford it. And still e one the richest people in the world. How do you live with that? 0: https://en.m.wikip…

You completely ignored my main point. Physical housing is not the issue when it comes to the homelessness crisis. The fact that homelessness, in a majority of people, is a symptom of underlying psychological issues. Namely addiction and/or mental illness. Bezos would be better off donating that money to help understand and combat mental illness than giving every homeless person a house.

You can treat me like I’m so heartless, evil, person if you want but my point is there’s a hell of a lot more nuance than “there’s no houses.”

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#107

Post by edgyquant »

sammalloy wrote: post #21
edgyquant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication was that if they just had a house their lives would turn around. This isn’t the case for a lot of people as it’s an addiction or mental illness problem.

Multiple case studies and real world examples show the opposite. It's cheaper to provide housing for the homeless, there's more success with drug/alcohol/mental illness programs when they have housing, and many of them do get a chance to re-enter the job market.

Can you link me to some of these studies?

Re: Homeless encampment grows on Apple property in Silicon Valley

#108

Post by edgyquant »

mattficke wrote: post #25
edgyquant wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The implication was that if they just had a house their lives would turn around. This isn’t the case for a lot of people as it’s an addiction or mental illness problem.

They wouldn’t be homeless anymore, though. I think that’s a pretty solid improvement, regardless of any other challenges they have in their lives.

The point is though that a lot of them might be. Besides houses aren’t cheap or free you still have all kinds of bills to pay so your basically giving an addict a burdensome issue. Homeless shelters are a much better place for someone just trying to get clean and off the streets. There’s also an abundance of beds in homeless shelters because a lot of the people don’t want to get clean or off the streets.
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