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The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

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Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did anyone force all those students to take student loans?

Uh, in my upper middle class DC suburb you were socially looked down on if you didn't go to college, and no one taught us even basic finance. I have friends who's parents literally put the forms in front of them, told them to sign it so they could go to college. They didn't know what they were signing, now they're possibly on the hook for the rest of their lives So "forced"? Not with a gun to their head, but when eve…

The parents knew what they were getting into, still. They were making a decision knowing the consequences.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#332

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…

> Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete

What makes you say that? As someone who's currently dating a Chinese immigrant I have been made aware of an entire world I didn't know existed. They often have much better family support so their parents will send money from home to help them buy a house.

From her masters program at university, which was all immigrants because universities here seem to be taking advantage of the fact that this is an easy path for immigration, everyone in her class (80 people) already have a house. From my group of friends at university, only 1 of them has a house, and 1 a condo (out of the ~50 people I loosely keep in touch with, all with good careers). We would too if my parents had been willing to meet her parents partway and give us a 50k loan, but they preferred to buy a 100k luxury car for themselves instead (they also refuse to acknowledge the current housing situation).

She also found out from WeChat that there are a number of Chinese landlords in Toronto who own blocks of houses by investing money on behalf of friends and family back home to get around foreign investment regulations, and nothing is being done to stop it.

edit: I'm not sure why this was downvoted, it may be anecdotal evidence, but nothing I said here is untrue, nor did I make any claims other than there being immigrants who are able to compete in the current housing market.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#333

My mom was homeless for years, thankfully she got stable housing right before covid took off. - in shelters/churches-with-cots there would be crazed drug-users, she was threatened numerous times in them and the shelter can't do anything - I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing - she's entirely dependent on getting social s…

> My mom was homeless for years > I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing Ah… So… If you had a place to live couldn’t you let her live in that same place too, instead of her being homeless? My parents lost their jobs due to covid, and even though they treated me bad when I was a kid I still let them in my house. How can you…

Maybe she's 3000km away? Maybe he doesn't have the resources to host her?

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…

>Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weir…

> Why are those companies willing to pay so much?

Because they are buying assets with debt just like everyone else, and they don't actually care about ROI via rents, either due to "appreciation" (really, further inflation), or they're expecting the financial system to collapse.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#335
post #268
post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Part of the problem is government regulation. And not just too much regulation, but the wrong kind of regulation, and a lack of regulation in areas that need it. Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Corporations buying up homes in order to drive up prices shouldn't be allowed. Lots of things are allowed that shouldn't be. A…

> her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. GP: "Government regulation is preventing the construction of more housing" You: "So true. For example, we need more regulation that make housing a legally encumbered asset with uniquely constrained and inflexible financial properties" What is your thought process here? Do you think this kind of thing will encourage the provision of more houses?…

People really do think there should be short-term bandaid solutions to these problems, and that somehow landlords will just absorb cost increases that they get hit with without passing them on somehow, or just exiting the market.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#336
post #100

I moved to Portland a year ago. We certainly have a lot of homeless people, many of which are people caught up in the substance abuse cycle with particular drugs. However, one day I was driving back to East Portland, I drove under an underpass that's a particularly rough place. I saw a woman that looked to be my mom's age with what appeared to be a modern suit case, she was well dressed, and sober looking. The blood…

It's comforting to think homelessness is caused by people making bad decisions, but it's almost entirely a result of bad public policy. West Virginia has a much higher rate of drug addiction than Portland, but much less homelessness. Because drug addicts in West Virginia can afford housing. Other places have worse access to mental healthcare but less homelessness for the same reason. Demand in metropolitan areas has…

I think it’s hard to compare West Virginia to Portland, and conclude that the differences are a result of policy decisions.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#337

Part of the problem is government regulation. In some places, it's almost impossible to build new houses due to regulations. Some portion of the population wants to see house prices continue to increase and they will vote for politicians who will implement policies which will support that agenda. Of course this happens at the expense of another, also large portion of the population who do not own a house and have to…

Ive seen your Reaganite "the government and regulations are the enemy" comments since Ive been born, and it was crap then and it's crap now. In fact, dereg is how we've gotten to this point.

Housing has been turned from "a place to live" to a "place we can extract rents to make bank". And with the nature of landlording, the rents are priced to "mortgage+profit", so they get their mortgage paid on our backs and grow their personal wealth, and top it off with even more profit.

Policies that include a highly progressive tax after 2 homes should definitely be enacted, along with proper policing of flop houses (airbnb) in non-hotelier situations. Time to de-profit-ize housing.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But other than zoning it seems it would help more if the government would step in to disallow large leasing companies buying up giant swathes of the housing stock just to flip into rentals. There was a timely video about this yesterday from Oh the Urbanity: https://youtu.be/BRqZBuu_Ers?si=NlavrFpm8sNTUcYp Summary is that Rotterdam did just this, and the effect was that the price to purchase a house did not measurab…

If more people actually owned, that's a positive.

If the result of that is excluding lower-income people from living there, I disagree.

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why the Robin Hood issue is never a problem when money is moved in the opposite direction :-)

Did anyone force all those students to take student loans?

Their parents, society, etc.

I won't convince you because you've got your anecdotes. Though I'd say if a public school counselor, parents and teachers all tell a 17 year old it's "college or bust", it's laughable to argue "ah, those teenagers should have been rational, informed consumers of professional training and eschewed the advice of every trusted adult in their life".

Re: The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression

#340

My mom was homeless for years, thankfully she got stable housing right before covid took off. - in shelters/churches-with-cots there would be crazed drug-users, she was threatened numerous times in them and the shelter can't do anything - I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing - she's entirely dependent on getting social s…

> My mom was homeless for years > I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing Ah… So… If you had a place to live couldn’t you let her live in that same place too, instead of her being homeless? My parents lost their jobs due to covid, and even though they treated me bad when I was a kid I still let them in my house. How can you…

You're assuming he has a house. Apartments, especially ones with roommates don't just let you bring in extra people.
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