Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness • Hacker News Board

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

#261

Post by woah » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

dano wrote: post #240

Building more housing is tossed out as if this is a single dimension economics problem, like widgets in Freshman econ. Perform a capacity utilization study of all available housing, where Capacity is the number of room days of housing available and utilization is the amount it is actually occupied. Then tag each of these housing units (room) across multiple dimensions including cost, location, house, apartment, condo…

What a bizarrely complicated argument to try to refute the most basic law of supply and demand.

Many economists have proven over and over that building more housing means that there are more places for people to live. The burden of proof is on you, since you are the one making outlandish claims.

The number of "underutilized properties" is likely a few percent in your area. "Most condos are empty and owned by foreigners" is a myth perpetuated by NIMBYs and conspiracy theorists.

Even if it was true, the best way to screw over these shadowy foreign empty-building-owning figures would simply be to build more housing so that it's not an artificially scarce investment asset. The value of their investment would plummet and they would have to sell it or take on tenants.

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

#262

Post by ejb999 » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

janalsncm wrote: post #210

whiddershins wrote: post #90

I don't understand this thesis. In terms of visible homelessness a huge percentage are untreated mentally ill and/or drug addicted to such an extent that they won't be able to afford housing at any price level. The article offers no data to support the claim, just some anecdotal observations.

Cities like Milwaukee have very low homelessness. Is it because the people there are just less mentally ill? Less prone to drug addiction? Of course not. (In fact in a state with cold, dark winters and where there is a bar on every corner, you’d expect the opposite.) No, it’s because of the low cost of housing and because of their Housing First initiative. Housing First works and it’s only because of a lack of politi…

Its also possible that it is very hard to be truly homeless in the winter in many places in the USA, and being someplace warm year-round, makes being homeless easier. Just like being someplace that is less likely to arrest you for openly doing drugs in public. If you make it easy to do drugs without consequences, easy to live on the streets year round, you are pretty much guaranteed of getting more of those things.

I live someplace where it routinely gets well below 0F in the winter, for weeks on end - if you live someplace like that, you do your best to make different life choices if you do not have a death wish.

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

#263

Post by mindover » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:35 PM UTC

joenot443 wrote: post #228

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are great opportunities to teach your children about the consequences of an apathetic voting base. It’s also a great time to nurture children’s empathetic abilities by teaching them to juxtapose indecent behavior, mental illness, poverty, and general despair. Want more action? Try protesting and demanding solutions that include no questions asked housing, healthcare, food, water, and basic essential communicati…

There are so many countries on earth with a far, far more apathetic voting base than San Francisco which face a fraction of the homeless issues. It’s not fair to tell regular citizens that the homeless people harassing them on their walk to work are only there because they haven’t protested hard enough, that’s just baloney. Something’s very, very wrong in SF and it’s absolutely okay for tax paying law abiding citizen…

People in the neighborhoods with fewer problems (let’s face it, there are many very quiet expensive neighborhoods in the Bay Area) have very “progressive” views on the homelessnesses. They don’t experience its effects frequently, so don’t think it’s a big problem. They vote for policies that grow social services for the homeless, even though those policies don’t work. But the idea they have is that these services just need more money. And then more money again, and again.

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

#264

Post by prottog » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:36 PM UTC

jmoak3 wrote: post #101

orangecat wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more people to near to them so they vote against any and all change. Yes, combined with useful idiot "anti-gentrification" activists who have convinced themselves that the concept of supply and demand is a capitalist myth.

Useful idiot is a great term for this. It's ironic that the same people who want to prevent gentrification are the actual "bootlickers" after all. I ended up leaving San Francisco over this sort of stuff to go to my hometown with a cheaper cost of living. Here in Louisville, we have fewer things going on than most metros. Yet every time a new apartment complex comes up a good amount of people scream bloody murder tha…

It's a very common mindset -- one of wealth being zero-sum. If you believe that for whatever reason, it's very easy to be against growth, because you think growth will come out of your own pockets.

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

#265

Post by SketchySeaBeast » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:38 PM UTC

ioblomov wrote: post #260

SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 lux…

Building luxury downtown apartments and saying that they'll making housing more affordable for everyone really feels like trickle down housing to me, ESPECIALLY when combined with an argument that the economics will take care of themselves.

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

#266

Post by __MatrixMan__ » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:42 PM UTC

thefounder wrote: post #99

jlmorton wrote: post #17

Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at 6%. You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you even control many of the ordinances that…

Ok but why do all the people need to live in city center? There is enough housing/land, just not in "prime" location.

It's an issue with the zoning laws. Back when it became illegal to ban black people from your neighborhood the next best thing was to ban the kind of housing that black people could afford. So the only place where it's legal to put the kind of housing that addresses the problem is in the city centers which were already established and therefore out of scope for the zoning restrictions. (more on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc)

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

#267

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:44 PM UTC

prottog wrote: post #264

jmoak3 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful idiot is a great term for this. It's ironic that the same people who want to prevent gentrification are the actual "bootlickers" after all. I ended up leaving San Francisco over this sort of stuff to go to my hometown with a cheaper cost of living. Here in Louisville, we have fewer things going on than most metros. Yet every time a new apartment complex comes up a good amount of people scream bloody murder tha…

It's a very common mindset -- one of wealth being zero-sum. If you believe that for whatever reason, it's very easy to be against growth, because you think growth will come out of your own pockets.

Wealth is not utility. There are very strong reasons to think that the greater the level of absolute wealth, the greater the impact of relative condition vs. absolute condition is on what people actually experience, and that therefore, as the overall level of wealth increases, growth with poor distributional features goes from being beneficial (yes, some people are getting much richer, but a large mass of people are going from starving to less starving) to neutral to a net negative in social terms as the baseline moves up.

Now, of course, the best solution, if and to the extent possible, is to keep the growth and lose the distributional problems, rather than the other way around.

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

#268

Post by avmich » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:47 PM UTC

twelve40 wrote: post #253

avmich wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mo…

Combination is good, agree. For separate points, the argument stands.

And the combination is likely the product of people, gradually accumulated in the area. So, yes, the intellectual potential is great. But that could be moved some hundreds miles away relatively easily, or at least replicated to a high degree - partially because of the sad situation with housing.

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

#269

Post by majormajor » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:50 PM UTC

zozbot234 wrote: post #248

majormajor wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I can tell, the Manhattan case tells us that we aren't even close to the "building more will cause prices to fall" point anywhere in the US. And because of that, building more where it's cheaper is a better strategy for controlling costs than building more where it's already expensive . Manhattan was brought up to mock the idea that construction could make prices worse for existing residents, I don't think…

"Expensive" city centers in the U.S. have comparable density to bog-standard suburban towns in the rest of the developed world. By all indications, we're nowhere near the "tipping point" where trying to increase density there would physically be so costly as to be unsustainable. That's something NYC can perhaps legitimately worry about, but I'm not sure how that could apply to other high-demand places in the U.S.

The tipping point of concern for the anti-gentrification crowd isn't "is it profitable to upzone", it's "will upzoning make things cheaper" and those are VERY different questions.

But just going on the numbers for the former question, the "expensive" city centers in the US generally start with Manhattan, Brooklyn, SF, and whatever you'd call "center" of LA. And they don't seem that far behind a lot of the rest of the developed world...

Manhattan is >70k/sqmile.

Brooklyn is 37k/sqmile.

SF is ~19k/sqmile.

LA is 8k/sqmile.

So what are the "bog-standard suburban towns" you think they're comparable to?

I can't think of many, and my searching isn't turning many up. Milan appears to be 20k/sqmile while Rome is 6k/sqmile. And those aren't "bog standard suburbs" like a Marietta, Georgia; those are central cities! Let's go bigger and even more central - London is 15k/sqmile, Paris is 53k/sqmile. Tokyo is ~17k (and larger, more like a double-size LA, there), but not overall denser than the US's expensive city centers. Manchester, in the UK, is 5450/sqmile. Stuttgart is 7,800/sqmile.

Manchester is apparently comparable to San Jose! So again, seems like the way to fix is it to focus on the places further down the list, like an Austin, TX, at 3k/sqmile.

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

#270

Post by exolymph » Fri, Jan 06, 2023, 10:55 PM UTC

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.

I've never been hit by another car, but I have been yelled at and followed by street people. So...