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

moneywise.com

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

#611

Post by jimt1234 »

gavin_gee wrote: post #594

Some good commentary in this thread, however one topic thats never raised in the topic of affordable housing is fast cheap public transit. I could never imagine being able to buy a house in London. but the train network makes it possible to live in a more affordable neighbourhood and commute as needed. In the US we seem to think that cities can continue to have affordable housing in the most desireable areas. this is…

I've been told since childhood that the main obstacle to inexpensive public transit in the the majority of US is racism - keep those people in their neighborhood. I've never done any sort of research or anything, and even though it's depressing, it sounds plausible.

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

#612

Post by carom »

cogman10 wrote: post #559
NathanKP wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have an external garage building that I'd love to turn into a small ADU, but it's not allowed in my area. Additionally, if you look at historical cheap rentals of the past, you see things like tenement buildings, which were arguably horrible, but provided a cheap alternate to homelessness. You can also see examples of what low rent places look like today in Asian countries, such as Hong Kong tiny apartments. Many o…

In 2010, I had a $600/month rental with a kitchen, living room, bedroom, bathroom, in apartment washing machine/dryer and a fairly large walk-in closet. With 13 years of inflation, that'd be $850/month. That apartment now goes for over $1200/month (Almost certainly hasn't been renovated). [1] The issue is oligopolies. Few large businesses that own the majority of available rentals and thus can set prices to whatever…

It is government policy. Specifically, it is restrictive zoning. Landlords do not get to set prices to whatever they want, they set prices to what the market will pay.

If rent has gone up faster than inflation it just means that demand has increased or supply has decreased in that time.

You can build apartments for ~$250 per sqft. The issue is that local governments make it really hard to build more apartments. If you disagree I implore you to go get a construction loan, build some housing, and rent it out.

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

#613

Post by 3minus1 »

Wow, the article provides 3 datapoints and the metric is not even that good. I wish articles could go better when talking about trends. How about an actual timeseries of number of homeless people per capita alongside another one of homeless people over 50 per capita? Like it's really hard to draw any conclusions based on the very poor data the article provides.

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

#614

Post by kuschku »

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…

It's primarily the missing middle.

Skyscrapers and high rises only work for luxury apartments or shitty soviet style blocks.

Single family homes only work in rural areas.

The vast majority of cities and housing demand is in-between, which is entirely missing in the US.

You'd expect 90% of housing to be row houses or 3-4 floor apartment buildings, but in the US, that's just not existing.

Sure, the housing market in Europe is struggling as well, but it's not even close to the situation in the US because so much affordable housing in mixed-use middle density buildings is available.

And with small shops on the bottom floor, offices on the second floor and 2-3 floors of housing above, this greatly reduces traffic (and in turn, infrastructure cost) as well.

I believe the US is finally wising up to this with "5 over 2" style housing, but I don't know enough about that to actually judge how well it works.

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

#615

Post by dr_dshiv »

cornercasechase wrote: post #610
GenerocUsername wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available transit needs to include safe transit. The current bus and light rail situation has turned off swaths of the working class to support the dredges of the drug-addict class by their lack of fare-enforcement and other low-end enabling schemes that sound great on paper, but lead to complicated downstream chilling effects on the entire region.

Public transit is much safer than driving in your car. Someone skipping fare does not compare to even a light fender bender.

Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like public transit is safe. That’s important.

Public transit in other countries feels nice. In the US, you feel poor. Design, maybe, matters?

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

#616

Post by 3minus1 »

jakewins wrote: post #125
nobodyandproud wrote: post #106

By how much is the total number raw number of homeless increasing?

Yeah the article uses terrible numbers, like the rate of the share of homeless is what they are talking about right? I looked up the homelessness numbers from the 30s, in absolute numbers it was about 4x what it is today - 2 million homeless vs todays half million. Given that the population has roughly tripled since the 30s that means the rate of homelessness is about 12x lower today than during the Great Depression?

Yeah, the article comparing this to Great Depression is super misleading. This bugs me so much.

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

#617

Post by bad_user »

gavin_gee wrote: post #594

Some good commentary in this thread, however one topic thats never raised in the topic of affordable housing is fast cheap public transit. I could never imagine being able to buy a house in London. but the train network makes it possible to live in a more affordable neighbourhood and commute as needed. In the US we seem to think that cities can continue to have affordable housing in the most desireable areas. this is…

London is very expensive, driving Londoners out of the city. It's nice that they have public transport, but it's not helping much, unless you're saying that it could have been much worse. And despite being praised for public transport, the average commute time in London is bad. They're also not building much housing, affordable or otherwise, which means that it's only going to get worse.

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

#618

Post by denimnerd42 »

cornercasechase wrote: post #610
GenerocUsername wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available transit needs to include safe transit. The current bus and light rail situation has turned off swaths of the working class to support the dredges of the drug-addict class by their lack of fare-enforcement and other low-end enabling schemes that sound great on paper, but lead to complicated downstream chilling effects on the entire region.

Public transit is much safer than driving in your car. Someone skipping fare does not compare to even a light fender bender.

I think people mean a more irrational feeling of safety, rather than hard statistics. They don't want to see or be near those antisocial behaviors when they're taking transportation. Old people seem to suffer from this irrational feeling more than younger.

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

#619

Post by conductr »

test6554 wrote: post #359
oooyay wrote: post #100

I moved to Portland a year ago. We certainly have a lot of homeless people, many of which are people caught up in the substance abuse cycle with particular drugs. However, one day I was driving back to East Portland, I drove under an underpass that's a particularly rough place. I saw a woman that looked to be my mom's age with what appeared to be a modern suit case, she was well dressed, and sober looking. The blood…

I don't know why we don't just have a single state where all homeless people can live. Where homeless people from all over can be bussed into. Where all homelessness resources can be directed. Where a majority of caseworkers can go, where lots and lots of housing can be built and no NIMBYs can complain. A state that is already basically this kind of place. Like West Virginia.

I think this is a challenging concept for homeless as it becomes hard to re-integrate them into society and also it's a bit Gestapo sounding. I'm not sure homeless would opt-in, so we'd be plucking them off the streets and shipping them to camps? You can't seek assistance at a shelter/kitchen for fear of entrapment?

However, I have this same idea for how prisons could more value additive to society and those incarcerated. Especially, for non-violent offenders. Would need some guardrails, but I like to think it could be turned into a positive experience where inmates help each other build homes and small businesses, grow their own food, etc. If we eliminated most fiat currency and just provided some basic raw materials for building and perhaps some light manufacturing I could see it working. It'd be a wonderful outcome even if we just were able to reduce recidivism for this group. A dumb choice when you're 18, shouldn't put you on a path of a lifetime of gangs, crime, incarceration, etc. but that's how the current system works and it's very expensive to maintain for taxpayers not to mention the generational impact it has to the family.

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

#620

Post by blairbeckwith »

cornercasechase wrote: post #610
GenerocUsername wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Available transit needs to include safe transit. The current bus and light rail situation has turned off swaths of the working class to support the dredges of the drug-addict class by their lack of fare-enforcement and other low-end enabling schemes that sound great on paper, but lead to complicated downstream chilling effects on the entire region.

Public transit is much safer than driving in your car. Someone skipping fare does not compare to even a light fender bender.

I think when most people use "safe" in this context, they mean "comfortable" or "psychologically comfortable". Nobody enjoys sitting beside someone tweaking and shitting themselves, even if it's perfectly safe.
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