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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

#901

Post by escapedmoose »

mywittyname wrote: post #674
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We know it’s from zoning laws because a few places don’t have this problem > “We have kept our rent increases to about 1% whereas the rest of the country was looking at 31%,” Mayor Jacob Frey said on Monday, citing data from The Pew Charitable Trusts. > “That’s a drastic difference. And in part, it’s due to the policies that we’ve passed.” > It’s mostly simple supply and demand, according to Mayor Frey. An explosion…

This kind of zoning also builds desireable neighborhoods. The neighborhood I live in has six-ten unit apartments on the same streets as six-to-ten bedroom mansions. In some places, you can see where the owner of the mansion had an apartment building constructed in their front yard. I could never imagine this happening today. Yet everyone in the region knows of this neighborhood as being prestigious, with the best sch…

This sounds a lot like my neighborhood. The zoning is very mixed and the outcome is great. It’s now a highly desirable area.

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

#903

Post by npteljes »

hedora wrote: post #509
incahoots wrote: post #365

Ah yes, apathy my old friend. We can recognize the various problems that got us here, but when it comes to resolving them, well that’s simply a bridge too far. Take note: we absolutely have the resources to defeat homelessness and hunger, it’s just not a profitable model.

I think building a post-scarcity society would be incredibly profitable, so then the question is why we're not just doing that. This is from last week's outro of a fantasy fiction podcast I enjoy. It says it better than I ever could: Musings on art being the seat of the soul feel particularly timely in this, the year of our generative-AI pyramid schemes. I doubt I am alone among this audience in feeling like the only…

I'd wager it's because shorter-term, more local maximums are easier to achieve, and are also profitable. So basically because of greed. More charitably, because how people's resources like attention, ability to care etc are finite, and because the kind of high organization it would require to achieve such a goal.

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

#904

Post by npteljes »

Exoristos wrote: post #728
hotpotamus wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't we supposed to be incredibly productive compared to a century ago? "We" (not me) certainly have more megayachts and private jets traversing the Earth than we did. You'd think we could afford some housing to go around, but I'm far from naive enough to believe that we'll solve this or any problem facing us at this point.

It's perfectly possible to solve all society's problems. We simply lack the political will and moral fortitude.

We must lack something else too. And I'm not saying this ironically. So far, no utopias succeeded, and that must be for valid reasons.

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

#905

Post by escapedmoose »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #602
unethical_ban wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The point is that the problem of mega corps is greatly overstated, and isn't really the root of the problem anyway. They are just an easy scapegoat. Take them away and private "mom & pop" land lords quickly fill the void, and usually are much more stringent about who they will rent to and what they think a fair rent is.

While I agree the mom and pop landlords also pose a problem, they don’t have the capital to outbid new buyers by tens of thousands, or to leverage dozens of existing properties. Bidding against them is not a perpetual David vs. Goliath battle.

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

#906

Post by frozenport »

mholm wrote: post #685
frozenport wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

SF problems

This is not just SF problems. These problems are _everywhere_ in the US, with just a reduction in other major hubs where transit is effective for the middle class.

There are threshold effects. Going down into the bart tunnels is a decent into human misery, but in Chicago feel much safer because don't see people loitering.

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

#907

Post by beretguy »

silenced_trope wrote: post #825
beretguy wrote: post #281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Hey, I apologies. I didn’t mean to come off rude. I was naive with my understanding of the situation. I agree, life, people, pride, emotions, etc. - it’s all complicated. I wish things will get better for y’all.

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

#908

Post by mym1990 »

araes wrote: post #888
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…

My thought on this, is that a lot of humans plan like they're playing a game they expect to end tomorrow. The wealth stuff feels like people don't want to spend money, because they're afraid they'll fall off the leader board. In a Game Theory sense, that means always choose "backstab", cause "cooperate" might never pan out. There's also a lot of selfish, and "I want to win" or "I want my sport team to win", and I don…

It won’t ever be so black and white. Certainly some cultures place less emphasis on the future, but western culture definitely revolves around long term goals of building a family/retiring, etc…

I think a lot of people are choosing not to have kids mainly for 2 reasons: it is getting extremely expensive to raise a child, and the uncertainty of the next 20-40 years makes people hesitant to put their kids into that environment.

Social and economic welfare is not a zero sum game, I don’t need to ruin the lives of all of my competitors in order to win, that would actually be disastrous.

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

#909

Post by kuschku »

mcntsh wrote: post #891
kuschku wrote: post #839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not an american, I actually live in Germany. And as long as you rent instead of buying hohsing affordability is okay in most cities, and in those where it isn't the transit network is good enough that you can easily commute without an expensive car.

Yeah I also live in Germany and housing affordability is much much worse than in the USA. The ratio of the median income to the median housing cost is significantly worse: https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_count... Renting in the US also is very cheap outside of cities. You can rent in New Jersey and take the train into NYC, or rent in Vallejo and take the train into San Francisco. Over all the i…

> The ratio of the median income to the median housing cost is significantly worse

You're again quoting income vs the price to buy property. You're arguing against a strawman with that.

The argument is about the cost to rent, combined with the monetary and opportunity cost of commuting associated with that.

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

#910

Post by jjav »

BytesAndGears wrote: post #454
ryandrake wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What specific government policy is causing developers to only build $2k+/mo rentals? You can't just vaguely say "government" is at fault without connecting the dots. This seems more like the market's fault. If homes in a particular area are going for $2k/mo, then that's what they are going for. If this is the government's fault, are you proposing price controls?

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…

> if we suddenly built a million “luxury” apartments in each major city

How would you realistically "suddenly" build a million apartments? Is there enough labor in the country to do that? Enough land in each major city? A million is a lot. Some ddging suggests San Francisco has about ~400K housing units, is adding a million realistic? Let alone suddenly?

> there would be a bit of competition for tenants

But no builder will build apartments that might have to be rented at a loss if the bidding war takes prices too low.

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