8 ms·
You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem. I'd look more into providing mental health, relocation
by mrits 6y ago
You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem. I'd look more into providing mental health, relocation, and incentives to stay off heavy drugs.
- norswap 6y agoSurely that number is not right - probably lacking two digits?
- dfinninger 6y agoYou can get out of Austin pretty quick. 30 mins in some directions can get you out of the metro area. Also, 5k sqft is 1/10 of an acre. That said, I don’t know anything about land prices in Texas right now.
- tmh88j 6y ago>You can get out of Austin pretty quick. 30 mins in some directions can get you out of the metro area. Also, 5k sqft is 1/10 of an acre. During the normal busy hours in which people commute, no way. I can only hope all the construction going on along 183 will speed things up on the East side. The 290/71 junction is another nightmare during rush hour.
- RhysU 6y ago30 minutes won't take you from the river to North Loop. And even Redbud is slow in the opposite direction.
- mrits 6y agoI always hear bay area friends tell me how it's not that bad there if you have room mates. Mean while the engineers here in their 30s are collecting income from their 3rd rental property already.
- opportune 6y agoI know lots of people under 30 in the Bay Area who could have much more than 3 rental properties if they wanted to. Especially outside of the bay area. It's just that living with roommates is pretty frugal, and before the pandemic, it was a good way to save an extra $10k a year living in a more central location. Every single person I know who is a bay area SWE makes enough to afford renting a 1bed apartment in a good area, they just don't think it's worth it. Yes if your main goal in life is to live in a large house on a large lot in a nice area without spending much, you will not find it there, but your characterization makes it seem like bay area engineers are poor which is... not true
- nogabebop23 6y ago>> makes enough to afford renting a 1bed apartment in a good area In most cities in the US this is not the definition of wealthy or even well off. living with roommates to save 10K a year does sound like one step above poverty.
- mypalmike 6y agoWhen I lived in the bay area, lots of my friends lived in shared accommodation because they actually liked living with other people. Saving money was a side effect. They usually bought a place when they got married or not long after. That's not poverty.
- anonyxyz 6y agoThis is common when you're a kid out of college, but a few years go by and living with other people sucks.
- 6y ago
- mbesto 6y agoLive in Austin. Yes that's BS, unless you're talking about a 5.5k sf lot out carved out of a rural farmland (which are plentiful right outside of Austin).
- mrits 6y agoOdd thing to argue about that is easily provable with a Zillow search. Plenty of half acre lots that sold int he last year for ~$5K east of downtown but certainly before farm country. And capital metro goes past it all the way to the toll road.
- mbesto 6y agoMontopolis and McKinney are basically right before farm country (I ride my bike there all of the time). Where on earth are you seeing 5k sf lots being sold for $2k?!?!
- elevenoh 6y agoOr that figure is the monthly mortgage payment heh
- ip26 6y agoNo... In most parts of the country, a tenth of an acre of dirt past the edge of town does not run $200k.
- csomar 6y agoCan you build on that? Is there water, electricity, gas and cable?
- mrits 6y agoYes. If you want to drive 50 miles outside the city you can get 10 acres for $50k.
- lawrenceyan 6y ago50 miles is really far. You can get the exact same prices in California if you're willing to drive 50 miles outside SF / Bay Area proper.
- vondur 6y agoSF has a $360 million dollar a year budget for addressing the homeless situation. I'm not sure what funding they may also get in addition from the County and State Level.
- sroussey 6y agoIt was upped to about $600m. Good luck getting an audit.
- rmk 6y agoOkay, that is something on the order of $10,000 per person if there's a homeless population of 60,000 people. I doubt if SF has such a large homeless population. Does this $600 million cover things like Churches sheltering the homeless, pantries, and such? Or is it in addition to the the $600 million? Something is very rotten here.
- andrewstuart2 6y agoLooks like 8k or 10k as of January [1], depending on which standard you consider, though obviously that may have gone up with recent events. [1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population
- mdorazio 6y agoYou're off by almost an order of magnitude [1]. Even if we say the official estimates are off by a huge margin and there are actually 20,000 homeless in SF, that's $30K per person, on top of however many millions are given out via begging and other programs. It's insanity. [1] https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population https://sfgov.org/scorecards/safety-net/homeless-population
- rmk 6y agoOh my. I feel like I will never understand California politics. Such blatant corruption and such a large vulnerable population, but also such a huge 'woke' electorate. It would take some crazy mental gymnastics to reconcile these things.
- austincheney 6y agoFort Worth is in the same state, almost the same population, growing just as fast, and has similar taxes. Yet Fort Worth doesn’t have the visible homeless problem that Austin and San Francisco do.
- dminvs 6y agoThis is partly because the private security force employed by the wealthy Bass brothers forcefully (and sometimes violently) discourage the homeless from existing in downtown Fort Worth, especially the Sundance Square area. I used to work downtown (Oil & Gas Commerce building) and became friends with the night-shift security guard, who told some really shocking stories about how the Bass goons would drag the homeless into alleys and beat them, simply for existing in downtown Ft. Worth.
- austincheney 6y agoThat might be 0.1% of the city’s land area. Not really a significant cause. If you applied that exact same factor to Austin there would still be a ton of homeless people everywhere.
- RhodesianHunter 6y agoThe homeless tend to congregate where they're treated better. The cities that treat the homeless better, when confronted with a new influx of homeless, work to confront the problem with more spending and social programs, and the cycle continues.
- urbansix 6y agoIf your security guard at the O&G/C Building said that, then you were being told a wild story. There is NO WAY Sundance Security would do that. I personally know the security team members and how professionally they are trained, and I know the Basses and how they operate. That's a horrible thing to say. And it is sad that you or anyone would actually believe it. It's a tall tale that a late shift guard might enjoy telling, but it isn't the truth.
- lawrenceyan 6y ago> You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 How many miles away from the city though?
- RhodesianHunter 6y agoQuite a few, and not somewhere most would probably choose to live
- kortilla 6y ago> You can purchase a 5K sqft lot outside of Austin for $2,200 and we still have a growing homeless problem. But not actually near Austin enough for it to be a sane place to live and commute to Austin from (especially if you depend on public transit).
- mrits 6y ago30 mins east of downtown is farmland
- kortilla 6y agoNot with traffic. Takes 30 mins just to get to the airport from downtown around rush hour.
- freeone3000 6y agoIf you depend on public transit in Austin, you're not going to be able to commute reliably no matter where you live.
- gpanders 6y agoWhen I lived in Austin I took the bus almost every day without issue. Austin has the best public transit in all of Texas (though that’s admittedly a low bar).
- CryptoPunk 6y agoSocial problems exist in degrees. San Francisco, with the most stringent land-use restrictions in the US, and largely as a consequence of that, the highest rental rates in the world, experiences the problem of homelessness to a much higher degree.