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The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

moneywise.com

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Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#231

Post by J_Shelby_J »

jwestbury wrote: post #112
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most Metro areas do not have enough affordable housing. It's well established that local governments cannot build enough new affordable housing, partly because any contractor that bids goes way over the value of a private housing venture. The idea that there's enough housing but "in the wrong place" is like saying there's plenty of jobs, they're just in third world countries and Scandinavia. The idea that the solutio…

> Most Metro areas do not have enough affordable housing. There's no such thing as affordable housing[0]. Just housing. You can certainly argue that building a house is too expensive -- and due to NIMBYism, discriminatory policies, and anti-density regulatory environments, this is often true -- but affordability is not an intrinsic value of a building, and the problem is generally that housing stock simply doesn't ke…

Building any housing is building affordable housing.

Adding one home at the top of the price range, increases the number of affordable homes for someone, somewhere, by at least one.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#232

Post by wocka »

mlinhares wrote: post #218
escapedmoose wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…

Not only building new homes is unnecessarily complicated and expensive, single family homes are an incredible waste of space and money, had the US and it's big cities invested in apartment buildings with better amenities or forced developers to build shared neighborhood amenities Americans in general wouldn't be so incredibly against it. It's insane to me that my hometown of 1M people in Brazil has more tall apartmen…

> It's insane to me that my hometown of 1M people in Brazil has more tall apartment buildings than Philadelphia, with incredibly better amenities.

Would you mind sharing what the amenities are that you are referring to--both the in-building and neighborhood amenities? In the US I've seen gyms, swimming pools, shared hosting spaces, and some child-friendly spaces, to name a few.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#233

Post by peyton »

packetlost wrote: post #212
escapedmoose wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…

We, IMO, need a progressive tax system for every home controlled by an entity that isn't their primary residence. You don't want to hurt small individuals trying to build up wealth, but we need to stop allowing large corporations to turn basic necessities into investment vehicles.

I don’t think houses should be used by anybody to build up wealth.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#234

Post by spir »

escapedmoose wrote: post #192
jongjong wrote: post #16

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…

You only perceive corporate landlords as the greater problem because we're not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and well-located.

In pretty much every major city in North America, it is illegal or there is too much red tape to build the affordable housing people actually want.

Why is it that living in a tent on the street costs $0/month but the entry-level apartments cost ~$2k/month? Why are there no price points between $0 and $2k? The answer is bad government policy.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#235

Post by ohyes »

BytesAndGears wrote: post #179
giraffe_lady wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call a low experience worker, who only has access to jobs that pay insufficient to the cost of living? Underclass works fine for me. It seems like you do agree, you just either don't see that you do, or aren't honest enough to admit what the agreement means for the people who work these jobs. Their status as students or "other low skill" is irrelevant to their need to pay for food, housing, transport, hea…

It’s totally relevant because someone in their 20s might be able to live with their parents, or has multiple roommates etc. The amount of money that they need is much less than that of someone more established. It is a really interesting contrast though, that in Amsterdam where I now live (and many other parts of Europe), this divide doesn’t exist as strongly. We have a perfectly happy and healthy ~40 year old woman…

And then people wonder why none of us are having families. You’re too poor in your 20s, then you aren’t able to biologically by the time you’re in your 40s. But by then everyone in their 40s has the “I’ve got mine” mentality so nothing changes.

We live in the stupidest timeline.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#236

Post by Ensorceled »

betaby wrote: post #188
Ensorceled wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, this is why the "it's immigration" comments are incredibly naive. Immigration is trying to prop up this system.

Doesn't seem to work in Canada.

Didn't say it's working :-/

Canada has two major problems with immigration right now:

1) the rapid increase in numbers is a shock that the immigration systems (including immigrant community resources) can't handle, that shock is exacerbating the housing crisis (and health care crisis and ...)

2) the family reunification program defeats one of the major purposes of immigration, increase the ratio of working age citizens to elderly citizens.

I say this as someone who has traditionally been pretty gung ho about immigration.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#237

Post by esarbe »

robertlagrant wrote: post #198
esarbe wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the idea, the "American Dream" - you roll up your sleeves, spit in your hands and go to work - get busy and rich. Alas, that's not been the case for a long time. Please look at the data. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/thirteen-economic-facts-a...

Can you point at which of these shows that wealthy people weren't paid for value created please?

What make you assume that this is the case or that the data I linked to would answer that question?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#238

Post by kevinsync »

ac29 wrote: post #167
voidwtf wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since the beginning of 2020, yes. Even the delayed statistics appear to support my anecdotal evidence. However, thanks to Publix sending receipts to my email account I can provide a more concrete example. Kellogg’s Fruit Loops “Family Size” 01/16/2020 21oz $4.79 ~$0.23/oz Today 18.4oz $8.59 ~$0.47/oz So yea, over a 100% increase…

Not sure if you are cherry picking that example, but I looked up that cereal in my local grocery store in a VHCOL area and it is $6.99/23oz ($0.30/oz).

In my area, the Malt-O-Meal knockoff version ("Tootie Fruities") is $5.99/30oz ($0.20/oz).

I point this out because it always seems weird to me that discussing housing / utilities / healthcare / education costs somehow get boiled down to grocery store pricing disparities, when grocery stores allow you to comparison shop (and real estate / electricity / oil / etc don't).

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#239

Post by giraffe_lady »

BytesAndGears wrote: post #179
giraffe_lady wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you call a low experience worker, who only has access to jobs that pay insufficient to the cost of living? Underclass works fine for me. It seems like you do agree, you just either don't see that you do, or aren't honest enough to admit what the agreement means for the people who work these jobs. Their status as students or "other low skill" is irrelevant to their need to pay for food, housing, transport, hea…

It’s totally relevant because someone in their 20s might be able to live with their parents, or has multiple roommates etc. The amount of money that they need is much less than that of someone more established. It is a really interesting contrast though, that in Amsterdam where I now live (and many other parts of Europe), this divide doesn’t exist as strongly. We have a perfectly happy and healthy ~40 year old woman…

> someone in their 20s might be able to live with their parents

They also might not? Why are we structuring access to fundamental needs around this assumption?

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