831–840 of 930 posts
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Squatting is a problem, period. Doesn’t matter if the house is empty or not.
It depends on the actual numbers, which usually don't support the fear coming from the media.
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I think people angry about squatters are thinking that squatters are squatting for political reasons, because for people angry about squatters, this is a political issue. For squatters, this isn't primarily a political issue, it's primarily a survival issue. Squatting in the summer house of a CEO does solve your survival need for shelter, but it leaves a bunch of your other survival needs unmet because you're far awa…
> The reality is that while squatters might hold political beliefs, few people would choose to squat if they had other housing options Here in Seattle, time and time again, studies are done which show the majority of homeless, when offered shelter, turn it down and prefer to live on the streets. Which seems to completely contradict your claim that they would make use of housing options. Maybe Seattle homeless are dif…
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It can be surprising to be on the other end of something and see the lack of sympathy. I went on a group hike once and somehow ended up telling people that my house had been broken into. It was a bummer. Actual monetary damages about 10k, but so many little gifts and heirlooms that were irreplaceable. It's hard to express the sense of violation. They also stole some of my wife's underwear which was just gross. Someon…
People also maliciously ignore the obvious fact that living in a society which is lenient towards burglary automatically attracts opportunists, who were not actually poor in the first place.
Personally I think it's because people have these standard narratives floating around in their mind, and pattern-match them reflexively even when it doesn't make sense.
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How can that be worse than "there are millions of unoccupied places, most housing belongs to the same people who don't need it, and yet there are millions living in the street" It's not just about you
the claim is who is doing "nothing". Working, saving, and buying a house is doing a lot more than doing nothing and expecting something
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> people will be LESS likely to invest in fixing up unliveable places. Someone's still paying for the house flipping. By definition the flipper makes a margin between what they paid, the repairs, and the price they get at the end. So why should we encourage house flipping instead of having howners buy the damaged property and pay for a renovation company ? Housing wise the end result is the same, minus the flipping.…
>>Someone's still paying for the house flipping. Of course they are - even in the case of 'flipping', they are at least working to add value. Barring complete incompetence, the repaired and upgraded place is MORE valuable. >>By definition the flipper makes a margin between what they paid, the repairs, and the price they get at the end. NO; there is nothing 'by definition' about it. While investors all desire to make…
You're arguing for having professional home renovators, that works the same if the house is flipped or not. So let's choose not.
> squatters
You're protected from squatters when it's your primary residency. You make it sound like you'd go buy some groceries and when you're back at home your house is occupied with no recourse. No.
It only becomes a legal quagmire when you're flipping properties, it was your winter vacation house, or you're actually spending your life in the Bahamas. Nobody's having issues while their house is actively renovated and they move in as soon as it's finished.
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By incentivizing people renovating, then living in, the rundown house they bought, instead of seeing that option as equally valuable as just selling/renting the house? Its one thing to produce more housing, its another to somehow magically produce more housing in such a way that does not devalue the other resources. Step 1 is to disincentivize speculative/rent-seeking home purchases. Its been said a couple times in s…
Work hard and get your own.
What happens when its simply impossible to accrue via labor, in a single lifetime, enough wealth to buy that first home?
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> But we are missing half the story if we don't consider the other end of the spectrum No, not really. Theft is not the answer. Consider laws restricting how many houses a person can own, or maybe an increasing property tax on each unit. These are good solutions. Condoning theft has no other side to the story, it's always wrong.
> No, not really. Theft is not the answer. Well HN's favored solution seems to be not caring that people are homeless until they start scaring rich people, at which point you lock them up in "mental health" institutions that are less about helping them and more about keeping them away from rich people. My solution is not letting people own homes they don't live in, but that's going to crash a lot of rich people's inv…
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I would like to know what the limits of your application of this idea is because if I were to extend your argument that "even having to pay rent to another person to have a place to live is a problem.", this is what I get to: I am currently buying a house, every month I pay money to the bank, this is very similar to having to pay rent. From my understanding of your logic, this would be a problem. Further from that, I…
Not endorsing the view, just sharing lines of reasoning I've seen. Paying money to the bank implies you financed your purchase of a home. This is not necessarily a morally-neutral activity, it's in fact nuanced but we've done a good job of handwaving away the nuance in the last 4-5 generations of Americans. A small vignette to explain: financing allows people to leverage their credit history and income to make larger…
I also think that if that was only the option, housing prices would rise rather than fall.
Cash up front, I assume in an escrow so that buyer can't cheat builder and builder can't run away with the money.
This means that a someone who wants to build/buy a home is going to need around 150k saved up.
Assuming that 50k yearly salary and rent is immoral, they have to live at home until saved up. 1/3 put aside is 16.66k per year, 9 years before they can get a house.
In actuality, the cost is probably going to be more expensive as you would no longer have developments going up.
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The okupas are the ones running the extortion racket. If anyone is acting like the Mafia, it's the people illegally occupying the house and demanding money to leave. What happens in the US is that the land owner hires people to squat in the house. They don't lay a finger on the real squatters. They just take up all the rooms and generally make it annoying to live there until they leave. Then they get paid by the land…
> If anyone is acting like the Mafia, it's the people illegally occupying the house and demanding money to leave. People demand housing, not money. It's not a racket that people are homeless and need a place to live. It's funny how you go into conspirational thinking that quick. It's more concerning that you think it's better to pay the anti-squat mafia tons of cash, rather than give the same amount to the squatters…
Wrong. Okupas often demand money in exchange for leaving the house.
> But there is now a darker phenomenon too - squatters who demand a "ransom" before they will leave a property
https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-58310532
> Just because you live in a squat doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space
Do you really not see the hypocrisy of this statement?
"It doesn't mean anyone can come and live there. It's your residence, not a public space."
Then how on earth do you defend squatters moving into another person's residence illegally? This is the kind of laughable hypocrisy typically displayed when squatters come back to house they've illegally occupied and meet some new housemates. It's amazing how they can rationalize that it's acceptable for them to move into people's homes without permission, but not acceptable for other people to do the same.