Just give everyone a universal basic income.
LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
181–190 of 312 posts
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#182Can anyone estimate how much it would cost a scrappy private company to provide similar services sustainably? My guess is that it would be far less than $2600/m.
I imagine the main reason nobody does this is due to the minefield of legal issues, being accused of exploitation, etc. Not to mention the personal safety risk of your staff, and so on.
It's so sad that these mechanisms that were set up to protect people are now preventing people from getting the help they need.
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#183I think the main takeaway here is government, as usual, thinking short term and spending more money on bandaid solutions. Yes, the $2600 gets you services, meals, sanitation and staffing. But in reality, you can get a decent 1BR apartment for $1500 that is waaay bigger than a tent, sanitation for free since it is an apartment, and have almost $1000 for groceries left over. And, you can fit more people in the apartmen…
You're misunderstanding the fundamental function of modern government. That $2600 goes to a contractor (political crony, friend, or relative) who then mostly pockets the money through salaries, sub-contracts, and such. This is the purpose of the spending and there was never an intent to help anyone in the first place.
get enough people to vote and you can change it in your area. simple as that
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Sitting on a house doesn't look so bad with those returns Those returns are underwritten by voters rejecting new housing. If that political landscape changes, the incentives for landholders evolve.
I dunno, I do see "luxury" apartments being built rather often around here, but starting at $2K/mn for a 1 bedroom isn't really affordable. Political NIMBYism probably does play some part along with the pandemic, but again, that doesn't mean these investors are paying attention to that. There is a gold rush on at the moment.
People who move into these more expensive units leave other, less-luxury units though that now someone else can move into. Of course, as someone else pointed out, there is actually pent up demand outside of major cities as well by people wanting to move to the city. But still our only realistic, long term solution out of this mess that 40 years of insufficient construction had gotten us into is unprecedented construction. Upzone and remove barriers to get permits.
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
> one big way to prevent this downward trend in quality of life is to build more cheap housing One pedantic quibble. It's not necessary to build cheap housing specifically. It's perfectly fine simply to build more housing of any type. Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Throughout all of American history, new h…
Today's new expensive housing will indirectly create more cheap housing in the pre-existing housing stock, by pulling demand out of the market. Only if people actually live in those houses, and they're bought by people living in the cheaper houses right now who then move up in to the new housing stock. If people buy the new houses as investments and leave them empty most of the year then it has no impact on the rest…
> If people buy the new houses as investments and leave them empty most of the year
Fortunately, this is already a metric that is tracked, called the vacancy rate. And what we see is, that in in-demand cities, that have high rents, the vacancy rate is pretty low.
So, if the vacancy rate is 5%, that means that if you build 100 houses, then 95 of them are going to be lived in. Yes, it sucks that those other 5 houses are not lived in, but those extra 95 houses, in our example, are still a good thing.
> This is precisely what happens in places like London
It is really not. A quick google search shows that the vacancy rate is as low as any other major in-demand city.
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#186Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whenever I see someone who is quite clearly very recently homeless I give them as much money as I can afford to, like $50-100, because I feel like it can get them out of homelessness. When I see someone completely out of their mind I don’t feel like anything I can do will make a material difference, just get them different levels of stoned for the next 3 hours.
When you give $50-100, please employ them to do a task. Ie. "Here's $50. Go and buy me some ice cream. You can have another $50 when you bring it to me". It discourages begging and encourages an entrepreneur mentality.
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Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#187Earlier quoted context omitted.
Market housing creates affordable housing by displacing demand. No matter what kind of housing you build, as long as it gets built now it will lower prices now.
That assumes there are market incentives to actually fill the housing that is built. What about when buildings of hundreds of luxury condos are built and they just sit empty, either owned by disinterested "investors" or unwilling to be sold for the market-directed price? Someone who studied this in Toronto by overlaying nighttime photos to find units where the lights are literally never on: https://www.movesmartly.co…
If you build more prices will come down and these "investments" will become nonviable.
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#188Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will b…
Math does not add up. 1/3 would over time vastly out number the 2/3 group unless the two third group is growing exponentially.
You assume transiently homeless people become chronically homeless faster than chronically homeless people find homes or die.
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#189Posting this because most people in HN have a warped view of what homelessness is, especially in california. First of all, when most people think homeless they think "fentanyl addict out of his mind living in squalor" and while there are certainly a bunch of those people in the homeless population, they aren't even a majority of the homeless. In general, about 2/3 of the homeless are transiently homeless. They will b…
Math does not add up. 1/3 would over time vastly out number the 2/3 group unless the two third group is growing exponentially.
Unless the 1/3 group doesn’t have a terribly long life expectancy.
Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
Market housing creates affordable housing by displacing demand. No matter what kind of housing you build, as long as it gets built now it will lower prices now.
More luxery houses would lower prices for luxery housing, but not necessarily for affordable housing. I don't know how much those are competing markets
In addition to the relation between luxury housing market and affordable housing market that others are calling out, regulations and other hurdles to build are a reason expensive units are built rather than cheap ones. If you need 15 permits to build in SoMa and changes requested by one council can require going through the process for another permit again, your fixed cost gets so high that you really have no choice but to build expensive units. I'm sure housing cost would quickly get under control of SF for example were to eliminate any height and other zoning constraints and have as the only requirement that you are able to get insurance for your building.