Los Angeles is spending up to $837k to house a single homeless person • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by 8note » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 9:46 PM UTC

tshaddox wrote: post #237

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!

> If the other option is living on the street, why not? That's a big "if." Surely not a significant portion of this $800k or the cost of any "luxury" apartment is due to it having a kitchen and bathroom.

building codes make a "luxury" apartment and an "affordable" apartment approximately the same. the main difference is how much rent can be charged.

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

#362

Post by Dig1t » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 10:11 PM UTC

asdff wrote: post #321

djrogers wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about selling the house, it's about being forced to move out of a city / neighborhood they've been in for decades, simply because it got more popular and they can't afford a property tax bill several times higher than their largest mortgage payment ever was.

Welcome to the real world, Californians. When you have an asset you get taxed on its value. You have no right to live somewhere indefinitely.

== "You don't deserve to live there anymore because you're not rich enough."

This is similar to arguing that people shouldn't even be allowed to own land in the first place. We're all just renting from the government and the government should ratchet up the price so that only the richest and most successful people should get to live in the nice desirable areas.

>When you have an asset you get taxed on its value.

I mean, no? We tax different assets in different ways. If you buy a bunch of stocks you don't have to pay tax on it as its value changes month by month or year by year. You only pay when you liquidate it. We can choose how to tax things for different reasons.

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

#363

Post by Dig1t » Fri, Feb 25, 2022, 10:28 PM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #356

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…

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.

You're right that it does have an effect, however if you look at other areas with a higher property tax, houses are still extremely expensive in desirable areas. It doesn't have as big of an effect as you'd think and it severely penalizes the middle class who are forced to relocate so that the ultra wealthy can take their place.

>The local government will get the money in a different way

This is a feature IMO, the government can get that tax revenue but in a more fair way e.g. income taxes that are skewed higher towards the ultra wealthy rather than just kicking people out of their homes, where they probably do want to live.

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

#364

Post by quartesixte » Sat, Feb 26, 2022, 6:44 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #295

mullingitover wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, the republican party trashed its brand so thoroughly that it essentially doesn't exist in California, so we're under one party rule. There is no other side of the aisle. It's a shame because Schwarzenegger gave the party a winning formula when he was governor, but the party swung so far off the rails that his centrism makes him a bolshevik to the party as it exists now. One party rule isn't good, but we d…

> It's a shame because Schwarzenegger gave the party a winning formula when he was governor Yes, but “find a political cypher of a celebrity, run in an irregular election leveraging a crisis created by Republican state and federal policies, and appoint an listen to a lot of establishment Dems as advisers while ignoring Republican Party insiders and donors because you don't need them once you have the dual advantages…

Not just any celebrity—Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Man those were some crazy times.

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

#365

Post by matt-attack » Sat, Feb 26, 2022, 6:11 PM UTC

closeparen wrote: post #217

999900000999 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first apartment didn't have a kitchen. And it was fine, we are talking about a homeless shelter. You do not need to have stainless steel appliances, it should be a short-term stopgap until you find a better solution. Historically lower income people had to share common amenities like a shower. Just because it would be nice for every single person to have a big apartment with brand new appliances doesn't make it fe…

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.

That is preposterous. I believe all homeless should be provided some sort of shelter, but I absolutely don’t feel they have any entitlement to that shelter being in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country.

My friends who couldn’t afford Santa Monica moved east. Riverside, San Bernardino, etc. They bear horrible commutes but did what they needed to do to afford housing for their families.

Why do we just assume that homeless have some god given right to be housed precisely where they happen to be sleeping. Regular people migrate all the time to accommodate their own economics. Let’s build homeless some cheap housing. And let’s do it somewhere in the middle of no where where land is cheap and building costs are low.

I fail to see how this is controversial if it isn’t controversial for my friends who voluntarily do the same.

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

#366

Post by JJMcJ » Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 5:56 AM UTC

rcpt wrote: post #334

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not quite Prop 13 but you can't have high increases in property values, and simultaneously have affordable housing. If you means test things, it can work better. If you're an artist or a retiree in san francisco, and then someone goes and invents the internet, prices will go way way up around you. If you don't want to force the artists and retirees to learn to code to keep up with housing catering to newcomers, som…

Retirees and the disabled have the California Tax Postponement Program to protect them from rising taxes. Prop 13 is wholly unnecessary for them. Artists? They can cash out for enormous windfall profits if they can't sell enough art.

That's if they are property owners.

Renters have little protection in most communities.

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

#367

Post by CPLX » Sun, Feb 27, 2022, 5:38 PM UTC

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?

Democracy isn't a Boolean value, it's a cluster of loosely related concepts and practices.

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

#368

Post by JJMcJ » Mon, Mar 07, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

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…

Since SFH owners tend to view living next to a 4-plex as a disaster, it doesn't seem to happen the way you envision. Almost all apartment here in Silicon Valley are built on boulevards, often displacing low end retail. Nice apartment, too bad you have to drive four miles to the nearest dry cleaner.