5 ms·

There is a really huge shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US. Public housing is generally pretty crappy and in short supply to boot. Having studie

by Mz 9y ago

There is a really huge shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US. Public housing is generally pretty crappy and in short supply to boot. Having studied the problem in an actual college class and also spent the last 5.5 years on the street: It's complicated. But we need more solutions for people and fewer aimed at poor people specifically. Programs to help the poor are routinely craptastic. Affordable housing and single payer medical coverage would go a long way towards reducing the problem.

hueving 9y ago
>There is a really huge shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US. Public housing is generally pretty crappy and in short supply to boot. This is disingenuous, the housing shortages are all in the highly desirable locations like the SFO, LAX, NYC, etc. There is no housing shortage in the vast majority of the country (look at Detroit). It's completely unsustainable to try to support a model where anyone should be able to live in whatever city they choose for an extremely low cost.
- thebooktocome 9y ago
  Follow this line of thought long enough, and you get to a hukou system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system
  - EGreg 9y ago
    Is that good or bad? Listen, I support single payer systems, but how do they figure out how much to pay in each region? Same question for UBI. I have come to believe that UBI and all other safety nets have to come with immigration requirements. Not just everyone is going to be accepted to live among rich billionaires without concern for running out of money. And so on in every neighborhood. Thus, UBI needs for each area needs to be tied in with community membership, and be based on the Consumer Price Index in that area. Communities can open themselves up to more people from time to time.
    - wbl 9y ago
      California makes adding new housing illegal.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      I have enough faith in the American people that we would never permit the end of freedom of movement. For one thing, it would take a Constitutional amendment to legalize internal border controls. For another, geographical mobility has been core to American identity since the earliest days of the country. You're talking about locking the Okies in the Dust Bowl. Locking the autoworkers in Detroit even after the auto industry dried up. Preventing the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the more hospitable Northern states. Deepening inequality by locking in the regional disparities that perpetuate it. This is insane, dystopic (literally, geographically-based caste systems feature in dystopian fiction with some regularity, for example the Hunger Games and Elysium), un-Constitutional, and un-American. If internal border controls ever became law, I'd be the first to sign up for the resistance in the resultant civil war.
      - EGreg 9y ago
        Whoa whoa, who's talking about ending freedom of movement? To be clear we are talking about being eligible to receive free money from whichever local area agrees to issue it to you.
        paganel 9y ago
        > we are talking about being eligible to receive free money from whichever local area agrees to issue it to you. This looks pretty similar to the English Poor Laws, which in the end proved to be quite despotic. It started like this, at the end of the 15h century: > In 1495, Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act ordering that "vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." (taken from the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws) but it turned out that that made people dependent on their "original" parishes and that the other parishes/towns would not want any of them on their streets, thus impeding the free movement of people across England. There were other major ills caused by this law (this subject also has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_English_Poor_Laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_English_Poor...), I for myself first learned of its bad effects (and of the bad effects that similar laws can cause) by reading some Bentham.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Mz 9y ago
  Disengenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. synonyms: insincere · dishonest · untruthful · false · deceitful · duplicitous · lying · mendacious · hypocritical That is a personal attack. The shortage of affordable housing is very much real. It is not something I am making up. And, yes, every American city should have housing that single people with entry level jobs can afford without an hour long commute or three roommates. We did historically. We tore a lot of it down in the 60s and 70s when it wasn't really needed, then never rebuilt it when the need for such came back, in essence.
mobilefriendly 9y ago
We have Single Payer for the poor and near-poor (Medicaid covers 1 in 5 Americans) and the U.S. government spends a couple hundred billion dollars a year on housing subsidies (directly and through the tax code and through subsidies in the mortgage market). Most federal public housing is privately administered through public vouchers to landlords and non-profits.
- Mz 9y ago
  Since the demand for housing assistance often exceeds the limited resources available to HUD and the local housing agencies, long waiting periods are common. In fact, a PHA may close its waiting list when it has more families on the list than can be assisted in the near future. https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choice_voucher_program_section_8 https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_cho...
  - njarboe 9y ago
    Having government benefits available to some people but not others, who are in the same circumstance, seems immoral and very prone to corruption. If someone qualifies for housing assistance and gets it, then moves out of that situation, and if they need it again it might not be available. This is a system that discourages a person from getting off of assistance (dependence).
EGreg 9y ago
Yes but costs vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. How do you determine how much to pay the doctors and who gets to live where? Obviously not every homeless can move into Beverly Hills tomorrow.
FuriouslyAdrift 9y ago
There are tons of Section 8 apartments in my city. While I work my butt off trying to make my rent and have leaky faucets and 50 yr old single pane windows, the section 8 across the street has new windows, min splits, and granite counter tops... The landlord gets garaunteed income, huge waiting list of tenants, can VERY easily have them evicted for violations and actually get MORE than market rate brcause the govt pays better for the section 8. It's driving up rents and drug related crime has already increased. I'm currently looking at moving out of the city core and into a suburb.
- Mz 9y ago
  To be clear, I am not for more Section 8 housing. I am for market based solutions. In the 60s and 70s, we tore down around 80% of the SROs we had because the Baby Boomers came from an unprecedentedly well off, large middle class and did not need minimal housing of that sort. Boarding houses used to also be common. Now, most housing is designed with a nuclear family in mind and our default expectation is that single adults should get one or more roommates to make such housing work for them. There is far too little market based housing aimed at singletons and childless couples. Meanwhile, our demographics have changed and we have drastically more singletons, childless couples or single parents, drastically fewer nuclear families. I want market based solutions, not more government interference of this sort. There are good things done by the government, but most programs to help the poor only entrench poverty and the problems that lead to it.
  - gamechangr 9y ago
    > "I want market based solutions". What would that look like? I assume it's not profitable for builders...or else there wouldn't be a problem? If it were, they would build them everywhere.
    - Mz 9y ago
      My comment was written 13 days ago. I have since gotten off the street with a market based solution. I am in an SRO. Historically, we had a lot more SROs and boarding houses than we do currently. Up to 80% of SROs were torn down in the 60s and 70s when they weren't needed by Baby Boomers, who were a demographic anomaly. As demographics returned to something more normal, we never rebuilt them. They are less profitable than other land uses. This is not the same as being unprofitable. In California, residential prices are skewed by protectionist government measures. Dismantling the government interference that pushes housing costs up in the state would very likely reduce the need for government vouchers et al for the poor. I left California to find someplace I could afford.

by Mz 9y ago

hueving 9y ago

>There is a really huge shortage of genuinely affordable housing in the US. Public housing is generally pretty crappy and in short supply to boot. This is disingenuous, the housing shortages are all in the highly desirable locations like the SFO, LAX, NYC, etc. There is no housing shortage in the vast majority of the country (look at Detroit). It's completely unsustainable to try to support a model where anyone should be able to live in whatever city they choose for an extremely low cost.

thebooktocome 9y ago
Follow this line of thought long enough, and you get to a hukou system. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hukou_system
- EGreg 9y ago
  Is that good or bad? Listen, I support single payer systems, but how do they figure out how much to pay in each region? Same question for UBI. I have come to believe that UBI and all other safety nets have to come with immigration requirements. Not just everyone is going to be accepted to live among rich billionaires without concern for running out of money. And so on in every neighborhood. Thus, UBI needs for each area needs to be tied in with community membership, and be based on the Consumer Price Index in that area. Communities can open themselves up to more people from time to time.
  - wbl 9y ago
    California makes adding new housing illegal.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    I have enough faith in the American people that we would never permit the end of freedom of movement. For one thing, it would take a Constitutional amendment to legalize internal border controls. For another, geographical mobility has been core to American identity since the earliest days of the country. You're talking about locking the Okies in the Dust Bowl. Locking the autoworkers in Detroit even after the auto industry dried up. Preventing the Great Migration of Southern blacks to the more hospitable Northern states. Deepening inequality by locking in the regional disparities that perpetuate it. This is insane, dystopic (literally, geographically-based caste systems feature in dystopian fiction with some regularity, for example the Hunger Games and Elysium), un-Constitutional, and un-American. If internal border controls ever became law, I'd be the first to sign up for the resistance in the resultant civil war.
    - EGreg 9y ago
      Whoa whoa, who's talking about ending freedom of movement? To be clear we are talking about being eligible to receive free money from whichever local area agrees to issue it to you.
      - paganel 9y ago
        > we are talking about being eligible to receive free money from whichever local area agrees to issue it to you. This looks pretty similar to the English Poor Laws, which in the end proved to be quite despotic. It started like this, at the end of the 15h century: > In 1495, Parliament passed the Vagabonds and Beggars Act ordering that "vagabonds, idle and suspected persons shall be set in the stocks for three days and three nights and have none other sustenance but bread and water and then shall be put out of Town. Every beggar suitable to work shall resort to the Hundred where he last dwelled, is best known, or was born and there remain upon the pain aforesaid." (taken from the wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Poor_Laws) but it turned out that that made people dependent on their "original" parishes and that the other parishes/towns would not want any of them on their streets, thus impeding the free movement of people across England. There were other major ills caused by this law (this subject also has its own wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_English_Poor_Laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_the_English_Poor...), I for myself first learned of its bad effects (and of the bad effects that similar laws can cause) by reading some Bentham.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Mz 9y ago
Disengenuous: not candid or sincere, typically by pretending that one knows less about something than one really does. synonyms: insincere · dishonest · untruthful · false · deceitful · duplicitous · lying · mendacious · hypocritical That is a personal attack. The shortage of affordable housing is very much real. It is not something I am making up. And, yes, every American city should have housing that single people with entry level jobs can afford without an hour long commute or three roommates. We did historically. We tore a lot of it down in the 60s and 70s when it wasn't really needed, then never rebuilt it when the need for such came back, in essence.

mobilefriendly 9y ago

We have Single Payer for the poor and near-poor (Medicaid covers 1 in 5 Americans) and the U.S. government spends a couple hundred billion dollars a year on housing subsidies (directly and through the tax code and through subsidies in the mortgage market). Most federal public housing is privately administered through public vouchers to landlords and non-profits.

Mz 9y ago
Since the demand for housing assistance often exceeds the limited resources available to HUD and the local housing agencies, long waiting periods are common. In fact, a PHA may close its waiting list when it has more families on the list than can be assisted in the near future. https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_choice_voucher_program_section_8 https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/topics/housing_cho...
- njarboe 9y ago
  Having government benefits available to some people but not others, who are in the same circumstance, seems immoral and very prone to corruption. If someone qualifies for housing assistance and gets it, then moves out of that situation, and if they need it again it might not be available. This is a system that discourages a person from getting off of assistance (dependence).

EGreg 9y ago

Yes but costs vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. How do you determine how much to pay the doctors and who gets to live where? Obviously not every homeless can move into Beverly Hills tomorrow.

FuriouslyAdrift 9y ago

There are tons of Section 8 apartments in my city. While I work my butt off trying to make my rent and have leaky faucets and 50 yr old single pane windows, the section 8 across the street has new windows, min splits, and granite counter tops... The landlord gets garaunteed income, huge waiting list of tenants, can VERY easily have them evicted for violations and actually get MORE than market rate brcause the govt pays better for the section 8. It's driving up rents and drug related crime has already increased. I'm currently looking at moving out of the city core and into a suburb.

Mz 9y ago
To be clear, I am not for more Section 8 housing. I am for market based solutions. In the 60s and 70s, we tore down around 80% of the SROs we had because the Baby Boomers came from an unprecedentedly well off, large middle class and did not need minimal housing of that sort. Boarding houses used to also be common. Now, most housing is designed with a nuclear family in mind and our default expectation is that single adults should get one or more roommates to make such housing work for them. There is far too little market based housing aimed at singletons and childless couples. Meanwhile, our demographics have changed and we have drastically more singletons, childless couples or single parents, drastically fewer nuclear families. I want market based solutions, not more government interference of this sort. There are good things done by the government, but most programs to help the poor only entrench poverty and the problems that lead to it.
- gamechangr 9y ago
  > "I want market based solutions". What would that look like? I assume it's not profitable for builders...or else there wouldn't be a problem? If it were, they would build them everywhere.
  - Mz 9y ago
    My comment was written 13 days ago. I have since gotten off the street with a market based solution. I am in an SRO. Historically, we had a lot more SROs and boarding houses than we do currently. Up to 80% of SROs were torn down in the 60s and 70s when they weren't needed by Baby Boomers, who were a demographic anomaly. As demographics returned to something more normal, we never rebuilt them. They are less profitable than other land uses. This is not the same as being unprofitable. In California, residential prices are skewed by protectionist government measures. Dismantling the government interference that pushes housing costs up in the state would very likely reduce the need for government vouchers et al for the poor. I left California to find someplace I could afford.