9 ms·

Homeless explosion on West Coast pushing cities to the brink

36 points by mgdo 9y ago

Boothroid 9y ago
Perhaps a little inland from the coast, but I was in Palm Springs 10 years ago, and then again this year and was struck by what seemed like a general deterioration in the town, as well as the number of homeless people - I don't remember seeing a single homeless person on my first trip. Very sad to see. These intertwined economic/social problems seem to be the most difficult to solve, or is it just lack of willingness to do something about it by elites or society as a whole? An idea that has crossed my mind before is: how expensive would it be to provide the homeless the very bare minimum of survival i.e. food, shelter, most basic healthcare, even free alcohol? Why don't we just accept that some people are going to fall through the cracks and save ourselves the delusion that we are going to be able to get them off drugs/reintroduce them to employment etc., and take care of their needs in the simplest and cheapest way possible? The current economy is pretty good at casting aside those it deems economically worthless. Is it really so tricky to just accept this and pay to look after them?
- cwal37 9y ago
  You're not alone in thinking that. It works[1], and it's cheaper than the current revolving door of policies and support systems. The problem seems to be that people have a strong negative reaction to "undeserving others" getting things "for free". [1] https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...
  - Fauntleroy 9y ago
    It's sickening to me that most US citizens seem to prefer watching people die on the street than give them things they "do not deserve".
    - User23 9y ago
      I have good news for you. US citizens don't actually like watching people die on the street, not even the ones on the right.
      - geogra4 9y ago
        Right, they close their doors and avert their gaze
        ShabbosGoy 9y ago
        That's very easy to say on your very comfortable chair.
      - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
        Arguments on both sides here are about what people "like to do" - with hyperbole in both directions. But the fundamental problem is with what people actually do - and given the scale of the problem, and apparent lack of solution, it doesn't seem unfair to say that not enough is being done. Quite a large chunk of the non-homeless population in the US is living in a relatively precarious situation[1], which leaves them both practically unable to help and presumably also afraid of ending up on the street themselves. Hence it's not unreasonable to expect the response to come from governments, like Utah's did. 1: https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-paycheck-away-from-the-street-2015-01-07 https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-...
    - geogra4 9y ago
      bourgeois ideology is contagious, sadly.
      - dredmorbius 9y ago
        And why?
    - sliverstorm 9y ago
      Well, it is important to avoid creating a culture of dependence. We've seen how that can backfire on us in Africa. So it's not totally irrational.
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    I always thought that experiment was in some senses actually kind of damning. On the one hand it's a success, 91% reduction in chronic homelessness, that's good. On the other hand, how was it not a 100% reduction!? I think it really does validate some of the reservations & criticisms. 9% of the homeless population remained homeless even when everything was provided. That is striking.
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    Me included - which is why I would provide the bare minimum, and would provide it directly as services rather than dish out benefits for people to spend in the economy. One of the most depressing things on TV here in the UK is a genre of poor people documentary porn which show benefits recipients who commonly have a Sky TV subscription, massive flat screens TVs, latest consoles and phones, plenty of money for ciggies and booze etc, and that appear deeply averse to work but are not so averse to intellectual effort that they aren't able to understand the intricate details of the benefits system necessary to keep their benefits flowing in. Unfortunately I think the only way to discourage this dependency culture is to make working aspirational - and how do we do that? Attitude change yes, but I would argue also making life on benefits less attractive, whilst still remaining humane.
- glibgil 9y ago
  This is the idea behind basic income. Basic income eschews the oversight of traditional welfare programs so people are free to spend their money on food and drugs with less pressure to pick one over the other
  - nnfy 9y ago
    Right, the solution is to give addicts more money to buy drugs. I suppose that'll solve the problem when they inevitably OD and we can stop wasting our money on them. I'm not speaking from an ivory tower either, like many UBI supporters seem to do. I grew up with friends who were addicts. Ive known people who died of overdose. Plenty of kids are more than happy to throw away their lives smoking weed and shooting up, especially if they're getting their shit for free. For the record, I support responsible drug use. But UBI is not the answer for the problems in our society, because it will hurt many if not most of the people it should protect.
    - Boothroid 9y ago
      I don't see why we couldn't directly provide pure pharmaceutical grade narcotics to addicts for them to consume in safety, as part of a compulsory programme to attempt to cure the addiction. Eventually I hope we will come up with a drug to reset the brain, but in the meantime I wish we could have an outbreak of maturity and recognise and treat the addiction in a sensible way, rather than contiuining with the obviously failed war on drugs and all the bad things that flow from it. Imagine if we destroyed a massive part of global organised crime's income at stroke.
      - logfromblammo 9y ago
        > a drug to reset the brain Ibogaine. The US classifies all hallucinogens and psychedelics at Schedule I, so obviously no researcher that values their academic career can study the use of psychedelics for the purpose of curing addiction. But anecdotal reports suggest that a heroin addict may be cured of opioid addiction by using kratom to alleviate the physical symptoms of withdrawal, and ibogaine to "reset the brain" to no longer desire heroin. Politically, people would prefer to believe that rehab centers actually work. Using illegal drugs classified as "the worst, most dangerous drugs in existence" to cure addictions to other illegal drugs with a lesser classification may be perceived as... a bit hypocritical.
- mcbruiser4 9y ago
  wouldn't it be more humane to try and treat their mental illness than enabling their homelessness?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  Is it really so tricky to just accept this and pay to look after them? People don't want to do that. But one day we may be able to effectively make the argument that we are paying to look after them one way or the other, and we are currently looking after them with the most expensive possible resources, e.g. first responders, penitentiary, etc. If the argument can be made effectively I think we can get there, but that's the key. You can get people to vote against their ethics & beliefs, but only if you really prove to them that even if it's counterintuitive, you're saving them money.
RingwormOne 9y ago
This is not a result of prohibitive housing prices or anything like that. Through my work in the homeless community I've seen and heard first hand that chronic homelessness is almost always a result of mental illness and/or drug use. Those two problems have always existed, but opiate abuse is much worse now than it has ever been. Of course there are sad cases of people unable to find jobs who are otherwise 'normal', but these cases are in the minority. Many people unable to find jobs or hold down jobs beyond the most menial sort have mental illness that prevents them from doing so.
- ufo 9y ago
  The article has a quote that says exactly the opposite, btw. > “Most homeless people I know aren’t homeless because they’re addicts,” said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. “Most people are homeless because they can’t afford a place to live.”
  - SilasX 9y ago
    That is extremely implausible. What fraction of them would be able to put together the $1000/month (in the scenario of extreme home buildout)? It's only true in the trivial, unhelpful sense of "if we got housing costs down to $10/month or free, then all the people there could afford a place." But when we talk about housing costs in general and policy around it, we mean something like getting rents down from $3000/month to $1000/month (from vast expansion of building), not some artificial number that no amount of expansion would (scalably) get. And I don't think you can really take one homeless person living at an encampment, making a self-serving statement, as a source.
    - cucuuc 9y ago
      Did you read the article? Do you have grad school experience? An $1800 grad stipend will help you understand the difference a few hundred bucks make.
      - SilasX 9y ago
dredmorbius 9y ago
Duplicate (same AP source) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15642394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15642394
mmoche 9y ago
Why don't we build public housing in the US anymore?
- smashingfiasco 9y ago
  It's complicated and treacherous. http://www.pruitt-igoe.com http://www.pruitt-igoe.com
  - mmoche 9y ago
    I understand that it's difficult to do correctly, but it has been done correctly in the past, on a few occasions (e.g. the scattered-site developments in Yonkers, NY). It just seems like we've completely given up, and I'm not sure if that's something that has been politically ordained or if we just aren't interested in trying again.
- logfromblammo 9y ago
  Because as it turns out, the way public housing was being built concentrated all the poverty in the city into a tiny area, which drew the predators out of the woodwork, drove away investment, and made the housing development nigh-unlivable. Additionally, the architecture has often been hostile to the residents, and the city neglected maintenance. The best way to build public housing would be to make it a part of the gentrification process. Build where the revenue from property taxes is increasing, and in proportion to the development for more affluent housing. Some municipalities get a lame approximation to this by requiring that developers build housing for poor people in exchange for regulatory variances, but it just isn't the same. But the short explanation is that the US is overwhelmingly run by rich people, and the rich people in the US hate to see poor people get something at or below cost without them sweating on it first, because they believe that welfare dollars are overwhelmingly coming out of their pockets, and they earned them by their hard work. They may be delusional, but they still get elected to fill the public offices.
  - ihsw2 9y ago
    Rich property owners (or those looking to become rich from high-value property) would counter with concerns about their property value being destroyed, but personally I am satisfied with this as it is an indirect means of progressive taxation. Wrenching the general populace above bottom-barrel poverty was done on the back of twentieth-century prosperity (ie: progressive taxation) but there is no such progressive taxation scheme for property tax (ie: property taxes are exceedingly complicated and many deductions are available). It is only prudent that other (new and exotic) means of wealth redistribution are attempted.
PatientTrades 9y ago
This is the result of population growth. Even if housing is built specifically for poorer and lower income individuals, middle class families looking for housing will inevitably trickle in causing demand and prices to rise naturally. Once again poor individuals will be on the street. The same cycle keeps occurring in cities across America. Properties designed for the poor end up getting bought by middle and upper class individuals, seen this in Washington D.C. and New york firsthand. Other than full blown capping prices that can be charged for rent, I don't see a long term solution.
- rukittenme 9y ago
  Weird how New York City housed millions of poor immigrants at the turn of the century but we can't support natural population growth and urbanization today.
  - nnfy 9y ago
    Weird how you haven't considered population density, or housing safety regulations, or the state of the economy, or the average productivity of immigrants looking for a better life at the turn of the century compared to the homeless in modern cities... Almost as if comparing NYC 100 years ago to modern Seattle is total nonsense.
  - PatientTrades 9y ago
    > Weird how New York City housed millions of poor immigrants at the turn of the century Are you really comparing housing standards for the poor today vs 100 years ago? Unless your solution is to throw all poor people in filthy slums like its 1902 I don't see the point of your comment.
    - rukittenme 9y ago
      Better to let them live on the street then?
- lend000 9y ago
  I made a similar point on a different article about housing prices in Seattle, and just like you, I was down-voted into oblivion for apparently challenging whatever preconceived notions people have. Yes, the root problem is population growth. Yes, any organism will continue to reproduce until the population size is constrained by sufficient 'poverty.' The difference is that we are running out of land / unable to keep up with building shelters, rather than running out of food as was common for the rest of history. Does this mean there are not solutions we should try to enact? E.g. less restrictive zoning? No, of course we should be fighting the problem and realizing there are things we can do in the short term. But, until we get into space and are able to create resources/shelter at an exponential rate faster than potential population explosion, this is not a problem that one "solves" -- only delays/pacifies.
aorloff 9y ago
The cost of housing cannot go below the cost of servicing the debt required to construct the housing, otherwise that capital will flow elsewhere to find returns and no housing will be built. Realistic solutions will focus on ways to lower the cost to bring units to market and finding new low-cost sources of capital to fund it.
- busterarm 9y ago
  Is that a bad thing? Maybe we should be increasing the efficiency of the existing housing inventory. Second homes, timeshares, empty neighborhoods (...Las Vegas...), AirBNB properties show pretty clearly that there's an excess, or at least strange market incentives.
- eggpy 9y ago
  That's not entirely true. LA had a semi-successful program to build housing that ultimately decreased the cost of _other_ expenses like shelters and jail. The program ran into problems for exactly the reason you stated, even though it was a net _reduction_ in social service expense for the people in the trial. So basically the equation is (cost of building housing per person) - (charged rent) + (mental health/ other support) <= (prison + hospital + shelter + existing homeless support services) Although that's coming from memory and I can't source it...
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  The cost is driven by land value. Increased financing increases demand, increases land value (price). Reducing financing, or a land value (Georgian) tax should address both points.
User23 9y ago
It might have something to do with this chart: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/926781/thumbs/s-COLLEGE-TEXTBOOKS-PRICES-480x360.jpg?6 http://i.huffpost.com/gen/926781/thumbs/s-COLLEGE-TEXTBOOKS-... (not just textbooks). Remember of course that median incomes have been almost exactly flat over the same interval.
- xadhominemx 9y ago
  Not really seeing it, to be honest http://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/real-estate/8978-california-association-of-realtors-release-4th-quarter-2016-housing-affordability-report-higher-wages-and-seasonal-price-declines-hold-california-housing-affordability-in-check http://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/real-estate/...
- m777z 9y ago
  US median income from 1984 to 2016, adjusted for inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
  - dredmorbius 9y ago
    Against C-S median housing price (seasonally adjusted): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N#0 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N#0
indubitable 9y ago
Something I find amazingly prescient here is Past Tense [1]. Past Tense is an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. It was filmed going on 25 years ago - in 1993. It told a story of increasing disparity eventually culminating in "Sanctuary Districts" starting in the early 2020s as a means of providing 'sanctuary' for the unemployed, mentally ill, and those otherwise unable to make it in society -- and the dystopia that followed. Everything down to the timeline and location (the story focused on San Francisco) is again just quite prescient. It's just a story, but one to keep in mind when deciding how to try to deal with problems like this. The ideas of Sanctuary Cities are incredibly appealing, and it's for that reason that I think we're highly likely to play out this story to its natural conclusion. It offers no alternative, and it's entirely possible that there is none. But it's certainly a thought provoking episode tying together all the issues we're facing today, while considering how good intentions can go very wrong. [1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/star-trek-deep-space-nine-past-tense/542280/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/st... (the episode itself is far more on point than this article - and is only provided for those who cannot access the episode)
dredmorbius 9y ago
I find Google's Ngram viewer a useful tool for getting a sense of the emergence of issues and trends. Here, "homelessness", "homeless crisis", and "housing crisis". Emerging during the 1980s. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homelessness%2C+homeless+crisis%2C+housing+crisis&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chomelessness%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chomeless%20crisis%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chousing%20crisis%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homelessness%2...

36 points by mgdo 9y ago

Perhaps a little inland from the coast, but I was in Palm Springs 10 years ago, and then again this year and was struck by what seemed like a general deterioration in the town, as well as the number of homeless people - I don't remember seeing a single homeless person on my first trip. Very sad to see. These intertwined economic/social problems seem to be the most difficult to solve, or is it just lack of willingness to do something about it by elites or society as a whole? An idea that has crossed my mind before is: how expensive would it be to provide the homeless the very bare minimum of survival i.e. food, shelter, most basic healthcare, even free alcohol? Why don't we just accept that some people are going to fall through the cracks and save ourselves the delusion that we are going to be able to get them off drugs/reintroduce them to employment etc., and take care of their needs in the simplest and cheapest way possible? The current economy is pretty good at casting aside those it deems economically worthless. Is it really so tricky to just accept this and pay to look after them?

cwal37 9y ago
You're not alone in thinking that. It works[1], and it's cheaper than the current revolving door of policies and support systems. The problem seems to be that people have a strong negative reaction to "undeserving others" getting things "for free". [1] https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chronic-homelessness-by-91-percent-heres-how https://www.npr.org/2015/12/10/459100751/utah-reduced-chroni...
- Fauntleroy 9y ago
  It's sickening to me that most US citizens seem to prefer watching people die on the street than give them things they "do not deserve".
  - User23 9y ago
    I have good news for you. US citizens don't actually like watching people die on the street, not even the ones on the right.
    - geogra4 9y ago
      Right, they close their doors and avert their gaze
      - ShabbosGoy 9y ago
        That's very easy to say on your very comfortable chair.
    - blacksmith_tb 9y ago
      Arguments on both sides here are about what people "like to do" - with hyperbole in both directions. But the fundamental problem is with what people actually do - and given the scale of the problem, and apparent lack of solution, it doesn't seem unfair to say that not enough is being done. Quite a large chunk of the non-homeless population in the US is living in a relatively precarious situation[1], which leaves them both practically unable to help and presumably also afraid of ending up on the street themselves. Hence it's not unreasonable to expect the response to come from governments, like Utah's did. 1: https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-paycheck-away-from-the-street-2015-01-07 https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/most-americans-are-one-...
  - geogra4 9y ago
    bourgeois ideology is contagious, sadly.
    - dredmorbius 9y ago
      And why?
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    Well, it is important to avoid creating a culture of dependence. We've seen how that can backfire on us in Africa. So it's not totally irrational.
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  I always thought that experiment was in some senses actually kind of damning. On the one hand it's a success, 91% reduction in chronic homelessness, that's good. On the other hand, how was it not a 100% reduction!? I think it really does validate some of the reservations & criticisms. 9% of the homeless population remained homeless even when everything was provided. That is striking.
- Boothroid 9y ago
  Me included - which is why I would provide the bare minimum, and would provide it directly as services rather than dish out benefits for people to spend in the economy. One of the most depressing things on TV here in the UK is a genre of poor people documentary porn which show benefits recipients who commonly have a Sky TV subscription, massive flat screens TVs, latest consoles and phones, plenty of money for ciggies and booze etc, and that appear deeply averse to work but are not so averse to intellectual effort that they aren't able to understand the intricate details of the benefits system necessary to keep their benefits flowing in. Unfortunately I think the only way to discourage this dependency culture is to make working aspirational - and how do we do that? Attitude change yes, but I would argue also making life on benefits less attractive, whilst still remaining humane.
glibgil 9y ago
This is the idea behind basic income. Basic income eschews the oversight of traditional welfare programs so people are free to spend their money on food and drugs with less pressure to pick one over the other
- nnfy 9y ago
  Right, the solution is to give addicts more money to buy drugs. I suppose that'll solve the problem when they inevitably OD and we can stop wasting our money on them. I'm not speaking from an ivory tower either, like many UBI supporters seem to do. I grew up with friends who were addicts. Ive known people who died of overdose. Plenty of kids are more than happy to throw away their lives smoking weed and shooting up, especially if they're getting their shit for free. For the record, I support responsible drug use. But UBI is not the answer for the problems in our society, because it will hurt many if not most of the people it should protect.
  - Boothroid 9y ago
    I don't see why we couldn't directly provide pure pharmaceutical grade narcotics to addicts for them to consume in safety, as part of a compulsory programme to attempt to cure the addiction. Eventually I hope we will come up with a drug to reset the brain, but in the meantime I wish we could have an outbreak of maturity and recognise and treat the addiction in a sensible way, rather than contiuining with the obviously failed war on drugs and all the bad things that flow from it. Imagine if we destroyed a massive part of global organised crime's income at stroke.
    - logfromblammo 9y ago
      > a drug to reset the brain Ibogaine. The US classifies all hallucinogens and psychedelics at Schedule I, so obviously no researcher that values their academic career can study the use of psychedelics for the purpose of curing addiction. But anecdotal reports suggest that a heroin addict may be cured of opioid addiction by using kratom to alleviate the physical symptoms of withdrawal, and ibogaine to "reset the brain" to no longer desire heroin. Politically, people would prefer to believe that rehab centers actually work. Using illegal drugs classified as "the worst, most dangerous drugs in existence" to cure addictions to other illegal drugs with a lesser classification may be perceived as... a bit hypocritical.
mcbruiser4 9y ago
wouldn't it be more humane to try and treat their mental illness than enabling their homelessness?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sliverstorm 9y ago
Is it really so tricky to just accept this and pay to look after them? People don't want to do that. But one day we may be able to effectively make the argument that we are paying to look after them one way or the other, and we are currently looking after them with the most expensive possible resources, e.g. first responders, penitentiary, etc. If the argument can be made effectively I think we can get there, but that's the key. You can get people to vote against their ethics & beliefs, but only if you really prove to them that even if it's counterintuitive, you're saving them money.

RingwormOne 9y ago

This is not a result of prohibitive housing prices or anything like that. Through my work in the homeless community I've seen and heard first hand that chronic homelessness is almost always a result of mental illness and/or drug use. Those two problems have always existed, but opiate abuse is much worse now than it has ever been. Of course there are sad cases of people unable to find jobs who are otherwise 'normal', but these cases are in the minority. Many people unable to find jobs or hold down jobs beyond the most menial sort have mental illness that prevents them from doing so.

ufo 9y ago
The article has a quote that says exactly the opposite, btw. > “Most homeless people I know aren’t homeless because they’re addicts,” said Tammy Stephen, 54, who lives at a homeless encampment in Seattle. “Most people are homeless because they can’t afford a place to live.”
- SilasX 9y ago
  That is extremely implausible. What fraction of them would be able to put together the $1000/month (in the scenario of extreme home buildout)? It's only true in the trivial, unhelpful sense of "if we got housing costs down to $10/month or free, then all the people there could afford a place." But when we talk about housing costs in general and policy around it, we mean something like getting rents down from $3000/month to $1000/month (from vast expansion of building), not some artificial number that no amount of expansion would (scalably) get. And I don't think you can really take one homeless person living at an encampment, making a self-serving statement, as a source.
  - cucuuc 9y ago
    Did you read the article? Do you have grad school experience? An $1800 grad stipend will help you understand the difference a few hundred bucks make.
    - SilasX 9y ago

dredmorbius 9y ago

Duplicate (same AP source) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15642394 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15642394

mmoche 9y ago

Why don't we build public housing in the US anymore?

smashingfiasco 9y ago
It's complicated and treacherous. http://www.pruitt-igoe.com http://www.pruitt-igoe.com
- mmoche 9y ago
  I understand that it's difficult to do correctly, but it has been done correctly in the past, on a few occasions (e.g. the scattered-site developments in Yonkers, NY). It just seems like we've completely given up, and I'm not sure if that's something that has been politically ordained or if we just aren't interested in trying again.
logfromblammo 9y ago
Because as it turns out, the way public housing was being built concentrated all the poverty in the city into a tiny area, which drew the predators out of the woodwork, drove away investment, and made the housing development nigh-unlivable. Additionally, the architecture has often been hostile to the residents, and the city neglected maintenance. The best way to build public housing would be to make it a part of the gentrification process. Build where the revenue from property taxes is increasing, and in proportion to the development for more affluent housing. Some municipalities get a lame approximation to this by requiring that developers build housing for poor people in exchange for regulatory variances, but it just isn't the same. But the short explanation is that the US is overwhelmingly run by rich people, and the rich people in the US hate to see poor people get something at or below cost without them sweating on it first, because they believe that welfare dollars are overwhelmingly coming out of their pockets, and they earned them by their hard work. They may be delusional, but they still get elected to fill the public offices.
- ihsw2 9y ago
  Rich property owners (or those looking to become rich from high-value property) would counter with concerns about their property value being destroyed, but personally I am satisfied with this as it is an indirect means of progressive taxation. Wrenching the general populace above bottom-barrel poverty was done on the back of twentieth-century prosperity (ie: progressive taxation) but there is no such progressive taxation scheme for property tax (ie: property taxes are exceedingly complicated and many deductions are available). It is only prudent that other (new and exotic) means of wealth redistribution are attempted.

PatientTrades 9y ago

This is the result of population growth. Even if housing is built specifically for poorer and lower income individuals, middle class families looking for housing will inevitably trickle in causing demand and prices to rise naturally. Once again poor individuals will be on the street. The same cycle keeps occurring in cities across America. Properties designed for the poor end up getting bought by middle and upper class individuals, seen this in Washington D.C. and New york firsthand. Other than full blown capping prices that can be charged for rent, I don't see a long term solution.

rukittenme 9y ago
Weird how New York City housed millions of poor immigrants at the turn of the century but we can't support natural population growth and urbanization today.
- nnfy 9y ago
  Weird how you haven't considered population density, or housing safety regulations, or the state of the economy, or the average productivity of immigrants looking for a better life at the turn of the century compared to the homeless in modern cities... Almost as if comparing NYC 100 years ago to modern Seattle is total nonsense.
- PatientTrades 9y ago
  > Weird how New York City housed millions of poor immigrants at the turn of the century Are you really comparing housing standards for the poor today vs 100 years ago? Unless your solution is to throw all poor people in filthy slums like its 1902 I don't see the point of your comment.
  - rukittenme 9y ago
    Better to let them live on the street then?
lend000 9y ago
I made a similar point on a different article about housing prices in Seattle, and just like you, I was down-voted into oblivion for apparently challenging whatever preconceived notions people have. Yes, the root problem is population growth. Yes, any organism will continue to reproduce until the population size is constrained by sufficient 'poverty.' The difference is that we are running out of land / unable to keep up with building shelters, rather than running out of food as was common for the rest of history. Does this mean there are not solutions we should try to enact? E.g. less restrictive zoning? No, of course we should be fighting the problem and realizing there are things we can do in the short term. But, until we get into space and are able to create resources/shelter at an exponential rate faster than potential population explosion, this is not a problem that one "solves" -- only delays/pacifies.

aorloff 9y ago

The cost of housing cannot go below the cost of servicing the debt required to construct the housing, otherwise that capital will flow elsewhere to find returns and no housing will be built. Realistic solutions will focus on ways to lower the cost to bring units to market and finding new low-cost sources of capital to fund it.

busterarm 9y ago
Is that a bad thing? Maybe we should be increasing the efficiency of the existing housing inventory. Second homes, timeshares, empty neighborhoods (...Las Vegas...), AirBNB properties show pretty clearly that there's an excess, or at least strange market incentives.
eggpy 9y ago
That's not entirely true. LA had a semi-successful program to build housing that ultimately decreased the cost of _other_ expenses like shelters and jail. The program ran into problems for exactly the reason you stated, even though it was a net _reduction_ in social service expense for the people in the trial. So basically the equation is (cost of building housing per person) - (charged rent) + (mental health/ other support) <= (prison + hospital + shelter + existing homeless support services) Although that's coming from memory and I can't source it...
dredmorbius 9y ago
The cost is driven by land value. Increased financing increases demand, increases land value (price). Reducing financing, or a land value (Georgian) tax should address both points.

User23 9y ago

It might have something to do with this chart: http://i.huffpost.com/gen/926781/thumbs/s-COLLEGE-TEXTBOOKS-PRICES-480x360.jpg?6 http://i.huffpost.com/gen/926781/thumbs/s-COLLEGE-TEXTBOOKS-... (not just textbooks). Remember of course that median incomes have been almost exactly flat over the same interval.

xadhominemx 9y ago
Not really seeing it, to be honest http://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/real-estate/8978-california-association-of-realtors-release-4th-quarter-2016-housing-affordability-report-higher-wages-and-seasonal-price-declines-hold-california-housing-affordability-in-check http://goldrushcam.com/sierrasuntimes/index.php/real-estate/...
m777z 9y ago
US median income from 1984 to 2016, adjusted for inflation: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N
- dredmorbius 9y ago
  Against C-S median housing price (seasonally adjusted): https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N#0 https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEHOINUSA672N#0

indubitable 9y ago

Something I find amazingly prescient here is Past Tense [1]. Past Tense is an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9. It was filmed going on 25 years ago - in 1993. It told a story of increasing disparity eventually culminating in "Sanctuary Districts" starting in the early 2020s as a means of providing 'sanctuary' for the unemployed, mentally ill, and those otherwise unable to make it in society -- and the dystopia that followed. Everything down to the timeline and location (the story focused on San Francisco) is again just quite prescient. It's just a story, but one to keep in mind when deciding how to try to deal with problems like this. The ideas of Sanctuary Cities are incredibly appealing, and it's for that reason that I think we're highly likely to play out this story to its natural conclusion. It offers no alternative, and it's entirely possible that there is none. But it's certainly a thought provoking episode tying together all the issues we're facing today, while considering how good intentions can go very wrong. [1] - https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/star-trek-deep-space-nine-past-tense/542280/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/10/st... (the episode itself is far more on point than this article - and is only provided for those who cannot access the episode)

dredmorbius 9y ago

I find Google's Ngram viewer a useful tool for getting a sense of the emergence of issues and trends. Here, "homelessness", "homeless crisis", and "housing crisis". Emerging during the 1980s. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homelessness%2C+homeless+crisis%2C+housing+crisis&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Chomelessness%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chomeless%20crisis%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Chousing%20crisis%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=homelessness%2...