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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)

#381

Post by chairmansteve »

edude03 wrote: post #137

I think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall thr…

That was my reaction. Nimbyism is an easy scapegoat, and is a factor, but the problem is much more complex.

For example, there is a rental cartel operating in the USA.

https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-s...

AirBnB is a factor.

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

#382

Post by scoofy »

lyu07282 wrote: post #158
scandox wrote: post #11

A bit broad. I guess the broadness of satire that people enjoy probably is a measure of how close the revolution is?

Also kind of the simplicity of the problem: You have homeless -> give them homes = no more homeless. Just build a shit ton of public housing. It really doesn't help the liberals argument that in the last 40 years, China raised 800 million people out of poverty. [1] [1] according to the communists at the world bank: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...

It's not just about homelessness though, sure the article is, but the crisis is not. It's about standard of living and making sure we are building a future where people have better lives than the previous generations. We need housing to approach the cost of production for people to build wealth. Otherwise, we will always have rent-seeking by existing homeowners.

Whether we do that by gigantic public housing projects, non-profit coop developments, or markets building housing for profit is almost irrelevant to the point that it's currently effectively illegal to build housing in the vast majority of cities.

We should be looking to Vienna, which has had the most success at keeping urban housing affordable and available. They did so by always building more housing all the time. They're doing basically the opposite of what we do in CA where we fight about which type of housing we should build one or two buildings of. We need to just legalize and fast track housing of all kinds.

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

#383

Post by UncleMeat »

bko wrote: post #201
aqme28 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this take a lot but it's a very static take on homelessness. Yes, homeless people are often in a mental state where they are difficult to take care of. However, that doesn't mean they're homeless because they're mentally unstable. Often, the reason they are unstable is because they are homeless. Being on the street heavily exacerbates drug and mental health issues. Plenty of homeless people start out normal and…

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…

> 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 library, find cheap cost of living and high job availability place, and get a one way bus ticket there. Literally anything is better than living on the street.

If you've already been evicted then getting anybody to rent to you is extremely difficult. You are going to need not only the first month of rent but also a deposit at this rental in some other city. And it is going to be hard to get a job right away in your new city. Oh, and maybe you have kids who need to be fed.

Where is this bridge money coming from to make this move work? And what happens if it doesn't work?

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

#384

Post by nikanj »

yesfitz wrote: post #368
jplrssn wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My point was to illustrate that not all population growth is fungible, so comparing birth-driven growth from the '50s to migration-driven growth since the '80s will miss things. 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 t…

Immigrants can immediately provide labor for building more housing, babies not so much.

The next false argument is saying ”by the time the 50s babies were moving out, the population was higher so the ratio of new homes needed was not as dire”, as if the infants of the 1970s could provide construction labor

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

#385

Post by sillyfluke »

scoofy wrote: post #379
sillyfluke wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this the real estate version of the "trickle down" theory? You take half the land left in the county for construction and build 5 mil mansions with ridiculous garden acrage instead of more affordable houses. You've now constrained yourself in the number of affordable homes you can build in your county in the future, as land is finite. Maybe you took a few k's off the 10 mil mansions for a short while. Congratulati…

I don't think building high-end housing will completely solve homelessness, no, but it is a non-trivial improvement especially when it comes to tax revenues that can be used to build public housing. We only build high-end housing in CA because it's wildly expensive to build housing at all. It's especially expensive exactly because the cost of the "affordable" (subsidized) housing that is required for most of these de…

>the idea that building "high-end" housing does nothing is just wrong.

Not sure anyone said this. The parent said it does nothing to solve homelessness and unless the homeowners are housing homeless people in their mansions, I think they're by and large correct. And you still have to contend with the luxury homes taking away future building potential by occupying a ridiculous amount of finite land that a county has available.

People call it a housing crisis for a reason. You don't solve a crisis by championing something by arguing "hey, it's not nothing" anymore than you would attempt to solve a famine crisis by dripping a couple of drops of water in a few malnourished kids' mouthes.

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

#386

Post by scoofy »

sillyfluke wrote: post #385
scoofy wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think building high-end housing will completely solve homelessness, no, but it is a non-trivial improvement especially when it comes to tax revenues that can be used to build public housing. We only build high-end housing in CA because it's wildly expensive to build housing at all. It's especially expensive exactly because the cost of the "affordable" (subsidized) housing that is required for most of these de…

>the idea that building "high-end" housing does nothing is just wrong. Not sure anyone said this. The parent said it does nothing to solve homelessness and unless the homeowners are housing homeless people in their mansions, I think they're by and large correct. And you still have to contend with the luxury homes taking away future building potential by occupying a ridiculous amount of finite land that a county has a…

>Not sure anyone said this

It's literally what the person I was responding to said:

>>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...

Given the Prop 13 tax environment. Building expensive homes is a necessary condition to facilitate local tax revenues necessary to build public housing.

I would never argue that just allowing high-end homes is enough. I'm saying that allowing high-end homes is also part of the holistic solution. OP is the one saying that it does nothing. It does not do nothing. It's not a "one or another" thing... we need to build more homes at every income level, and there is no way to do that without largely deregulating the housing environment so that developers cannot simply all target the luxury market.

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

#387

Post by more_corn »

papa0101 wrote: post #265
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,…

That, and reduce the immigration ffs. Importing a city-sized population (500k+) every year? - Sorry mate, you just won't be able to build a new city every year.

Without population growth and without immigration your economy will collapse. Good luck with that.

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

#388

Post by danaris »

fragmede wrote: post #293
danaris wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there! I live in the US. I am a leftist. I am in favor of prison abolition, universal basic income, massively increased taxation of the rich, and voting reform. Care to explain why I either don't count or don't really exist?

Because of the two party system, you have to either vote Democrat or Republican for your vote to count, so your actually leftist ideals, which are to the left of the centrist Democrat party, do not meaningfully exist as a voting block.

So the only political movements that you think are allowed to be said to exist in a country are those explicitly and broadly represented by a major party?

I mean, I guess that's a position you could take, but it seems like a pretty extreme one.

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

#389

Post by more_corn »

edude03 wrote: post #137

I think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall thr…

The housing first initiative proved definitively that all secondary factors are much more treatable when the subject is housed. The societal cost of housing is way less than dealing with all the problems caused by people being unhoused.

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

#390

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

toast0 wrote: post #292
goosedragons wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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.

Near a highway there is so much noise for homes though, I'm always shocked people find that acceptable. I checked a home near a highway and I couldn't even open the window due to the noise
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