221–230 of 449 posts
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A handful of corporation own most of the grocery stores, but grocery prices remain reasonable, nowhere close to as insanely priced as rent. The difference is real competition: there's only so much land that exists, and localities only allow so much housing on that land. Demand goes way up, supply goes up only feebly, the result is predictable.
Rent is not ownership.
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The homeless issue in the US is much more of a drug addiction and alcoholism problem than a down on one's luck problem. Something like 90% of the homeless are in that category. > Who needs plumbing when you have a servant to bring you whatever you want? I like hot showers. I bet you do, too. Besides, what do you think happens to kings when they get a toothache? No anesthetic, nothing to be done except an idiot with a…
> The homeless issue in the US is much more of a drug addiction and alcoholism problem than a down on one's luck problem. Something like 90% of the homeless are in that category. Where'd you hear that? I've been watching a lot of Soft White Underbelly, interviews with people on Skid Row, and that doesn't really seem to be the case in general although there are a few [1]. Invisible People also does interviews with hom…
The problem is treating both kinds of homeless equally: they have completely different problems with completely different solutions. Give the chronic homeless just housing and they’ll more than likely just trash it or figure out how to support their habit with it, the latter will use the housing in the way it was intended as help.
We should throw as much help as possible to those who aren’t in the drug and substance abuse bucket simply because it is very difficult to help them effectively once they move into that bucket.
The end of poverty began in the US around 1800, when the specter of famine was finally eliminated. Throughout the 19th century, Americans grew in height and life expectancy, resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.
“Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.” That may be true from a purely materialistic point of view but a lot of the unpleasantness of being poor is stress. Not knowing if you can feed your children tomorrow, you may become homeless, if you work minimum wage you often get treated like crap. Medieval kings didn’t have to worry about that. In short, this is a pretty condescending line…
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It's more like 50%: https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/programs_campaign... And 30% have severe mental health issues (same source). Treating those issues solves only ~half the problem though (though that's probably 90% of the visible problem). The rest (to your point) is that it's really hard to afford to get a home when you don't have one. I'd blame zoning as the biggest issue here. Boarding homes and micro-…
This is a survey of drug use, not cause of homelessness. Many people use drugs after they've become homeless because of how terrible and pointless it is. Check out the interviews.
Surveys in the homeless community are extremely unreliable, but I guess that makes sense (better to claim you started drugs after being homeless than admit you did them before, more sympathy that way). Even outside of the homeless context, self reported surveys aren’t considered reliable (see https://www.verywellmind.com/definition-of-self-report-42526...).
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Drug addiction leads to homelessness, as the addict's priority is always getting the drugs. Things like jobs, friends, family, sense, are all sacrificed for the drugs. Everything is sacrificed, and so they wind up on the street. Treating a homeless drug addict as a victim of poverty is like giving cough medicine to a person with lung cancer. It does not work.
That is a very simplistic view of addiction; High functioning addiction is the norm - Purdue made billions creating them. I'm sure - at your workplace in a major city like SF or NY you have worked with people addicted to Benzos, Cocaine, or Alcohol. Most of them will tell you they can "quit any time" (they can't), but are still capable of taking a shower and showing up to work. > Treating a homeless drug addict as a…
Put them in a drug rehab facility.
It's still not an economic problem, it's a drug addiction problem.
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Where I live they have not been able to build new housing fast enough to keep up with rising population over the last thirty years. The prices increase directly proportional to the current velocity of new housing availability at any given moment. If they continue to build new housing at this rate my city will become one of the 10 largest US cities within the next 15 years and the value of my house will boom to more t…
> Where I live they have not been able to build new housing fast enough to keep up with rising population over the last thirty years. Yes, because rules in the US handicap new housing growth. > The prices increase directly proportional to the current velocity of new housing availability at any given moment. Yes, because they have the same cause: demand increasing. Imagine that every car maker was heavily constrained…
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So the 40 million Americans living below the poverty line with zero access to health care or dental services are living like kings? Really? May I suggest that you talk to some of them and ask if they feel like Kings/Queens?
Source? Why don't they have medicaid? It covers everyone under the 140% the poverty line.
The end of poverty began in the US around 1800, when the specter of famine was finally eliminated. Throughout the 19th century, Americans grew in height and life expectancy, resulting in America's poor being the richest poor people in the world. Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings.
> Today, America's poor have a better quality of life than medieval kings. Humans are social animals, and kings are at the absolute top of the social hierarchy. They had immense power. Poor people have very little power in comparison. This has an immense effect on their experience in the world. Most poor people in the US face a variety of real hardships. Your comment seems quite tone deaf to this reality.
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Source? Why don't they have medicaid? It covers everyone under the 140% the poverty line.
140% of the poverty line doesn't even reach $20,000.
Median household size is around 2.5. Poverty line for household size 2 is $17,420, for 3 is $21,960.
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The solution to your housing costs isn't increased payments, but cheaper housing. Housing prices are spiraling out of control almost everywhere because we refuse to build more of it through asinine zoning restrictions. High housing costs have such ripple effects on the cost of everything else that it's incredibly frustrating to see everything else but cheaper and more available housing be proposed as a means to help…
That isn’t a solution either, because individuals and businesses with the money will simply snap-up the real estate. Discouraging multi-ownership and preventing residential ownership by business mes needs to happen as well.