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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)

#421

Post by dzhiurgis »

sokoloff wrote: post #395
willis936 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things probably work. Why do we have to give up so much that was considered standard 50 years ago? Recipe for social unrest.

There are 1.5 times as many people in the US competing for the same amount of land and buying houses using mortgages that are around 40% cheaper and many mortgages accept down payments that are 1/6th the size versus 1975, with underwriting that judges debt-to-income of 36% as “ideal” and some programs allowing 50% versus a limit of 25% in 1975, meaning the same amount of 1975 Americans plus the 50% extra Americans ca…

Sounds like you found a niche that market hasn't exploited then. Can I build a small house for fraction of the cost or most of my cost is going to be land?

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

#422

Post by sokoloff »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #421
sokoloff wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 1.5 times as many people in the US competing for the same amount of land and buying houses using mortgages that are around 40% cheaper and many mortgages accept down payments that are 1/6th the size versus 1975, with underwriting that judges debt-to-income of 36% as “ideal” and some programs allowing 50% versus a limit of 25% in 1975, meaning the same amount of 1975 Americans plus the 50% extra Americans ca…

Sounds like you found a niche that market hasn't exploited then. Can I build a small house for fraction of the cost or most of my cost is going to be land?

It’s not an unknown niche.

Land cost depends on the location. You can find an acre of rural land for $1K. Or an 1/8th acre for $1M or more in a city.

For a cheap parcel of land in an unincorporated area with no building permit process, but with existing grid power, you can buy and build quite reasonably. (There are several YouTube channels covering builds like this.) In these areas, I wouldn’t overlook existing properties as well.

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

#423

Post by UncleMeat »

bitlax wrote: post #412
UncleMeat wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not know any other mechanism to ensure that your child never interacts with a poor person except to imprison them all.

This is silly. You don't really believe this. My status quo is potless. We're discussing a policy change.

I really do believe this. And I hope it makes it clear to others why wanting to keep housing prices high to prevent your kids from smelling pot is an outrageous opinion.

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

#424

Post by UncleMeat »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #418
UncleMeat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A substantial reason why these people have substance addictions is because they are homeless and use substances to cope. Reducing the price of rent can prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

> A substantial reason why these people have substance addictions is because they are homeless and use substances to cope My experience is the opposite, I have family who do streetworking.

And the data is wider than your experience I suppose.

Yes, there are homeless people with pre-existing substance abuse problems. But so many people have this idea that somebody has their life together and then they try meth and then they end up homeless and that's how most homelessness works. This makes the "well, they deserve it and there is nothing to be done" position stick.

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

#425

Post by krapp »

armada651 wrote: post #413
dragonwriter wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However I have doubts that, when people who hold that position come to power, El Chapo will be walking free with no restrictions the next morning. "Prison" (carceral punishment) does not encompass all possible restrictions on personal freedom and movement. Even in systems with carceral punishment, other restrictions on freedom and movement are used for some situations, that do not involve incarceration.

And this is exactly why calling for "prison abolishment" is so counter-productive, because when most people hear that the assumption is that everyone who's in prison right now is free to go. It does not help your cause to adopt a motto that espouses a more extreme position than you actually hold and both your supporters and detractors will feel betrayed when they learn your position is actually more moderate.

>And this is exactly why calling for "prison abolishment" is so counter-productive, because when most people hear that the assumption is that everyone who's in prison right now is free to go.

So what? You say "DEI" or "woke" and people assume you mean racism against white people. You say "toxic masculinity" or "feminism" and people assume you hate all men. "Pro choice" means you choose to murder babies. Transgender people are pedophiles and fetishists. Immigration is invasion. Atheists are incapable of morality. Opposition to Israeli Zionism is antisemitism. Any economic system besides free market capitalism is socialism, all socialism is communism and all communism leads to the death camps. Democracy is the worst system except for all of the others. By the way did you the Nazis were socialist, and BLM was a violent Marxist army that burned entire cities to the ground?

Most people (especially Americans) have been indoctrinated by society to be unable to interpret any radical or leftist concept in any but the most extreme bad faith way possible, so they don't have to take it seriously. Their minds are protected by a cloud of thought-terminating cliches. Despite this, one doesn't let the opposition control one's language or police one's tone, because that just leads to one's own argument being co-opted and undermined.

The position being described here begins with "abolish the prisons," it just doesn't end with that. But that isn't reform, and if one called it "reform" just to be civil, no one would even bother to listen. Even getting people to consider the nature of the systems they live within and benefit from enough to say "abolish the prisons? That's crazy talk" is getting them to examine their biases more deeply than they probably have in their entire lives.

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

#426

Post by danaris »

derelicta wrote: post #414
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 you very likely still defend capitalism and US hegemony

...Where on earth do you get that idea?

Of course, one does have to be careful with one's definitions when talking about "capitalism", because I've seen people mean everything from "the current, specific, late-stage capitalist system and nothing else" to "the basic concept of exchanging currency for goods and services" and everything in between. Personally, I'm in favor of abolishing the former and some of the stuff in the middle, but I'm skeptical that even in a fully post-scarcity society we would abandon the need for the latter.

As for US hegemony...I think that the current situation demonstrates very well why it's a serious problem. We're a single point of failure, and the polarization here has been rising for decades, leaving something like this all but inevitable. Indeed, even if someone like Trump had not come along and normalized hatred and fascism, we would still have likely been in a situation where every 4-8 years the US's policies on a wide range of things flipped violently back and forth.

No; while I fear that the transition will be very rocky, the world will be better off if a broader coalition of nations can collectively take up the role of attempting to enforce the notion of universal human rights across the globe. While they're at it, maybe they'll finally be able to get the US to agree to things like the UN Convention on Rights of the Child, and the authority of the International Criminal Court.

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

#427

Post by mr_toad »

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.

Infrastructure makes a big difference, as does WFH.

People commute from Canterbury to London, which is > 50 miles. But they have over 100 trains a day, many of them high speed.

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

#428

Post by bko »

jerlam wrote: post #401
bko wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The rich cities that are too expensive to live in are often the ones that provide the most benefits to the homeless, both legal and illegal. Anything from free or discounted food, medical care, laundry, charitable organizations, people who give money to panhandlers, lenient law enforcement, less violent crime, better weather, and easier targets to steal from. Not to mention your entire support network and your friend…

I think the whole point is to not be homeless. Sure, if you want to be homeless, big expensive cities might be your best bet. And a lot of people that want this lifestyle migrate to these cities for this reason.

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

#429

Post by goosedragons »

bko wrote: post #428
jerlam wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The rich cities that are too expensive to live in are often the ones that provide the most benefits to the homeless, both legal and illegal. Anything from free or discounted food, medical care, laundry, charitable organizations, people who give money to panhandlers, lenient law enforcement, less violent crime, better weather, and easier targets to steal from. Not to mention your entire support network and your friend…

I think the whole point is to not be homeless. Sure, if you want to be homeless, big expensive cities might be your best bet. And a lot of people that want this lifestyle migrate to these cities for this reason.

I think you're vastly over simplifying the "not be homeless" part. Very highly doubt the majority of homeless people want to be homeless.

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

#430

Post by throwanem »

krapp wrote: post #425
armada651 wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is exactly why calling for "prison abolishment" is so counter-productive, because when most people hear that the assumption is that everyone who's in prison right now is free to go. It does not help your cause to adopt a motto that espouses a more extreme position than you actually hold and both your supporters and detractors will feel betrayed when they learn your position is actually more moderate.

>And this is exactly why calling for "prison abolishment" is so counter-productive, because when most people hear that the assumption is that everyone who's in prison right now is free to go. So what? You say "DEI" or "woke" and people assume you mean racism against white people. You say "toxic masculinity" or "feminism" and people assume you hate all men. "Pro choice" means you choose to murder babies. Transgender p…

'The scolding will continue until politics improves.'
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