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Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

nytimes.com

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Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#11

Post by mft_ »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good, hey?

And I'm no expert, but I imagine there's a circular relationship between the issues that homeless people have. Not having a home often means no address (unless they're able to access a PO box or similar?) so difficulty receiving mail or getting a bank account; it can mean less physical security so a higher risk of being a victim of crime (e.g. theft, assult); a higher risk of problems with the police; probably greater risk of ill health due to living conditions; and far less psychological security - to name but a few.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#12

Post by cglan »

Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down to 200sqft.

Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap townhomes that can house 6 or 12 families each, without being oppressing mega apartment complexes. Townhomes in NYC were a working class concept originally. We could be erecting thousands of cookie cutter townhomes in somewhere like Austin for dirt cheap housing. The density would bring better benefits in terms of infra scalability, mixed use, and public transportation. All these solutions feel like they're silly middle school solutions for a problem that was solved hundreds of years ago

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#14

Post by theteapot »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

> Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes.

So your saying homeless people actually do have homes??

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#15

Post by davidw »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

Research indicates that expensive housing makes homelessness much worse.

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...

Indeed, it's the primary driver of homelessness.

Things like drugs and mental health make things worse, but "at the margin" as economists say, if your housing is cheap, you might be able to hold on to it even if you have some problems with an addiction. There are plenty of wealthy people with drug habits who are not homeless.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#16

Post by ozten »

I’ve volunteered to build a tiny home in Seattle and have seen this deployed in my neighborhood and a few other sites.

It is a feel good thing, but the reality is…

These are a fraction of what is actually needed. It is symbolic.

The residents are removed from mental health and other services and plopped into a suburban neighborhood without community or resources.

The host families are not trained social workers, but they are forced into a tenuous management role between the tiny homes project and the resident.

The one I helped build is no longer enrolled in the program, due to these and more failures of not having a long term sustainable system.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#18

Post by heavyset_go »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

The majority of homeless people are homeless for economic or relationship reasons like loss of job/income, insufficient income, breakups and divorce, and lack of affordable housing[1].

The fastest growing demographic of homeless people are entire families.

[1] https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_...

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#19

Post by badgersnake »

IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

Right, depression and other mental health conditions, various addictions, heath problems, lack of basic numeracy and literacy. These need to be dealt with as well.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#20

Post by johnnyanmac »

thriftwy wrote: post #10
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a funny thing. I recently looked into living in a central location downtown, and all the rents are far beyond my means as a Section 8 participant. But if you put "affordable housing" way out in the boonies, then how do residents access any services at a reasonable price? If we need to run all over town for stuff, why live in a God-forsaken location like that? Downtown in my metro area is not only a transit hu…

I'm just not sure how you get these problems unironically. What's so hard about having a grocery store and reliable transit to downtown? The notorious St. Petersburg's Murino district is located outside city's boundary but it has a metro station, several grocery stores, bakeries, bars and other shops. It's not like US poor have no disposable income at all. Kudrovo has worse transit options but features an absolutely…

I don't know, but many cities do not have reliable transit. Hourly busses that stop after 9pm doesn't help at all. And thars the case for a lot of the western part of the US.

Also, thst grocery store may not exactly be profitable and be worth keeping up. Especially if Walmart or something use to station there and then left.

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