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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

#741

Post by mlinhares »

unethical_ban wrote: post #320
mlinhares wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only building new homes is unnecessarily complicated and expensive, single family homes are an incredible waste of space and money, had the US and it's big cities invested in apartment buildings with better amenities or forced developers to build shared neighborhood amenities Americans in general wouldn't be so incredibly against it. It's insane to me that my hometown of 1M people in Brazil has more tall apartmen…

The only problem with apartments in the US is the lack of equity.

Not owning the apartment seems to be a very US thing, I owned two apartments in Brazil and had a small construction business that built small apartment buildings and it was almost all sold to owners.

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

#742

Post by trident5000 »

etc-hosts wrote: post #470
trident5000 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only reason they're regulated is because of logistical and permitting issues. Not because they're special for any other reason. If there was private competition for delivering water it might even be cheaper.

I tried to find an example of a water system in America that posted cheaper rates after being privatized. I could not. I found a couple of examples of complete disaster though. Do you have any examples I can read about?

Im going to have to decline doing a research project for you. Regardless and back to the main point of my comment - the reason 3/4 of water delivery is a public service is from permitting and other red tape primarily. Not because of reasons having to do with pricing.

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

#743

Post by brewdad »

carom wrote: post #670
svnt wrote: post #499

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is counterfactual in the literal sense. It is entirely possible that there are no real prices below $2k in urban centers because of demand and constrained supply. It is entirely possible that getting below this would result in a return to conditions where people were regularly dying in fires and building collapse. We have plenty of examples of what happens in your fantasy land, you just choose to reason from ideol…

Maybe we keep the fire codes but eliminate parking minimums and lot setbacks. Just a thought.

Lot set backs are frequently a part of the fire codes. They help prevent a fire in one building taking out the entire block.

Parking minimums are a chicken and egg problem. My suburb has started allowing new apartments to build about half the parking that would have been required a decade ago. Trouble is, those tenants still own cars since the transit system isn't robust enough to go without. Now those cars flood the streets of the single family residences nearby. Eliminating parking minimums has been mostly successful in the city core but expanding it out to the entire metro doesn't work with how we've built America over the last 70 years.

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

#744

Post by mcntsh »

kuschku wrote: post #614
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 Eu…

> 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.

Housing affordability in Europe is, in most places, way worse than in the US. Not sure where Americans get this idea that it's better there.

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

#745

Post by [deleted] »

spir wrote: post #234
escapedmoose wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among my friends seeking to buy houses, the greater problem is the ability of large companies to buy up whatever is on the market, which they then immediately turn into a rental. It’s nearly impossible to compete with a company who will pay $50k over asking price, in cash, for the house you’re trying to get. Comparatively, immigrants don’t have the purchasing power to compete, so saying they’re the problem is a weird…

You only perceive corporate landlords as the greater problem because we're not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and well-located. In pretty much every major city in North America, it is illegal or there is too much red tape to build the affordable housing people actually want. Why is it that living in a t…

[deleted]

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

#746

Post by dukeyukey »

cogman10 wrote: post #478
spir wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only perceive corporate landlords as the greater problem because we're not living in the counterfactual reality where there are millions of new apartments that are inexpensive, tiny, safe, quiet, modern, clean, dignified, and well-located. In pretty much every major city in North America, it is illegal or there is too much red tape to build the affordable housing people actually want. Why is it that living in a t…

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…

> What government policy would allow for a 2k apartment building and not a $500 apartment building?

At least in the UK, it's because there's pushback against perceived "luxury" flats being built rather than affordable places. That luxury flats are still 2-bedroom 600sqft starter homes doesn't really come into it, it's the class of people each is perceived to be for.

So local governments block mid-and-high end housing in favour of fewer, worse, cheaper homes instead.

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

#747

Post by TinkersW »

SamoyedFurFluff wrote: post #21
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…

I wouldn’t attribute this to immigration. Generally (eta: in my understanding in the usa where this study also is) immigrants are job creators and entrepreneurs, and take less from the system than native born people do. I otherwise agree the homeowning NIMBY class who want to retain neighborhood character or whatever suck, because as a consequence they are restricting housing. I also want to point the finger at corpo…

That stat is made up because they ding natives for the cost of K12 education etc, thus making them look worse by comparison because they start out with a big negative value assigned to them.

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

#748

Post by brewdad »

jethro_tell wrote: post #568
kurthr wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If parking spaces are $400/mo, you're going to be hard pressed to have power, water, and heating for $500. The reason a tent in the city is $0 is because that is an externality that is allowed... you can't even stay for free in a campground, because water, trash, and toilets cost money.

or, and hear me out here, parking spaces are $400/mo because that's what people are willing to pay in a sparsely populated autocentric living environment. We don't have to take things like "the cost of a parking space in the system we've created" as a fact, we can change the value of the parking space.

How? You need to either build a LOT more parking or you need to make it possible to live without a car. There are only a handful (with leftover fingers) of US cities where going car-free is reasonable.

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

#749

Post by brandall10 »

amrocha wrote: post #676
brandall10 wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having spent 6 months in NYC over the past year, you see shit on the subway lines all of the time, but normal people use it all the time. I think the latter is the important thing. It's not normalized as a viable means of transport in the land of the automobile.

Buddy if you want to convince people to use public transit, saying a little shit is normal is not the way to do it btw I live in Tokyo and moved here explicitly because of public transit.

That wasn’t the message - it’s the presence of having normal people. Public transport is just as popular in NYC as it is in Tokyo despite the shit.

Just got back from 3.5 months in Europe (17 cities), and yes it’s vastly better there, far more clean and sane. Still, coming back to NYC I’m not not taking the subway despite spending nearly my whole life in SoCal. It’s easily the better option over owning a car if you’re in Manhattan/Brooklyn.

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