4 ms·

> I suspect the organizations promoting the concept of Missing Middle housing aren't for bringing back SROs. Because they're a bad idea, that had terrible cons

> I suspect the organizations promoting the concept of Missing Middle housing aren't for bringing back SROs. Because they're a bad idea, that had terrible consequences, and most reasonable people have vowed never to repeat that mistake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenement It's not like building real housing costs that much more. Trying to downgrade housing to make it cheaper is by scrimping 50sqft here, or a bathroom over there, is like the textbook definition of "penny wise, pound foolish". --- Housing is expensive because land is monopolized, hyper-overinvested, and carries zero risk because of government-guaranteed bailouts. Housing in cities is expensive for the same reasons, plus the inherently higher costs of higher density in construction. Housing is not expensive because an apartment is required to have running water, a functional toilet, and enough floorspace for a mattress. That's just simply not the issue.

DoreenMichele 7y ago
That argument boils down to "I'd rather let poor people be homeless than allow less than middle class housing to exist at all." I spent nearly six years homeless. I got off the street by moving into an SRO. An SRO with access to electricity, heat, bathroom facilities etc beats the hell out of living in a tent, peeing in the bushes and living in fear of being rounded up by the police for being too poor for my existence to be legal. I'm working on resolving my personal problems and raising my income. I still struggle to make ends meet every single month. I'm not a drug addict and I don't have a mental health diagnosis. I do have two special needs sons who still live with me and I'm medically handicapped. If you really want to outlaw poverty, you basically need to start applying the death sentence to anyone who has intractable personal problems, no matter the cause. Beat up by your husband and no place else to go but a shelter? Oh, death penalty for you. Gave birth to a child with an expensive genetic disorder? The baby needs to die so you can keep being a productive member of society. Etc. I don't think that works so well, personally. Our current system does a poor job of helping people find their way back to a middle class life once things go wrong somewhere and, so far, no one is quite yet proposing the death penalty for such problems. Which means people barred from having minimal housing become an increasing drag on the system because they have no immediate way out of their predicament. That's not intended as hyperbole: The average life expectancy in the homeless population is estimated between 42 and 52 years, compared to 78 years in the general population. https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/health.html https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/health.html Our housing policies are killing people, just more slowly and with more plausible deniability than putting a bullet through their brain. And some do get murdered simply for being homeless. Four homeless individuals were murdered in their sleep in New York recently and three years ago someone was setting tents on fire in San Diego. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-crime/man-accused-in-fatal-beatings-of-four-homeless-people-in-new-yorks-chinatown-idUSKCN1WK0CR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-crime/man-accuse... https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-diego-police-looking-for-person-of-interest-in-string-of-homeless-murders https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-diego-police-looking-for-pers...
- maxsilver 7y ago
  > That argument boils down to "I'd rather let poor people be homeless than allow less than middle class housing to exist at all." No, it really doesn't. My argument boils down to "poisoned/expired milk is never worth it, even if it would help reduce the price of milk". > I spent nearly six years homeless. I got off the street by moving into an SRO. I'm glad you found something that's better than nothing. I totally get how an SRO helped you out, and that you want to maintain that step for others. That's a good and admirable thing. But this is not an argument for SROs. It's an argument for more real apartments. If you had not managed to land an SRO, but had instead found a coleman tent, and it had helped you out, should we provide free camping tents to the homeless? That's not a solution, it's a band-aid. SROs are obviously much much nicer than this, but ultimately are just a much nicer band-aid. --- We don't need to create "shittier" housing to get homeless people off the street. We don't need to revert back to tenements. The solution to homelessness is housing -- real housing -- the kind that meets all relevant local regulations. We can do this just as easily as SROs, for nearly the same price, there's zero reason not to build real housing for everyone. Including those with low income. Including those with no income. --- If your complaint is that no one is doing this housing (or not doing it properly), then I agree with you 100%. I personally believe housing is a fundamental human right, and that the government should be compelled to provide free housing to all citizens, automatically, by right of law. It should be systematically impossible for any citizen to ever be "homeless". (In the same way that's systematically impossible for a child to be "uneducated", since a public K-12 education is guaranteed for free to all citizens. In the same way that it's systemically impossible for almost any citizen to be "emergency-less", anyone can call 911 almost anywhere in the US, and be automatically connected to local emergency services, even if their cell phone isn't paid up, even if their provider is roaming, even if they borrowed it from a friend, even if they have no income at all, and so on)
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove... Missing Middle housing is being widely advocated for. It is also, to use your phrasing, "shittier housing." It is smaller and more dense. Part of why we have such a big problem is because housing standards have steadily crept upwards for decades. In the 1950s, the average new home was about 1200 sqft and housed about 3.5 people. Today, the average new home is over 2400 sqft and houses about 2.5 people. Our housing standards have gotten ridiculously inflated such that only rich people can afford them. The solution is absolutely to start setting some more reasonable standards for basic housing such that we stop actively pushing people out into the street. Research by Zillow Group Inc. last year found that a 5 percent increase in rents in L.A. translates into about 2,000 more homeless people, among the highest correlations in the U.S. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the city was $2,371 in September, up 43 percent from 2010. Similarly, consultant McKinsey & Co. recently concluded that the runup in housing costs was 96 percent correlated with Seattle’s soaring homeless population. Even skeptics have come around to accepting the relationship. “I argued for a long time that the homelessness issue wasn’t due to rents,” says Joel Singer, chief executive officer of the California Association of Realtors. “I can’t argue that anymore.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homel... I'm not saying "Let's go back to grass huts with dirt floors and no plumbing." I'm saying that renting a room was a perfectly normal thing at one time and wasn't considered to be "slum" housing. It was fairly normal for young people from even wealthy families. This tradition lives on and is preserved in the form of college dorm rooms and military barracks. These are typically intended for people in their late teens to early twenties who are unmarried and childless. In both cases, it is normal for them to eat at a dining hall of some sort as a routine thing. We cannot solve our current housing crisis by arguing that housing is a basic right and then setting such high standards that we can't afford it as a society. I have six years of college. I have an incurable medical condition. I occasionally get a bit of money out of compassion from people who don't know me well, but charity is not enough to resolve my problems. I'm not suggesting we need SROs everywhere. But I'm hardly the only person recognizing that we need to lower our crazy high standards somewhere. If I were, YIMBY would not be a movement and there wouldn't be resources promoting the idea of Missing Middle housing. Our housing standards were shaped by the events surrounding the end of WW2 and American housing caters to an idea that a home designed for a nuclear family is the only acceptable housing. Meanwhile, people are delaying marriage, delaying having kids, having fewer kids, living longer after the kids grow up and move out, etc. We have more families with three or fewer members than we had at the end of WW2 and we don't design housing for their needs. When I got divorced and my husband physically moved out, my sons and I had to start storing sodas in the fridge because the fridge was too large for our needs and if we didn't find some way to fill it up, milk would spoil. I lived in Germany for a few years. Entire families have fridges the size of what are mostly found in college dorms in the US. You don't absolutely need a 20 cubic foot fridge to serve the needs of a household, but that's what we get, whether it works for us or not. And in Japan, it's weird to have an oven. Americans who buy homes in Japan typically have to add an oven because that's just not standard over there. But they cook plenty and eat well and have world famous cuisine that has inspired restaurants and restaurant chains around the world.
javagram 7y ago
SRO housing is still available in college dorms, where even well-off families send their kids and are happy to have them live in those conditions for a couple years. As long as they are code-compliant with regard to fire protection (sprinklers) and emergency egress, might as well make them legal. Let the market decide if the lower rent vs a small studio apartment with in-unit bath and stove is worth it. (I suspect in most cases, people would prefer to team up via craigslist or facebook and share a multi-bedroom apartment or townhouse rather than live the dorm life though. But PodShare seems to be getting customers...)
pjlegato 7y ago
SRO does not necessarily imply squalor; middle and upper class SROs used to be common until they were zoned out of existence in the mid 20th century: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49p0wf&brand=ucpress https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...

DoreenMichele 7y ago

That argument boils down to "I'd rather let poor people be homeless than allow less than middle class housing to exist at all." I spent nearly six years homeless. I got off the street by moving into an SRO. An SRO with access to electricity, heat, bathroom facilities etc beats the hell out of living in a tent, peeing in the bushes and living in fear of being rounded up by the police for being too poor for my existence to be legal. I'm working on resolving my personal problems and raising my income. I still struggle to make ends meet every single month. I'm not a drug addict and I don't have a mental health diagnosis. I do have two special needs sons who still live with me and I'm medically handicapped. If you really want to outlaw poverty, you basically need to start applying the death sentence to anyone who has intractable personal problems, no matter the cause. Beat up by your husband and no place else to go but a shelter? Oh, death penalty for you. Gave birth to a child with an expensive genetic disorder? The baby needs to die so you can keep being a productive member of society. Etc. I don't think that works so well, personally. Our current system does a poor job of helping people find their way back to a middle class life once things go wrong somewhere and, so far, no one is quite yet proposing the death penalty for such problems. Which means people barred from having minimal housing become an increasing drag on the system because they have no immediate way out of their predicament. That's not intended as hyperbole: The average life expectancy in the homeless population is estimated between 42 and 52 years, compared to 78 years in the general population. https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/health.html https://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/health.html Our housing policies are killing people, just more slowly and with more plausible deniability than putting a bullet through their brain. And some do get murdered simply for being homeless. Four homeless individuals were murdered in their sleep in New York recently and three years ago someone was setting tents on fire in San Diego. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-crime/man-accused-in-fatal-beatings-of-four-homeless-people-in-new-yorks-chinatown-idUSKCN1WK0CR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-new-york-crime/man-accuse... https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-diego-police-looking-for-person-of-interest-in-string-of-homeless-murders https://www.foxnews.com/us/san-diego-police-looking-for-pers...

maxsilver 7y ago
> That argument boils down to "I'd rather let poor people be homeless than allow less than middle class housing to exist at all." No, it really doesn't. My argument boils down to "poisoned/expired milk is never worth it, even if it would help reduce the price of milk". > I spent nearly six years homeless. I got off the street by moving into an SRO. I'm glad you found something that's better than nothing. I totally get how an SRO helped you out, and that you want to maintain that step for others. That's a good and admirable thing. But this is not an argument for SROs. It's an argument for more real apartments. If you had not managed to land an SRO, but had instead found a coleman tent, and it had helped you out, should we provide free camping tents to the homeless? That's not a solution, it's a band-aid. SROs are obviously much much nicer than this, but ultimately are just a much nicer band-aid. --- We don't need to create "shittier" housing to get homeless people off the street. We don't need to revert back to tenements. The solution to homelessness is housing -- real housing -- the kind that meets all relevant local regulations. We can do this just as easily as SROs, for nearly the same price, there's zero reason not to build real housing for everyone. Including those with low income. Including those with no income. --- If your complaint is that no one is doing this housing (or not doing it properly), then I agree with you 100%. I personally believe housing is a fundamental human right, and that the government should be compelled to provide free housing to all citizens, automatically, by right of law. It should be systematically impossible for any citizen to ever be "homeless". (In the same way that's systematically impossible for a child to be "uneducated", since a public K-12 education is guaranteed for free to all citizens. In the same way that it's systemically impossible for almost any citizen to be "emergency-less", anyone can call 911 almost anywhere in the US, and be automatically connected to local emergency services, even if their cell phone isn't paid up, even if their provider is roaming, even if they borrowed it from a friend, even if they have no income at all, and so on)
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  For every 100 families living in poverty on the West Coast, there are no more than 30 affordable homes https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-poverty-west-coast-no-30-affordable-homes/ https://www.geekwire.com/2018/every-100-families-living-pove... Missing Middle housing is being widely advocated for. It is also, to use your phrasing, "shittier housing." It is smaller and more dense. Part of why we have such a big problem is because housing standards have steadily crept upwards for decades. In the 1950s, the average new home was about 1200 sqft and housed about 3.5 people. Today, the average new home is over 2400 sqft and houses about 2.5 people. Our housing standards have gotten ridiculously inflated such that only rich people can afford them. The solution is absolutely to start setting some more reasonable standards for basic housing such that we stop actively pushing people out into the street. Research by Zillow Group Inc. last year found that a 5 percent increase in rents in L.A. translates into about 2,000 more homeless people, among the highest correlations in the U.S. The median rent for a one-bedroom in the city was $2,371 in September, up 43 percent from 2010. Similarly, consultant McKinsey & Co. recently concluded that the runup in housing costs was 96 percent correlated with Seattle’s soaring homeless population. Even skeptics have come around to accepting the relationship. “I argued for a long time that the homelessness issue wasn’t due to rents,” says Joel Singer, chief executive officer of the California Association of Realtors. “I can’t argue that anymore.” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homel... I'm not saying "Let's go back to grass huts with dirt floors and no plumbing." I'm saying that renting a room was a perfectly normal thing at one time and wasn't considered to be "slum" housing. It was fairly normal for young people from even wealthy families. This tradition lives on and is preserved in the form of college dorm rooms and military barracks. These are typically intended for people in their late teens to early twenties who are unmarried and childless. In both cases, it is normal for them to eat at a dining hall of some sort as a routine thing. We cannot solve our current housing crisis by arguing that housing is a basic right and then setting such high standards that we can't afford it as a society. I have six years of college. I have an incurable medical condition. I occasionally get a bit of money out of compassion from people who don't know me well, but charity is not enough to resolve my problems. I'm not suggesting we need SROs everywhere. But I'm hardly the only person recognizing that we need to lower our crazy high standards somewhere. If I were, YIMBY would not be a movement and there wouldn't be resources promoting the idea of Missing Middle housing. Our housing standards were shaped by the events surrounding the end of WW2 and American housing caters to an idea that a home designed for a nuclear family is the only acceptable housing. Meanwhile, people are delaying marriage, delaying having kids, having fewer kids, living longer after the kids grow up and move out, etc. We have more families with three or fewer members than we had at the end of WW2 and we don't design housing for their needs. When I got divorced and my husband physically moved out, my sons and I had to start storing sodas in the fridge because the fridge was too large for our needs and if we didn't find some way to fill it up, milk would spoil. I lived in Germany for a few years. Entire families have fridges the size of what are mostly found in college dorms in the US. You don't absolutely need a 20 cubic foot fridge to serve the needs of a household, but that's what we get, whether it works for us or not. And in Japan, it's weird to have an oven. Americans who buy homes in Japan typically have to add an oven because that's just not standard over there. But they cook plenty and eat well and have world famous cuisine that has inspired restaurants and restaurant chains around the world.

javagram 7y ago

SRO housing is still available in college dorms, where even well-off families send their kids and are happy to have them live in those conditions for a couple years. As long as they are code-compliant with regard to fire protection (sprinklers) and emergency egress, might as well make them legal. Let the market decide if the lower rent vs a small studio apartment with in-unit bath and stove is worth it. (I suspect in most cases, people would prefer to team up via craigslist or facebook and share a multi-bedroom apartment or townhouse rather than live the dorm life though. But PodShare seems to be getting customers...)

pjlegato 7y ago

SRO does not necessarily imply squalor; middle and upper class SROs used to be common until they were zoned out of existence in the mid 20th century: https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49p0wf&brand=ucpress https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...