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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

#351

Post by wolverine876 »

muaytimbo wrote: post #207
wolverine876 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't the overwhelming liberal majority rule in California be evidence in and of itself? I guess there could be liberals in name who enact conservative policy (or maybe little policy at all), but I haven't seen evidence of that. Good points. First, what do the outcomes depend on? Policies of California state and local government are only limited factors. They do not create the economy, migration, weather, real e…

I think these are good questions. You can find a nice graphic of homelessness by state here: https://www.usich.gov/tools-for-action/map/#fn[]=1300&fn[]=2... States like CA and NY seem to have the most growth in homeless population. That might be considered supporting evidence. "They do not create the economy, migration, weather, real estate development, etc. etc. (though they some limited effect on all of them). Ther…

Government power to control Coronavirus is definitely limited, as the outcomes show.

> The result is migration, which also as of late has resulted in net outflows in CA, NY, and IL.

Those outflows began decades before Coronoavirus.

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

#352

Post by imtringued »

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…

"I want these barely homless people out of my community" turned into "I want these homeless people out of my community"

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

#353

Post by imtringued »

asdff wrote: post #156
rhizome wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what should have been done is enforce laws (and pass legislation if necessary) to prevent the SROs from being allowed to decline into slums.

Well they were often considered slums by politicians by who lived there, not by the craftsmanship of the build.

I once saw a very beautiful large building on hackernews. Then one person commented that it was turned into a dozen condos so that it was affordable to everyone (including racial minorities).

The next HN comment immediately talked about how that building is a slum.

You literally cannot see the residents inside. It's impossible to tell. It's the same building but now somehow it was ruining the character of the neighborhood. Strange.

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

#354

Post by imtringued »

long_time_gone wrote: post #104
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.

More like, we'd be better off if voters didn't demand short-term actions with negative long-term effects.

A positive interest rate demands short term actions with immediate effects and disregards negative long term effects. Getting rid of positive interest rates requires eliminating all monopolies. It is a cat and mouse game but it is THE cat and mouse game. If you win you win big.

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

#355

Post by imtringued »

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.

You mean too little direct democracy. Only a handful of people are actually engaging in local politics and therey are no longer representing the community as a whole. Special interest groups are the opposite of democracy.

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

#356

Post by imtringued »

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…

Higher property tax rates lead to lower home values. If you reduce property taxes then the house will get increasingly less affordable because the money saved on taxes is getting priced into the value of the house.

The local government will get the money in a different way so you end up paying twice.

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

#357

Post by holbrad »

wolverine876 wrote: post #349
holbrad wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets provide availability of goods, as long as you can accept price variability. I'll reiterate for safety and land I think these things fail for the reason I mentioned originally. Healthcare I could certainly see working in a mostly market led way, I'm personally from the UK (So extra heretical to say) Food is a bad example, as availability is ultra high. Fresh produce is scarce in areas due to low demand. Low de…

> Markets provide availability of goods, as long as you can accept price variability. Not if the vendor goes out of business. > Food is a bad example, as availability is ultra high. Fresh produce is scarce in areas due to low demand. Low demand leads to higher prices. That's not the case, based on the reports I've seen. What have you seen that supports that?

Unless we are in a monopoly situation there are other vendors for common goods.

If a super market goes out of business there are several others though perhaps further away.

The idea of "Food deserts" is around the poor availability of affordable "nutritious" food. There is plenty of food in these food deserts with many different food providers.

So it's not about general food availability, it's around what food is stocked. Which food are stocked is almost completely determined by supply and demand. We know the supply exists, so if there a lack of stock it's due to demand.

What other explanation is there ? A shadowy cabal making sure the poor can't access certain foods ?

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

#359

Post by JJMcJ »

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…

Homeowners typically go ballistic at any concept for something other than single family homes in their neighborhoods.

Certainly allowing something as modest as allowing say 25% of lots in R-1 areas to be duplexes would go a long way to helping, as would allowing so called granny units (small houses in back yards or as part of garage) would also make quite a difference.

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

#360

Post by clairity »

kuang_eleven wrote: post #173
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…

Luckily, SB9 and SB10 are massive pushes in the right direction for California, accompanied by incandescent rage of my local NIMBYs.

those bills are for political optics and favor, not to really make a dent in the homelessness issue. they're designed to allow people who already own land to make some extra cash, not to provide housing (less than 2% of CA residential properties can even take advantage of them). what we need are real, significant zoning reforms. things like making every residential zone mixed-use (residential + light commercial), and remove setback requirements, floor area ratio (FAR) restrictions, yard/parking specifications, and height restrictions.
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