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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

#281

Post by acchow »

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…

There is no single coordinated entity making all the decisions. In reality, there are dozens of self-interested groups which have no interest in solving homelessness and just want to stop every kind of development for all kinds of different reasons.

There is also the homeless-industrial complex which has a lot to lose if you solve homelessness

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

#282

Post by [deleted] »

majormajor wrote: post #269
zozbot234 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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…

[deleted]

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

#283

Post by shanty »

woah wrote: post #261
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 foreigne…

From a supply and demand side, Real Estate Developers would gravitate to high value developments due to potential for making higher returns as well as the prestige in building "fancier" developments.

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

#285

Post by sangnoir »

c7b wrote: post #215
dasil003 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a questionable take on two levels. First, yes, yes there is something magic about SF's geography, it's the closest major city to the largest VC hub in the world. These companies thrive on young talent that prefers to live in a city. It's not dissimilar to the gold rush 170 years ago when you think about it. Second, what do you mean "San Francisco is just not suitable any more"? The tech companies and their em…

Both tech and VC are vastly more mobile than anything to do with the gold rush or even other 'technology' sectors with heavy physical assets, it's purely a coordination game.

I think having both in high concentrations is mutually beneficial. The same goes for tech workers: having thousands of potential employers within commute distance without having to move is great.

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

#286

Post by shanty »

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…

You're neglecting to address enforcement issues such as Criminal Vagrancy which is strictly enforced in some locales and lax in others.

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

#287

Post by sangnoir »

dasil003 wrote: post #157
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sunshine. Sunshine helps when you're shooting outdoors. Southern California has more sunny days than the east.

And a bit of haze helps the aesthetic as well.

They add that in post.

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

#288

Post by rsj_hn »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34
jeffbee wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners and they don't want housing, they want excess returns. Simple.

> government is run by and for the benefit of the established land owners Do San Francisco’s renters fail to turn out to vote? (Serious question.)

San Francisco has a large transient population of renters. They drift in, party and work hard, and then leave when they have kids or want to settle down. This is because San Francisco is not very family friendly - it's a city with more dogs than kids -- with more drug addicts than kids. It's much more of a party town than a place where people can put down roots. The average renter lives in San Francisco for 6 years and then moves away. Don't think of San Francisco as a self-contained unit, it is a 7x7 mile square containing 800K people in a larger SF Bay Area containing 8 million people. People go to the Square when they are in the mid to late 20s to early 30s to party and then move to other places nearby when they have a family.

This transient population generally does not involve itself too much in local issues because it is not attached to city. That is why SF mayoral candidates and city council candidates spend a lot more time discussing how they will fight global warming and white supremacy rather than discussing local zoning. Because the transient population cares about these general non-local issues and generally don't bother too much with details of local issues. This has some hilarious consequences, for example, one rich family whose view would get blocked by new development managed to put on the ballot a measure to block the development, and got it to pass in the name of "Save our Waterfront From Greedy Corporations". That's why SF has a large parking lot and tennis courts on prime waterfront real estate. There is no one easier to manipulate than the uninformed do-gooders that is the SF voting population -- just link more housing development to "greedy corporations" or "gentrification" or "large carbon footprint" or complain about lack of diversity in the construction crew or administrative staff, or new residents, etc. So many ways to kill a project.

The result is that control over local issues -- e.g. what the city council actually does -- is handed over to a small core of residents that do care and have put down roots -- e.g. to homeowners. And homeowners want house prices to rise and for neighborhoods to not change radically. Therefore the SF city council and mayor are very conservative about things like zoning, even as they spend a lot of time espousing radical positions on generic lefty issues.

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

#289

Post by closeparen »

wolverine876 wrote: post #158
dionidium wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

> if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Those tech workers, once they move, are not customers, they are the city. It's their city as much as anyone's, any failures or successes are theirs; what have they done?

Recent arrivals pay the lion’s share of property taxes thanks to Prop 13. Income tax on tech wages and stocks gave California its budget surplus in recent years. Political advocacy is a bit more limited, but you have to keep in mind that tech is heavily foreign born. I’m the only one of my work friends who can vote.

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

#290

Post by AussieWog93 »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #112
luckylion wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially for a city that is explicitly progressive, why the "all rapid change is bad, it must take decades or centuries, otherwise it's not natural" approach? Germany's large cities have similar issues where they don't want to start building new districts because it'd be artificial and not naturally grown building by building. And it's better to have rents double every 10 years, apparently. I don't get the "why", b…

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.

>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.

Not sure if this is the case overseas, but here in Melbourne (AU), it's really common for new developments in built-up areas to consist of a shopping centre with supermarket on the bottom floor, and a large amount of (nice) apartments on top.

Seems like a good way to solve the density problem without also isolating people from shops and services.

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