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Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

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Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#521

Post by epistasis »

wpm wrote: post #330
bdowling wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Homeless people want to live in cities, for all the reasons other people want to live in cities. In cities, affordable housing is extremely expensive. For example, in Santa Monica, California, an affordable housing project can cost over $1 million per unit. https://www.surfsantamonica.com/ssm_site/the_lookout/news/Ne...

They don't cost $1M a unit just because. The article you posted highlights a number of reasons it was as expensive as it was, many of them policy choices that could be undone with the stroke of a pen and a round of votes. There is nothing about building housing in cities that makes it that expensive other than the regulations, many of which could use a re-think or a re-scope. Otherwise, what's Finland's secret? Are t…

Finland is a model of 1) good land use policy (Anna Haila's study of Singapore is also fantastic for understanding this), 2) excellent efficiency of organization and design in social housing (they run competitions and stamp out winning designs many times, getting economies of scale), and 3) understanding market economies and using the buying power of a large builder to be ruthlessly efficient in construction, 4) somewhat sane permitting processes and allocation of resources to social housing builds.

4 and to a lesser extent 3 above are the biggest differences with the non-profits that build below-market-rate housing in California. In California, the non-profits must fight like hell to get any permission to build, and that process can easily take years upon years, with uncertain delays along the entire process. In the meantime, funds that might go to the project will have deadlines on them, and any project will actually be assembled from a large and diverse set of sources that vary from grants, to loans, to LIHTC tax credits. And for the funding that comes from an application process to other organizations.

All this means that the entire build must be 100% subservient to the needs of getting local build approval and funding gathered all at the same time. Any project that focuses on minimizing costs is going to fail because the other parts are so hard to pull together.

IMHO there should be changes to local approval such that when plans are submitted, the city has 90 days to give final approval or rejection, with zero, absolutely zero extensions. And if the city rejects projects that follow the rules, or takes longer than 90 days, then that city loses any control over permitting for a year and a disinterested state board takes over, with the city paying the state for that cost.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#522

Post by ghaff »

gottorf wrote: post #513
ghaff wrote: post #491

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, it's probably more about being in a bad area of Detroit (or even cities that are considered much more elite) than being rural with a meth lab next door but I don't really disagree with your basic point though I'd have to look at the actual stats. Not sure that US rural areas in general have a big crime problem relative to areas of some cities.

Yeah, you're probably right. To restate my point, it's that buying a cheap house in the US comes with risks to one's basic safety that you don't find in other developed countries.

Although I'm not sure that's true in general outside of bad areas of cities--which do also exist in other developed countries. Maybe some rural areas are iffy but many inexpensive ones are really not.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#523

Post by lostlogin »

throw5959 wrote: post #515
epistasis wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do recessions unravel the economic system? Is the UK ready to collapse as a system after an extended period of stagnation? I guess it depends on your precise definition of "growth" but I am having trouble finding one that can fit with your assertions.

Recessions are slowdowns of growth.

Recessions are consecutive quarters of negative growth. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recession

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#524

Post by lostlogin »

throw5959 wrote: post #516
dns_snek wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't care about growth, nor do most people I know. We don't need to endlessly consume to be happy. The world won't end when this economic system unravels either, it's not the first and it won't be the last one to fail.

Lol, you have no idea what you're talking about. I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. You don't want to live like that.

It was massive turmoil for sure, but world didn’t end (I’m referencing your earlier comment, not downplaying the devastating fall). How would continual growth work? We will run out of everything.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#525

Post by lifestyleguru »

watwut wrote: post #497
lifestyleguru wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long into your life do you accept to share rooms and apartments? > It's not too difficult to rent a room in a shared house/apartment as a single person In Berlin or Munich absolutely not, even shared accommodation have some absurd castings. Some people really smell their advantage and squeeze every drop of humiliation they can.

Historically shared living was standard. You had multigenerational households and such too. It was not seen as humiliating, but as normal. It has its issues and is definitely not ideal, but whether you accept these has less to do with age and more to do with culture and economics.

How do you start sharing multigenerational household when you're a foreigner hundreds kilometers away from any family? Culture and economics might mutually agree that you are obsolete and should eliminate yourself, would you comply?

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#526

Post by throw5959 »

lostlogin wrote: post #524
throw5959 wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, you have no idea what you're talking about. I lived through the collapse of the Soviet Union. You don't want to live like that.

It was massive turmoil for sure, but world didn’t end (I’m referencing your earlier comment, not downplaying the devastating fall). How would continual growth work? We will run out of everything.

We are not limited to Earth.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#527

Post by rhubarbtree »

watwut wrote: post #501
rhubarbtree wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN and on tech twitter I often see this statement: “the reason rents are high is because we don’t build enough houses.” But I don’t think that’s really true, I think that’s very simplistic. The missing observation is that housing has become an asset class in a way it wasn’t in the past. Large numbers of people purchase houses to rent seek as landlords, and the only limit to the demand for rent seeking is the abili…

You there are enough houses being build, people who buy them to extract rent are non issue.

It would only work if you built _more_ houses than the demand and even then the market would have to be perfectly liquid.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#528

Post by rhubarbtree »

jfil wrote: post #518
rhubarbtree wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN and on tech twitter I often see this statement: “the reason rents are high is because we don’t build enough houses.” But I don’t think that’s really true, I think that’s very simplistic. The missing observation is that housing has become an asset class in a way it wasn’t in the past. Large numbers of people purchase houses to rent seek as landlords, and the only limit to the demand for rent seeking is the abili…

This is an interesting perspective on increased supply that I haven't considered before. It is remarkable how similar the Canadian housing situation is to the UK's.

It's the same everywhere, and even China is copying the model. Housing is a fixed asset and everyone needs one, so the moment you allow people to borrow to buy and let then the renters are stuck and the house prices soar.

The reason it's the same everywhere is that this model magically creates "growth" and "wealth". My house is worth £100K. House prices increase. So now there is more wealth in the economy (there isn't, but economists think there is). Now it is worth £120K.

I remortgage and - voila! I have £20K to spend. Now I can spend that extending or upgrading my house, now the plumber and decorator have jobs, and Amazon or whoever sell new curtains, and everyone is happy.

This is a particularly useful model to follow if you don't actually produce any real wealth, because you exported all your manufacturing jobs abroad and whilst we like to pretend an economy can run on services, in reality we run a massive trade deficit and are selling off assets to pay for it (guess which assets we sell --- we export house ownership to rent seekers from abroad! My last landlords were based in China and I live in the UK! The system works)

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#529

Post by rhubarbtree »

noisy_boy wrote: post #457
rhubarbtree wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN and on tech twitter I often see this statement: “the reason rents are high is because we don’t build enough houses.” But I don’t think that’s really true, I think that’s very simplistic. The missing observation is that housing has become an asset class in a way it wasn’t in the past. Large numbers of people purchase houses to rent seek as landlords, and the only limit to the demand for rent seeking is the abili…

Then why doesn't the government put limits on the no. of houses/flats a canadian family can buy? Allowing wealthy individuals to keep buying housing for rent-seeking isn't going to help the problem. Beyond the one for staying, how many more should they be able to own, if any? From the houseowners' perspective, if they can only own one that they stay in, what alternatives the government needs to structure to balance t…

> Then why doesn't the government put limits on the no. of houses/flats a canadian family can buy?

Well, mainly the answer to this in public discourse is the same reason people say "we just need to build more flats" --- because people believe in the magical powers of "markets", like there's some natural law that leaving things to the market will lead to desirable outcomes.

But the actual politics of it is that if you did this, then where are you going to get the boomers pensions from? And where is the economic "growth" going to come from? See my other comment.

We're all in a big ponzi scheme because we exported most of our real welath-generating activity.

Re: Finland's zero homeless strategy (2021)

#530

Post by rhubarbtree »

maxerickson wrote: post #475
rhubarbtree wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN and on tech twitter I often see this statement: “the reason rents are high is because we don’t build enough houses.” But I don’t think that’s really true, I think that’s very simplistic. The missing observation is that housing has become an asset class in a way it wasn’t in the past. Large numbers of people purchase houses to rent seek as landlords, and the only limit to the demand for rent seeking is the abili…

Why are rents going down in Austin then? Lots of rent to seek there with all the new housing being built.

We've seen London prices drop recently. That's mainly because we've seen higher interest rates and a flight of capital from the UK. People aren't as confident in the ponzi scheme continuing. It may also be in part because of huge drop in population post-brexit, although AFAICT there are no accurate numbers on that because the government doesn't want to admit that Brexit is a disaster.

I would guess Austin might be seeing a drop because it was "the big thing" for a while but now the consensus is it is not going to rival San Francisco. The rent seekers are moving elsewhere because there are bigger capital gains to be made? Just a guess, but you can probably verify it by checking house prices in Austin vs San Francisco.

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