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

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

#851

Post by mym1990 »

RationPhantoms wrote: post #736
mym1990 wrote: post #633

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like it should just be "Humans are and have always been characterized by their failure to plan for the future". All of history is just a rise and fall of empires due to unforeseen or unexpected consequences, followed by an advance in technology. Who are you to say that gen X or any other generation will correctly plan for the future(as we currently navigate some of the biggest hurdles to humanity and the Earth…

Thank you for adding rationality to this argument. The whole notion that "boomers" are some unnatural microcosm of what humans have been doing for thousands of years is laughable. I always ask my fellow millennials, what are you doing to avoid having our grandchildren call us a selective cohort of do-nothings & non-tree/shade planters?

I agree. Finger pointing is easy, and for a short time, might even feel good. But it does nothing to solve the problems of today. The main questions to ask are: "how can I learn from the past?" and "what can I do to help the future?"

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

#852

Post by rmk »

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.

> Anyone who buys a house wants to use it as a nest egg. Its not just a baby boomer thing.

This is a recent phenomenon, and it is not universal at all. The boomers are the first generation not to protect pensions but instead gut them, and also to simultaneously use their houses as ATMs which HELOCs and such, which exploded in the boomers' heyday, the mid-late 80s. Almost every large institution and measure that supports the rampant inflation of house prices and keeps their values afloat came into its own with the explicit encouragement and effort of the boomers.

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

#853

Post by rendang »

giantrobot wrote: post #552
alexb_ wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone in the article was forced out of her home because her landlord suddenly raised her rent by $500. That shouldn't be legal. Rent gets raised by $500 because someone else would actually pay that much. Rent control is the ultimate "I got mine" - it rewards people who got in early while making it impossible for anyone else to have housing. The reason rent could go up that much is because supply is so artificiall…

> Rent control is the ultimate "I got mine" - it rewards people who got in early while making it impossible for anyone else to have housing. Where the fuck is the priced out person supposed to go? They need to uproot their life because a wealthier person came along?

You don't have some special right to keep living in the same neighborhood just because you were there first

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

#854

Post by demondemidi »

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…

A lot of portland's problems stem from a century of institutional racism.

Do you know why single-family zoning was driven so hard for so long? It keeps out undesirables. The consequences of that policy go very deep, from preventing new development to driving up values of existing properties. Both of which are terrible for affordable housing.

The shockwaves of Portland's past are still reverberating. I'm glad they finally passed laws to allow infill and rezoning, although all the boomers are squawking like crows around roadkill.

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

#855

Post by anthonypasq »

somewhereoutth wrote: post #842
anthonypasq wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah thats because the building was centrally planned, which is always a worse choice than just allowing the market to work itself out. It doesnt detract from the mind numbingly obvious statement that increasing supply decreases prices.

> mind numbingly obvious statement that increasing supply decreases prices Only in idealised markets. Housing markets are often not like that.

can you explain how and when this wasnt the case barring regulatory interference?

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

#856

Post by demondemidi »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #419
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...

West Virginia didn’t outlaw new housing like Portland did. American cities largely rejected supply and demand over the last decades, as land-owning interests found alliance, variously, with renting incumbents and the economically naive. Charleston didn’t make better policy than Salem; it simply didn’t pass the bad ones.

Portland recently passed legislation to allow infill of 2- and 4-plexes. There is new construction (corporate and residential) going up everywhere. Your agenda is showing.

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

#857

Post by cscurmudgeon »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #683
cornercasechase wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s a dishonest comparison. Skipping fare not same as a drug addled person hassling commuters.

[flagged]

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

#858

Post by xg15 »

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…

Why do you suddenly need so much additional housing in the first place? Was there an earthquake I missed? Or a sudden population explosion?

And which regulations are you talking about specifically?

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

#859

Post by advisedwang »

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.

If we do that:

* Corporations would only ever hire there for cheap labor, if they hire there at all. Now these people are never going to escape poverty.

* The state would raise little tax revenue, and it will be easy for other states to reduce funding (and thus offering their own voters tax cuts). So no services there could be funded.

* The people there would be moved away from any remaining support network they do have. Again, this worsens poverty but also seriously hurts mental health.

* Why would the doctors, nurses, case workers, engineers, tradespeople and other non-homeless people your plan depends on move to a place being filled with the worst conditions and inevitably starved of funding?

* Likely many homeless people would not voluntarily join this program, so you're also going to require criminalizing vagrancy and forced relocation. This is a huge violation of their rights.

There's a reason homeless people aren't moving to West Virginia on their own.

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

#860

Post by jlmorton »

titzer wrote: post #334
invalidOrTaken wrote: post #217

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 weir…

> Why are those companies willing to pay so much? Because they are buying assets with debt just like everyone else, and they don't actually care about ROI via rents, either due to "appreciation" (really, further inflation), or they're expecting the financial system to collapse.

Blackrock doesn't care about the ROI of their housing investments, and they expect the financial system to collapse? Damn. Big if true.
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