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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

#331

Post by rsj_hn »

jeffbee wrote: post #328
rsj_hn wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 20…

FYI your link doesn't go directly to the specific table you are using, which I believe is B25026. I am using S2502.

Yes, B25026 has this data. Thanks for pointing out that the link doesn't go directly there, links to these SPAs often don't work well.

FYI, S2502 is not the right table to use because it is looking at housing units rather than people, whereas you want to measure people. So if there is a apartment that is owner occupied and rents out a room to a tenant, then this is an owner occupied unit for purposes of S2502. This also applies to in-laws.

Again, I'm not saying all renters are transient. There is certainly a core of renters -- I think 28% or 1/3 is a good estimate. That is, from living in SF for a while and spending a lot of time with this data, I'd say a good 1/3 of renters in SF are just there for a couple of years to have fun and will move out quickly. They have no roots at all. 1/3 are a bit in the middle, where they think they have roots but decide to leave when they have children or get married and the realities of family life in SF hit them. 1/3 are all in.

So even though you have a 60-40 split in terms of renters/owners, the actual split of people who care about zoning and local issues is heavily in favor of owners. This is why the city council is constituted as it is. It's not voter suppression. It's not dirty tricks. It's just reflecting the demands of the population that cares about these issues. That's why you have things like crazy shadow ordinances preventing tall buildings from being built, or why the 8 Washington debacle happened.

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

#332

Post by pzone »

mindover wrote: post #230
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…

Right - just build more housing. Forget about failing utilities, packed roads, overwhelmed social services, crowded schools! Just build more skyscrapers and move half of the country to SF so that we can all drown in shit together. This oversimplification that we just need to build more houses is amusing. SF is a tiny city, stuffing more people here won’t resolve many of the problems that already make life here diffic…

You just have to look at Tokyo and Taipei. It is possible for cities to grow without soaring rents as long as you build lots of housing for everyone.

We’re not just talking about the tiny San Francisco city proper, we’re talking about the whole Bay Area, as well as the rest of the state.

You’re right that fixing housing won’t fix everything, but more problems than you think are caused by high housing prices, particularly crime and homelessness. https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...

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

#333

Post by muzz »

SoftTalker wrote: post #62
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…

Sounds like you're proposing government run high-rise housing projects. Can you name any that are not dangerous, crime-ridden hellholes?

Geneva Towers. Oh wait, that was so dangerous they literally had to tear it down.

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

#334

Post by closeparen »

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…

Children need bedrooms but don't generate any income, the typical adult who moves here can barely afford their own bedroom, so of course most people will have to leave when they have kids. It's not a revelation about the kind of people who move here or why, it's just a mechanical consequence of high prices.

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

#335

Post by muzz »

slibhb wrote: post #53

When people talk about "homelessness," they're often referring to street people. Most technically homeless people aren't street people, they're between jobs or living in their car or something like that. It seems clear that lower rent/housing prices would help with homelessness but I don't think it would help street people.

Agreed. There is a shortage of _low-cost_ housing. This isn't because of "zoning", it's because low-cost housing became considered undesirable. Think housing projects, SROs, "flop houses", etc. As gentrification occurred and these were closed (and some refurbished into upscale units), their occupants-- and their future occupants-- became homeless.

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

#336

Post by wolverine876 »

misterprime wrote: post #172
wolverine876 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that you misunderstand the threats, and are much more likely to be hit by someone in an SUV. I've spent lots and lots of time in cities; I've never had a problem with a homeless person.

Would you count having to step over an active urine stream on your way to the grocery store as "a problem"? How about walking with your pregnant wife past someone who is splitting his time yelling at the sky and scratching his crotch from the inside of his pants? Sure, in both scenarios we weren't physically harmed, but it certainly made us feel unsafe and uncomfortable. It's not something that I think we should all…

Take a deep breath, or just don't live in cities if you can't handle it. These are momentary distractions; just go on with your day.

The second person is very easy to avoid; I've done it many times (maybe the same person!). The first you just keep going.

I do have empathy for these people, who have noplace else to go. Maybe build some public bathrooms - I know when I'm out in the city, it can be hard to find a bathroom, and I don't get stereotyped and rejected by most places (just stereotyped and accepted!).

However, I spend lots and lots of time in cities and hardly ever see these situations, though critics love to describe them. What smells isn't urine (people love to give examples including human waste - the well-used 'human feces' now gets a laugh from a few of us - how could you tell what kind of feces? Did you examine it closely? Take a sample? Tell us your technique!).

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

#337

Post by muzz »

WillPostForFood wrote: post #201
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…

it's the closest major city to the largest VC hub San Jose has entered the room. San Francisco is cute and that's why people like it and ignore San Jose.

Palo Alto joins the room too.

All this talk of "just relax zoning and build housing" is so simplistic that it's actually kinda cute. As if everything else just multiplies accordingly-- streets widen, schools are built, water/power/etc just magically appear whenever residential units are simply permitted.

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

#338

Post by wolverine876 »

mindover wrote: post #263
joenot443 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many countries on earth with a far, far more apathetic voting base than San Francisco which face a fraction of the homeless issues. It’s not fair to tell regular citizens that the homeless people harassing them on their walk to work are only there because they haven’t protested hard enough, that’s just baloney. Something’s very, very wrong in SF and it’s absolutely okay for tax paying law abiding citizen…

People in the neighborhoods with fewer problems (let’s face it, there are many very quiet expensive neighborhoods in the Bay Area) have very “progressive” views on the homelessnesses. They don’t experience its effects frequently, so don’t think it’s a big problem. They vote for policies that grow social services for the homeless, even though those policies don’t work. But the idea they have is that these services jus…

Progressives live in cities more than anywhere else, San Francisco being a center of progressivism. The critics live elsewhere, and love to tell people in cities what they really should want and do (more guns, no progressive reforms, etc. etc.). In NY, the anti-progressive vote was in the suburbs; in the city they do well. In Philadelphia, the progressive DA did best in African-American neighborhoods.

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

#339

Post by wolverine876 »

mattpallissard wrote: post #233
wolverine876 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that you misunderstand the threats, and are much more likely to be hit by someone in an SUV. I've spent lots and lots of time in cities; I've never had a problem with a homeless person.

A variant of this comment comes up every time someone expresses tense situations. I used to live around the corner from homeless services in the greater Seattle area and commute by foot after dark regularly. I never got physically assaulted but certainly would have if I didn't have my wits about me. Are most homeless folks problematic? Absolutely not. Is there higher prevalence of mental illness, drug abuse, and othe…

> I used to live around the corner from homeless services in the greater Seattle area and commute by foot after dark regularly. I never got physically assaulted but certainly would have if I didn't have my wits about me.

What would have "certainly" happened?

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

#340

Post by wolverine876 »

exolymph wrote: post #270
wolverine876 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm guessing that you misunderstand the threats, and are much more likely to be hit by someone in an SUV. I've spent lots and lots of time in cities; I've never had a problem with a homeless person.

I've never been hit by another car, but I have been yelled at and followed by street people. So...

Lots of people have been hit by cars - far more die and are injured by them than by homeless people. Do you disagree?
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