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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

#21

Post by cqqxo4zV46cp »

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.

It certainly makes things easier, actually. You can be homeless because you were priced out of the market. Homelessness can be both the cause and the effect of other issues. My partner works in mental health / AOD, and repeatedly exclaimed how much pressure was ‘accidentally’ taken off so many people when lockdown-era economic incentives gave people in my area a better shot at just getting back on their feet. Housing matters an awful lot.

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

#22

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

> What's so hard about having a grocery store and reliable transit to downtown?

Are you asking what's difficult about living far away from people's support networks and abilities to provide for themselves?

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

#23

Post by charlie0 »

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…

"you can only make it affordable by making it a miserable experience." This hurts because it's so true. We need to get over car-centric cities, but that's only happening slowly and those areas are the most expensive areas. That housing won't be going to those who need it the most.

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

#24

Post by faeriechangling »

Tiny homes reduce housing density and effectively necessitate car usage to connect people to services which is already unaffordable and will only become more unaffordable. Electric golf carts and public transit do not solve this problem.

Sounds like an awful plan to me. Increasing energy costs mean we need to densify instead of sprawl. I’d be thinking apartments, townhouses, vertical mixed use developments. Things which generally make commuting on foot or light transit more viable.

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

#25

Post by closeparen »

You can certainly have a housing crisis of the form that incomes are too low relative to the construction materials and labor involved in normal amounts of built square footage using normal methods. Most urban housing crises, though, are about increasingly stiff competition for land. Only the vertical axis can save you there.

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

#26

Post by szundi »

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 moment until they lose their homes they are not homeless.

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

#27

Post by crooked-v »

cglan wrote: post #12

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…

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

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

#28

Post by badgersnake »

davidw wrote: post #15
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 p…

That’s only relevant if you’re trying to prevent homelessness. The article is about people who are already homeless. They may not have had these problems when the became homeless, but being homeless ain’t easy.

That’s not to say housing costs aren’t a problem, they are but they have to be prepared for other problems as well.

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

#29

Post by thriftwy »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #20
thriftwy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe this is an unique US situation where you are unable to scale down Walmart. Just make a Walmart Lite with no jeans or TVs but only food. Then these can be built practically everywhere, offering the same competitive prices. There are half dozen of chains like this in Russia and they often open on the other sides of same street.

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

#30

Post by wyldfire »

crooked-v wrote: post #27
cglan wrote: post #12

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…

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

Townhomes are present all over the city of Austin and surrounding areas. At least in this case it's not an obstacle.
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