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

#621

Post by hifromLA » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

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.

Psychological safety matters just as much as physical safety. If you think that you won’t see some shit on public transit I welcome you to come to LA and take the red line for a day.

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

#622

Post by Schiendelman » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

QuarterReptile wrote: post #575

cogman10 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What government policy would allow for a 2k apartment building and not a $500 apartment building? I just don't buy this argument. The reason there's not a $500 apartments being built is because by expanding the residence out just a tiny bit you can charge $2000 for the same space that 2 $500 apartments would occupy. I'm seeing this play out where I live that has practically no zoning laws or regulations (LOTS of buil…

Because I didn't see it in any of the other comments: ' The realistic path is that apartments become $500 apartments late in life cycle. It's extremely rare to build low-end housing, but not so unreasonable for units to filter down-market over time when new construction provides adequate supply at the upper end of the market. The logic of updating vs. repairing changes when new housing is a regular occurrence.

Interestingly - if you allow growth to keep up with demand, there are units today that are being held off market (as investments) that suddenly aren't good investments anymore, so they go back on market.

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

#623

Post by rabuse » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

postalrat wrote: post #523

rmk wrote: post #515

Ah, so all the boomers who want to use their houses as nest eggs and have driven up prices making housing unaffordable for future generations have also wrecked the prospects of those less fortunate in their own generation. What's more unconscionable is the fact that young people are not forming families, not that some boomers are facing the consequences of their actions. It would be nice if all boomers faced the musi…

Anyone who buys a house wants to use it as a nest egg. Its not just a baby boomer thing. You want cheap housing? Figure out a way to build houses for cheap. That's how it was done in the past.

Agree with this. I've honestly been thinking about tapping out of the rental game and just going full van life for awhile, with the ability Starlink grants to us remote workers.

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

#624

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:27 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #384

zenkat wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing is cheap in West Virginia because it's currently experiencing the largest population exodus in the US. https://apnews.com/article/al-state-wire-west-virginia-lifes...

So perhaps the solution is more affordable senior housing built in lower cost of living areas? If we’re subsidizing the housing, medical care (Medicare), income (Social Security or a bridge to it), you don’t need to build in expensive urban cores; location is not as important. Suburban cores are probably fine if the land cost is reasonable and close enough to public transit.

> So perhaps the solution is more affordable senior housing built in lower cost of living areas?

That's still necessary but we're past the optimum point where that is helpful.

Once folks transition into homelessness, they've lost their income earning ability. Reacquiring employment is much harder after homelessness and much worse for older people. For them, the pool of who will hire them sharply decreases year by year.

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

#625

Post by wyager » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:28 PM UTC

klodolph wrote: post #319

wyager wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. GP: "Government regulation is preventing the construction of more housing" You: "So true. For example, we need more regulation that make housing a legally encumbered asset with uniquely constrained and inflexible financial properties" What is your thought process here? Do you think this kind of thing will encourage the provision of more houses?…

The logic here is that there are two different competing concerns—the use of housing as an investment (money in, money out) and the use of housing as a place to live. There’s a lot of legislation that shifts the balance one way or the other. Things like property tax caps and zoning regulations shift the balance towards house-as-investment, and things like rent increase caps shift it the other way. If you don’t buy in…

Every physical good is a financial asset whether you like it or not. Ignoring this reality will not help achieve policy goals.

I agree that you are accurately describing the economically illiterate thought process, just not that it's correct.

Price controls are one of those interesting things where there's a phase transition from near-universal support to near-zero support at a certain knowledge level.

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

#626

Post by titzer » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #389

titzer wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, And that has a simple cause: they created too much money to prop up both the housing and stock markets. We're in an inflationary debt spiral that has a very high chance of going the same route as every other one in history; completely devaluing the currency, defaulting on debt, and issuing new currency. The rational play in such a scenario is to ta…

Raise the government-set lending rates and keep them there, let overextended private parties (like highly leveraged asset owners) actually default en masse, and slowly pay down the government's external debt by moving it to the federal reserve. I'm not saying that the metastasized finance industry will let this happen, but there is a way out of the spiral.

I agree with those things, but we both see how unworkable it is. It hurts the monied class and edifice that holds up the house of cards made of people who produce no real value other than pulling levers in the casino.

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

#627

Post by rabuse » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #141

Wait until a few more years of this, of the dollar losing its stronghold in global commerce, of trade wars, of the impact of AI/LLM on jobs, and of further climate change impact... Fun times!

The future is bleak, and that's why I chose to never bring children into this mess. The line ends with me.

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

#628

Post by psd1 » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #611

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.

Sprinkle in a dash of car-industry lobbying and suburban sprawl

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

#629

Post by WarOnPrivacy » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

d357r0y3r wrote: post #527

momirlan wrote: post #91

this is the generation that had it best: jobs for life, good benefits, cheap houses, etc. they also destroyed the planet with their "American dream" style consumption. what's coming for the new generations if these are suffering ?

So, boomers bad, millenials good. I don't know. Maybe the situation is a little more nuanced, and not every boomer was able to get rich. My boomer parents couldn't dream of making the money I've made in tech. They can't even retire yet.

The thing about outliers is they don't negate general trends.

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

#630

Post by Schiendelman » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 4:29 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #481

BytesAndGears wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t built a “$2k rental”. You can only build a rental that someone will pay for. Landlords are building luxury housing because it’s the only thing that’s profitable right now due to the immensely ridiculous laws that don’t help people. But if an apartment building popped up in downtown SF charging $800/mo, it’s not like only the low income people would live there. Many people living in $3000/mo apartments also…

A non-trivial amount of "property" is speculation at best and concrete money laundering at worst, especially in the largest cities It's not supposed to saleable or rentable. But it does take up land that could be used for real housing. And it also drives up the perceived value - and price - of both rentals and outright buys. Rent control may or may not be a solution. But many of these schemes are run through shady sh…

That's the case in any predictably supply restricted market. That behavior completely disappears if you don't restrict supply, because if people can build more housing, housing depreciates - and investors put their money somewhere else because they don't want to lose it.