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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

#61

Post by avelis »

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…

They would in theory never run out of development projects for 20+ years. Many large cities could fall into this category as well. The pressure to not piss off homeowners is atrocious.

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

#62

Post by SoftTalker »

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…

Sounds like you're proposing government run high-rise housing projects. Can you name any that are not dangerous, crime-ridden hellholes?

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

#63

Post by dionidium »

jeffbee wrote: post #29
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…

It's not wrong, though. This is just a rephrasing of the same problem. Imagine two people, one with a family that will take them in in an emergency and another with nobody. They both become heroin addicts. The addiction results in a job loss and a few arrests. Soon they've sold all their possessions, their health is declining, and they're behind on rent.

Person A puts their tail between their legs and goes and sleeps in mom's basement.

Person B becomes homeless.

It would be fairly deranged to say that "life choices" and "events" didn't matter "at all," that the second person's homelessness can be entirely explained by the lack of supportive family. It's both things. Homelessness arises when poor choices intersect with a lack of options.

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

#64

Post by closeparen »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34
jeffbee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote? (Serious question.)

To the extent that SF renters are organized, they're organized around groups and ideologies that don't prioritize supply a solution. They're focused on things like rent control, just cause eviction, foreign/institutional investor boogeymen, and preventing even substantially or fully below-market housing developments because they still threaten to upset what renters believe is a delicate balance their neighborhoods/communities depend on.

It makes sense, renters who are politically engaged and organized are more likely to be long-term residents, and being able to preserve your tenancy/community is a different thing from being able to easily move or upgrade.

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

#65

Post by r00fus »

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…

> Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco.

I couldn't get past this because the analogy breaks down already. SF as a polity is not controlled by one person or single department. The power is highly decentralized (the Board of Supervisors hold most of the keys).

Thus, even if you have someone who can make sweeping changes, likelihood is they'd never get elected in such a setup (or if they do, be able to effect change).

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

#66

Post by t-writescode »

JamesBarney wrote: post #59
jollyllama wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This; the landlords will destroy you if you dare to try this.

Judging from what I've seen of SF politics its much more homeowners, who have far more power, than landlords.

A landlord is, by definition, a homeowner.

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

#67

Post by fnimick »

dionidium wrote: post #37
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…

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

> the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco

The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access.

A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich people in the area who do that.

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

#68

Post by luckylion »

dionidium wrote: post #37
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…

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

Especially for a city that is explicitly progressive, why the "all rapid change is bad, it must take decades or centuries, otherwise it's not natural" approach?

Germany's large cities have similar issues where they don't want to start building new districts because it'd be artificial and not naturally grown building by building. And it's better to have rents double every 10 years, apparently.

I don't get the "why", but the approach is fairly explicit -- and politicians get reelected while following it, so I guess it's what "the people" want.

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

#69

Post by fnimick »

jankyxenon wrote: post #60
jrockway wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it because buildings refuse to house people with addiction problems, or that the extra $1/month is better used in their mind to get the next dose of the substance?

The roof typically comes with the stipulation of no drugs (or even rehab). That’s untenable to the addict.

The roof also comes with a loss of any sense of personal autonomy and the threat of violence from other people in the shelter.

There's a reason people treat them as a last resort, and it's not drugs. It's that being in a shelter opens you up to abuse.

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

#70

Post by dinosaurdynasty »

twblalock wrote: post #26
deathanatos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Making month-to-month 60% more expensive is effectively refusing to allow it to go month-to-month
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