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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)

#351

Post by drdunce »

tim333 wrote: post #269
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,…

A lot of the issue in the UK is getting permission to build anything. My dad had a 160 acre farm near london, you can get nordic type cabins for ~£50k ( https://www.quick-garden.co.uk/log-cabins/homes/ ) and you could stick loads there for little money but can you get permission? On no. I can understand not wanting to give windfall profits to folks like my dad who did nothing but the government could buy land and dev…

There's not really an issue with planning. The actual problem is that developers will then sit on that land rather than build on it, as this is more valuable long term. See "land banks"

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

#352

Post by AlotOfReading »

goosedragons wrote: post #298
toast0 wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building new, isolated, towns is hard for that reason. But if you build a town on a train or bus line that connects to places people work you don't need to bootstrap self sufficiency. Building near a highway works too.

Is that a new town? Or sprawl of an existing city? There's only so far out you can reasonably go before the commute stops making sense. Many cities have already hit that limit. For example, there really isn't any space outside Toronto for a new community to have a tolerable commute with the current infrastructure.

Terrible infrastructure is a bit of a self fulfilling prophecy here. If you've only ever built it out to places that already have density, there won't be places without density almost by definition unless something like Detroit has happened in the meantime.

There's certainly land within close proximity to Toronto that could be used if there were political will. Georgetown is closer than Bletchley Park and already has a (terrible) train connection. Nobleton is like 10km from Vaughan, well within easy reach.

If you look at other Canadian cities there are even easier wins. Calgary has empty land (not parks, not reservation) within 8km of downtown. Winnipeg is practically a model city for this kind of treatment. Vancouver and Montreal are the only obviously difficult ones due to their geography.

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

#353

Post by titanomachy »

fragmede wrote: post #312
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…

At the extreme end, with absolutely zero zoning restrictions, you could build capsule hotels for people to live in, driving the price for a tiny tiny room to, say $300/month. With a minimum wage of $15, you'd need to only work 20 hours a month to afford that. Double it to account for taxes. Figure they have EBT for food. Assume they're able to use a platform like Reflex to pick up retail shifts (like driving for Uber…

In practice, these hotels become full of mentally ill, drug-dependent, and sometimes violent people, to the point where most people actually do feel safer in a tent.

You can police things, but it’s not an easy problem. Where do you draw the line? Zero tolerance? As soon as someone has an angry outburst, or is caught with drugs, they’re back on the streets? Then you get back where you started pretty quickly.

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

#354

Post by bko »

goosedragons wrote: post #281
bko wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe for some, but how do you see it playing out? Suppose you're living in LA or NYC, and you lose your job, get evicted (takes a few months and you can't land on your feet by then) and then move all your stuff to a shopping cart and start sleeping under a bridge? I'm sure this has happened, but if I were in that situation I would begin by moving out of one of the most expensive neighborhoods in the world. Go to the…

Where are these cheap cost of living and high job availability places? How do you rent a place in a city you've likely never been, without a job already lined up, presumedly no money for a deposit? What do you do when you realize this cheap cost of living place pretty much demands a car to be livable?

Pretty much anything is better than sleeping on the street. Why would you choose to let your last money run out and then you're stuck somewhere where if you have no reasonable way to afford rent on a low paying job.

For instance, move to Cleveland Ohio. Median home price is $173k. Rent is also cheap.

I don't know, make it work. Whats the alternative? Stay in a city and sleep on the street because you don't want to figure out a bus schedule?

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

#355

Post by danaris »

edude03 wrote: post #273
danaris wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's the wrong angle to look at this from. People do live in LA, and they expect to be able to do things like shop at a grocery store and buy their coffee at a Starbucks. Therefore, there's a need for people to work at such jobs. If those jobs don't pay enough to afford to live in LA, that means there's a structural problem that needs to be solved, one way or another, and individual choices (like "I will mo…

> If those jobs don't pay enough to afford to live in LA There's a huge gap between "I can't afford to buy a $700,000 house" and "I live on the streets" though. Renting is an option, renting (or buying) and having room mates is an option. Not living in Beverly Hills is an option etc. > I will move away from LA") will never be enough to fix it. I disagree - people generally go towards where the money is. People want t…

> There's a huge gap between "I can't afford to buy a $700,000 house" and "I live on the streets" though.

Sure. But that's not what I was talking about. I'm saying if it is very difficult or impossible for an average grocery store clerk to find an apartment in LA where they can live what most people would consider a fairly normal life—ie, living alone or with a small number of roommates, each with their own bedroom or sharing one with an actual partner—then that's a systemic failure, not an individual one.

> I disagree - people generally go towards where the money is.

Right. That's part of the system that we're working within.

What I'm saying is that individual choices, like "LA is too expensive; I'll move somewhere else" do not solve the problem. As in, yes, that individual is no longer dealing with the unaffordability of housing in LA, but housing in LA is still unaffordable.

> I don't think the author is talking about the average starbucks employee here

I mean, the author is clearly satirizing the position of an upper-middle-class person, but the problem they're highlighting is absolutely one that Starbucks workers in high-cost-of-living areas face.

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

#356

Post by danaris »

Atheros wrote: post #310
danaris wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> the comment is not inherently absurd enough to be immediately recognizable as laughably wrong

But how do you achieve this when there are a significant number of real people willing to write even more absurd things with no irony whatsoever?

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

#357

Post by camgunz »

anon291 wrote: post #270
camgunz wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what your experience is. To your 2nd point, I googled "homelessness studies" and here's some stuff I found: The bulk of homelessness is a housing problem [0]. Per-capita rates are the highest in the most expensive places to live. This isn't because homeless people migrate to the places w/ the best homelessness programs either: they're largely long-term residents of their cities [1]. Homelessness is incre…

Homelessness studies is a useless field because it conflates those temporarily without a permanent home with those living on the streets. Which is to say a family who lost their home and is living with a friend while supportive housing services is getting them accomodations is considered as 'homeless' as the crazy man who sleeps under the bridge and exposed himself to young girls. Everyone is supportive of the former…

No it doesn't, there's the term "unsheltered homeless" for the group you're talking about.

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

#358

Post by anthonypasq »

diet_jerome wrote: post #171
donatj wrote: post #136

I live just outside Minneapolis. There's an absolute glut right now of largely unoccupied apartments that have sprung up in the last couple years anywhere there was an open lot and many places there wasn't - tearing down a number of historic buildings in the name of cheaply built wooden framed apartments. Well over 100 new buildings in the last five years within a 10 mile radius. Most of them cost more per month to l…

I feel you there with only luxury housing being the only kind of housing being built in many areas. Honestly, a lot of it is damn ugly too. Allowing developers to construct non-luxury housing would help much more than only allowing them to build luxury housing.

where i live (Boston) it is impossible to build anything new that is not qualified as "luxury" because its competing with a 150 year old tenement with 20year old appliances.

i dont even know what it would mean to build a new non-luxury apartment. No one has ever explained this to me. New housing is always lampooned as being shit quality yet luxury at the same time just because it has.... cabinets that arent falling off the walls and a floor that isnt slanted so badly that i roll away from my desk?

When the existing current housing stock is so old and bad you just need to build to bring up the average quality of an apartment. Rich people will go to the new stuff and it brings up the floor of housing quality.

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

#359

Post by anthonypasq »

jccalhoun wrote: post #197
diet_jerome wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel you there with only luxury housing being the only kind of housing being built in many areas. Honestly, a lot of it is damn ugly too. Allowing developers to construct non-luxury housing would help much more than only allowing them to build luxury housing.

Same here. I am in a small midwestern USA city of less than 100k people. Someone got a grant to build some housing. Instead of building affordable housing they tried to build a huge "luxury" apartment complex with rent way above average for the city.

where i live (Boston) it is impossible to build anything new that is not qualified as "luxury" because its competing with a 150 year old tenement with 20year old appliances.

i dont even know what it would mean to build a new non-luxury apartment. No one has ever explained this to me. New housing is always lampooned as being shit quality yet luxury at the same time just because it has.... cabinets that arent falling off the walls and a floor that isnt slanted so badly that i roll away from my desk?

When the existing current housing stock is so old and bad you just need to build to bring up the average quality of an apartment. Rich people will go to the new stuff and it brings up the floor of housing quality.

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

#360

Post by sokoloff »

ben-schaaf wrote: post #307
sokoloff wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Indeed. Only if you’re unhappy with the current pace of that does it make sense to examine whether the incentives are correct.

Habitat for Humanity is doing great work.

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