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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

#271

Post by piva00 »

londons_explore wrote: post #114
spoonjim wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see someone who is quite clearly very recently homeless I give them as much money as I can afford to, like $50-100, because I feel like it can get them out of homelessness. When I see someone completely out of their mind I don’t feel like anything I can do will make a material difference, just get them different levels of stoned for the next 3 hours.

When you give $50-100, please employ them to do a task. Ie. "Here's $50. Go and buy me some ice cream. You can have another $50 when you bring it to me". It discourages begging and encourages an entrepreneur mentality.

People aren't dogs, you don't train anyone to have "entrepreneur mentality" by giving them asinine tasks. It is condescending as hell and, worse: it is degrading.

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

#272

Post by imtringued »

Klinky wrote: post #166
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sitting on a house doesn't look so bad with those returns Those returns are underwritten by voters rejecting new housing. If that political landscape changes, the incentives for landholders evolve.

I dunno, I do see "luxury" apartments being built rather often around here, but starting at $2K/mn for a 1 bedroom isn't really affordable. Political NIMBYism probably does play some part along with the pandemic, but again, that doesn't mean these investors are paying attention to that. There is a gold rush on at the moment.

Someone is willing to pay that much, they will pay that much for an old apartment if they must.

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

#273

Post by imtringued »

mactrey wrote: post #239
vxNsr wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve heard of it too, apparently foreign money (mostly China) needs a legit way to pull the money out of their country and real estate is a good way to do it that doesn’t alarm regulators. Can’t say why it doesn’t make sense to rent it out. But I do know that Vancouver passed laws to limit this type of purchase.

Did Vancouver pass limits on foreign purchases because that was the underlying reason for the high cost of housing, or did they pass limits because that was easier than actually building new housing?

Building housing must be stopped at all costs.

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

#274

Post by imtringued »

onion2k wrote: post #252
maddyboo wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the rationale for giving such a tax break? That seems ridiculous.

The current UK government is full of people who believe rich people keeping their money is how you stimulate the economy in to growth. It's not a completely unreasonable position according to economic theory but there are plenty of reasons to disagree with it.

If your economy cannot produce all the products consumers consume then you need to encourage saving.

If the economy cannot consume all the products the suppliers produce you need to encourage consumption.

If you perfectly hit the balance (unlikely but in theory possible) then you need to do... nothing, neither savings nor consumption increases.

It depends on what your economy needs.

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

#275

Post by imtringued »

mikepurvis wrote: post #98
BobbyJo wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Market housing creates affordable housing by displacing demand. No matter what kind of housing you build, as long as it gets built now it will lower prices now.

That assumes there are market incentives to actually fill the housing that is built. What about when buildings of hundreds of luxury condos are built and they just sit empty, either owned by disinterested "investors" or unwilling to be sold for the market-directed price? Someone who studied this in Toronto by overlaying nighttime photos to find units where the lights are literally never on: https://www.movesmartly.co…

Raise capital gains taxes on land. If they don't sell or rent it's their loss.

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

#276

Post by imtringued »

CivBase wrote: post #121
et-al wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see you've read that CityObservatory article from a few years back [0]. Unfortunately as the Tiktaalik mentioned, we have a housing shortage now . So the trickle-down economics of luxury housing won't work for at least a generation. Also, all the actual luxury housing that ends up being built is bought by wealthy investors buying their third or fourth property. Just look at the housing market in London. > Throughou…

Do we actually have a "housing" shortage, though? I know that supply of stereotypical single-family, detatched homes is massively outstripped by demand in many parts of the US and that's a problem. But is there actually a shortage of "housing" - places to live - including apartments, condos, duplexes, mobile homes, etc? This is not a rhetorical question, by the way. I'm genuinely curious as I've never been to LA or s…

Technically there is a shortage of nice places to live.

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

#277

Post by imtringued »

wyager wrote: post #48
advisedwang wrote: post #2

> the per-tent cost covers services, meals, sanitation and staffing OK, so $2600 gets a fair bit. Also looking at the report [1] this rate is calculated by dividing the total cost of the pilot by the duration and number of clients. So that is including one-time set up, planning and evaluation in the cost, which is probably a decent fraction of the cost as it's only an 8 month pilot. The recurring cost for extending m…

$31,000/yr is already pretty shit, and it’s even worse when you consider the opportunity cost of not using that space on a person who’s actually going to gain a productivity benefit from living in SF.

Putting a dozen homeless people on a plot may be more space efficient than another single family home.

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

#278

Post by imtringued »

kiba wrote: post #76
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…

The government is not thinking short term. They are turning that mostly useless parking lot into affordable apartments.

Apartments? I thought tents are classified as single family homes.

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

#279

Post by mmcwilliams »

fastball wrote: post #74
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…

That is well and all, but seems like a bit of a distraction from the OP. While 2/3 of homeless may be transient homeless, it seems incredibly unlikely that most of the people living in tents fall into that category rather than into the chronically homeless camp.

Wouldn’t the fact that the population is split 2/1 mean that it is very likely that unhoused people living in those tents do fall into that category? I believe that’s what the GP is referring to when they say that people have a warped view about homelessness; that the situation “seems” one way because of anecdotal experience and media representation.

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

#280

Post by imtringued »

morpheuskafka wrote: post #63

Monthly rent for a furnished apartment at my university (i.e. already overpriced and in demand) is $1049. Why not buy these people a ticket and a year's prepaid rent to somewhere with a much, much cheaper cost of living. It would save the city money and these people would have a real place to live (i.e. not homeless anymore, instead of homeless in a tent).

Also, send them to community college for the duration of the program.
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