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The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

moneywise.com

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Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#121

Post by esarbe »

robertlagrant wrote: post #70
somewhereoutth wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funnelled to the very wealthy. For example, medical bills. For example student loans. For example zero interest rates with zero wage inflation meaning accommodation cost…

> The issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). This drives prices up, though. Not just price of homes, but, similarly to fuel, prices of almost everything. Not many people are in the correct stage of life to evenly distribute themselves across the US's geography. > For example, medical bills. For example student loans. I doubt the baby boomers…

You're making quite a number of faulty assumptions.

> Medical bills, sure, but they have always been around.

Prices for medical care have increased disproportionately in the last few decades[0].

> Investing giant sums in defending Ukraine's border.

It's barely 1% of your budget. It's 3% or so of your military budget. That doesn't move the needle. I mean sure; you're spending too much on the military, no doubt about that. But that doesn't have anything to do with Ukraine.

> We need a system that works, not a system that doesn't work with a heavy-handed thumb on the scale.

You already have that. Currently it is heavily biased in favor or the upper 10% of the population.

> The actual obvious candidate is not punishing people who create so much value they have a load of money,

That's assuming that people that "have a load of money" necessarily created that value. Given the current socio-economic conditions, I doubt that is usually the case. [1]

[0] https://www.in2013dollars.com/Medical-care/price-inflation

[1] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/09/social-mobility-upwar...

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#122

Post by silenced_trope »

My mom was homeless for years, thankfully she got stable housing right before covid took off.

- in shelters/churches-with-cots there would be crazed drug-users, she was threatened numerous times in them and the shelter can't do anything

- I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing

- she's entirely dependent on getting social security, for food, housing, etc. she fears any politician that even talks about going after it

- she's 70 and is currently looking for work :( currently looking for jobs as a substitute teacher, for which I'm scared to death for her given all the videos online of kids beating up teachers and getting away with it, but what else can be done?

- I bought her a new (used) car recently, a tiny SUV -- when we were on the lot looking at it she wanted to see how the seats go down so that she could try laying down in it to make sure she fits, in case it ever happens again

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#123

Post by chii »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #114
chii wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> where everyone has to justify their claim but why shouldn't that be the case? There's no natural rights to anything, and it's the law of the jungle. There's a veneer of civility so as not to cause anarchy with people killing each other for some food. But just because someone exists, doesn't give them any privileges to own anything, except for what they worked for (or get given from parents).

> There's no natural rights to anything, and it's the law of the jungle. Except the crowning achievement of our civilisation is the realisation that there are natural rights (see UN Declaration of Human Rights, US Constitution etc). Indeed, the Rule of Law is perhaps a greater achievement than democracy, and from a jungle perspective not self evident. The property rights you allude to are also part of this Rule of La…

That's why i call it a veneer.

Just have a look at the blackout of New York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_blackout_of_1977... , and how much crime it led to, just because the veneer is torn off. People are only civil because they fear the threat of punishment.

As soon as this threat is removed, or is evident that it's unenforceable, you tell me what "natural rights" exist?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#124

Post by giraffe_lady »

dantheman wrote: post #98
colonelpopcorn wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the under class is by design. Anyone who's ever used the phrase "real job" believes in the necessary existence of an under class.

Not at all, there a jobs that are good for students and other low skill/low experience workers... you can walk in and generate value, the phrase real job as I've heard it means career where with experience the amount of value increases.

What do you call a low experience worker, who only has access to jobs that pay insufficient to the cost of living? Underclass works fine for me. It seems like you do agree, you just either don't see that you do, or aren't honest enough to admit what the agreement means for the people who work these jobs. Their status as students or "other low skill" is irrelevant to their need to pay for food, housing, transport, healthcare etc.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#125

Post by jakewins »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #106

By how much is the total number raw number of homeless increasing?

Yeah the article uses terrible numbers, like the rate of the share of homeless is what they are talking about right?

I looked up the homelessness numbers from the 30s, in absolute numbers it was about 4x what it is today - 2 million homeless vs todays half million.

Given that the population has roughly tripled since the 30s that means the rate of homelessness is about 12x lower today than during the Great Depression?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#126

Post by voidwtf »

gcanyon wrote: post #95
voidwtf wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can’t be a real, thought out, response. I’m living in Florida. I will agree with you that rent-seeking and increasingly abusive landlords are a huge problem here. However, the largest drivers of pricing out retirees in my anecdotal observations is uncontrolled healthcare, insurance, and food costs. The electric companies have also increased their rates and been allowed to add insane flat infrastructure recovery…

> The same box of cereal increased from ~$3.75 to ~$6.59 and gone from 19oz to 17oz. Your claim is that cereal has experienced 96% inflation? Over what time frame?

Since the beginning of 2020, yes. Even the delayed statistics appear to support my anecdotal evidence. However, thanks to Publix sending receipts to my email account I can provide a more concrete example.

Kellogg’s Fruit Loops “Family Size”

01/16/2020 21oz $4.79 ~$0.23/oz

Today 18.4oz $8.59 ~$0.47/oz

So yea, over a 100% increase…

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#127

Post by piker »

Is this normalized for the base rate? Aren't baby boomers a massive proportion of the population that is just ... aging? Should any different result be expected?

(There is a concern if you have a lot of old, homeless people, but that's different from the concern implied that something systemic is causing old people to go homeless at a rate higher than the base.)

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#128

Post by carlosjobim »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #111
carlosjobim wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funneled to the very wealthy. This has happened in all of the industrialized world, and it's happening very quickly right now. The reasons you mention are very US-specific, but the funneling happens everywhere, usually by more traditional means such as rents and taxes. Yes, taxes are gr…

> The reason for this massive wealth distribution is the inflationary monetary system Inflation serves to reduce wealth (if just stuffed under the mattress), and encourages investment (to beat inflation). The real problem is that wealth begets wealth - if left to it's own devices the capitalist system will ensure wealth becomes concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The only way this can be counter-balanced is with g…

Inflation serves to redistribute wealth, since the first people to receive the new money created are those who benefit most from it. The reduced value of money some rich man has under his mattress is of very little importance here, what's important is the reduced value of the money received as wages by labourers.

When Roman emperors inflated their currency, the first people to receive the new money created were their soldiers. Wealth of the rest of Roman citizens was in this way redistributed to the soldiers.

Today we have a fractional reserve system in banking, meaning that banks actually create money and inflate the money supply when they give a "loan". While a lot of this money goes to governments and some goes to companies, the wast majority of new money enters circulation by being lent to real estate purchasers. That's why real estate is so unaffordable. It's not more complicated than that.

> The only way this can be counter-balanced is with government regulation

Then start regulating the banks and take away their privilege of creating money from nothing.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#129

Post by wccrawford »

thsksbd wrote: post #53
tobr wrote: post #7

Unless they had a time machine I don’t think any baby boomers became homeless during the Great Depression, so that should be a low bar to clear!

Now that I re-reaf the headline you're right. How how to fix it in a concise manner ?

Since they're talking about an age range, and the boomers are being looked at because they're currently that age, you'd have to either also specify the name of that age range back then, or drop the names and just use the age range.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#130

Post by poorbutdebtfree »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #35
jongjong wrote: post #16

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

The issue is not supply and demand for houses - there are plenty enough to go around (though often in the wrong place). The issue is that a sizeable underclass is being created that have no wealth, not least because what wealth they did have has been funnelled to the very wealthy. For example, medical bills. For example student loans. For example zero interest rates with zero wage inflation meaning accommodation cost…

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