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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

#281

Post by pempem »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #197
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…

This...is not wrong. Pioneer Square in Seattle used to have a lot of flop houses, part of it being the original "skid row" (logs skid to the saw mill, really muddy and not a desirable place to live). My grandfather in Spokane unwittingly ran a rooming house we cousins called the "empty arms" (inherited from his sister), which housed a lot of people who were just barely getting by. Seattle's flop houses are mostly gon…

That's a possibility

The other possibility is that we should root out the corruption in this process. I am not generally a fan of privitization at all. In the private market however you're building 2/2s in LA for less than half of the cost including furnishings and fixtures.

By that I mean a 2 bed, 2 bathroom, with all of the traditionally middle class loved touches including faux marble, and faux wood flooring etc.

The situation LA is in is unconscionable as 4,000/mo apartments are going up for rent and developed for less than 350k.

The issue here is definitely corruption and not ability, cost, or the need to put people in Parasite style apartments.

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

#282

Post by rsync »

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.

Is that your opinion on marijuana policy in California?

Which issues, pray tell, are best governed by local control and which are best governed by top-down, remote decision makers?

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

#283

Post by conductr »

vannevar wrote: post #99
s1artibartfast wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Before it went into people's pockets, so they could care for their families and improve their life conditions.

Are their life conditions improved by having homeless people all over the place? There's a price to pay for living in an organized civil society, because people have learned the hard way that having an organized, civil society is better for their families and life conditions.

It's an economic solution. And quite simply, money goes further and could be used for more services elsewhere. It just feels icky to relocate folks that are already down. NIMBY at it's worse. But, done right, could absolutely be a better situation for all.

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

#284

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pempem wrote: post #281
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This...is not wrong. Pioneer Square in Seattle used to have a lot of flop houses, part of it being the original "skid row" (logs skid to the saw mill, really muddy and not a desirable place to live). My grandfather in Spokane unwittingly ran a rooming house we cousins called the "empty arms" (inherited from his sister), which housed a lot of people who were just barely getting by. Seattle's flop houses are mostly gon…

That's a possibility The other possibility is that we should root out the corruption in this process. I am not generally a fan of privitization at all. In the private market however you're building 2/2s in LA for less than half of the cost including furnishings and fixtures. By that I mean a 2 bed, 2 bathroom, with all of the traditionally middle class loved touches including faux marble, and faux wood flooring etc.…

> The issue here is definitely corruption and not ability, cost, or the need to put people in Parasite style apartments.

You claim corruption, but provide no evidence of such, just that the result doesn't make sense to you. But instead of corruption, maybe it is just capitalism at work here? Developers go with what the market demands, and that demand comes through what the market is willing to pay. In that case, they develop $350k units because they can rent them out for $4k, that sounds really profitable. Why would they bother doing what you think they should do if they can't make money doing it that way? Or is it alleged corruption that allows this behavior? If so, what kind of corruption?

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

#285

Post by seanmcdirmid »

mhb wrote: post #276
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This...is not wrong. Pioneer Square in Seattle used to have a lot of flop houses, part of it being the original "skid row" (logs skid to the saw mill, really muddy and not a desirable place to live). My grandfather in Spokane unwittingly ran a rooming house we cousins called the "empty arms" (inherited from his sister), which housed a lot of people who were just barely getting by. Seattle's flop houses are mostly gon…

How do you unwittingly run a rooming house?

You inherit property from your sister and...after putting work into it, realize that you are only getting low-end tenants. I guess it is hard to call it a rooming house, they were full apartments from what I remember, but we still thought of it as a flop house.

It didn't last long, he gave the place to my uncle after running it for a few years. My uncle quickly sold it after fixing it up a bit, he didn't want to be in that kind of business either.

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

#286

Post by asdff »

wolverine876 wrote: post #188
asdff wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

They provided your own room with a lock on the door and a bed, and a shared bathroom and kitchen, for a price that was substantially lower than any other unit of housing on offer in the area, so yes they provided these things. If these things were lacking, then it was the state of the times in code enforcement and you would expect these things to be lacking in any lower income housing unit during this time as well. That doesn't mean a modern SRO would be filled with any more code violations than your typical low income apartment today since code enforcement has gotten more modern.

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

#287

Post by aaronchall »

djrogers wrote: post #273
closeparen wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we are not talking about a homeless shelter or a temporary stopgap, these kinds of units are the "something better" that people in homeless shelters and other temporary stopgaps are in a holding pattern waiting for. Shipping the homeless elsewhere than California's most expensive cities is way outside the Overton window.

> Shipping the homeless elsewhere than California's most expensive cities is way outside the Overton window. Why? Unless you can show proof that most of the homeless in SF and LA are locals who fell on hard times rather than junkies who moved in for better weather and benefits, shipping them out seems completely reasonable.

Ask the Democrats and judges if they think that's reasonable.

And where will you ship them to? Smaller cities don't want them and they'll be inhospitable enough they won't want to be there either - they'd rather ship themselves back where they can stay close to their drug sources and still rotate with their panhandling around enough that the locals don't get too familiar with them.

So if you want to do something about the vagrant encampments being in the city you live in, the most effective thing that you can do is move to where they aren't, which is what everyone else who cared that much about it already did long ago.

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

#288

Post by mym1990 »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #241
mym1990 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I very well might, but my particular observation is with government behavior towards most projects, not just the one in this headline.

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

#289

Post by TimPC »

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…

Prop 13 is bad policy as demonstrated by every single area of the world that gets by without it. Most cities assess property values on a lagging window basis where your value for property taxes is set every few years based on the value from a few years ago. This generally gives you time to prepare for the increase or make whatever financial decisions you need to. One thing to keep in mind is that percentage property tax rates are necessarily set higher when some people pay taxes on values far below market. My region has a 0.63% property tax rate which amounts to about $6,300 a year on a million dollar home. That might be larger than one month of a mortgage payment but it's a reasonable price to pay for all the services the city provides. I live in a city where this includes garbage, mail, police, fire, transportation and sewage infrastructure and a number of other important services. The idea that someone who bought a house in 1963 should pay less than 10% of the taxes that other taxpayers do means that someone or several someone's are footing the remainder of the bill. You pay a substantial price for that as new homes become less affordable with the higher % rates of property tax. It's also not clear that being forced to sell over high property tax bills is a bad thing as it creates new supply on the market. Most people selling a single family home could easily afford to live in a condominium in the same neighborhood without losing touch with the people they care about. Keep in mind the necessary condition for selling is the property has gone up by enough to make the property tax bill unaffordable. This means whomever is selling their home is making a substantial profit and portraying them as low/middle income people who are hard done by is doing a disservice to anyone struggling in the artificial market created by prop 13 and paying the higher base rates associated with it.

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

#290

Post by renewiltord »

sfe22 wrote: post #277
renewiltord wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sounds like a reason to justify tyranny to me. What do you mean mob rule. In a (true) democratic society just a small group can change something the majority disagrees with because they got together? The majority is also together in the same matter isnt it?

Well, the idea recognizes two concepts:

- We don't want the minority enforcing on the majority

- We don't want a plurality or even a majority enforcing on a minority under certain circumstances

So, for instance, even if 300 million Americans think "sfe22 should be stripped of their assets and have it given to us 300 million" that's not going to happen. Yes, that is 'tyrannical' of you to have such power but it is so nonetheless.

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