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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

#301

Post by vkou »

linksnapzz wrote: post #300
vkou wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think compelling longterm vagrants to accept mandatory psychiatric and drug treatment in a secure facility under state custodial care is criminalizing poverty. I live in Seattle. Please tell me which facility within 50 miles of me will both safely house people, and provide psychiatric/drug treatment for them, and I'll get right onto advocating for getting people out of tents and into that facility. Does it…

Nobody's building a magical housing and treatment facility for 5,500 people. Yeah, that's the problem; nobody's building it, not because the facility is impossible to build or run, but because it would require the political will to compel anyone arrested on multiple counts of vagrancy to be held there on the condition of accepting some form of treatment or further counseling. It is not magic; the tent city phenomena…

> Yeah, that's the problem; nobody's building it, not because the facility is impossible to build or run, but because it would require the political will to compel anyone arrested on multiple counts of vagrancy to be held there on the condition of accepting some form of treatment or further counseling.

Nonsense. It's not being built because city voters (and, more importantly, city businesses like Amazon) like their money more than they like not seeing tent camps.

Complaining on AM radio about tent camps is free, fixing the problem is expensive.

You're attacking some weird progressive boogieman, when progressives aren't the ones winning city elections, or in control of the council. The winners of the most recent one are all status quo corporate candidates, who have zero qualms about fucking with homeless people (hence the re-introduction of the sweeps), but have every qualm about actually spending money on solving homelessness.

Musical chair sweeps are cheap, solutions are expensive. The political will to do something is there, it's just not the political will to do anything useful. You can't with a straight face blame progressives and bleeding hearts for not solving the problem, when they aren't the ones running the town.

> I don't think compelling longterm vagrants to accept mandatory psychiatric and drug treatment in a secure facility under state custodial care is criminalizing poverty.

> but because it would require the political will to compel anyone arrested on multiple counts of vagrancy

... So, hold on, let me get the record straight, is poverty and/or mental illness a crime or not? You seem to flip-flop on this from one post to the other.

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

#302

Post by ShroudedNight »

muaytimbo wrote: post #186
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?

> Property taxes in general are a complete sham, what other item do you continually need to pay for after you own it?

A sham? Unless you argue that most people are buying property under false pretenses, especially given the public nature of property taxes, the expectation would be that those purchasing land do so understanding the existence of on-going financial duties.

As to why land is potentially materially different from other assets:

1. Land is only yours while some party will coerce all other parties to respect your claim. The cost of that infrastructure is on-going.

2. Most land might accrue some small value because of the actions of the land owner, but mostly accrues in value because of externalities from the action of others. Taxing those externalities so that the commons benefits rather than the individual seems at least equally as just as the current model where the wealth generated by collective action is overwhelmingly privatized. Reasonable arguments can be made for deferring that tax until sale or equivalent, rather than on a continuous basis.

3. In terms of being inexorably linked to specific governments, land is much more akin to citizenship and / or residency than fungible widgets. Citizenship and residence also frequently incurs ongoing tax duties.

4. Other scarce asset classes have been controlled in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

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

#303

Post by seanmcdirmid »

muaytimbo wrote: post #186
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?

> Property taxes in general are a complete sham, what other item do you continually need to pay for after you own it?

City infrastructure needs constant maintnence, city services need to be constantly funded. And local schools (where most property tax in much of the USA goes) keep going even after your house is built (suffice it to say, areas with the best schools have the highest property taxes).

> And why is the amount you need to pay pegged to what other people in the neighborhood around you are doing?

The more developed your property is, the more city services you consume. And this is ignoring the speculation deterrence that property tax enforces, which is very important also.

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

#304

Post by renewiltord »

sfe22 wrote: post #294
renewiltord wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Unfortunately I don’t agree. If 95% Americans want to steal my assets, something is wrong with the them (or me), and I should have probably seen it coming and leave. Why would I want to live in such extreme society anymore. If I was used to set an example that still would tell many a lot about this hypothetical america. Would a tyrant really be of any help then, maybe if it was somehow “good” to me, for a limited tim…

Right, and that's your thesis for the world, but America lives under a different thesis, and some individual rights are protected, _even_ if 95% of people disagree.

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

#305

Post by closeparen »

ipaddr wrote: post #298
djrogers wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Ship them where? Can other cities ship to LA/SF? How does this work?

I assume the model would be to build the same kinds of supportive housing facilities but to do so in markets where the same budget buys more units.

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

#306

Post by Dig1t »

TimPC wrote: post #289
Dig1t wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>prepare for the increase or make whatever financial decisions you need to

What does this statement actually mean for an individual family? Most working class people cannot just demand more money from their employer. So really it just means "get ready to move out and find a new home", which means uprooting your family, commuting further, finding new schools for your kids to attend, potentially worse ones because its probably a cheaper/poorer neighborhood.

>It's also not clear that being forced to sell over high property tax bills is a bad thing

I just plain old disagree with this; my family would have been forced to move because some rich people would have displaced my working class parents, and it honestly sounds like you consider that a good thing, "well they're poorer so they don't deserve to live in a place where a lot of people want to live" is really what that argument boils down to. Even though they worked hard and saved for many years to afford to buy that place. There are very few condos in the neighborhood I grew up in, and the ones that exist are on the edge of the city in much less desirable areas. I would have had to go to a different (worse) school, lose touch with my friends and generally have much less space than I had as well. Your argument only makes sense if you consider people as wanting to live somewhere purely as a financial enterprise rather than a good safe place to raise a family.

If you eliminated the zoning restrictions and power of the NIMBYs then this would allow for the best of both worlds. We could continue to allow a tax rate for working class people, but also allow the development of more profitable/denser units. As people naturally move around, companies could buy the houses and redevelop them into denser units.

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

#307

Post by sfe22 »

renewiltord wrote: post #304
sfe22 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately I don’t agree. If 95% Americans want to steal my assets, something is wrong with the them (or me), and I should have probably seen it coming and leave. Why would I want to live in such extreme society anymore. If I was used to set an example that still would tell many a lot about this hypothetical america. Would a tyrant really be of any help then, maybe if it was somehow “good” to me, for a limited tim…

Right, and that's your thesis for the world, but America lives under a different thesis, and some individual rights are protected, _even_ if 95% of people disagree.

Who decides what are individual rights? Would they be held up if 95% disagree with it? I mean it might work idk, it would just not be a democracy.

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

#308

Post by linksnapzz »

vkou wrote: post #301
linksnapzz wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's building a magical housing and treatment facility for 5,500 people. Yeah, that's the problem; nobody's building it, not because the facility is impossible to build or run, but because it would require the political will to compel anyone arrested on multiple counts of vagrancy to be held there on the condition of accepting some form of treatment or further counseling. It is not magic; the tent city phenomena…

> Yeah, that's the problem; nobody's building it, not because the facility is impossible to build or run, but because it would require the political will to compel anyone arrested on multiple counts of vagrancy to be held there on the condition of accepting some form of treatment or further counseling. Nonsense. It's not being built because city voters (and, more importantly, city businesses like Amazon) like their m…

It's not being built because city voters (and, more importantly, city businesses like Amazon) like their money more than they like not seeing tent camps.

I think that the burden ought to fall not only on King County voters, but on the WA & Fed. gov't to an extent. My cursory feeling is that my good progressive friends in Seattle would be happy to pay a tax increase, if that were to translate into a guaranteed significant reduction in misery.

You're attacking some weird progressive boogieman

Sorry, no. Well, not this time. The failing in this case is that there's no guarantee that anyone would remain in such a facility against their will, given that neither being an addict nor insane is enough to keep someone in jail in and of itself.

you state that homelessness is not a crime, but in this one, you state that it is.

I'm comfortable with the first two instances of sleeping rough or public drug use being misdemeanors; after that-you've gotta go.

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

#310

Post by vkou »

linksnapzz wrote: post #308
vkou wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yeah, that's the problem; nobody's building it, not because the facility is impossible to build or run, but because it would require the political will to compel anyone arrested on multiple counts of vagrancy to be held there on the condition of accepting some form of treatment or further counseling. Nonsense. It's not being built because city voters (and, more importantly, city businesses like Amazon) like their m…

It's not being built because city voters (and, more importantly, city businesses like Amazon) like their money more than they like not seeing tent camps. I think that the burden ought to fall not only on King County voters, but on the WA & Fed. gov't to an extent. My cursory feeling is that my good progressive friends in Seattle would be happy to pay a tax increase, if that were to translate into a guaranteed signifi…

> I think that the burden ought to fall not only on King County voters, but on the WA & Fed. gov't to an extent.

I mean, yes, it's obviously unsustainable for the rest of the state/country to dump all its problems onto a few coastal cities. But lack of state/federal support is not a problem that KC can solve anytime soon. It can only push on the parts that it can solve.

> The failing in this case is that there's no guarantee that anyone would remain in such a facility against their will,

We're talking past eachother, here. It sounds like you're saying there's no point to building facilities because we don't want to compel people to live in them. I'm saying that it's unconscionable to compel people to live in facilities that, well, don't exist.

I postulate that if facilities existed, a lot of people who oppose criminalizing homelessness as of 2022 would find mandating them a reasonable compromise... If the facilities were actually better for homeless people than tent cities. It's a very low bar that we are currently failing to meet.

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