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I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

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Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#181

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

Talanes wrote: post #123
lbarrow wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

55% is one of the lowest home ownership rates in the country. If high levels of home ownership drive policies that prohibit new construction and drive up prices, how is it that places like Minnesota, with a home ownership rate in the mid-70s, are so cheap to live in?

It's worth noting that property taxes in California are only re-assessed on ownership change or new construction. There's no downside to having the value of your home balloon as much as possible.

They can increase when home values increase.

But, that increase is capped at a percent per year, which practically speaking means taxes lag behind home values when they increase.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#182

Post by rektide »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #161
xboxnolifes wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't that 55% is "high" (or not). The problem is that, currently, there is a housing problem that is significantly profitable for 55% of a population. This means that 55% of people have conflicting interests with fixing this problem.

I have friends more invested in housing issues than I am. But they generally agree with my assessment that without fixing transportation issues there is only downsides for homeowners and even renters to new development. It definitely seems like developers don't want to to pay a cent for mass transit. The just want to build lux houses and lofts in some neighborhood and then run away with the money. I think Scott Wiene…

Picking a couple specific issues, to me, seems like a naive hope in counting a majority of over-privileged under-taxed folk whose land-value goes up the more they suppress change or growth. Trying to argue this or that specific issue, get them to come around each time, seems unlikely to provide real progress.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#183

Post by romanhn »

zebnyc wrote: post #167
CheezeIt wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlike other states, California property tax rates don’t increase with market value.

Can you clarify this? Property taxes are what are holding me back from making a bid for a more expensive home. If I buy a home for $1 million, won't I have to pay property taxes based on that price even if it was previously tax assessed at $100k.

The other comments are all correct, but they didn't address your last point. Yes, you will indeed pay taxes on the $1M value, and yeah, high property taxes is definitely something to plan for when buying property in California. The kicker is, as others mentioned, when your home's value is $2M in five years, you're still paying taxes on essentialy a $1M property.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#184

Post by omgwtfbyobbq »

colinmhayes wrote: post #154
fortran77 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the only people I see really arguing for Prop 13 are in the dying our demographics of newspaper comment sections and NextDoor, and nearly no one I meet in person. I like Prop 13. I'd be more than happy to meet you in person. California has the highest sales tax and income tax in the nation. The amount of revenue it gets from property tax is near the median for the U.S. I think they get enough money and don't need m…

Repealing prop 13 doesn't have to mean taxes go up. Housing can be kept in check by adequate property taxes while lowering income taxes at the same time.

It can. To me, this is the usual debate between taxing income and taxing wealth. They each have their positives and negatives.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#185

Post by sershe »

The only reason I don't laugh quite out loud is that I have a misfortune of living in Seattle and my wife refuses to move until something "actually happens" to us, as opposed to stuff going on 15 blocks away.

California is not suffering from others' "broken" policy, but only from its own.

It's an unpopular opinion, but I think it's great that there are people out there who concentrate the entire problem around themselves and spare the rest of us. They should suffer the consequences of their very willful and insistent stupidity. We should make fun of them, from safe distance.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#186

Post by xondono »

jpindar wrote: post #29
rubicon33 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really not convinced that high housing costs accurately depict the source of the homelessness problem in CA. If it does, it certainly isn't describing the homeless people I see. Most of the homeless people I see, the ones who are literally pitching tents on the side walks, sleeping on boxes, defecating anywhere and everywhere, passed out on park benches at 3 in the afternoon, are almost certainly not going to be…

No offense, but equating housing with owning a house is part of the problem.

You do need to own a house to suffer the consequences of bad zoning policies, if owning prices go up, rent goes up as well.

Not to mention that when owning prices are high, there’s a bigger incentive for local governments to use every opportunity to help other people who might not need as much help but have more consistent voting habits

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#187

Post by reillyse »

holler wrote: post #146
DoreenMichele wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was homeless for nearly six years. I hated it. It wasn't actually anything I wanted. Most people on the street don't want to be there. The research points to housing as the primary root cause.

Directly next to where I live there are multiple people living in the hillside. Each day for the past year+ they park their BMW, Honda Accord, and Toyota Camry on our street, and then walk off into the park, hop a fence, and down to wherever it is their tents are. It's really perplexing to see someone driving a ~2010 clean BMW while choosing to live in the hillside. My determination is that they're simply choosing th…

Ah high percentage of people living homeless in Los Angeles, (in the region of 60% if I remember from the survey) have at least one job. They get paid money, just not enough money to rent somewhere. There is no "lifestyle" to choose.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#188

Post by progre »

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #125
issa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that having low income housing somehow impacts the price of higher end housing, and I am not sure that this is true. Would a person with a million dollar house be hurt if we built 100,000 more million dollar houses? Yes. Would that same homeowner be hurt if we built 100,000 cheap rental apartments? It certainly doesn't seem like it. However much property values fall due to less people looking for low…

> Would that same homeowner be hurt if we built 100,000 cheap rental apartments? Of course they would. Million dollar houses in many parts of the country are so insanely expensive not because they’re luxury goods; they’re expensive because supply is so constrained that even mediocre houses are extremely scarce relative to demand. People buying million dollar houses in e.g. the Bay Area know that their house is not pa…

Please don't compare Ladas with Trabants. Ladas are real cars. Simple, crude even, but robust. Trabants are shitty 4 weel mopeds.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#189

Post by sershe »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #48
betwixthewires wrote: post #40

I agree with the premise of the article, that a large proportion of California's homeless move there because it's easier to he homeless for all the reasons listed, but that's about the substance of the article. It blames the problem on detached housing and demands solutions without an inkling of a hint at any. Our homeless problem is the result of 2 things: a mental health problem and to a much lesser extent the perv…

I'm the author. It's really not mostly mental health problems. I've studied this issue for years. I write about homelessness on Street Life Solutions. I try to write about housing and community development stuff elsewhere, like Eclogiselle.com and https://projectsro.blogspot.com/ . This post wasn't intended to be some opus solving everything. I wanted to make one point: California's extreme homeless problem is not so…

How do you reconcile "national shortage of housing" being the cause with California being the most expensive state with the most homeless? Shouldn't a national problem cause people to migrate AWAY from the expensive housing? Housing in the US (median, not SF) is one of the cheapest relative to income among the developed countries, AFAIK.

Also, I can tell you from my own example that it's a chicken and egg problem. If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have told you I'd like to have Singapore-style vehicle taxes, introduced gradually, so that developmental patterns would change, basically forcing people into transit and walkable neighborhoods. However, based mainly on living in Seattle, I am now 100% pro-driving, anti-transit and dream of moving to suburbs, specifically because I want to be far away from blight (and I grew up in Moscow in the 90ies economic collapse, so my standards for lack of urban blight are pretty low). Now, I am only willing to accept Singapore-style (or Moscow-style) urban environment with Singapore-style/Moscow-style ruthless enforcement of law and order.

Re: I believe California is the dumping ground for America's homeless problem

#190

Post by hypothesis »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #176
issa wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sort of at a loss for understanding the misunderstanding here. Someone without equity in their home probably cannot get a loan of any sort. Access to capital, as a loan or any other form, is a huge thing. So if your home gives you access to that loan, this is important.

There is no misunderstanding. Most people don't have a use for a line of credit other than to spend it on things that don't make them any money. Everyone I know that did this used it to say, pay off a bunch of credit card debt, or build a new kitchen that will be worthless by the time they sell their house anyways.

Paying off credit card debt should be beneficial here, right? I would assume that trading a 15%-25% rate to something lower is good thing.
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