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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

#821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you may have missed that Florida passed a school choice act, and that tons of funds are now flowing into private religious schools. A ridiculous waste of money, especially considering a majority of said schools raised their tuition rates to just absorb the new funding. DeSantis policies at work.

I'm not religious myself, but I still think it's pretty ridiculous for you to assume that this mode of education has no value. Isn't our modern watch word supposed to be "tolerance", and not objecting to other members of our community following their values even when those are different from our own?

I'm fine subsidizing education of any form, as long as what I'm subsidizing meets all the same standards and burdens that the public option does for the same amount of funding. The idea that they can charge a tuition greater than the subsidized amount is tantamount to a handout.

If they want to incorporate religion and/or alternative education, it should be on top of the same requirement the public school systems follow. (i.e. They should be required to teach the standard classes without religious influence or bias. Let their religious teachings be separate classes. No student receiving a publicly funded education should be taught exclusively that the earth is only 6000 years old or supplied with publicly funded textbooks that outright reject evolution in all forms.)

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

#822

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not disagreeing with your observations, but I'd like to add property taxes, and most specifically, the portion used to support public schools, to your list. Excluding the past year, this is where I've seen the greatest increases in my expenses. And since it's government creating most of this, it's hard to imagine that there's any relief to be found by looking towards government for a solution.

> property taxes Anywhere that has property taxes really needs to have a clause similar to what Oregon has that states that the assessed value of your property cannot increase by more than 3% per year for property tax calculation purposes. It's pretty bonkers that people can very quickly, over the course of less than 5 years, get priced out of a place that they own, just because the market became white hot. I bought…

Maybe they could lock it to COLA used for SS benefits?

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

#823
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If more people actually owned, that's a positive.

1. Homeowners being a powerful political bloc and using that power to stop development is part of the problem in the first place 2. Buying a house makes sense if you're a starting a family and/or setting down roots, but that's not everyone's situation. Students or young professionals get utterly shafted by lack of rental housing, because they don't have the income or the credit to buy a house, and they don't intend o…

By the time you’re a young professional your credit is honestly pretty decently established, hell I tried to buy a house on an internship and they qualified me for a 250k mortgage with a 48k salary.

Hell I know guys that went straight into the workforce after high school, nothing stopped them from financing 6 figure pickup trucks, and those depreciate badly in comparison and are harder to repo and re-sell.

Problem is, most places with work that won’t get you a place to live. Houses used to be 3x the median income, nowadays it’s more than 10x.

The idea of housing only being for very established people is new, and only due to its staggering costs nowadays. When my father moved to a town to wash dishes at a pub, he bought himself a house. Cost him 3x his salary.

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

#824
post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't ever mind public transport. I have used public transport in multiple areas of the planet. There are two quips: 1. You have to be there in someone else's time. You can't have 5 or 10 or 30 minutes if something comes up. 2. What you say. I don't want to rub my body with people who are wearing dirty clothes, smell, and has god-knows-what liquid on their clothes who might choose to cough without using th…

If the rail comes every 15 minutes, you know you can plan to be a little early. Not hard at all.

True for subway. But not for longer distance/inter-city.

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

#825

My mom was homeless for years, thankfully she got stable housing right before covid took off. - in shelters/churches-with-cots there would be crazed drug-users, she was threatened numerous times in them and the shelter can't do anything - I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing - she's entirely dependent on getting social s…

> My mom was homeless for years > I wasn't financially able to help her much but managed to buy her a "clunker" of a car which she later slept in before getting housing Ah… So… If you had a place to live couldn’t you let her live in that same place too, instead of her being homeless? My parents lost their jobs due to covid, and even though they treated me bad when I was a kid I still let them in my house. How can you…

I live on the West coast, my Mom lives back East. I can't add another tenant in my apartment and even if I could, my Mom didn't want to upend "her life" to move to a place she has no history, roots, or connections.

She wanted to be near her sisters, of whom she wouldn't accept any help. She is proud and maybe too proud in that regard that she'd rather suffer in silence and not let anyone know. I helped pay her bills for a decade before she became homeless, at that time nobody else, my brothers for instance, offered her any assistance.

Additionally she wouldn't tell family about her situation and wouldn't allow me to. A few years ago I broke down on a phone call with her sister (my aunt) and explained everything. My mom didn't talk to me for a while as a result, saying her situation "wasn't anyone else's business!". But my aunt said she'd help, she said "I could give her $500, but that's all". I had been giving her $500+ per month for years by this point.

There are other complexities that were involved. But I understand your point.

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

#826
post #673
post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I don't ever mind public transport. I have used public transport in multiple areas of the planet. There are two quips: 1. You have to be there in someone else's time. You can't have 5 or 10 or 30 minutes if something comes up. 2. What you say. I don't want to rub my body with people who are wearing dirty clothes, smell, and has god-knows-what liquid on their clothes who might choose to cough without using th…

Do you avoid elevators?

There's security at the gates- much before the elevators.

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

#827
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This can’t be a real, thought out, response. I’m living in Florida. I will agree with you that rent-seeking and increasingly abusive landlords are a huge problem here. However, the largest drivers of pricing out retirees in my anecdotal observations is uncontrolled healthcare, insurance, and food costs. The electric companies have also increased their rates and been allowed to add insane flat infrastructure recovery…

Not disagreeing with your observations, but I'd like to add property taxes, and most specifically, the portion used to support public schools, to your list. Excluding the past year, this is where I've seen the greatest increases in my expenses. And since it's government creating most of this, it's hard to imagine that there's any relief to be found by looking towards government for a solution.

>And since it's government creating most of this, it's hard to imagine that there's any relief to be found by looking towards government for a solution.

Maybe not the government you're electing.

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

#828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> has always been underfunded to make it look bad. I Yes, the "secret capitalists hiding in the woodpile" theory of why communism sucks. You, of course, are immune to the other side's propaganda, and your own brain is a perfect simulator of the real world so you've run mental experiments that prove to you irrefutably how awesome it would be. If only other people paid for it for you. > That's why it happens, outside o…

> Yes, the "secret capitalists hiding in the woodpile" theory of why communism sucks. As I specified in my previous post, I was talking about public housing in the US. > This is shit throughout all of western civilization. Go check out Ireland, or any place in Europe right now. It's shit everywhere. The poster child counterpoint is Austria, proving it's possible. Hard to do? Mostly on a political front. Anyway, I apo…

I've met Austria, and, trust me [America], you're no Austria.

The other day, this happened: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/portland-area-mom-gets-...

That doesn't happen in Austria.

That happens in https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pe4d6aPhbHo

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

#829

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compound interest shouldn't be the primary factor in rejecting a four to five digit loan when you have low or zero income.

> four to five digit loan Bro, when did you last look at the cost of college, the 70s? I went to a community college and then transferred to a state college that was also in my town, so I didn't have to pay absurd dorm expenses. I worked 30-35 hours a week while going to college. I still came out with ~$45K in loan debt. And you're proposing even the possibility of a four-digit loan? > when you have low or zero incom…

I think a four digit loan is already on the high end when one also needs to get a car, find a place to live and to rent, with no savings. You arguing that it is consistently much higher makes my case against taking loans stronger, not weaker.

>Have you missed the part where adults are lying to children and telling them that the high salary their degree will earn them will pay for the loan?

Lying to teenagers who should, at some point, use their own judgment. You signed a paper for the loans, yes? Were you able to calculate that it would equal 45K or more of debt? How did you, yourself, think that you would manage to climb out of that debt with a job that you did not have, and would only have a chance of getting four years after graduating?

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

#830
As a senior citizen who just retired, something the article didn't say enough about was bad spending while still employed. MANY of my former co-workers who are still working refuse to control their gambling, credit card levels, buying new vehicles and homes, multiple divorces. Several of them had the courage to ask me how I could afford to retire! I told them, politely, that I practiced not spending money, but saving it in my 401K.

I'm not saying my fellow boomers are all doing this with their money while working, this is just my experience with those I know.

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