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Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

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Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#21

Post by deathanatos »

twblalock wrote: post #9
jimbob45 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue is that apartment managers can come after you for the remainder of your lease. You can suddenly be in 10-20k of debt if you need to break your lease early. That's both more accessible and worse than many medical debt horror stories.

If you signed an agreement to pay a certain amount, for a certain number of months, and then you don't do it, the counterparty should be able to come after you. I understand that some of the people who break leases are experiencing hardship, but others are just breaking their leases because they can -- and a lot more people would do that if it was easier. That would put landlords on the defensive and result in more r…

There's "covering risk", and there's tenant lock-in.

I have no problem with requiring a tenant to rent for a year, to prevent quick turnover and the risk and costs associated with that.

But multiple landlords now have all had the same policy: the lease will never go month-to-month, basically. You can, but e.g., for my current lease, it costs ~60% more to go month to month. This creates bizarre pay-off points, and greatly raises the costs of trying to move. When it's "+$2k/mo to go month-to-month", that's not risk-reduction, that's just greed, trying to make sure I can't move.

IME, it used to be that after you rented for a while (e.g., a year), the lease went month-to-month. You were a long-term stable renter, and you'd paid enough rent at that point to cover the overheads of finding a new tenant and making the necessary touch-ups to the apartment. (Beyond what was covered by security deposit.)

(I recently had this conversation with my parents recently. The previous generation has no idea about some of the provisions that renters of my generation are having to put up with.)

An average price of $18,000 to break lease on a 3+ year old lease is absurd. We need more housing, to drive competition in the rental & housing markets.

If I ever get to buy a house (… if my landlord doesn't first capture any gains I might get…) the first thing I'll have to do is not get to live in it: the most logical course of action would be to rent it short term, until I can get out of my own lease.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#22

Post by exabrial »

No it is not. Raising rent is a correlated effect, not a causation. All cases of homelessness are highly individualized. They usually follow a pattern such as this:

1. The setup: Some sort of condition or pattern of life choices that isn't intrinsically harmful, but combined with other things, will become overwhelming once the bottom drops out. The lack of community and isolation from a support network are key indicators that a person is at risk.

2. An Event: divorce, disease, severe mental illness, tragedy, etc that causes their steady state to change significantly.

3. An Aftermath: Poor coping mechanisms such as hard drug usage, alcoholism, and other short sighted choices, combined with the inability to bounce back from things in step 1, lead to the bottom falling out. With no support network, the individual falls out of normal society and ends up on the street. Addictions can develop and the person becomes trapped.

^ These three things aren't mine, It's something a social worker pointed out to me.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#23

Post by jankyxenon »

jrockway wrote: post #16
jankyxenon wrote: post #15

Is street homelessness really driven by people who couldn't pay their rent? You would think they'd stay away from drug-addled violent tent cities - and sleep in a car or at a friend's house. Too many ideas seem to be conflated with the umbrella term "homeless"

I see where you're coming from, but if you go to the extreme and anyone could have a private room for $1 a month, would anyone be living on the streets?

Absolutely yes they would. I know someone in my extended family on the streets - his problem is addiction. Lot's of people are willing to offer a roof.

I know that's anecdata - but you asked about the extreme case.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#24

Post by ck2 »

jankyxenon wrote: post #15

Is street homelessness really driven by people who couldn't pay their rent? You would think they'd stay away from drug-addled violent tent cities - and sleep in a car or at a friend's house. Too many ideas seem to be conflated with the umbrella term "homeless"

You start with sleeping in your car for "just a little while" until one day the car breaks or you can't renew tag/insurance.

Or your friends get burnt out with the unpaid roommate using resources idea.

Hop skip and jump away from "real" street homelessness.

Been there. Amazed sometimes I made it out because it breaks your brain, just the lack of sleep enough days in a row will make the best minds broken.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#25

Post by Tiktaalik »

jlmorton wrote: post #17

Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at 6%. You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you even control many of the ordinances that…

> How is this not the easiest decision in the world?

Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change.

Welp!

This is why higher orders of government need to step in to "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy changes you describe. This gives the local municipalities cover to enact the good policies that the selfish rich would kill at the ballot box.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#26

Post by twblalock »

deathanatos wrote: post #21
twblalock wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you signed an agreement to pay a certain amount, for a certain number of months, and then you don't do it, the counterparty should be able to come after you. I understand that some of the people who break leases are experiencing hardship, but others are just breaking their leases because they can -- and a lot more people would do that if it was easier. That would put landlords on the defensive and result in more r…

There's "covering risk", and there's tenant lock-in. I have no problem with requiring a tenant to rent for a year, to prevent quick turnover and the risk and costs associated with that. But multiple landlords now have all had the same policy: the lease will never go month-to-month, basically. You can , but e.g., for my current lease, it costs ~60% more to go month to month. This creates bizarre pay-off points, and gr…

I was renting until just a few years ago and I never had a lease longer than 12 months, and it was actually difficult to find one longer than that.

I'm not sure where you live, but in a lot of places, a landlord refusing to allow a lease to go month-to-month is illegal.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#27

Post by exolymph »

The non-visible homeless (people down on their luck, to an approximation) get mentally sorted into the vast category of "that's unfortunate but it doesn't affect me directly," which might influence people's votes or charitable donations, but doesn't arouse much passion for most of us.

By contrast, the visible homeless are a visceral inconvenience, even a danger, so people feel strongly about how that problem is addressed. As a smallish woman, I am on high alert in certain areas of San Francisco, Oakland, etc. I'm not all that likely to be accosted, but if I ever am, it will be a big deal, so navigating those places is nerve-wracking because my threat-detection is constantly dialed up.

I would compare it to, like, road planning versus traffic enforcement. The former has far-reaching, long-term impact (like housing policy) but the latter is what gets people heated, due to the immediate impact in their day-to-day lives.

---

Full disclosure, reposting a comment from a similar thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33961731

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#28

Post by jeffbee »

jlmorton wrote: post #17

Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at 6%. You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you even control many of the ordinances that…

The government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners and they don't want housing, they want excess returns. Simple.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#29

Post by jeffbee »

exabrial wrote: post #22

No it is not. Raising rent is a correlated effect, not a causation. All cases of homelessness are highly individualized. They usually follow a pattern such as this: 1. The setup: Some sort of condition or pattern of life choices that isn't intrinsically harmful, but combined with other things, will become overwhelming once the bottom drops out. The lack of community and isolation from a support network are key indica…

This theory is wrong and it is easy to see why. Rates of homelessness are not correlated with "life choices" or "events" at all. Mental illness rates don't vary much geographically and they don't correlate with homelessness. Same with drug abuse and disease. However housing costs are very strongly correlated with homelessness.

Great book on the subject: https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/

Edit: prospective reply guys need to explain why W. Virginia, the place with by far the biggest drug abuse problem, also has the least homelessness.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#30

Post by jrockway »

anonuser123456 wrote: post #14
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some reason I doubt that developers will be looking to convert that office space into affordable housing.

Why? They don’t like money?

What is the path to profitability you see? They pretty much have to gut rehab the building to add kitchens and bathrooms, in an economy where loans are pretty expensive. Is that competitive with people selling existing move-in ready housing stock in a down market? Do you want to be the first person to sign a contract in one of these conversions? (Not to mention the usual "new construction" taxes that are seller-paid on existing housing, but buyer-paid on new construction.)

I think everyone is incentivized to sit on what they have now and offer cheap leases. I also think that cities are incentivized to bring workers back to the office. Like in NYC, we spent billions of dollars on a new commuter railroad terminal that opens this year, and upgrades to run more trains per hour during rush hour. I don't think the state is going to step in and offer free money to make more housing.

All in all I love the idea of converting offices to housing. Working from home is great, and affording your own home is even better. But, I don't think the economy wants either of them :/

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