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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

#241

Post by garbagecoder »

throwaway742 wrote: post #219
WalterBright wrote: post #214

Should check the drug addiction rate among the street dwellers before drawing such conclusions. In Seattle, 90% are addicted to drugs or alcohol, or are mentally ill. https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is...

That number seems unbelievably high. LAHSA for example found that only 15% of homeless individuals have a substance abuse disorder. https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3422-2019-greater-los-ang...

You just missed the distinction. Talk to people who work with “street people” and they will tell you almost all either suffer from mental illness or addiction. This is not the same as people who are housing insecure.

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

#242

Post by colechristensen »

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…

It’s really the opposite, they wanted to gain too much from it.

If your city wants to keep it’s style of residential density, fine, limit commercial growth, stop adding jobs to the city if you won’t add housing to match it. And that would be fine, plenty of other places would benefit from spreading the tech wealth around.

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

#243

Post by supersour »

ejb999 wrote: post #141
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…

>>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?

The state has an interest in keeping its cities economically healthy, perhaps more than the city government itself which is focused on appeasing citizens with its delivery of police/recreation services. The state government can act more dynamically since it has a wider voter base to consider, including those who would like to live in the city but are pushed out.

The Valley must maintain some level of competitiveness with other city hubs, else the techxodus worsens and California loses a large portion of their economy and tax revenue. This is an existential threat to California, and the residents of the valley will lose out in the long run.

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

#244

Post by mindover »

fnimick wrote: post #69
jankyxenon wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Unlike the street?

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

#245

Post by twblalock »

freeone3000 wrote: post #231
twblalock wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want the increased rent, and it appears they'll get it from me, or the market. Is that wrong? Do you think you are entitled to live in someone else's property, at a price below what others in the market would pay, for as long as you like? There has to be some balance here. Someone is contracting to let you live in their property. If they don't get something out of it, why should they do it? Why would anyone be…

If nobody wanted to be a landlord, it'd be so much easier to find a place to live -- so many vacancies, so much empty space, so little occupied land...

Uh, no, there would be no options other than home ownership or homelessness (or government housing projects, which are only options in certain areas and are always pretty bad).

Rentals don't just exist without landlords to own and maintain them. No apartment buildings would get built if there weren't landlords ready to buy them from the property developers. The existing ones would be left vacant because it would be cheaper than filling them and keeping them habitable.

Every time the government makes it harder to be a landlord, they also make it harder to be a renter. Even well-intentioned programs like rent control always end up impacting the majority of renters negatively.

If you are a renter, the best thing you can do for yourself is to advocate for more housing and more landlords to rent it from. It's supply and demand.

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

#246

Post by woah »

ejb999 wrote: post #141
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…

>>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?

If all decisions were best made at the most local possible level, then we wouldn't have highways or trains, and slavery would still be legal in the South

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

#247

Post by [deleted] »

wolverine876 wrote: post #162
exolymph wrote: post #27

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 addre…

I'm guessing that you misunderstand the threats, and are much more likely to be hit by someone in an SUV. I've spent lots and lots of time in cities; I've never had a problem with a homeless person.

[deleted]

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

#248

Post by zozbot234 »

majormajor wrote: post #209
zozbot234 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course density should be pursued wherever it's cheapest to do so. The point of thinking about the Manhattan case is that this is the natural endpoint of any sort of "more housing and higher density always leads to higher prices" argument. It clarifies to what extent that argument can possibly work, as a matter of basic logic.

As far as I can tell, the Manhattan case tells us that we aren't even close to the "building more will cause prices to fall" point anywhere in the US. And because of that, building more where it's cheaper is a better strategy for controlling costs than building more where it's already expensive . Manhattan was brought up to mock the idea that construction could make prices worse for existing residents, I don't think…

"Expensive" city centers in the U.S. have comparable density to bog-standard suburban towns in the rest of the developed world. By all indications, we're nowhere near the "tipping point" where trying to increase density there would physically be so costly as to be unsustainable. That's something NYC can perhaps legitimately worry about, but I'm not sure how that could apply to other high-demand places in the U.S.

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

#249

Post by throwaway742 »

garbagecoder wrote: post #241
throwaway742 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That number seems unbelievably high. LAHSA for example found that only 15% of homeless individuals have a substance abuse disorder. https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3422-2019-greater-los-ang...

You just missed the distinction. Talk to people who work with “street people” and they will tell you almost all either suffer from mental illness or addiction. This is not the same as people who are housing insecure.

Good point I did miss that. They also included mentally ill with substance abuse disorders.

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

#250

Post by woah »

ROTMetro wrote: post #79
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…

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…

This is the problem with promoting a highly illiquid and undiversified asset, bought with extreme government-backed leverage, as an ideal savings and investment strategy for people who don't know any better.
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