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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)

#301

Post by fragmede »

lifestyleguru wrote: post #177

It's universal problem everywhere where you pay with dollars and euros. The jobs are not where the housing is. Where the jobs exist the housing immediately becomes a turbo investment vehicle. Where there are no jobs the housing is not particularly cheap either. The solution usually is to inherit a real estate or two in desirable location. So we continue ignoring it or everyone are like "I have mine, fuck you"?

How about in Singaporean Dollars? The Signapore housing market is centrally organized by the government, so the problem is not universal, it just takes a government not bought by capitalist interests against housing policy for their citizens.

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

#302

Post by fragmede »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #297
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?

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

So have the fight. People living in plastic tents in the middle cities is abhorrent.

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

#303

Post by thegrim33 »

matt-attack wrote: post #287
albrewer wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've housed two sibling that were labeled as "mentally unstable"(raised by mentally abusive narcissists) and "lazy"(has narcolepsy), respectively. Both situations were pretty bad before they landed in our home, but everyone in their lives called us "angels" for taking them in. Each of them lived with my family for two years. All my wife and I did was let them exist in their own space with no pressure to do anything (…

And this is the problem with homelessness. There are two drastically different “classes” of homeless people. There’s the working single mother waitress or nurse who fell behind on bills due to medical debt, maybe rent went up and is just bad at managing spending, saving, etc. Now she’s living in a car. Then there’s the batshit crazy dude who’s living under the bridge who’s staring off into the trees and can’t hold a…

There's also scenario 3, which you can see pushed throughout this thread - that scenario 2 doesn't really exist, because "that bat shit crazy person smoking fent and screaming at passerbys" was once just a regular, down-on-their luck mother (scenario 1), who was driven insane / driven to drugs by being homeless".

We don't really need more words to describe the scenarios. It's all politics, we know what the game is. Whether you see homeless as primarily category 1(/3) or primarily category 2, seems to align overwhelmingly with your preferred brand of politics. And as such, in the current social milieu, there's effectively no constructive conversation that can happen. It's just political extremists being handed their moral justification for their position, refusing to accept any other version of reality that conflicts with it.

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

#304

Post by fragmede »

papa0101 wrote: post #265
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,…

That, and reduce the immigration ffs. Importing a city-sized population (500k+) every year? - Sorry mate, you just won't be able to build a new city every year.

Tell that to China, who has been building so many new cities that their housing crisis is too many homes.

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

#305

Post by edude03 »

nikanj wrote: post #285
edude03 wrote: post #137

I think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall thr…

A huge number of people end up on the street by simply losing income and not being able to afford rent anymore. We tell ourselves it’s substance abuse, so we can pretend it’s their own fault and couldn’t happen to us

> We tell ourselves it’s substance abuse, so we can pretend it’s their own fault and couldn’t happen to us

I don't disagree that many people disregard the problems of the homeless however I want to be abundantly clear that that I'm arguing against

> by simply losing income and not being able to afford rent anymore.

It's not simply that, things have to be going wrong in your life (not necessarily your fault) that losing your income puts you on the streets. Which goes back to the gradient - for some people losing their income will have no visible impact, for some they'll be under a bridge but which one it ends up being will depend on other factors in your life (having savings, friends, etc)

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

#306

Post by naasking »

sokoloff wrote: post #230
naasking wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should always be a surplus of homes, the point is to get a sufficient surplus in the places that are in demand that this places downward pressure on prices, aka competition.

One question would be how could we create any incentive for someone to build a home in an area that's currently in equilibrium? Starting a new home construction in a location with falling housing prices isn't an obviously winning business strategy.

House prices don't fall forever, and as long as selling prices don't fall below cost of construction + margin, there's still incentive to build. There are numerous examples around the US where this is taking place, like Austin.

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

#307

Post by ben-schaaf »

sokoloff wrote: post #230
naasking wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There should always be a surplus of homes, the point is to get a sufficient surplus in the places that are in demand that this places downward pressure on prices, aka competition.

One question would be how could we create any incentive for someone to build a home in an area that's currently in equilibrium? Starting a new home construction in a location with falling housing prices isn't an obviously winning business strategy.

You don't need an incentive, you can just build it. Not everything that's good needs to make money.

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

#308

Post by RajT88 »

papa0101 wrote: post #265
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,…

That, and reduce the immigration ffs. Importing a city-sized population (500k+) every year? - Sorry mate, you just won't be able to build a new city every year.

I mean. Had it escaped your attention those immigrants are he ones building the cities?

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

#309

Post by briangriffinfan »

luizfzs wrote: post #289
edude03 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, what people miss are the tons of people living in their cars, wearing regular clothes, not panhandling and showing up to work best they can. Sure, this is what I'm talking about when I say there is a gradient. But for argument sake/illustrative purposes though - what would housing have to cost to end homeless? And bonus question - what would zoning laws have to look like to get to this price? I imagine the…

Having a roof above one's head should be a right, not a privilege. It becomes even more of a privilege when people view real estate as investment. They want to profit. For example, in Toronto, there are lots of apartments that are 'unrentable' because they were so badly designed that it's awful. They were built for investors to sell. Think of a studio costing 600k. Who wants to pay 600k for a studio? Like, where woul…

It's one thing to just say something nice ought to be a right, and it's another to put it into a rigorous law that will last us indefinitely and have sprawling effects on a lot of different areas while we make sure it doesn't ruin or break anything.

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

#310

Post by Atheros »

danaris wrote: post #251
furyofantares wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are being sarcastic.

They are, however, falling afoul of the generalized version of Poe's Law [0]. If you want to satirize positions like this on the internet, you really need to leave some indication that that's what you're doing. If you just remain committed to the bit, you will look exactly like the very real assholes who believe these things unironically. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law

Hard disagree. Satire is never labeled as such. By identifying sarcasm or sardonicism, you would basically be saying that the comment is not inherently absurd enough to be immediately recognizable as laughably wrong. The whole point of sarcasm is to highlight absurdity.

There will always be people who misinterpret this kind of writing. That doesn't make it bad writing; some people are just a little dumb. The writing isn't for them.

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