4 ms·

This seems like a troll question, so apologies, but is it really an affordability thing? What's the average income (public assistance and otherwise) of a homel

by jcims 7y ago

This seems like a troll question, so apologies, but is it really an affordability thing? What's the average income (public assistance and otherwise) of a homeless person in Seattle? I live in podunk Ohio and a single bedroom apartment is still ~$650 per month. Would they be able to come up with that? Say the government splits it with section 8 or whatever. Same? Is the idea that the public picks up the whole tab and the issue is just that the money just doesn't go as far with current rents?

Aloha 7y ago
I was paying 1900 or so a month in an outlying suburb and that was cheap for the area - the best you're gonna see for a one bedroom within a 20-25 mile radius around seattle is about 1200 a month, a two bedroom about 1500 a month. Public assistance pays nothing, and section 8/housing authority has years or decades long waiting lists.
- jcims 7y ago
  OK, good info, thank you. So let's say we carpet bomb the area with new housing capacity and cut rents in half. How does that help with the homeless situation? Doesn't really make any sense to me.
  - Aloha 7y ago
    There is more than one kind of homeless. The mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti recently said something striking, "homelessness is trauma meets high rent"[1]. Often times, decades ago, there was housing on the margins of society - yes, it wasn't very nice, but it was a warm dry place in winter. Often people who are homeless had jobs right up until the time they became homeless, and have marketable skills, but not ones that can pay for a median rent price, Basically the lack affordable housing puts stress on people who are already on the margins or in near crisis and puts them out of the street. Most of the homeless people fit into this category. There is another group of homeless folks though, who are long term chronic homeless, they have other complicating factors, like drug abuse, mental health issues, criminal records that make it hard to rent a home or find a job - often being in the first category of homelessness can lead you to slip into the second category, by simply the on the street. The first group of homelessness would be largely solved with affordable housing and a program to get people into it, Unfortunately for those of us who want to solve the problem the most visible homeless are the chronic variety not the people suffering from a life event. [1] - https://www.marketplace.org/2019/12/23/interview-la-mayor-eric-garcetti/ https://www.marketplace.org/2019/12/23/interview-la-mayor-er...
    - JohnFen 7y ago
      > Often people who are homeless had jobs right up until the time they became homeless, and have marketable skills, but not ones that can pay for a median rent price And, while I believe it's a minority, in the US a shockingly high percentage of homeless people remain employed.
- dragontamer 7y ago
  > I was paying 1900 or so a month in an outlying suburb and that was cheap for the area - the best you're gonna see for a one bedroom within a 20-25 mile radius around seattle is about 1200 a month, a two bedroom about 1500 a month. Even single bedroom apartments are too luxurious with regards to the homelessness problem. Aim lower. Typical NYC residents live in Studio Apartments (granted, at $2000/month, but that's NYC pricing there). A singular building can house hundreds, maybe thousands, of 300 Sq. Ft Studio units. If land is more readily available, then trailer-parks provide more room than a Studio and are probably cheaper to build out. A trailer costs $20,000 to construct, and maybe $600/month to rent out the land. ----------- The problem is that low-end housing drives down property values. No one wants to live near a trailer park. But by golly, it fixes the housing problem really cheap. I think people need to "wake up" and see the advantages that trailer parks can bring to their community. Yeah, trailer parks kinda suck for land value, but so do hoards of homeless people sleeping in the streets. And yes, I'm purposefully being callous: its the only real way to fight against NIMBY: you gotta "sell" how a trailer park can benefit a community in a callous way if you expect the NIMBY crowd to agree to it.
  - ThrustVectoring 7y ago
    The real problem is getting rid of single room occupancy units, IMO. It's the cheapest minimally acceptable living unit: room enough for a bed and a desk, with a door only you have a key to, and access to shared bathrooms and kitchens.
  - seanmcdirmid 7y ago
    Trailer parks need land...a lot more than a apartment buildings for the same number of residents, they aren’t urban solutions. They often go on marginal land without sewer, so you need more land to make a septic tank work. Trailers in the boonies outside of Vicksburg MS where I lived as a kid got maybe electricity, you had to take care of your own trash (usually by burning); I had many friends out there who were living in squalor. A trailer park was actually a step up from these places.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>I live in podunk Ohio and a single bedroom apartment is still ~$650 per month. I pay $1100 a month rent, no utilities/services included, for a 2 bedroom just west of Indianapolis, it's insane. The prices are that though because housing prices keep climbing. Fiance and I are starting to look at homes so we can get pre-approved once she has a teaching contract here and... new construction homes a mile or so from me are starting at 250k for 1 bedroom homes with 2-3 bedroom homes stating around 300k. There's actually a home, bank repo, about 1/4 of a mile from my apartment that they want 320k for in a cookie-cutter addition, with a messed up driveway and exterior damage, that's not even 5-10 years old. The median household income is 59k here... House prices have been climbing like crazy the past several years, but most people can't actually afford them. There are definitely not a lot of jobs around where I live that justify multiple new housing additions with homes at 300-350k a pop. I just don't get it.

by jcims 7y ago

Aloha 7y ago

I was paying 1900 or so a month in an outlying suburb and that was cheap for the area - the best you're gonna see for a one bedroom within a 20-25 mile radius around seattle is about 1200 a month, a two bedroom about 1500 a month. Public assistance pays nothing, and section 8/housing authority has years or decades long waiting lists.

jcims 7y ago
OK, good info, thank you. So let's say we carpet bomb the area with new housing capacity and cut rents in half. How does that help with the homeless situation? Doesn't really make any sense to me.
- Aloha 7y ago
  There is more than one kind of homeless. The mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti recently said something striking, "homelessness is trauma meets high rent"[1]. Often times, decades ago, there was housing on the margins of society - yes, it wasn't very nice, but it was a warm dry place in winter. Often people who are homeless had jobs right up until the time they became homeless, and have marketable skills, but not ones that can pay for a median rent price, Basically the lack affordable housing puts stress on people who are already on the margins or in near crisis and puts them out of the street. Most of the homeless people fit into this category. There is another group of homeless folks though, who are long term chronic homeless, they have other complicating factors, like drug abuse, mental health issues, criminal records that make it hard to rent a home or find a job - often being in the first category of homelessness can lead you to slip into the second category, by simply the on the street. The first group of homelessness would be largely solved with affordable housing and a program to get people into it, Unfortunately for those of us who want to solve the problem the most visible homeless are the chronic variety not the people suffering from a life event. [1] - https://www.marketplace.org/2019/12/23/interview-la-mayor-eric-garcetti/ https://www.marketplace.org/2019/12/23/interview-la-mayor-er...
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    > Often people who are homeless had jobs right up until the time they became homeless, and have marketable skills, but not ones that can pay for a median rent price And, while I believe it's a minority, in the US a shockingly high percentage of homeless people remain employed.
dragontamer 7y ago
> I was paying 1900 or so a month in an outlying suburb and that was cheap for the area - the best you're gonna see for a one bedroom within a 20-25 mile radius around seattle is about 1200 a month, a two bedroom about 1500 a month. Even single bedroom apartments are too luxurious with regards to the homelessness problem. Aim lower. Typical NYC residents live in Studio Apartments (granted, at $2000/month, but that's NYC pricing there). A singular building can house hundreds, maybe thousands, of 300 Sq. Ft Studio units. If land is more readily available, then trailer-parks provide more room than a Studio and are probably cheaper to build out. A trailer costs $20,000 to construct, and maybe $600/month to rent out the land. ----------- The problem is that low-end housing drives down property values. No one wants to live near a trailer park. But by golly, it fixes the housing problem really cheap. I think people need to "wake up" and see the advantages that trailer parks can bring to their community. Yeah, trailer parks kinda suck for land value, but so do hoards of homeless people sleeping in the streets. And yes, I'm purposefully being callous: its the only real way to fight against NIMBY: you gotta "sell" how a trailer park can benefit a community in a callous way if you expect the NIMBY crowd to agree to it.
- ThrustVectoring 7y ago
  The real problem is getting rid of single room occupancy units, IMO. It's the cheapest minimally acceptable living unit: room enough for a bed and a desk, with a door only you have a key to, and access to shared bathrooms and kitchens.
- seanmcdirmid 7y ago
  Trailer parks need land...a lot more than a apartment buildings for the same number of residents, they aren’t urban solutions. They often go on marginal land without sewer, so you need more land to make a septic tank work. Trailers in the boonies outside of Vicksburg MS where I lived as a kid got maybe electricity, you had to take care of your own trash (usually by burning); I had many friends out there who were living in squalor. A trailer park was actually a step up from these places.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>I live in podunk Ohio and a single bedroom apartment is still ~$650 per month. I pay $1100 a month rent, no utilities/services included, for a 2 bedroom just west of Indianapolis, it's insane. The prices are that though because housing prices keep climbing. Fiance and I are starting to look at homes so we can get pre-approved once she has a teaching contract here and... new construction homes a mile or so from me are starting at 250k for 1 bedroom homes with 2-3 bedroom homes stating around 300k. There's actually a home, bank repo, about 1/4 of a mile from my apartment that they want 320k for in a cookie-cutter addition, with a messed up driveway and exterior damage, that's not even 5-10 years old. The median household income is 59k here... House prices have been climbing like crazy the past several years, but most people can't actually afford them. There are definitely not a lot of jobs around where I live that justify multiple new housing additions with homes at 300-350k a pop. I just don't get it.