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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

#301

Post by themitigating »

novok wrote: post #155
themitigating wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"visceral inconvenience" The problem with the homeless isn't how it offends your senses. "I'm not all that likely to be accosted, but if I ever am, it will be a big deal, so navigating those places is nerve-wracking because my threat-detection is constantly dialed up." Have you ever thought that being this worried about threats is something you're partially responsible for?

Are you a large tall white man by any chance?

I'm a white man but I don't see how that matters. If I was Black would be more likely to be assaulted for some reason? Do homeless people avoid assaulting white people?

I get that you implying that I would feel safer because I'm less likely to be sexually assaulted and that I have a greater chance to defend myself. However, that doesn't prevent me from criticizing other's feelings. It's like a someone who is racist saying "well you don't live with them so you don't understand"

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

#302

Post by TheRealNGenius »

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…

[dead]

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

#303

Post by briandear »

jrockway wrote: post #30
anonuser123456 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They don’t like money?

What is the path to profitability you see? They pretty much have to gut rehab the building to add kitchens and bathrooms, in an economy where loans are pretty expensive. Is that competitive with people selling existing move-in ready housing stock in a down market? Do you want to be the first person to sign a contract in one of these conversions? (Not to mention the usual "new construction" taxes that are seller-paid…

> we spent billions of dollars on a new commuter railroad terminal that opens this year, and upgrades to run more trains per hour during rush hour.

This is my problem with trains in general — they make very long term expensive assumptions about where people want to go. But when the trends change (such as remote work,) then there are hundreds of billions invested in trains going places people don’t need to go.

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

#304

Post by crazygringo »

WalterBright wrote: post #217
germinalphrase wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Hollywood, after all, was just a dusty desert town that became the hub of the movie business because it was easier to move there and start a new one than dealing with Edison's lawyers back East…” Yes, but also no. Keep in mind the popularity of Westerns in the 1930’s-1950’s and the ease with which you can get to desert/mountain/beach/city/forest/etc settings within a relatively short drive from L.A. That said, I gen…

After all, the Battle of the Bulge did take place in the California desert. Medieval England looks like California, too. Even the alien worlds of Star Trek look suspiciously like California.

Well, to a large extent, yes. You might want to look at:

https://brilliantmaps.com/california-filming-map/

Also, consistent sunny weather, because wasting shooting days due to inconsistent weather adds up to losing a lot of money.

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

#305

Post by HDThoreaun »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #298
HDThoreaun wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, LVT needs to implemented along with Japan style national zoning to halt the progress of nimbys. It’s certainly not easy, but that’s because of politics, not the economic reality.

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

#306

Post by thelastgallon »

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…

I doubt they will be constructed at $440/sft.

S.F. is spending $1.7 million on one public toilet: https://archive.ph/hDumb

Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268748

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

#307

Post by dragonwriter »

itake wrote: post #47
anonuser123456 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? They don’t like money?

My understanding is commercial real estate operates a bit differently than residential. The value of the property is based on a multitude of factors and the people that invest in commercial are not making an investment in residential. For example, the value of the property is based on the last or current rent they have received. It is better for the property owner to not have a tenant, than it is to accept a lower le…

> The value of the property is based on a multitude of factors and the people that invest in commercial are not making an investment in residential.

This represents a set of assumptions about the operation of the market that a durable shift would invalidate; its not a stable situation that supports keeping units empty forever.

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

#308

Post by TrackerFF »

thelastgallon wrote: post #306
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…

I doubt they will be constructed at $440/sft. S.F. is spending $1.7 million on one public toilet: https://archive.ph/hDumb Discussed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33268748

In all fairness, that's a $20k in construction costs, and $1680000 in consulting / contractors / planning / various other fees

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

#309

Post by Grimburger »

zozbot234 wrote: post #161
majormajor wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so much demand in the world for places like Manhattan! How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do you think there is? The more the price drops, of course, the demand will go up. So how much "in the world" at both current prices and also if, say, prices went down by 5%? 10%? 50%? 75%? I think there's enough currently-unmet demand to keep the prices from f…

The effective demand for places like Manhattan comes from the highly productive economic activity that can be pursued in such places. So if the demand for places like Manhattan (or Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai etc.) really was that boundless, that would be plenty of reason to build as many of them as possible and speed towards that post-scarcity techno-utopia. (But the ghost cities of China actually show how this can go wr…

> the ghost cities of China actually show how this can go wrong

Except most of them filled up and now it's just another one of these Chinese misconceptions in the west that of course isn't newsworthy to clarify. Pudong was a prominent example a decade ago and is now a thriving financial hub.

Very much a case of build it and they will come, whereas us in the west seem to require significant undersupply and rampant social problems before we even talk about building housing or infrastructure to meet basic needs.

There's nothing wrong at all with overbuilding.

> any developments initially criticized as ghost cities did materialize into economically vibrant areas when given enough time to develop, such as Pudong, Zhujiang New Town, Zhengdong New Area, Tianducheng and malls such as the Golden Resources Mall and South China Mall.[16] While many developments failed to live up to initial lofty promises, most of them eventually became occupied when given enough time.[7][17]

> Reporting in a 2018, Shepard revisited a number of the so called "ghost cities" several years his book and noted that, "Today, China’s so-called ghost cities that were so prevalently showcased in 2013 and 2014 are no longer global intrigues. They have filled up to the point of being functioning, normal cities ...

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

#310

Post by prottog »

dragonwriter wrote: post #267
prottog wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> to keep the growth and lose the distributional problems, rather than the other way around.

Historical evidence so far shows that this is very difficult outside of monoethnic cultures with strong productive inclinations, i.e. Northern Europe.

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