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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

#341

Post by wolverine876 »

danjac wrote: post #273
wolverine876 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing magic about SF's geography It includes two of the world's top ten universities, incredible natural beauty there and nearby, excellent weather (locals complain, as locals do, but it's wonderful), and all the resources and people are gathered there. It's hard to imagine the return on investment of moving.

Universities are institutions made of people. If SF becomes to expensive for those people to work and study in, they'll face the same problem of housing costs. And universities rise and fall over time: a great CS department one decade might slip down the ratings the next. There are many places on Earth with nice weather and scenery (depending on taste). There are many cities with great night life for younger people,…

> universities rise and fall over time

I think it's the opposite; what changes more slowly? How has the list of elite universities changed over time, unless we are talking about centuries?

> There are many cities with great night life for younger people, or good schools for families.

People like to find others with their interests. Very smart, highly educated, intellectual, creative people gather in SF, NY, LA, Boston. It's all the people who were bored and felt limited elsewhere. You want talented people to work with, to talk to, to challenge you. All those people who wanted to get out of their small town go to these places.

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

#342

Post by [deleted] »

malandrew wrote: post #177
wolverine876 wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's nothing magic about SF's geography It includes two of the world's top ten universities, incredible natural beauty there and nearby, excellent weather (locals complain, as locals do, but it's wonderful), and all the resources and people are gathered there. It's hard to imagine the return on investment of moving.

It’s easy to imagine it moving. The people doing the work are the ICs (individual contributors), and up until recently, SF was the only place to go to have a top notch career in tech. People sacrificed to live in SF as junior to mid level engineers because eventually they would get to the point where they are a senior engineer and make enough to afford housing. But now the housing has gotten so expensive that even th…

[deleted]

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

#343

Post by themitigating »

prottog wrote: post #312
themitigating wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Why do you capitalize black and not white?

A mistake, I should have capitalized both. I was reading what the parent wrote when I typed it and they didn't capitalize it.

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

#344

Post by glass3 »

luckylion wrote: post #275
glass3 wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither. Why would significant further growth happen in Western (European) cities if cheap solar energy and space is available in North Africa?

A very practical reason: most of that available space is a desert, and people tend to prefer not living in a desert. And also because European nations are much more developed, have much stronger economies, allow much more freedom etc etc. There's a reason why migration is a one-way-street.

People have been living around Cairo for millions of years. There are reasons why migration is a one-way street but they can change. There are millions of under-utilized young adults with access to the internet. They will find a way to prosper.

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

#345

Post by danjac »

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.

And when production moved to Vancouver in the 90s, you had shows like the X-Files which often seemed to take place in a vague Pacific Northwest location.

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

#346

Post by luckylion »

glass3 wrote: post #344
luckylion wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A very practical reason: most of that available space is a desert, and people tend to prefer not living in a desert. And also because European nations are much more developed, have much stronger economies, allow much more freedom etc etc. There's a reason why migration is a one-way-street.

People have been living around Cairo for millions of years. There are reasons why migration is a one-way street but they can change. There are millions of under-utilized young adults with access to the internet. They will find a way to prosper.

Egypt's natural environment cannot really support strong further growth. If they invest heavily into solar energy and desalination, I'm sure they can create more arable land, but it'll still come at very high capital expenditure compared to other locations.

What's your prediction here, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria overtaking Germany, France and Italy with regards to economy, science etc (broadly "development") and drawing migration from Europe? In what time frame, by 2050?

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

#347

Post by novok »

prottog wrote: post #259
majormajor wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but we explicitly tried to counter those forces in the US, including through government policy to build industry in areas where it wasn't before. Moving the defense industry to be less-concentrated in Los Angeles was deliberate and wasn't moving to "frontier" towns. It was moving to towns that were created for one purpose but had been somewhat "skipped over" after that in favor of the biggest cities. I think it…

I'm a big fan of the German style of federalization, where federal agencies are spread out around the nation, instead of all being headquartered in one federal capital. The Ministry of Defence is headquartered in Bonn; the BfV in Cologne; the Bundespolizei in Potsdam. There's no reason why we can't do the same in the US, and have the USDA be headquartered in Kansas City, the Treasury in New York, the DOT in Indiana,…

Or even more beholden to industry as they live closer to industry than they do to other government agencies, making them even more of a revolving door than they are already. It's tradeoffs all the way down!

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

#348

Post by glass3 »

luckylion wrote: post #346
glass3 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have been living around Cairo for millions of years. There are reasons why migration is a one-way street but they can change. There are millions of under-utilized young adults with access to the internet. They will find a way to prosper.

Egypt's natural environment cannot really support strong further growth. If they invest heavily into solar energy and desalination, I'm sure they can create more arable land, but it'll still come at very high capital expenditure compared to other locations. What's your prediction here, Egypt, Morocco and Algeria overtaking Germany, France and Italy with regards to economy, science etc (broadly "development") and draw…

2050 is possible. There is no need for arable land if food is imported. People will want to live where the nicer weather is. Adjusted by air conditioning from cheap electricity, the advantage is in North Africa.

It's not inevitable, but when the competition is cold fusion and building housing in Western cities, I would bet on North Africa.

*edit:

>>>living around Cairo for ~millions~ thousands of years

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

#349

Post by jjav »

danjac wrote: post #80
dionidium wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

Maybe San Francisco is just not suitable any more? There's nothing magic about SF's geography that makes it a tech hub. It's not a mining town that needs to be next to coal or minerals, or a ski resort town that needs some mountains and snow. It's based on work that can literally be done anywhere. Hollywood, after all, was just a dusty desert town that became the hub of the movie business because it was easier to mov…

> Maybe San Francisco is just not suitable any more?

Good to keep in mind that San Francisco never was part of Silicon Valley, until this past decade where the mindshare of being SV migrated north to include SF.

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

#350

Post by jjav »

luckylion wrote: post #68
dionidium wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to actively work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to a…

Especially for a city that is explicitly progressive, why the "all rapid change is bad, it must take decades or centuries, otherwise it's not natural" approach? Germany's large cities have similar issues where they don't want to start building new districts because it'd be artificial and not naturally grown building by building. And it's better to have rents double every 10 years, apparently. I don't get the "why", b…

> I don't get the "why", but the approach is fairly explicit -- and politicians get reelected while following it, so I guess it's what "the people" want.

Consider every time you have moved into a new place to live. What kind of research did you do and what factors did you consider when prioritizing multiple option down to the final selection?

It's possible you might say (since I don't know you) that you only look at price per square foot and do a sort based on that and take the cheapest option and that's that.

Most people don't do that though. They consider the neighborhood as a whole, nearby facilities, the character of the location (e.g. lots of 24hr pubs or quiet tree-lined street, etc). So the surroundings matter a whole lot to a lot of people. So people don't often want to go through the whole process of researching, selecting a place and moving to it, just to have the whole neighborhood torn down and redone in a different way a few months later. Might be better, but it's still different, so it doesn't check the same boxes they so painstakingly researched before moving.

So when you say you don't get the "why", it's just human nature. A lot of people want to settle into a stable-ish home, where things around it change slowly, not at a hectic pace that makes it seem not-home anymore.

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