361–370 of 452 posts
When a shiny new 2 bedroom apartment is priced at $4200/month, it isn't going to do ANYTHING to resolve homelessness.
Outlaw AirBnB! Outlaw empty "investment" properties. There are a lot of things that could actually help. Empowering the California real estate mafia won't do anything for anyone here except the developers.
I'd like to advertise deregulating housing construction as a very clear way to help solve desperate housing problems in many countries (such as in the USA). You can check out more about it here https://www.econlib.org/build-baby-build-now-under-construct...
But here in California every state law deregulating real estate development has been abused by developers to build more $2M-$3M houses.
This does NOTHING to help homelessness...
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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…
You have to build something self sustaining and that requires jobs in the new city. You can't just have a connection to an existing city. You need an industry or institution or something there to attract workers and the workers to support those workers.
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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 fi…
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Yeah I buy that to some extent. But according to the studies I've read, the primary driver of homelessness is rising rent, not mental health issues. See e.g. https://www.statista.com/chart/32585/change-in-median-rent-a...
Having actually built, planned, and done all the paperwork for a house myself most the extra costs that can't be worked around (you can DIY everything if you want) is permitting, inspection, and codes. I just didn't get my house inspected nor did I submit engineered plans, so saved tons of money, but most people don't have the option to bypass 'safety' inspections and they get gutted like a pig following all those ru…
I'd like to advertise deregulating housing construction as a very clear way to help solve desperate housing problems in many countries (such as in the USA). You can check out more about it here https://www.econlib.org/build-baby-build-now-under-construct...
I'm not sure where you live, maybe that could help in your area. But here in California every state law deregulating real estate development has been abused by developers to build more $2M-$3M houses. This does NOTHING to help homelessness...
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,…
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?
These towns often have a bit of a reputation for being full of, well, 1960s architecture and being a bit dated and unexciting, but frankly that's just a lot of the UK. Functionally, I have been to a few of them and they are just fine, if a little boring, places to live.
> [is it] okay to have the government take over properties that are simply poor uses of land even if the owners don't want to sell?
I mean, happens all the time with infrastructure projects - roads, railroads, power plants.
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Housing demand caused by births and immigration are different. A baby generally calls for an additional bedroom (easier away from the city), an adult migrant generally calls for their own residence near other migrants (easier in the city). In the past, the population was growing even while net migration was negative. This means people were having babies. This trend reversed in the '80s and migration has made up somew…
Unless you plan for children to never leave the parental home, wouldn't housing demand caused by births just be identical to that caused by immigration, only phase shifted 20 years or so? Meanwhile the baby is essentially a net drain on productivity, whereas an immigrant is not.
To your point about phase-shifting though, I think that's a definite possibility, but relies on preferences of each community, and how they change by generation.
Urbanization is not solely driven by immigrants, but how likely are immigrants to move into lower density housing when they have kids? What about their kids? And their kids, etc? And compare that to non-immigrant (or non-recently immigrated) preferences.
The relative productivity of babies and immigrants is not of interest to me in talking about housing preference, but you're correct that babies don't directly add much to GDP for the first two decades.
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…
I don't think housing will help the people with mental health issues and addiction problems. Honestly I think sometimes building (compassionate, 21st century) mental health "asylums" and treatment centres would do more to end homelessness.
It is very obvious that the housing availability is a major factor.