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Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

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Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#251

Post by krainboltgreene »

majormajor wrote: post #107
Tiktaalik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How is this not the easiest decision in the world? Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Welp! This is why higher orders of government need to step in to "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy changes you describe. This gives the local municipalities cover to enact the good policies that the selfish rich wo…

> Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Sometimes poor established renters also don't want change. In the 20th century a lot of cities grew practically 'out of nowhere'. Why has that stopped? That's a great pressure relief valve and gets new buyers/renters out of a vicious feedback loop caused by the tendency of already cash-or-pro…

> Sometimes poor established renters also don't want change.

The way this is framed is so insidious. The "change" that "poor established renters" don't want is more expensive housing that they can't afford that will incentivize their current landlords to raise the rent on the properties they have and also change the local businesses to also raise prices.

It's not the same change.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#252

Post by mindover »

wolverine876 wrote: post #162
exolymph wrote: post #27

The non-visible homeless (people down on their luck, to an approximation) get mentally sorted into the vast category of "that's unfortunate but it doesn't affect me directly," which might influence people's votes or charitable donations, but doesn't arouse much passion for most of us. By contrast, the visible homeless are a visceral inconvenience, even a danger, so people feel strongly about how that problem is addre…

I'm guessing that you misunderstand the threats, and are much more likely to be hit by someone in an SUV. I've spent lots and lots of time in cities; I've never had a problem with a homeless person.

How do you define a “problem”? Is poop on the streets a problem? Used syringes? Mountains of trash? High people blocking public areas? Mentally ill people shouting at night and waking up whole neighborhoods? Physical assaults on weaker looking people (women, elderly, etc)? This is the everyday reality in SF.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#253

Post by twelve40 »

avmich wrote: post #181
wolverine876 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing magic about SF's geography It includes two of the world's top ten universities, incredible natural beauty there and nearby, excellent weather (locals complain, as locals do, but it's wonderful), and all the resources and people are gathered there. It's hard to imagine the return on investment of moving.

I can think about Stanford as the first one... the other one is probably Berkeley. I'm quite surprised they both are in world's top ten universities - actually, skeptical about that. "Incredible natural beauty" is not only at least somewhat subjective, but definitely is not exclusive to SF. Weather is good, but even Honolulu and Miami would argue, not to mention quite a few other places, even if they are minority ove…

no need to be skeptical, it's just one search away: https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/ra...

You may even ignore this particular ranking, but it really doesn't matter, because neither Honolulu nor Miami, with all due respect, have anything close to either school, let alone both (or half a dozen of UC's in driving distance)

Also, very subjective, but I can't bear the humidity in FL and HI for more than a week, so saying it's all similarly good weather in all those places doesn't make sense to me.

But really, it's a combination of all of these things in one place.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#254

Post by carom »

0_____0 wrote: post #212
klipt wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tech hubs grow organically from network effects. It's impossible to move the whole network in one go. Best you can do is make one network gradually shrink and another one gradually grow somewhere else.

Counterpoint: Shenzhen

Can we just move them to the US in one go? Asking for a friend.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#255

Post by hezralig »

SoftTalker wrote: post #76
fnimick wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And what happens when your hypothetical "emergency" isn't due to a personal failing? There are people homeless in the US right now because of medical debt due to illness, is that their fault too?

Medical debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, there's no reason anyone should become homeless over it.

Have you tried renting with a lack of a credit score or with a tanked score? It is increasingly out of reach.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#256

Post by zozbot234 »

Aunche wrote: post #190
fnimick wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich people in the area who do that.

> The people who are complaining about this are not the same people who are restricting housing access. The majority of them think that YIMBY is useless or counterproductive because only luxury apartments are being built. There have even been protests against this [1]. The main problem is that most housing advocacy is focused on taxing tech workers and using that to subsidize rents, which of course does nothing for h…

When building is made a luxury, only luxuries will be built. Quelle surprise! And this is supposed to be an argument against YIMBY?

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#257

Post by hellotomyrars »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #147
MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quickly throwing up cheap mass housing without also organically growing the services and rest of the community is how you get food deserts and ghettos though. I'm not saying it shouldn't be done, just pointing out where it's gone wrong in the past and why people may be hesitant to try again.

Food deserts are the result of theft driving away low margin businesses that don't want to absorb the hit.

Food deserts are not the result of theft. Food deserts exist outside of SF or other cities that are accused of being so soft on crime and all crime is legal. Food deserts are incredibly common in rural areas, especially as a result of their non-density. But hell, when I lived in Jacksonville( which is a consolidated city-county) I was 10+ miles from any grocery store. North side has developed a lot since I left and that is no longer true but in many rural areas the only places opening up are dollar generals which are taking advantage of the economics of whatever local grocery store is charging and offering an alternative to driving 30+ miles to the nearest Walmart. A sad state of affairs.

I live in Pacific County WA and it is an economically depressed area with an outsized cost of living. Groceries are absurdly expensive relative to the average income in the area and you could probably get the same groceries for half th price by driving to where the closest Walmart is( which is 30 or so miles from where I live.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#258

Post by jandrewrogers »

twblalock wrote: post #26
deathanatos wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's "covering risk", and there's tenant lock-in. I have no problem with requiring a tenant to rent for a year, to prevent quick turnover and the risk and costs associated with that. But multiple landlords now have all had the same policy: the lease will never go month-to-month, basically. You can , but e.g., for my current lease, it costs ~60% more to go month to month. This creates bizarre pay-off points, and gr…

I was renting until just a few years ago and I never had a lease longer than 12 months, and it was actually difficult to find one longer than that. I'm not sure where you live, but in a lot of places, a landlord refusing to allow a lease to go month-to-month is illegal.

In Seattle there are many places that will do leases longer than 12 months e.g. my current lease is 36 months. It may not be the default but if you ask they are often amenable.

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#259

Post by prottog »

majormajor wrote: post #194
novok wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cities out of nowhere do exist in function in the USA, there are plenty of cities where people can buy for cheap. New settlements get started due to something unique about the place, be it ports, resources, trade route nexuses, and so on. The USA was a frontier and thus these cities were established. You'll notice in western europe you don't see many new towns either for 100s of years, because it's frontier was settl…

Sure, but we explicitly tried to counter those forces in the US, including through government policy to build industry in areas where it wasn't before. Moving the defense industry to be less-concentrated in Los Angeles was deliberate and wasn't moving to "frontier" towns. It was moving to towns that were created for one purpose but had been somewhat "skipped over" after that in favor of the biggest cities. I think it…

I'm a big fan of the German style of federalization, where federal agencies are spread out around the nation, instead of all being headquartered in one federal capital. The Ministry of Defence is headquartered in Bonn; the BfV in Cologne; the Bundespolizei in Potsdam.

There's no reason why we can't do the same in the US, and have the USDA be headquartered in Kansas City, the Treasury in New York, the DOT in Indiana, and Interior in Colorado. It would be a material step towards "draining the swamp".

Re: Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness

#260

Post by ioblomov »

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #13
TSiege wrote: post #12

Before the pandemic this problem really seemed intractable for a lot of metro areas, but now with WFH taking hold we've been given a potential life raft if we jump on it. Office space cannot get converted into homes overnight. There's a lot of remodeling and rethinking of how to fit an apartment into one, but it's a chance nonetheless. The biggest burden is likely to be the cause of the problem in the first place, zo…

For some reason I doubt that developers will be looking to convert that office space into affordable housing.

The focus on affordability in new housing is, I think, a glaring example of short-term thinking. I mean sure, those sparkling new condos that somehow managed to squeak by the municipal approval process (the length and cost of which are no small part of why they cost so much) may be out of reach for most people, especially newcomers. But with time—or even sooner after, say, I don't know, a recession?—what was once luxury condos may become decidedly middle-class housing.

NYC where I live is chock-full of housing developments which began either as affordable (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacDougal–Sullivan_Gardens_H...) or luxury (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ansonia) and that, with the vicissitudes of economic cycles and time, flipped their tax brackets (and sometimes more than once).

The point is, supply is supply and, given enough time, the economics will take care of themselves.

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