The elderly are becoming homeless at a rate not seen since the Great Depression • Hacker News Board

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

#371

Post by JumpCrisscross » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:39 PM UTC

zb1plus wrote: post #134

In places like the bay area with a housing crisis and limited space to expand, the state should seize office buildings (remote work is the future and would help alleviate the shortage while new housing is developed) by eminent domain and set up a scheme like Singapore's HDB system [1] to develop affordable housing. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Housing_and_Development_Board

> places like the bay area with a housing crisis and limited space to expand

This is the most Californian response to the problem I’ve seen. Limited space? Even San Francisco has 190 acres of vacant land [1].

You want to emulate Singapore? Consider its relative lack of single-story structures. The Bay Area’s housing crisis is a political choice made by its voters.

[1] https://escholarship.org/content/qt5gc6w0vd/qt5gc6w0vd.pdf?t...

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

#372

Post by horpolopolil » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

Nifty3929 wrote: post #256

escapedmoose wrote: post #192

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…

What would happen to the person renting from the landlord, if the corporation hadn’t purchased the house to rent to them? Well, maybe that person would buy the house themselves to live in. But there still wouldn’t be any more houses for YOU to buy. Corporations and landlords aren’t the problem, lack of building is.

No, they are too. If you build, blackrock, or evergrand will buy it for a lot more than most can afford. The goal being to limit stock and push the prices of their asset up.

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

#373

Post by ericmay » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

alexb_ wrote: post #262

mcv wrote: 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…

> Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Rent gets raised by $500 because someone else would actually pay that much. Rent control is the ultimate "I got mine" - it rewards people who got in early while making it impossible for anyone else to have housing. The reason rent could go up that much is because supply is so artificiall…

> The reason rent could go up that much is because supply is so artificially constrained.

Or naturally constrained, it doesn't have to be artificially constrained.

I am open-minded on rent control. I agree with your sentiment here, but it seems like the trade off for not having rent control then becomes as a society we have to be willing to accept people becoming homeless because of changes in rent prices like this.

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

#374

Post by Eric_WVGG » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #16

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…

> At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society.

I was with you right up to this comment.

No, most of us who do not own homes do not descend into some weird shadow economy. We just keep showing up to work and giving all of our money to landlords and imagine what it would be like to have retirement savings.

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

#375

Post by loeg » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:40 PM UTC

jongjong wrote: post #16

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…

> I think we have a situation where part of the population is literally voting to appropriate wealth from another part of the population. Voting for more immigration which drives up demand for houses and voting for more regulations which constrain the supply of housing.

Yes, sure.

> At the same time, those people who do not own a house are wising up to the scheme and so they increasingly refuse to work or provide value to society.

This seems more like a fringe conspiracy theory. I don't think it's true in an anecdotal or statistically measurable sense.

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

#376

Post by thedaly » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

gniv wrote: post #347

escapedmoose wrote: post #192

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…

> 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 My instinct is to disagree. That could create other problems and it's not a given that it would help prices. Encouraging growth by changing zoning seems preferable. We know that it works, since Japan has been doing it forever.

If the policy goal is to have more homeowners, which I think it should be, you have to do something about private equity buying up all the home stock. Blackrock and its ilk of private equity firms buying up single family homes to turn them into rentals stands in direct opposition to the goal of more people owning homes.

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

#377

Post by macNchz » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:41 PM UTC

spir wrote: post #234

escapedmoose wrote: post #192

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…

You only perceive corporate landlords as the greater problem because we're not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and well-located. In pretty much every major city in North America, it is illegal or there is too much red tape to build the affordable housing people actually want. Why is it that living in a t…

SROs used to exist to fill that gap, but were largely banned over the last hundred years. The stupid thing is that now they basically exist again in the form of regular hotels, except city governments are the ones paying full price to house otherwise homeless people.

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

#378

Post by bombcar » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:42 PM UTC

markusde wrote: post #328

trident5000 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldnt be allowed for people to raise rent on the property they own? Thats an absurd idea. People have been complaining about not having the home they want in the location they want since the beginning of mankind.

It's not absurd because nobody is forcing that person to rent. Housing is a public resource, and contributing to that public resource shouldn't come without asterisks. Cities need the non-owning class to function, and cities function better when the non-owning class has some degree of stability-- letting landlords juice their tenants for as much as possible is counterproductive to this.

But if it becomes unprofitable (for some value of profit) to rent, they will stop renting, unless you force them at gunpoint to continue renting even when it loses money.

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

#379

Post by jeffbee » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

incahoots wrote: post #365

Ah yes, apathy my old friend. We can recognize the various problems that got us here, but when it comes to resolving them, well that’s simply a bridge too far. Take note: we absolutely have the resources to defeat homelessness and hunger, it’s just not a profitable model.

[flagged]

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

#380

Post by notsurenymore » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 2:43 PM UTC

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #246

bradley13 wrote: post #216

"There are a lot of services here if you're sober so I suspect they swooped in and found her." That's what is important. If someone has just had a run of lousy luck,there must be services to help them get back on their feet. The mentally ill, the junkies? You need services that give them a way out, but you cannot force them to use those services. If they won't accept help, then all that's left is "tough love": Force…

>> "There are a lot of services here if you're sober so I suspect they swooped in and found her." > If someone has just had a run of lousy luck,there must be services to help them get back on their feet. For the most part, there aren't. Not in most of the US. Housing waiting lists were years long for decades. In the last few years it's gone from difficult to impossible. My boomer sister just learned her long-time lea…

I was briefly homeless this year (technically still am, but I lucked out and now bumming with an old friend) I was out of work for a long time and my lease ran up. I found myself stuck in one of the most overpriced (in terms of housing housing costs vs avg local pay) markets. There was no support for me.

Most of the other homeless people I met were older individuals. I didn’t talk to them much, but there were no open drug users (they were probably out there, but I stuck to there parts of town where they didn’t congregate, including staying away from shelters) and I assume most of them were on fixed income and simply got priced out of the market.

There’s no aid I was aware of. As you noticed, for many things, there’s massive waiting lists. Even the cheaper apartments out here have waiting by lists, and when I looked at the price to rent just a room, I was floored. People were often charging more to live in a room out of their house than you would pay for a low end apartment. And they still wanted first/last/security/credit check/background check etc.

I’m still not sure if I’m going to make it out. I’d have to find work that’s going to pay enough for me to make it past the jump, and that’s looking less likely by the day. I’ve thought about just saying screw it, and moving to a cheaper area, but then I’m in the same position, in a foreign environment where I know nobody and have no network.

I was speaking to my old neighbor a couple months before my lease was up about the economic situation. I was shocked when she told me that back in 08, her landlord actually lowered rents.