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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

#141

Post by ejb999 »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #25
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 wo…

>>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.

The people that live there, don't want their city/neighborhood to change in a certain way, so people that don't live there should force them to do it?

Why are people that aren't even voters in that location have a say at all?

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

#142

Post by tick_tock_tick »

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.)

> Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote?

They aren't the best but when thy do vote they've somehow managed to link voting for housing to being a form a racist gentrification.

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

#143

Post by gremlinsinc »

slibhb wrote: post #53

When people talk about "homelessness," they're often referring to street people. Most technically homeless people aren't street people, they're between jobs or living in their car or something like that. It seems clear that lower rent/housing prices would help with homelessness but I don't think it would help street people.

I think if we could just help the out of sorts, hardship cases that are 'newer' homeless, or maybe classified as 'under-housed', which may include couch-surfers, car/van-lifers, etc. I mean there's levels to homelessness some of which is mental health related and such, some people actually maybe could prefer that life for reasons. There's a lot who are forced into it, and are just down on their luck. These should be a much easier subsection to target for at least fixing things a bit.

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

#144

Post by nickpinkston »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #117
nickpinkston wrote: post #87

There's also a good argument that rent/housing affects more of our broader lives than anything else - often called "The Housing Theory of Everything". https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e... If you're interested in helping the housing problem across the US, I encourage you to check out: YIMBY Action who does local activism across the US, and particularly active in SF Bay Area and CA. https://y…

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

#145

Post by novok »

majormajor wrote: post #107
Tiktaalik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 wo…

> Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Sometimes poor established renters also don't want change. In the 20th century a lot of cities grew practically 'out of nowhere'. Why has that stopped? That's a great pressure relief valve and gets new buyers/renters out of a vicious feedback loop caused by the tendency of already cash-or-pro…

Cities out of nowhere do exist in function in the USA, there are plenty of cities where people can buy for cheap. New settlements get started due to something unique about the place, be it ports, resources, trade route nexuses, and so on. The USA was a frontier and thus these cities were established. You'll notice in western europe you don't see many new towns either for 100s of years, because it's frontier was settled long time ago.

People want to live in SF because of the effective social networks that develop there and access to it's labor market. Cities are essentially representations of different labor markets, and labor markets in specific places develop because there is something unique about the place, or they seed crystal into a form of 'labor black hole' as a new industry develops.

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

#146

Post by seanmcdirmid »

SoftTalker wrote: post #62
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?

Singapore, but only because it targets the middle class and results in ownership. Poorer Singaporeans are in a different system of smaller rentals (still public housing).

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

#147

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #112
luckylion wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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", b…

Quickly throwing up cheap mass housing without also organically growing the services and rest of the community is how you get food deserts and ghettos though. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, just pointing out where it's gone wrong in the past and why people may be hesitant to try again.

Food deserts are the result of theft driving away low margin businesses that don't want to absorb the hit.

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

#148

Post by ajmurmann »

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"

To add to that, if rent use too high in SF, becoming homeless in SF isn't your only other option. I know plenty of people who thought rent was too high in SF and they moved to other cities rather than onto the street. Further I hear that in Portland 50% of homeless arrive homeless in the city. Doesn't sound like a high rent issue, but an issue with addiction that or severe mental health issues.

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

#149

Post by mikem170 »

8note wrote: post #97
ROTMetro wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, just average people, who built the community over time into something desirable, that were promised with zoning laws that it would be the type of community (single family homes, etc) that they wanted, and that then dedicated the majority of their lifetime earning power to purchase a home there. There are how many acres of land in this country? Why do you have a right to overrule the will of people in one comparat…

Seems fine, paired with limitations that they can't sell the places for more than they bought them for, nor can they charge rent over $100/mo. If you're trying to keep it the same, keep it the same

Existing homeowners would prefer to profit from a vibrant dynamic and growing community, they just need to screw over all the newcomers bringing that growth, those people who need new housing, by not allowing new housing, which drives up their property values.

They don't block job creation, which attracts people, they just block new housing. And then complain about the homeless.

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

#150

Post by paxys »

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 city of San Francisco isn't some independent entity. It is made up of people, a lot of whom already own houses and/or don't want higher buildings and more neighbors and/or don't want to be in the business of building and managing housing. If you think about individual incentives rather than what is right and wrong then it makes perfect sense.
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