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I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

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Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#291

Post by fragmede »

sokoloff wrote: post #109
willis936 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>if the price falls too much it becomes unprofitable to build and you don’t get new supply This is saying "building is expensive because building is expensive". Why is it expensive and how do we address it to make it cheaper?

There’s not a lot of confusion about how to build cheaper. Build less and worse per unit. Share foundations, roofs, walls, and common areas. Build less square footage per unit. Build less fancy per square foot (cheaper kitchens and baths). Use all standard materials and finishes. Install low-end appliances and HVAC. Everything cookie-cutter; no per-unit changes. Use less land per unit (and maybe less expensive land o…

just subsidize it. raise taxes on people making for than, say, $3 million a year, and give that money to construction companies to build homes. (subject to strict oversight that the money actually be used to build affordable homes)

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#292

Post by toast0 »

goosedragons wrote: post #268
rich_sasha wrote: post #190

UK has a chronic shortage of houses, as in, if you count the people in the country and how many houses you need, that's a bigger number than what you've got. Building in the UK is also hard. England, which is like 90% of the population, is very densely inhabited. Cities are sprawling, their road and transit infrastructure barely support their current size, never mind bigger population. Plus, with the housing bubble,…

Building new towns is hard because you need jobs nearby and there's no guarantee they'll materialize to a large enough degree to support the town. I'm wondering if it's okay to have the government take over properties that are simply poor uses of land even if the owners don't want to sell?

Building new, isolated, towns is hard for that reason. But if you build a town on a train or bus line that connects to places people work you don't need to bootstrap self sufficiency. Building near a highway works too.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#293

Post by fragmede »

danaris wrote: post #261
derelicta wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no leftists in the US. The people you are refering to a liberals, who are defacto identical to conservatives

Hi there! I live in the US. I am a leftist. I am in favor of prison abolition, universal basic income, massively increased taxation of the rich, and voting reform. Care to explain why I either don't count or don't really exist?

Because of the two party system, you have to either vote Democrat or Republican for your vote to count, so your actually leftist ideals, which are to the left of the centrist Democrat party, do not meaningfully exist as a voting block.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#294

Post by welshwelsh »

UncleMeat wrote: post #166
beAbU wrote: post #94

Giving housing to the homeless means we change the homeless into neighbours. And who the hell wants a poor person as a neighbour.

Homeless people are people. Society has an obligation to everybody, not just me. Unless your plan is "just imprison homeless people forever" then people are going to need be around homeless people while homelessness exists.

Society has an obligation to nobody. Governments are only obligated to serve the taxpayers that fund them.

Imprisoning homeless people is not an acceptable solution, because imprisonment costs taxpayer money.

A better solution is to let the market work. If you can't afford the rent for a city, you shouldn't be allowed to be in that city at all, even in a prison cell. People who can't afford to live in an inhabited area should be permitted to camp in the wilderness.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#295

Post by nic547 »

_petronius wrote: post #211
nic547 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely fast It's generally called "as fast as necessary", more focused on total journey lenght with the clock-face schedule across the whole country. Other countries certainly have faster trains.

I guess "fast" is what I mean when I think "on time, efficient" (compared to, say, the struggles Deutsche Bahn has had in recent years). There are no bullet trains laterally crossing Switzerland in under an hour, I suppose.

it's nit-picky, but I think the swiss approach of "as fast as necessary, not as fast as possible" is worth separation from "train go fast", especially since it's mostly the later that shows up in comparisions/statistics because it's much easier to calculate.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#296

Post by fragmede »

donatj wrote: post #136

I live just outside Minneapolis. There's an absolute glut right now of largely unoccupied apartments that have sprung up in the last couple years anywhere there was an open lot and many places there wasn't - tearing down a number of historic buildings in the name of cheaply built wooden framed apartments. Well over 100 new buildings in the last five years within a 10 mile radius. Most of them cost more per month to l…

It's very understandable once you get into the nitty gritty economics of it, where there is no tax on unoccupied housing. F there were a substantial tax on homes that were empty, that would incentivize landlords to rent out housing instead of having it sit empty.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#297

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

goosedragons wrote: post #268
rich_sasha wrote: post #190

UK has a chronic shortage of houses, as in, if you count the people in the country and how many houses you need, that's a bigger number than what you've got. Building in the UK is also hard. England, which is like 90% of the population, is very densely inhabited. Cities are sprawling, their road and transit infrastructure barely support their current size, never mind bigger population. Plus, with the housing bubble,…

Building new towns is hard because you need jobs nearby and there's no guarantee they'll materialize to a large enough degree to support the town. I'm wondering if it's okay to have the government take over properties that are simply poor uses of land even if the owners don't want to sell?

In the US, that's Eminent Domain and it usually doesn't happen without a fight.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#298

Post by goosedragons »

toast0 wrote: post #292
goosedragons wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building new towns is hard because you need jobs nearby and there's no guarantee they'll materialize to a large enough degree to support the town. I'm wondering if it's okay to have the government take over properties that are simply poor uses of land even if the owners don't want to sell?

Building new, isolated, towns is hard for that reason. But if you build a town on a train or bus line that connects to places people work you don't need to bootstrap self sufficiency. Building near a highway works too.

Is that a new town? Or sprawl of an existing city? There's only so far out you can reasonably go before the commute stops making sense. Many cities have already hit that limit. For example, there really isn't any space outside Toronto for a new community to have a tolerable commute with the current infrastructure.

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#299

Post by dang »

djexjms wrote: post #68

Reading this comment thread was a fun way to start my day. Always funny to see people react to satire about them.

"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)

#300

Post by swsieber »

goosedragons wrote: post #298
toast0 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building new, isolated, towns is hard for that reason. But if you build a town on a train or bus line that connects to places people work you don't need to bootstrap self sufficiency. Building near a highway works too.

Is that a new town? Or sprawl of an existing city? There's only so far out you can reasonably go before the commute stops making sense. Many cities have already hit that limit. For example, there really isn't any space outside Toronto for a new community to have a tolerable commute with the current infrastructure.

I think the key thing is to frame the new city as a city, and not just an extension. As part of that you'd need to keep enough space to let business pop up, etc. I think part of the problem extensions run into is that they don't want to be a city.
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