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Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

nytimes.com

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Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#41

Post by wolverine876 »

TexanFeller wrote: post #2

Looks like this housing is built outside of town, so it might actually work! One things cities do wrong is trying to house homeless people near downtown. It's dramatically more expensive to do it there, so there will never be enough housing or will to pay for it. The housing that was built for "low income artists to be able to live here" was even more of a joke. A bunch of condos downtown that were priced uncomfortab…

People, including unhoused ones and artistic ones, need to live near downtown because that's where jobs and services are, including needed social services, and transportation to the rest of the city, as well as community. In typical cities, the art galleries, museums, schools, etc. are downtown.

If you have a family and spend your time with them and at work, a home away from the city center makes sense. If you need to do a lot with people outside your home, then you want to be where the people are.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#42

Post by chrisco255 »

ozten wrote: post #16

I’ve volunteered to build a tiny home in Seattle and have seen this deployed in my neighborhood and a few other sites. It is a feel good thing, but the reality is… These are a fraction of what is actually needed. It is symbolic. The residents are removed from mental health and other services and plopped into a suburban neighborhood without community or resources. The host families are not trained social workers, but…

Community First, which the article references, has hundreds of these tiny houses and homeless residents. They have on-site activities, farming, a clinic, an outdoor movie theater, and a rotating staff of volunteers that contribute time and assistance.

I volunteered there about 5 years ago. One of the residents I met told me not everyone thrives there and they churn out back to the streets, but it's still 400 fewer homeless people as a result.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#44

Post by bequanna »

crooked-v wrote: post #27
cglan wrote: post #12

Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down to 200sqft. Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap townhomes that can house 6 or…

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

This rings false. Townhomes are seen in large numbers in almost all suburbs and I don’t think they inspire the same NIMBY fury that apartments do.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#45

Post by JeffSnazz »

TexanFeller wrote: post #2

Looks like this housing is built outside of town, so it might actually work! One things cities do wrong is trying to house homeless people near downtown. It's dramatically more expensive to do it there, so there will never be enough housing or will to pay for it. The housing that was built for "low income artists to be able to live here" was even more of a joke. A bunch of condos downtown that were priced uncomfortab…

> One things cities do wrong is trying to house homeless people near downtown.

It's pretty critical to build housing where there's actually need, or it won't do much.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#46

Post by wolverine876 »

thriftwy wrote: post #10
NoZebra120vClip wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a funny thing. I recently looked into living in a central location downtown, and all the rents are far beyond my means as a Section 8 participant. But if you put "affordable housing" way out in the boonies, then how do residents access any services at a reasonable price? If we need to run all over town for stuff, why live in a God-forsaken location like that? Downtown in my metro area is not only a transit hu…

I'm just not sure how you get these problems unironically. What's so hard about having a grocery store and reliable transit to downtown? The notorious St. Petersburg's Murino district is located outside city's boundary but it has a metro station, several grocery stores, bakeries, bars and other shops. It's not like US poor have no disposable income at all. Kudrovo has worse transit options but features an absolutely…

What the GP describes is a generally accepted need by planners, etc. Regarding grocery stores, look up 'food deserts'.

Also, when you are working multiple jobs, you have even less time for overhead like commutes to distant jobs and services.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#47

Post by akira2501 »

heavyset_go wrote: post #18
IAmNotACellist wrote: post #4

Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes. It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is often just a symptom.

The majority of homeless people are homeless for economic or relationship reasons like loss of job/income, insufficient income, breakups and divorce, and lack of affordable housing[1]. The fastest growing demographic of homeless people are entire families. [1] https://homelesslaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_...

From your own link.. that's only the top cause for families, which is only 30% of the total population. The causes for individuals are different and they represent the majority.

Finally.. this is all from a survey from the "U.S Conference of Mayors" which is mostly a lobbying organization as far as I can tell.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#48

Post by NoZebra120vClip »

akira2501 wrote: post #38
pyuser583 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Housing First” is such a bit like communism - perfect in theory. The problem is you need “second” and “third” things too, and the political will often just doesn’t exist. I lived near a “housing first” facility that was no better than a homeless encampment.

It's just like communism in that it entirely ignores the needs and capacity of an individual and makes them slaves to the idealism of the state. They're no better than a homeless encampment because you can't give people a house and then expect them to act like a homeowner overnight. It was the wrong problem to solve, and I think people rush to solve it out of self conscious guilt and a desire to quickly make the _app…

I have found that many people who receive housing benefits are very poor stewards of their personal resources.

The first thing someone does when they get housed is to invite all their homeless friends over, to shower, to eat, to crash, to do drugs, to play games, whatever.

So your typical Section 8 housing recipient is not just a single person/family benefiting from housing, they're dragging in their entire circle of loser friends who don't have those benefits, and so now you've got a cluster of mooches who aren't invested nor responsible for disruption or damage in that community.

It's really an unfortunate thing, and I just saw it over and over again. So many people lose their benefits very quickly because they can't resist helping other folks out, but that's not what you do with welfare and entitlements.

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#49

Post by roughly »

mulmen wrote: post #6
TexanFeller wrote: post #2

Looks like this housing is built outside of town, so it might actually work! One things cities do wrong is trying to house homeless people near downtown. It's dramatically more expensive to do it there, so there will never be enough housing or will to pay for it. The housing that was built for "low income artists to be able to live here" was even more of a joke. A bunch of condos downtown that were priced uncomfortab…

Hmm, when I hear “artist housing” I always assumed they meant “interesting people who make music and maybe paint”. But “interesting” is too subjective to be real. Freestyle watercolor is no foundation of an economy. We should not judge other humans by their ability to make rent. Some of my best friends struggle to do that. But for a city making rent is all that really matters. They don’t care if you literally create…

There's always a funny tension on the city trying to draw in artists to make a downtown area more palatable, too, in that good artists and good art is often intended as a challenge to the status quo - the goal is to make people uncomfortable.

I say this as a Berkeley-living lefty: the left often seems to espouse policies whose practical outcomes far exceed their actual appetite for discomfort or willingness to engage with real diversity.

(Standard HN disclaimer: if the above doesn't apply to you, it doesn't apply to you - but look me in the eye and tell me you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Re: Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness

#50

Post by heavyset_go »

bequanna wrote: post #44
crooked-v wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available, but they're not allowed to do so.

This rings false. Townhomes are seen in large numbers in almost all suburbs and I don’t think they inspire the same NIMBY fury that apartments do.

In my experience, they do, but they're marketed as luxury housing so the stigma isn't as apparent to your typical person who is sympathetic to NIMBYism.
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