Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

The places where I live are rife with crime, vandalism, and disruption, and it always turns out to begin with people who don't live here at all. They're just crashing at a friend's place.

The people who do get on federal assistance are the most stable and trustworthy. The people they drag into their lives are not eligible for that stuff, due to criminal records, mental illness, really intractable problems.

In the other place I lived, there were raucous parties, vandalised fixtures, scummy people just hanging around. One Holy Saturday I was about to leave for church, when someone was stabbed and left a trail of blood at my doorstep. There were numerous drug-related arrests. Once I came home around 8pm to meet a cop with an assault rifle, who advised me to hang back awhile because they were raiding the place across the way. I was eventually subpoenaed to a court case because I'd supposedly witnessed some dude damage property, who of course didn't live there.

The recertification process is full of checks on this behavior. Currently, they have a questionnaire with essay questions like, "What is fraud?" "What is the definition of a "visitor"?" and suchlike, because people just don't understand the difference between a temporary visitor and a live-in roommate who keeps their stuff there and sleeps on your couch or whatever.

It happens all the time, and in fact it's often the reason people become homeless in the first place, because they dragged over their loser friends, for a shower, a meal, some games, to crash on the couch, and the family of this person said to stop bringing drama and crime into our home. So the guy gets kicked out from an otherwise good home, because they are trying to keep the peace.

I was on the other end of this, in fact; when I was homeless, I would sometimes be invited over, you know, to shower, eat, crash or whatever, and my host would get in trouble, because I was not known and hadn't had a background check, or signed on to a lease or anything. Couch-surfers are often living in largesse of friends who informally vet them and those friends often risk eviction, because your typical lease agreement (not even Section 8, just a standard lease) prohibits long-term "visitors" who turn into "roommates" without legally signing on.

Back in 2008, my fiancée flew out from Catalonia to visit me, and we went on many outings using rented bicycles and public transit. One Saturday, I took her to see some museums near Downtown, and we transferred in Central Station, which was more or less deserted, except for some very brave pigeons. She looked around and she was downright incredulous about the lack of passersby. I told her this is totally typical because nobody views Downtown as a place to hang out or be entertained, it's a financial and business district where people go to work and then GTFO to their suburbs.

In Europe it is very different for her: typically people live and work right in the city center, and the suburbs are something else entirely.

Newsflash: neither would tiny houses. On the West Coast, the downtown homeless population is almost 100% drug addicts these days. No amount of housing can fix that.

And for the sane population (i.e. not fentanyl addicts), being AWAY from downtowns is a blessing.

> Anyway, housing is kind of fucked so long as americans consider it a private investment rather than a common good. How do you think we got in this mess to begin with?

We stopped building highways, and switched from Moses' model of building enough roads to the "urbanist" model. Where we put in transit that makes it easy to go to the downtown ONLY.

Having to live without a backyard and in a small space, crowded with other people, and having to deal with constant traffic.

> In most cities, they are the most expensive places to live - they are the most expensive, nicest places to live in the world.

And that's EXACTLY what makes downtowns "misery centrals". An average person will NOT be able to afford a large comfortable apartment.

> Argument through condescending dismissal isn't persuasive, and doesn't prove anything.

The thing is, no city in the US managed to increase affordability by either building transit or increasing density. Not a single one.

I don't have data for all the world, but it also holds true for several European cities. Oh, and Tokyo in Japan.