Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

ktla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 368 posts

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#181

Post by wolverine876 »

omegaworks wrote: post #166
wolverine876 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the members of the program are getting a much worse deal than if they were just given money directly to pay rent. There are programs like that, including large ones like federal Section 8. It's not simple at all: Landlords will often refuse to rent to Section 8 participants. Also, people who are unhoused often need other services in order to get back on their feet.

And unfortunately, in certain areas that used to be affordable to low income working class people, the folks that win the lottery for the few Section 8 vouchers can drive up rent, as that flat rate is now considered the floor that landlords can charge.

Hmmm ... Section 8 is not known for paying a lot, afaik, and not a large source of demand. Also, rents have been shooting up while Section 8 has (afaik) not.

But do we have data anywhere? (I don't.)

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#182

Post by coding123 »

jeffbee wrote: post #46

This is not a story about government waste, it's a story about the high cost of building housing. If you want this price to be lower, lower the general cost of housing. The median sale price in Los Angeles is about 1 million dollars, and new construction sells for more. New construction at $837k is a comparative deal. Also, if you read the report, a significant part of the cost is intragovernmental transfers, i.e. th…

Well it is both.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#183

Post by Jarwain »

sfe22 wrote: post #159
jvanderbot wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely this. In LA there are constant referendums about homelessness, in CA massive budget increases, and yet, nobody will allow a shelter or multi-family unit to be constructed in their neighborhood, lest their soaring land value peak. In CA, it's my firm belief that people have a tad too much power over the minutae of government operations. What did we even elect people for if we are going to try to solve everyt…

So CA is too democratic in your opinion? It should slide more towards tyranny?

Feels like a flamebaity false-dichotomy.

Is it really tyrannical to, say, elect officials to act on our behalf and consider long-term impacts and x-order effects?

Because to me that just sounds a little more "republic" and a little less "direct democracy".

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#184

Post by kuang_eleven »

zamfi wrote: post #148
JJMcJ wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> curtail rising taxes That, of course, was Proposition 13, a ballot initiative. The fallout was exactly what people predicted. Prop 13 did two things. It capped property taxes, though there have been a variety of ways of getting around that. The other thing was it capped increases in property taxes. Not quite Prop 13 but you can't have high increases in property values, and simultaneously have affordable housing. Im…

> Not quite Prop 13 but you can't have high increases in property values, and simultaneously have affordable housing. Sure you can, you just also need to build new housing. The key is that the new housing has to be higher density than the old housing — the value is primarily in the land, not the house. If a developer could legitimately and easily build a 4-plex where any single-family home exists right now, the price…

As of recently, you will be able to build a fourplex on any SFH plot, with the passage of SB9! It's not perfect, but it is a massive step in the right direction.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#185

Post by dont__panic »

ravenstine wrote: post #126
999900000999 wrote: post #50

Oh yes, my home city. I left LA for numerous reasons, absolutely unaffordable housing was one of them. Most people are doing extremely poorly in Los Angeles. It's the only city where you both have to pay an insane amount of rent, and own a car. The bare minimum survive in LA is probably around 80 k. But the median income there is only around 70k. Of the people I was meeting, almost no one had a job or any real intere…

LA isn't even better than most other cities. You'd think it would be considering how many people have come here and how much it costs, but it's possibly one of the most mediocre cities in existence. Countries with much smaller economies (yet longer histories) than LA manage to have better looking skyscrapers and scenery, along with roads that aren't crumbling to the same degree. There's some great things in LA, but t…

I live in Denver, and the situation is much the same. Rampant crime, rapidly ballooning prices, and a public transit system so awful (in city limits; commuter rail is OK if you need to get between the suburbs and the city center) that you need a car.

What's especially weird is that this city is so flat, the weather is so decent, and the distances are so small, you could easily make Denver a paradise for walking and biking. But instead we just keep doubling down on cars for getting around the city, street parking, and unsustainable car suburbs.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#186

Post by muaytimbo »

nimbius wrote: post #17

the fact that any housing is getting built is frankly a refreshing turn of events. for people unfamiliar with los angeles, is very much a city of landed gentry. republican legislation designed to curtail rising taxes for elderly residents 40 years ago wound up creating a cloistered elite of land-owners that pay nearly nothing in tax and resist any attempt to create additional housing. They coast on a bubble of six-fi…

Actually this proposition made it "less illegal" to be poor and a homeowner. Now poor people can keep their homes even if, through no fault of their own, property values rise around them. Property taxes in general are a complete sham, what other item do you continually need to pay for after you own it? And why is the amount you need to pay pegged to what other people in the neighborhood around you are doing?

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#187

Post by coding123 »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #139
rmason wrote: post #32

Do you realize that you could give that homeless person a first class ticket to Detroit? Put them up in a hotel until an abandoned house could be totally rebuilt for them. Pay their electricity, water, heating costs and taxes for the next ten years and still save California taxpayers $600,000!

Do you realize that forced relocation is a crime against humanity?

Not a huge deal to get past for me.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#188

Post by wolverine876 »

asdff wrote: post #163
wolverine876 wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do all these numbers and other claims come from? Without evidence, we're all writing works of fiction - compelling stories, but not reality. > handed over design and construction of the crossovers to a company that builds snowplows. Who is analogous to the snowplow building company? > SROs used to be provided by the private market, largely free to taxpayers! What do we know about SROs and their outcomes?

>What do we know about SROs and their outcomes? That they housed people who today live in nylon tents with no plumbing/hvac/security.

What is that based on? And what did SROs provide? Did they provide plumbing, HVAC, and security? I never heard of SROs being known for their a/c and security, and the plumbing didn't have a great reputation.

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#189

Post by nine_k »

wolverine876 wrote: post #160
legitster wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My grandparent's first apartment in SF didn't have it's own kitchen or bathroom. They thought it was a nice enough place, but you literally couldn't legally rent it out today.

> My grandparent's first apartment in SF didn't have it's own kitchen or bathroom. They thought it was a nice enough place, but you literally couldn't legally rent it out today. Are you defining a unit with a kitchen and bathroom as a 'luxury apartment'? Would you live without them?

If the other option is living on the street, why not?

The problem is that not everyone has a well-paid IT job, and some people barely make ends meet. These people need a place to live, too, a cheap, non-advanced place, with many corners cut for the sake of it being cheap to build and maintain. It's still much better than living in a tent as your primary residence!

Re: Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person

#190

Post by [deleted] »

coding123 wrote: post #146

This pisses me off a LOT. I'm currently owner building a house. It's going to end up costing 100k and I'm doing this paycheck to paycheck. Doing it because I can't afford a house. I'm too old to have a 30 year mortgage. Is LA willing to send me 1/8 of that cost to house my wife and I? And we'll do it ourselves. Can the homeless build their own houses? Are these people just going to be getting hand-outs forever? Why d…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN