21–30 of 68 posts
- The "criminal" was a kinda-disabled, middle-aged homeless man - who dug himself a hidden little cave, to live in, in a public park. Zzz...
- The law enforcement response (time, manpower, escalation up the counter-terrorism command chain) was massive, idiotic, and a huge waste of public resources.
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
Because a) he "stole" the land he used (land is really expensive in the UK and especially London) to build the shelter, and b) if the shelters were built officially there are of course rules to follow that I guarantee you this guy did not follow - e.g. fire safety. If the government built shelters out of some off cuts of wood and tarpaulin and then loads of homeless people burnt to death one day in them, who do you t…
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
You are probably reinventing slums. However the UK used to be good at building well built council housing at scale. I think that is the solution. It has a great legacy as long lasting but perhaps ugly brutalist housing (Goldfinger was mentioned in the article funnily enough)
Well, obviously. Is living in a slum worse than nothing?
Scott Sumner wrote a very good post about this: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yurt-place-or-mine/
> A peasant village perched on a hillside in a third world country can be aesthetically beautiful, but a shantytown of former peasants on the edge of a large modern urban area (even if the peasants are now better off) is aesthetically ugly.
> I was reminded of this while watching a recent video of Ulaanbaatar, which is attracting mass migration from the Mongolian countryside. There are few more picturesque scenes of rural poverty that a bunch of yurts set up on Mongolia’s vast plains, under a cerulean blue sky:
> [photograph]
> Fortunately, a mining boom has made Mongolia rich, and the peasants are flocking to the cities, and put up their yurts in shanty towns on the edge of Ulaanbaatar—which now has a majority of Mongolia’s population.
> The lady who narrated the show was a Westerner. And she couldn’t quite get past the idea that this urbanization didn’t look very attractive:
>> It’s so funny because in the countryside it seems natural and it seems clean and it seems lovely, and here this is just poverty-struck, and so not natural.
> It’s easy for Westerners and/or upper class people to think they know what’s best for the poor. But unless they’ve actually lived that life, they may end up substituting aesthetic judgments for utilitarian criteria. The Mongolians had to decide whether their country was going to be a place of yurts, or a place full of large open pit mines and cities with high-rise apartment buildings. They chose the latter. The Mongolian she interviewed pointed out that Mongolians wanted to live in these modern apartment buildings because “they don’t have to make fire anymore, they don’t have to carry water anymore.”
The Mongols in the slums outside Ulaanbaatar are richer than the Mongols living a traditional lifestyle off on the steppe, but they are aesthetically offensive to people with power, who would prefer them to be more picturesque and impoverished. Is the situation in London different?
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
Because a) he "stole" the land he used (land is really expensive in the UK and especially London) to build the shelter, and b) if the shelters were built officially there are of course rules to follow that I guarantee you this guy did not follow - e.g. fire safety. If the government built shelters out of some off cuts of wood and tarpaulin and then loads of homeless people burnt to death one day in them, who do you t…
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
1. Where are you going to build these? The neighbours will vote against you. Or you can build them in the middle of nowhere, meaning that they’re nowhere near any jobs. 2. This is appalling accommodation: no mains electricity, no heating, no running water, no sewerage. It is cheap, yes. People will assume that it’s part of a plan to _replace_ existing social housing, punish the working poor and generate tax cuts for…
They will then affect other people in the area, both home owners and temporary tenants.
Cambridge, UK is doing an experiment, where they put up little shelters, not totally dissimilar to this, but in homeopathic quantities: 3-4 at a time. It seems to be going well, but (a) that's still tiny number, and (b) I get the impression neighbours still don't like it.
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
The main way that is achieved is by disciplining workers as a class. Having a reserve army of labour pushes down wages by increasing the risks of striking or industrial action in general.
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
He did this using his own time. A professional builder would charge for the hours spent, and £100 would not allow for many hours of work.
> Van Allen had budgeted £100 for the job, and come in under. I have a question to people in charge of politics everywhere: Given how much money governments spend on nonsense, why can't we take some money, and build simple, but quality and stable shelter for people? If there are 100.000 homeless in a community, and 2 people manage to build that sort of shelter, with what they could get in tools and materials for 1,00…
It's really quite simple. Governments and corporations want to push the idea of living in a large house as an investment so that people work like crazy to create things we don't need.
In reality, we have more than enough resources to live in tiny homes much more sustainably. Many people who don't want to take on 30-year mortgage would benefit from this and they could retire earlier and live a more simple life.
It doesn't have to be a slum or a low-income housing thing either. If people are educated on how to live simply, they could live in fairly high-end communities but more simply.
The problem is, the top brass fear this idea because it would bring down the ultra-rich, because they would have nothing to profit from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are probably reinventing slums. However the UK used to be good at building well built council housing at scale. I think that is the solution. It has a great legacy as long lasting but perhaps ugly brutalist housing (Goldfinger was mentioned in the article funnily enough)
> You are probably reinventing slums. Well, obviously. Is living in a slum worse than nothing? Scott Sumner wrote a very good post about this: https://www.themoneyillusion.com/yurt-place-or-mine/ > A peasant village perched on a hillside in a third world country can be aesthetically beautiful, but a shantytown of former peasants on the edge of a large modern urban area (even if the peasants are now better off) is aes…