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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

#291

Post by CogitoCogito »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #211
bradlys wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> low taxes and low spending? Almost no one in power in the USA is actually low taxes and low spending. Maybe a few libertarians scattered throughout the country that managed to get a seat but they're a very small minority. Everyone is all about high taxes and high spending. It's just "high taxes for thee but not for me". So, for instance, republicans will repeal taxes on the rich and large corporations even when we…

> no one in power in the USA is actually low taxes and low spending Wyoming says hello.

Given that Wyoming makes up around 0.2% of the US population, I guess the original claim that "almost[!] no one in power in the USA is actually low taxes and low spending" might be pretty reasonable.

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

#292

Post by jeffbee »

rsj_hn wrote: post #288
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 a…

Congratulations on squeezing every toxic canard about "transient" renters into a single comment!

According to the Census American Community Survey of 2021, 43% of renters in San Francisco have lived in the same dwelling for ten years or more. It certainly is not typical that a person arrives and departs the city in just 6 years.

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

#293

Post by triceratops »

ejb999 wrote: post #141
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…

>>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. The people that live there, don't want their city/neighborhood to change in a certain way, so people that don't live there should force them to do it? Why are people that aren't even voters in that location have a say at all?

Cities are incorporated by the state. The state is ultimately responsible for every city - including its debts. That's why.

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

#294

Post by jmyeet »

shanty wrote: post #280
jmyeet wrote: post #203

There are levels of homelessness. The first level is one where you don't have permanent shelter. Maybe you're staying on a friend's couch or in your sibling's basemenet. But not long term. You may have several such situations and bounce between them. These arrangemenets tend to be temporary and are triggered by the loss of a job or rising rent or divorce or a number of other factors. These people are larely invisible…

This premise is interesting in that you are basically saying that homelessness is progressive. I am not sure that your levels encompass all types of homeless out there, given that the data is so scant. By that I mean there are a number of individuals who may refuse offers of shelter or homes (de facto homeless by choice). How do most homeless end up homeless and in places where resources ARE readily available, why do…

It's not a strict progression. I mean you can not have a car or could lose it first and then lose your home and go immediately into the streets.

My point is that approaches to homelessness are inherently aesthetic and performative. It's focused on reducing the appearance of homelessness (ie those on the street), which is why police will clear out an encampnet now and again or, in the worst case, just bus them to some other city to deal with.

But for so many people these problems start long before they get to the streets and the biggest problem of all is housing security.

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

#295

Post by triceratops »

twblalock wrote: post #245
freeone3000 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If nobody wanted to be a landlord, it'd be so much easier to find a place to live -- so many vacancies, so much empty space, so little occupied land...

Uh, no, there would be no options other than home ownership or homelessness (or government housing projects, which are only options in certain areas and are always pretty bad). Rentals don't just exist without landlords to own and maintain them. No apartment buildings would get built if there weren't landlords ready to buy them from the property developers. The existing ones would be left vacant because it would be c…

> there would be no options other than home ownership or homelessness

There are also extended-stay hotels. But other than that, is near-universal home ownership such a bad thing? What's the big difference between paying a mortgage and paying rent? Rent already pays for mortgage, repairs, and maintenance anyway. All that's left is closing costs when you move.

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

#296

Post by [deleted] »

dionidium wrote: post #37
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…

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…

[deleted]

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

#297

Post by c7b »

sangnoir wrote: post #285
c7b wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That's what I meant by coordination game: it could be any place, but they should all (well, sufficiently many) be in the same place. That's why there's a lot of staying power once a place has achieved that status (fyi, in game theory that's called a correlated equilibrium [0]).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlated_equilibrium

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

#298

Post by dsfyu404ed »

HDThoreaun wrote: post #117
nickpinkston wrote: post #87

There's also a good argument that rent/housing affects more of our broader lives than anything else - often called "The Housing Theory of Everything". https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e... If you're interested in helping the housing problem across the US, I encourage you to check out: YIMBY Action who does local activism across the US, and particularly active in SF Bay Area and CA. https://y…

LVT now. Truly the solution to all our economic problems.

If it was that simple someone would have done it recently.

LVT would cure places like SF where there's huge land values and pent up demand, sure. But it also creates a huge incentive to block development on a town level to keep taxes low.

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

#299

Post by rsj_hn »

jeffbee wrote: post #292
rsj_hn wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Congratulations on squeezing every toxic canard about "transient" renters into a single comment! According to the Census American Community Survey of 2021, 43% of renters in San Francisco have lived in the same dwelling for ten years or more. It certainly is not typical that a person arrives and departs the city in just 6 years.

I will respond to the one factual claim buried in all the emotional outrage.

Let's look at the 2021 American Community Survey.

How long someone has lived in a unit is called "tenure". You want to look at tenure for renters, which is this table:

https://data.census.gov/table?q=san+francisco&t=Owner/Renter...

Here is the data:

    Renter occupied: 427300
        Moved in 2019 or later 170948
        Moved in 2015 to 2018 70878
        Moved in 2010 to 2014 64753
        Moved in 2000 to 2009 71281
        Moved in 1990 to 1999 31614
        Moved in 1989 or earlier 17826
What we see is that 40% of renters lived in their unit for 2 years or less. About 17% lived in their units for between 3-6 years. 15% lived in their unit for 7-11 years. 28% lived in their unit for 12 or more years. Therefore it's clearly false that 40% of renters have lived in their unit for 10 or more years.

Let's compare with the corresponding table for owner occupied housing, and you see the difference:

    Owner occupied: 370695
        Moved in 2019 or later 48657
        Moved in 2015 to 2018 50381
        Moved in 2010 to 2014 53299
        Moved in 2000 to 2009 91120
        Moved in 1990 to 1999 63382
        Moved in 1989 or earlier 63856
Here, the smallest category is 2 years or less, and the the largest is 12-21 years.

Yes, there are renters that are long term and have comparable roots (not 40%, but 28%). But they are a sufficiently small minority of renters that they are comfortably and easily outvoted by owners, which is why the city council reflects the views of owners and not renters.

Even though SF has more renters than owners, if you restrict yourself to the population that has tenure longer than 2 years, then owners outnumber renters 322K to 256K.

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

#300

Post by tinyspacewizard »

dnissley wrote: post #73
t-writescode wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A landlord is, by definition, a homeowner.

In this case the commenter is specifically referring to the class of people who own a home they live in.

owner-occupier is the usual term
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