The housing is usually the primary problem. Change zoning to allow building, cost of housing declines. Give the poor money, they can rent what is out there. Most of the problem is then solved.
Housing, Homelessness and Poverty
- Thread starter Bonyduck Campersang
- Start date
The housing is usually the primary problem. Change zoning to allow building, cost of housing declines. Give the poor money, they can rent what is out there. Most of the problem is then solved.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Housing prices are a big reason now. There are people who work 40 hours a week and live in their car 'cause they can't afford anywhere to live.
And good luck if you're on disability or a pension.
And good luck if you're on disability or a pension.
How much residential land is needed for 1500 housing units? You can't to build houses for poor people where there is no good [public] transportation or easy access to jobs, shopping and schools.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Tiny Homes and Apartment buildings. And stop selling off low income apartment buildings to developers who kick out all the tenants, renovate all the apartments and rent them out for like $2000+ a month.
And build more low income apartment buildings, everyone seemed to stop doing that in the 80's.
And build more low income apartment buildings, everyone seemed to stop doing that in the 80's.
Cities in the US rarely own apartment buildings. A tiny homes project in Albuquerque took more than two years and IIFC has maybe 2 dozen homes.
Broken_Erika
Play with me.
Also, another major problem is a lack of starter homes, companies that build new housing want the biggest most expensive houses 'cause they have the highest profit margins.
If you don't have a home you don't have an address to even register for job searches and chances are you won't have a telephone so you're uncontactable. So yes, homelessness worsens all of the other elements in a crisis situation. Ergo, giving people a home rather than a cage is a good start.
If you don't have a car or public transportation, you cannot get to a job.
If you don't have childcare a single mon cannot work.
If you have low skills or poor education you cannot even get a job.
If you are drug addicted, you are unlikely to keep you job, if you get one.
If you are seriously mentally ill, well that can suck big time.
If you get a job that earns too much, the cliff effects will cut off all one's social benefits.
etc.
How many small business owners or mall shopping center owners are going to foot the bill for expanding their buildings to house the homeless?
Synobun
Deity
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2006
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- 24,896
Should that be the goal? Not everyone is capable of that. And everyone is susceptible to becoming incapable at any given moment. It seems more logical and compassionate to consider housing to be a fundamental right and not something that has to be clawed after through grit and sweat and tears. Contrary to capitalist and hierarchal authority theory, existence does not require passing a deserve-o-meter test based on bootstraps and productivity.
You mention that building homes is neither easy nor cheap, but this is a problem by design and not, like, something inherent to the concept. Especially in North America, zoning is an atrocity intentionally designed to be heinous and car dependent. Not to mention the fact that housing is treated as an investment in the economy and not an investment in people.
Sure, there are other problems. But the single biggest one is housing cost. Which requires building, you know, housing. And that requires allowing housing to be built. Zoning, and zoning alone, is the most important factor in excessive housing costs.
Housing is important but it is also the slowest and most expensive path to help those in poverty. While waiting for new homes, there is lots of other important things to be done. There are at least two housing issues. One is homes for the homeless living on the street and the other is affordable homes for those who are working and want to move out of apartments and into their first home. Solving both at the same time is unlikely. Which should take priority?
sophie
Break My Heart
American boomers don’t be sadistically hateful towards the poor and marginalized challenge (difficulty impossible)
The MAGA half of the boomers have been and will continue to be.
You are assuming there is something "out there" that is affordable.
I have to laugh at people who complain that they're paying 1/3 of their monthly income on rent/mortgage. About 75% of my monthly income goes to rent and utilities. And that's with my negotiating with the leasing agent and telecom. You know what I had to do to knock $50 off the monthly rent when I moved into the place I'm in now?
I don't have a stove. The manager kept extolling the virtues of the new appliances in this suite when I had to move from my old one (plumbing issues in the kitchen, no insulation that meant freezing for two winters, and the final straw was a flood from the upstairs neighbors). He told me the new appliances meant the rent would go up $50. He also insisted that they were going to remove the carpeting and put in tile, and new blinds and remove the ceiling fan.
I told him that I could do without the stove but would keep the fridge (essential, off course, and I do my cooking with a microwave). I insisted on keeping the ceiling fan, and a damn good thing, too. It made all the difference in whether or not I could sleep during the heat dome we had in the summer of 2021. He kept bleating about "aesthetics" but I told him that for me it was a matter of survival. We're not allowed to have air conditioners here. I insisted on keeping the old blinds because they're more adjustable than the new ones. He kept yapping about "the next tenant." I don't give a crap about "the next tenant." If they keep me happy, they won't need to worry about "the next tenant".
He kept protesting about the stove, saying that I HAVE to have one, in case "head office" does an inspection. They would be Very Upset to discover I don't have one. I told them that I would tell them the exact reasons why I don't have one: I couldn't afford the extra $50/month for the "new appliances". By letting them take that stove away (thus providing me with a few more square feet of storage in the kitchen), keeping the old blinds, keeping carpet in 3 of the rooms (the noise level in carpetless suites in this building is atrocious), and keeping the ceiling fan, they didn't jack up the rent. And the funny thing about the stove is that a couple of weeks after they took the stove out of here, another tenant complained that her stove wasn't working. Good thing they had a spare to give her - the one I gave up.
Or at least until last fall. They gave a small incentive, and due to some new policy with the parking space I don't use but they want me to let other tenants use (I told them that since I don't have a car and no longer share the space with another tenant, if they want to use it for someone else they should give me the equivalent off my rent that would normally be charged for an extra parking space), they increased the incentive by that much. So instead of the rent going up by $100, it went up by $50. That had to be made up from somewhere, and the only flexible part of the budget was food and transportation.
Where do you imagine all this "retail and office space" is going to come from, in areas where the living units would be needed, at an affordable price? For example, most of the stores in the downtown in my city are empty. At least a third of the stores in the local mall are empty. We have a premier who would rather pick fights with Justin Trudeau and shut down renewable energy jobs for ideological reasons than do anything practical to help the non-wealthy here.
Calgary is trying something with living space in office buildings. Since so many are empty now and the homeless situation is dire, they're converting some office buildings to apartments. Of course I rather doubt it's the homeless who will get to live there. And in any case, prospective tenants have pointed out that even if people move into those places, what are they actually going to do there, outside of working hours?
As for my own situation, apartments that are accessible for mobility-disabled people don't grow on trees. I looked around last year for somewhere cheaper, and found something that would have been $200/month less than what I'm paying now. The problem is that there's no elevator in the building. I can't do stairs anymore. It's a shame, since that place was downtown, within walking distance of some of the places I go, and most importantly it was within walking distance of a grocery store. That's something I don't currently have. But no elevator means it might as well be on the Moon.
Moderator Action: Split from Rants thread.
GoodEnoughForMe
n.m.s.s.
There are a lot of enormously difficult topics and respective solutions in politics, but the housing crisis is not one of them. More housing = less homelessness. End of discussion. To wit, San Francisco has 5 times the per capita homeless rate that Detroit has, even though the poverty rates are 10.4% and 31.5%, respectively, because Detroit has way more and way cheaper housing.
We have a shortage of 4 million to 8 million houses depending on the source you use (I firmly believe the higher numbers are closer). It means landlords are empowered, prices can keep climbing, and people have to live far away from city jobs and do more child mangling driving. It’s crushing the entire desire of 35 and unders to participate in politics or believe in this country as a worthwhile institution. The longer this goes, the more Americans will ratchet up the already unbelievable cruelty we inflict on those without housing, and the more younger people will turn to completely justified rage.
We have a shortage of 4 million to 8 million houses depending on the source you use (I firmly believe the higher numbers are closer). It means landlords are empowered, prices can keep climbing, and people have to live far away from city jobs and do more child mangling driving. It’s crushing the entire desire of 35 and unders to participate in politics or believe in this country as a worthwhile institution. The longer this goes, the more Americans will ratchet up the already unbelievable cruelty we inflict on those without housing, and the more younger people will turn to completely justified rage.
A giant mystery.
China's 1.4 billion population can't fill the country's millions of empty homes. Here are 3 things that would.
China's empty homes, based on experts' high estimates of vacant houses, could house nearly 10 times the population of the US.
www.businessinsider.com
Hmm, a different kind of problem.
More inexpensive housing. Building more $300,000 to $700,000 homes does nothing for the folks who are impoverished. Housing and homelessness can only be solved at the local level, even if federal dollars are involved. Land, infrastructure, zoning, access to transportation and NIMBY are all involved in the local politics and budgets. In China the governments own and control all the land so they can offer developers the opportunity to build hundreds of 30-40 story towers. In the US governments own parks and recreation areas. Albuquerque needs 1500 homes. On the north and south the city is walled off by Indian reservations; on the east, mountains. On the west is the Rio Grande with too few bridges across. The city has been growing west for decades but the west side is mostly a bedroom community. Within the city limits there are only infill projects. What is left is building up. Hi rise residential will not come easy.
