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
#2[flagged]
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#3I get it. I know a lot of people who cover their rent but losing their jobs would be an immediate severe issue. Housing insecurity is really scary.
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#4The current link points to the website of a radio station that only posted a brief summary of a much longer article from The Atlantic. Maybe the URL in this post should be changed to the original? https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
edit: actually the original link already has a submission on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33961543
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#5Two sides of the same coin really
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#6Two sides of the same coin really
"It's not that we don't pay people enough, it's that living costs too much"
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#7I get it. I know a lot of people who cover their rent but losing their jobs would be an immediate severe issue. Housing insecurity is really scary.
The real issue is that apartment managers can come after you for the remainder of your lease. You can suddenly be in 10-20k of debt if you need to break your lease early. That's both more accessible and worse than many medical debt horror stories.
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#8I get it. I know a lot of people who cover their rent but losing their jobs would be an immediate severe issue. Housing insecurity is really scary.
The real issue is that apartment managers can come after you for the remainder of your lease. You can suddenly be in 10-20k of debt if you need to break your lease early. That's both more accessible and worse than many medical debt horror stories.
Even without that, you're still easily $2k in the hole and that all on its own is scary - the long-term repercussions of "evil by bureaucracy" are, of course, even worse; but the very beginning is plenty terrible, enough that there doesn't need to be a "real issue" here for it to be bad.
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#9I get it. I know a lot of people who cover their rent but losing their jobs would be an immediate severe issue. Housing insecurity is really scary.
The real issue is that apartment managers can come after you for the remainder of your lease. You can suddenly be in 10-20k of debt if you need to break your lease early. That's both more accessible and worse than many medical debt horror stories.
If you signed an agreement to pay a certain amount, for a certain number of months, and then you don't do it, the counterparty should be able to come after you.
I understand that some of the people who break leases are experiencing hardship, but others are just breaking their leases because they can -- and a lot more people would do that if it was easier. That would put landlords on the defensive and result in more restrictive lease agreements and/or higher rents to reduce the risk, which would ultimately make things worse for all the renters who really do intend to honor their agreements to the best of their ability.
Also, in many places, landlords are legally obligated to make a good-faith attempt to find replacement tenants before they sue lease-breakers for the remaining rent.
Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
#10Two sides of the same coin really
Not exactly since the largest cause of housing insecurity is the fact that there simply isn't enough homes (at least where we need them). Paying everyone more wouldn't solve that issue, it'd just make rents rise further