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I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

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Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#151

Post by gugagore »

thrance wrote: post #145
edude03 wrote: post #137

I think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall thr…

I very much agree. This is how I feel too in regards to this "abundance liberalism": some people think they can fix the whole country by deregulating zoning laws and tweaking a few numbers. It seems foolish to me. Whatever the solution is, I am convinced it requires (re)building actual social nets and welfare.

The post is from 2018, but it's very topical because of "abundance", as you point out.

You might be interested in this podcast Bad Faith: Episode 478 - The Abundance Conspiracy (w/ Sandeep Vaheesan, Isabella Weber, & Aaron Regunberg)

Episode webpage: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130189560

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#152

Post by loudmax »

energy123 wrote: post #43
_dark_matter_ wrote: post #6

This isn't everywhere. I live in Nashville and we have SO MUCH housing being built. Just apartment building after apartment building after apartment building.

It is a big problem in Democratic states like California, where the leftists (Dean Preston and other leftist NIMBYs) have allied themselves with homeowner liberals to make it impossible to build housing. Republican states like Texas do a significantly better job, as you can see by looking at annual per capita new housing, and lower rental inflation. There's a growing liberal movement to change this status quo but the…

There is a proposal to build an apartment complex in my neighborhood in Northern Virginia. The houses that had Trump lawn signs up last year, now have lawn signs arguing to block the new housing (or "preserve the neighborhood's character").

NIMBYism is an economic issue, not a culture issue. It has far more to do with how much impact the new housing is expected to have on the value of people's property. Or more saliently, the equity they have in the property. If people expect that nearby housing will cut their $500k equity in half, they're likely to petition against it, regardless of whether their governor is a Republican or a Democrat.

NIMBY isn't red or blue, it's just fear and greed.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#153

Post by card_zero »

542354234235 wrote: post #130
bmn__ wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really, you wanna police speech on HN? What priggishness. smh As long as the gypsies in Slovakia call themselves thus, you have no moral leg to stand on.

I call my wife “baby” but that doesn’t mean it is ok for random men to call her that. You are free to use ethnic slurs if you want, and people are free to point out that they are in fact slurs.

It's socially constructed, what's a slur. Something below a fact.

What, you downvoted to disagree? Look:

"We asked many members of the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities how they preferred to describe themselves. While some find the term “Gypsy” to be offensive, many stakeholders and witnesses were proud to associate themselves with this term and so we have decided that it is right and proper to use it, where appropriate, throughout the report." Women and Equalities Committee, UK Parliament. 2019.

Of course that was six years ago, maybe it's a slur now. Or maybe it's a slur to you, but not to them. Or it won't be slur tomorrow, or it's a slur everywhere but not on Tuesdays and except in Scotland. Socially constructed, see? Not factual.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#154

Post by huhkerrf »

comrade1234 wrote: post #86
fakedang wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switzerland ships the homeless by bus to other European capitals for free. https://www.joe.co.uk/news/swiss-city-offers-beggars-one-way...

I think that has more to do with the summer gypsies than an endemic homeless problem.

I find it fascinating that Europeans will look down on Americans for their race problems, but mention the Roma/travelers and they respond in a way that would make Archie Bunker say calm down.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#155

Post by teekert »

My country has enough homes (in principle, and there is pressure on the system), but we still have homeless people.

Maybe in the US it is about building houses, but at some point it isn't anymore. I once wrote this here: [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903859

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#156

Post by nic547 »

_petronius wrote: post #51
maxweylandt wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is public transport to nearby commuter towns? If it's affordable/convenient/reasonably quick that can help a lot, I suspect. (But am quite ignorant so appreciate correction!)

Switzerland has the best rail system in the world (IMHO). One app can manage ticketing across all public transit in the entire country, and it is extremely fast and reliable. Lots of people who work in Zürich, for example, commute in from Zug (due to lower taxes in the neighboring canton).

> extremely fast

It's generally called "as fast as necessary", more focused on total journey lenght with the clock-face schedule across the whole country. Other countries certainly have faster trains.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#157

Post by aqme28 »

edude03 wrote: post #137

I think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall thr…

I see this take a lot but it's a very static take on homelessness.

Yes, homeless people are often in a mental state where they are difficult to take care of. However, that doesn't mean they're homeless because they're mentally unstable. Often, the reason they are unstable is because they are homeless.

Being on the street heavily exacerbates drug and mental health issues. Plenty of homeless people start out normal and then fall into this state. So if you want to reduce the number of crazy people on the street, then people need stability and homes to cut off the pipeline.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#158

Post by lyu07282 »

scandox wrote: post #11

A bit broad. I guess the broadness of satire that people enjoy probably is a measure of how close the revolution is?

Also kind of the simplicity of the problem: You have homeless -> give them homes = no more homeless. Just build a shit ton of public housing. It really doesn't help the liberals argument that in the last 40 years, China raised 800 million people out of poverty. [1]

[1] according to the communists at the world bank: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#159

Post by UncleMeat »

edude03 wrote: post #137

I think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall thr…

> 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem

There is a well demonstrated and strong correlation between housing costs and homelessness rates. There are absolutely cases where the root cause is pre-existing mental health issues or substance abuse but it is simply not true to say that housing costs are rarely the problem.

Further, homelessness can cause substance abuse and mental health issues. So even if you can look at somebody today and say "wow that person has a massive addiction to meth and clearly just giving them a roof won't solve everything" this does not mean that the reason they became homeless in the first place was a substance addiction.

Building more housing will not solve all homelessness. Frankly, so what? Almost no problem on the planet is solved by a single thing. It'll solve a substantial portion of homelessness. That's still good.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#160

Post by codingdave »

gadders wrote: post #60

I don't think housing will help the people with mental health issues and addiction problems. Honestly I think sometimes building (compassionate, 21st century) mental health "asylums" and treatment centres would do more to end homelessness.

We need something in the middle. The ability to be a functional adult is forced into being a binary thing. You either succeed, or you crash and burn down into being homeless, institutionalized, etc.

There really aren't many ways to meet halfway - to have living spaces where you can live up to your abilities and have safety nets for the areas where you struggle. We have "halfway houses" to help people re-enter society after crashing, but not much to catch people before they fall.

(We do have some programs that try to help, but they are swamped, or inefficient, either expensive or under-funded, or some combination of those things. )

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