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

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

#241

Post by fennecfoxen »

mym1990 wrote: post #161
mwint wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically, we’d be better off if the government had done nothing. Seems like that happens a lot.

Incentives for governments to deliver good results are much lower than in the private markets(not non-existent though), which is why governments are so bad at capital allocation. Its almost like the government wants to look like they are doing something, without ever actually following through.

I think you misunderstand the incentives. The elimination of the residential hotels and boarding houses of yesteryear (to be replaced with two-or-three bedroom apartments) was a deliberate exercise in class warfare, and the governments in question were largely delivering what voters wanted.

The remarkable part is the people who still defend the measures as for-the-poor's-own-good.

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

#242

Post by 2c2c2c »

Dig1t wrote: post #78
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…

I think you're talking about this in pretty black/white terms and the partisan framing doesn't do much. Prop 13 is a double edged sword IMO. It does have the problem you describe of landed gentry not getting hit with high property taxes, but also it does protect middle class people from getting kicked out of their homes due to the popularity of the area they live in. My parents are the perfect example of this, my dad…

always fun to see prop13ers turn themselves into victims over the idea of having to sell their 300% ROI property

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

#243

Post by HWR_14 »

This headline seems misleading. First, these are one-time costs, but most reporting on programs like these are annual costs. Second, this conflates a lot of numbers. Most are one bedroom (which could house a small family, as sleeping on a couch is more comfortable than a car), but the most expensive is $837,000. There's nothing even stated that the most expensive one-bedroom is $837,000). In fact, 86% are under $700,000 to build. In fact, they plan to hit 10,000 units in the next 5 years, with it seems about half of those coming from the first $1.2 billion allocation.

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

#244

Post by fennecfoxen »

999900000999 wrote: post #120
legitster wrote: post #66

In the last 50 years, cities across the country closed down over 1 million SROs ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy ) in an effort to remove slums or just neglect at increasing property value. There are now over half of a million homeless. It's honestly impressive the number is not more. For the 1.2 billion dollars they are spending, if all of the apartments were built to the spec of a roadside mote…

I don't buy the argument SROs were removed to get rid of Slums. In fact, my first apartment, ironically in LA was a very small step up from an SRO. It had a private bathroom, but not much else. Now the city has effectively made this housing illegal to build. These units for the homeless are basically luxury condos. It's never been about helping people, Garcerti and the boys just ripped off the people of Los Angeles.…

> I don't buy the argument SROs were removed to get rid of Slums.

"Criticizing hotel life was one thing; effectively controlling it was another. By 1910, reformers had established the idea that hotel housing was a public nuisance. From 1900 through the 1940s, interlocking groups of reformers and landowners transformed objections about hotel life into practices to control living in hotels. For the goals of the culturally and socially reorganized new city to succeed, aberrant forms of housing had to be prevented and removed—slum and hotel alike. Yet gaining control was neither automatic nor preordained. Hotel housing was entrenched in some areas and in others, still expanding (fig. 8.1). A few handfuls of reformers had to do more than galvanize public opinion against the notion of living in hotels; they also had to establish whole new governmental organizations and procedures to give cities and states the necessary legal and bureaucratic power." https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...

"As with the SFRA's applications of blight and nonbuilding, the actions of other hotel-closing agencies were not (in their own minds) aiming the wrecking ball at the homes of the poor but "eliminating dead tissue," "applying the scalpel," "clearing away the mistakes of the past," and building "an attractive new city." About a Norfolk, Virginia, hotel district, one planning journal editor reported in 1961 that "progress had reached the demolition stage." Local agents crowed that they had "reduced to rubble . . . scores of flophouses not renowned for adding luster to their city's good name."

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...

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

#245

Post by nine_k »

wolverine876 wrote: post #196
nine_k wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

The question was, is it luxury? > If the other option is living on the street, why not? Those aren't our only choices. > 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. And they also, like other humans, need kitchens and bathrooms. Also, kitchens save a lot of money - cooking is by far t…

I agree.

But it's better to have one kitchen for several units ("single rooms"), than none at all, and not even a single room.

Back to the beginning: I don't think that decrepit SRO buildings had to be perpetuated. But I suppose that moving people out of them should have included an offer of some other affordable housing, back in the time they were being removed, I need to find out what has been done.

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

#246

Post by renewiltord »

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?

That's exactly it. One of the reasons that the US (and other representative democracies) have limits on direct voter rule explicitly to prevent a "too democratic" situation yielding "mob rule" outcomes.

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

#247

Post by sfe22 »

setr wrote: post #178
sfe22 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Sounds more like too much direct democracy, and needs to slide further towards representative.

The emperor can also be your representative, and so is Putin to russians, and the slightly more complex US system. The slider is democracy to tyranny, just because we dont yet have democracy in most or all countries doesn't change anything here. We just have twisted its meaning to describe some decision power when choosing tyrants. Either all decide equally-democracy , or fewer to very few or one-tyranny.

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

#248

Post by legitster »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #231
legitster wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Publix in Seattle is a perfect example. A developer bought them out, them combined every 2-3 SROs to make a (still small) luxury apartment. I do not begrudge the developer. If you were to propose the opposite (taking an existing set of luxury apartments, and subdivide them into more rent paying units), it would probably be more profitable, but you would never get the plans approved.

> it would probably be more profitable, but you would never get the plans approved. I'm not sure it would be in this market. Catering to people with money is pretty profitable. Catering to lower income tenants...even with more scale on your side, might not work out, especially with the extra overheads involved (with Seattle's strict eviction laws, for example). Most small-scale landlords in Seattle are trying to get…

I remember watching this fight play out in real time in Seattle:

https://www.seattleweekly.com/news/somethings-rotten-in-roos...

> Most in the crowd were furious about the Sisleys’ refusal to help keep up the neighborhood. “I feel like I’m watching a neighborhood crumble,” said David Ahrens. Another angry resident added, “These are transient places. People are moving in and out. I think you need to get more aggressive with them.”

> In 1994, after the DCLU took action on a number of violations at Sisley properties, including the illegal conversion of a house that was zoned single-family into a six-unit “residents’ club” house, Gilbert brought a similar suit against city officials.

Then there's all of the Carl Haglund stuff.

I think people have tried to cater to low income tenants, and all of them have been run out of town.

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

#249

Post by coding123 »

thebean11 wrote: post #219
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…

Why are you too old to have a 30 year mortgage?

I don't want to work through my 70s and possibly 80s

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

#250

Post by myfavoritedog »

Shuang1 wrote: post #228
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…

Republicans caused all the problems in a city that they haven't controlled since 2001, in a state they haven't controlled since 1987? That really is incredible! I wonder how they accomplished that.

Probably the same way that they're blaming Trump for Russia's aggression during the non-Trump presidencies before and after the Trump one. It's almost like reality doesn't align with their tribal narrative but they can't give it up.
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