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LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

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Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#221

Post by chmod600 »

0xB31B1B wrote: post #57

Posting 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…

"[transient homeless] generally refuse to get services"

Is this because the services don't really offer effective help for this group?

I understand why mental illness or addiction might keep people from using services. But if someone is just down on their luck and won't accept any help (assuming they need it), something seems wrong with that picture.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#222

Post by havelhovel »

dcolkitt wrote: post #198
slg wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This generally doesn't happen for two primary reasons. First cities are not closed systems. Places like LA and the Bay Area have a built up demand that exceeds housing. The new housing would have to be added at an extremely high right to keep up with that demand otherwise the city just grows rather than becomes cheaper. When a city simply grows, the cheaper units never flow down to the bottom of the market as someone…

> someone else will move in who lives outside the city I don't really see this as a gotcha. Those would-be new arrivals to the city don't materialize out of thin air. Presumably they left some other place behind, and their migration is freeing up housing stock wherever they leave behind. The underlying dynamic is still the same. New housing increases low-end affordability by soaking up mid-end demand for old housing…

My sense of community would have to be severely damaged or underdeveloped to be content with municipal policies possibly helping individuals who live thousands of miles away while passing by people living in tents on a daily basis.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#223

Post by kbenson »

paxys wrote: post #61
sjg007 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the solution then? Utah built apartments for everyone. That seems to have worked.

You don't even have to build housing specifically for the homeless. You don't have to build BMR or affordable housing. Just build more housing, period, and the problem will eventually solve itself.

The problem with saying this is that while it makes sense if you connect the dots, the path of those dots isn't direct so it's non-obvious to some. A government spending that money can't just build housing and have it solve the problem through market forces because the government won't be participating in the market that way. What a government has to do is incentivize the market, and through incentivizing the market (even if that's taking out many disincentives that have been put in place) cause market participants to build more housing.

So, while saying "just build more housing" isn't wrong, it's not a useful way to communicate the concept of do whatever it takes to encourage more housing to people that aren't already on board with the idea.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#224

Post by throwkeep »

GartzenDeHaes wrote: post #39
darth_avocado wrote: post #35

I 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.

A jobs program, for those who know the right politician.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#225

Post by JohnBooty »

dcolkitt wrote: post #78
0xB31B1B wrote: post #57

Posting 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…

> 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…

    The best way to lower the cost of housing is to 
    increase the supply of housing. And the best way 
    to do that is to unleash developers whatever is 
    most profitable whenever and whoever they want 
    without government regulation and NIMBY activists 
    getting in their way.
You had me up until here. There is surely a (messy) middle ground between "recognizing that increasing housing supply drives down pricing" and "letting real estate developers do literally whatever they want."

I spent quite a few years living in a "trendy" area where housing developers crammed as much housing into it as possible. The results were not pretty. Very easy to create an environmental and quality-of-life nightmare which is particularly unfair to those already living in the area, with no say over what becomes of it.

The goals of housing developers are not necessarily aligned with that of society.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#226

Post by iancmceachern »

simfree wrote: post #157
onion2k wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but property values in London are increasing at a rate that more than pays for that (many times over actually).

Same in Seattle, my block has a 2017 constructed home that has never had occupants, owned by a non-resident from China. He owns at least a few other empty new homes in the inner suburbs as well. About once every 2 weeks his son pops by to make sure the house has not burned down or had a pipe burst.

Can I rent one of his houses?

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#227

Post by an_opabinia »

alsetmusic wrote: post #86

"In 2013 the Utah Housing and Community Development Division reported that the cost of emergency room treatment and jail time averaged over $16,000 per year per homeless person, while the cost of providing a fully subsidized apartment was only $11,000."[0] Obviously, the numbers will change with the area. The cost of an apartment in the Bay Area or LA would be much greater, for example. But the book makes a good case…

> But the book makes a good case that it'd cost society less overall to just take care of people than to ignore rampant homelessness.

It will cost the government less, no question, the analysis is great in this regard. But the reason it doesn't happen is because the analysis is incomplete.

My theory is, housing a homeless person decreases the value of the land where they're housed severely and quickly, land that takes relatively an extremely long time to grow in value. That's why what always happens is expensive tents on worthless, unexploitable land (parking lots under highways, sidewalks, city parks).

I personally think this is horrible, but I believe it's a better model of what really happens.

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#229

Post by andy_jensen »

BurningFrog wrote: post #167
onion2k wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm fascinated by how widespread this weird idea is. Even if we buy the exotic premise that investors would buy houses and leave them empty - generating zero rental income for these greed driven people - as an investment, we still have to explain why they would only do this with new housing stock. Why can't you do the same trick with existing housing?

>Even if we buy the exotic premise that investors would buy houses and leave them empty - generating zero rental income for these greed driven people - as an investment, we still have to explain why they would only do this with new housing stock.

Where I live the housing prices are expected to go up roughly 15% this year. So someone buying a house for 600k can expect to sell it for 690k making 90k. That is 7500 USD a month. If you wanted to make that much money from rent you would have to squeeze 4 or 5 tenants into the property. It is simply not worth the hassle trying to rent buildings out when house prices go up at such a high rate

Re: LA pays $2600 per homeless tent, per month

#230

Post by tboughen »

slg wrote: post #124
dcolkitt wrote: post #78

Earlier 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…

This generally doesn't happen for two primary reasons. First cities are not closed systems. Places like LA and the Bay Area have a built up demand that exceeds housing. The new housing would have to be added at an extremely high right to keep up with that demand otherwise the city just grows rather than becomes cheaper. When a city simply grows, the cheaper units never flow down to the bottom of the market as someone…

This may be true if the housing market has sufficient capacity to build homes at the required rate. The UK’s experience over the past 50 years is that the private sector has built around 170k homes per year, but the rate of household formation suggests we need around 300k extra each year.

The U.K. hasn’t built 300k+ homes per year (or anything like that) since the government stopped building houses - the private sector has never picked up the slack. And the result is hugely increased prices.

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