7 ms·

I would like to see America build more of these. Even lightening building codes, and zoning requirements (allow for very small rooms). If the Infrasctructure

I would like to see America build more of these. Even lightening building codes, and zoning requirements (allow for very small rooms). If the Infrasctructure bill promised more of this type of housing I would be thrilled. I'd be happy with a few public restrooms strategically placed around cities, but I guess I'm the only one that needs easy access to a bathroom! 1. It's obvious homlessness is just getting worse. I just heard the head of the Federal Reserve comment on the increasing size of the homeless encampment mext to his office. 2. We need building codes that encourage small simple housing units. 3. I like the hotel doesn't have a list of rules. I feel giving people some control over their lives is very important. I like there are no mandatory religious meetings, or curfews. Treat a man like a thinking adult, and you might be suprised with the result? 4. Yes--I understand this place is in disrepair, but why couldn't we built simple housing? I sometimes think authorities make projects more complicated because they secretly don't want anything built, especially for the poor. 5. Oh yea, America needs more people like thus guy: "Wesley Duran, a porter at the hotel. “I try to give everyone respect, treat people fairly here. There’s too much hatred in the world for me to go that way. We’ve gotta be nicer to one another.”

perardi 5y ago
Ugh, I hate to pull this out, by: NIMBY-ism. To a first approximation nobody wants an SRO on their back yard. Me? I am just fine with it, I have lived near SROs for years. But…oh whatever, I’ll be blunt: Karen doesn’t want a giant building full of itinerant men on her block, and she is going to fight tooth and nail to prevent such a thing.
- bombcar 5y ago
  So let's be realistic and admit these buildings do NOT have to be built in residential areas with Karens abounding. The perfect is the enemy of the good here; let them be wedged into industrial areas or other "not as desirable" parts of town. Trying to pretend that the "bad part of town" can be removed if we just figure out the magic steps is part of the problem.
  - andrew_v4 5y ago
    Not sure I completely agree, but I definitely do think this kind of project can be derailed by proponents who want to be uncompromising about it and don't think it's acceptable to compromise in something like location because its harder to get built where people don't want it. An example people probably won't like is those mixed income buildings (can't remember where now) that had separate entrances for the subsidized units. It's definitely not egalitarian in some sense, but if it allows more subsidized housing to be built for people that need it, is it really better just to not do it?
    - perardi 5y ago
      Mm, yes, this is closer. You see this with other goods too, notably cars. Creating a car that meets all contemporary safety standards is hugely expensive. Is that safety a net good? Yes. Does it have societal costs? You betcha.
    - bilbo0s 5y ago
      It was NYC. (Manhattan.) And they didn't have separate entrances for subsidized units, they had separate entrances for wealthy penthouse owners who really did have greater security concerns than the run of the mill residents living on lower floors. People who can afford a 20 to 50 million dollar penthouse do think long and hard about security. But the masses simply ignored the service provision aspect and screamed "Why do you guys have a poor people door!?!?!"
      - euroderf 5y ago
        I guess I didn't get the memo. When we say "security" in this context, what do we mean ? Kidnaping ? Assassination ?
        FDSGSG 5y ago
        More basic things like robberies. It's nice to have the building security guy open the door of your car and walk you inside when you're carrying hundreds of thousands worth of jewelry on you. I don't live in a dangerous area (Westminster), but targeted robberies happen here too. I (and much less my girlfriend with her high jewellery obsession) wouldn't feel super comfortable living in a townhouse or apartment building without 24/7 security staff. If someone wants to kidnap or assassinate you, this kind of security will probably do nothing to stop them. At least it'll disincentivize robberies, there are easier targets out there.
- baron816 5y ago
  It’s not just NIMBY-ism, and NIMBY-ism isn’t what drove these away. What it is is pretty much the minimum mage—housing has to meet a minimum threshold in quality or else it can’t exist. Never mind that people might still be willing to live there and are able to make their own decisions. And some people might not have other options. To many, this seems like exploitation. They’d rather have people living on the street than have a business make money off of them.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    Bingo. And it's not even the exploitation. Believe it or not, it's the fact that there is no one to hold liable if things go wrong. At root, it's about on which head does liability rest. You don't meet code, firefighters rush in, and the staircase collapses. Who do the cops and the firefighters go after? If it's the owner of the SRO, then no real estate investor will build one. (At least, not one that isn't up to code.) You can try to loosen the code, but the firefighters are only going to allow you to cut so much before their unions have your picture up on billboards around town as the big, bad, slumlord pushing for substandard housing. Owning a lot of real estate is not a picnic, and you learn a lot of things you never knew before about how local politics work.
    - Spooky23 5y ago
      My dad ran section 8 programs for a decade or more. They meet higher code standards than many suburbia “luxury” apartments. Slumlords who don’t maintain buildings to code are bottom of the barrel renting to a very limited and desperate clientele. Encouraging that is nuts. The notion that evil firefighter unions are making real estate expensive by advocating for codes that put them out of business is probably the most ill-informed comment I’ve read in some time. Absurd. Getting rid of balloon frames and cocklofts raised construction costs... but saved thousands of lives.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    >They’d rather have people living on the street than have a business make money off of them. Considering the way these cities are going they will end up with a lot of people on the street.
- gwright 5y ago
  I know I'm working from incomplete data and confirmation bias, but it seems to me that those who fight against permanent facilities also seem to be against taking action against ad-hoc encampments. This just one of an almost endless set of contradictions I see in discussions of public policy these days.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    I'm fair certain Karen is leading the charge to shut down ad-hoc encampments as well. Let's be honest, we have a lot of Karens in the US, and they're well known for not liking things like tent cities.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - dang 5y ago
      Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880612 and make your substantive points without swipes.
  - brendoelfrendo 5y ago
    The conclusion we can draw from this is that "people" (in quotes because, as you say, this is an incomplete data set) don't want to solve the problem of homelessness, they simply want to remove the visible signs of it in their local area. Make them go somewhere else, as it were. To be fair, this is not necessarily one person holding a contradictory position, but the only realistic outcome of a process where people can't agree on a solution; several groups agree the encampments are a problem, but if they can't agree on a solution than the only action taken is removing the encampments.
- barry-cotter 5y ago
  If you want to use gendered raced insults go for it but if you would prefer to be more accurate and inclusive you could use NIMBY, middle class homeowner or environmentalist.
- caturopath 5y ago
  A big part of the missing SROs are the lack of ones that don't target itinerant men, such as are found in much of the world. The accommodations aren't the problem, the perception is -- plenty of medium- and high-income people in low-density areas participate in house shares. But since SROs are illegal almost everywhere in the US, the few that have stuck in our memory are the ones for folks who didn't have any other real choice, rather than the ones that were simply the best choice. I'm not sure how perception might shift. If I were to spitball, steps might include finding catchy names that combine student housing, nursing homes, and general-audience SROs and finding a couple flagship projects where luxury towers have high-floor SROs geared toward minimalist tech/finance bros and rich people in need of a crash pad.
  - bmarquez 5y ago
    I was about to comment the exact same thing. There needs to be SRO's catered to non-poor people just needing a place to crash while exploring a city, minimalists, etc. Outside America the hostel/guesthouse scene worked well for me as a longer term traveler, I even met others doing the "digital nomad" thing and fairly well-off people so there isn't a stigma like in America. When I mention the concept of hostels (even private room ones) to less-traveled Americans, some rolled their eyes and made comments about personal safety, poverty, and "not having your own big space."
    - caturopath 5y ago
      This isn't the only place where this happens in urbanism, of course. One such issue is busses. People with a choice will gladly ride trains and streetcars, but busses are stigmatized. It turns out that if you design a bus line a certain way, busses are every bit as good a transportation system as light rail up to a pretty high throughput, and often cheaper (always cheaper upfront). But even places with really good Bus Rapid Transit lines, folks don't want to get on a bus to get them where they're going faster. This is HN, I suspect many of us have taken company busses. I've known tons of people making over 500k/yr who took a bus to work in the US. And that was a bus that gets stuck in traffic! People not wanting to take a bus is not fundamental to the mode, it's a perception thing. In much of the world, there's no stigma, and everyone will gladly take a bus if that's the best way to get where they're going.
- Spooky23 5y ago
  Lol. Only on HN. I got rid of an SRO in my neighborhood. It was a shitshow... drug deals, issues with open containers and prostitution, car break ins, etc. There are NIMBY assholes. But there are people who just want to live their life peaceably. Something like an SRO can turn from OK to a nightmare with a change in management or ownership. Nobody in their right mind wants one nearby.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- watwut 5y ago
  It is always womens fault. Whatever it is.
  - dang 5y ago
    I understand the frustration but comments like this just make things worse, so please don't.
- dang 5y ago
  > Karen I'd put this in the same category as "ok boomer" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20boomer&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Society may be divided about how ok those putdowns are relative to others, but in an HN context it's flamebait and name-calling, so it breaks the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
maxerickson 5y ago
My small town has turned down apartment buildings for reasons like 'preserving the character of a run down building built after 1970' and 'not wanting to have apartments near a planned business hotel'. The people opposing the projects absolutely don't want them built. For the one, there was also a discussion of having more poor people in the area that is a few hundred feet from the poorest census block in the county.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
I live in a hundred year old SRO in a blighted downtown area. It's how I got back into housing after years of homelessness. I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way, so I see all the things wrong in my downtown and have some idea of what broke and why. So one of my online projects is a website called Project: SRO trying to put together info about where things went wrong and how we could course correct. http://projectsro.blogspot.com/ http://projectsro.blogspot.com/
peter303 5y ago
There is dorm style co-living housing aimed recent college grads. Private bedroom, but most every other kind of room is "community". I have wondered if these places could discriminate against frugal older adults.
peter303 5y ago
In the 19th century there were boarding houses aimed at working men. They bedded like this and had communal meal service.
FqOD4xih7Uq6m9Z 5y ago
Like Doya in Japan? https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g?t=334 https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g?t=334

perardi 5y ago

Ugh, I hate to pull this out, by: NIMBY-ism. To a first approximation nobody wants an SRO on their back yard. Me? I am just fine with it, I have lived near SROs for years. But…oh whatever, I’ll be blunt: Karen doesn’t want a giant building full of itinerant men on her block, and she is going to fight tooth and nail to prevent such a thing.

bombcar 5y ago
So let's be realistic and admit these buildings do NOT have to be built in residential areas with Karens abounding. The perfect is the enemy of the good here; let them be wedged into industrial areas or other "not as desirable" parts of town. Trying to pretend that the "bad part of town" can be removed if we just figure out the magic steps is part of the problem.
- andrew_v4 5y ago
  Not sure I completely agree, but I definitely do think this kind of project can be derailed by proponents who want to be uncompromising about it and don't think it's acceptable to compromise in something like location because its harder to get built where people don't want it. An example people probably won't like is those mixed income buildings (can't remember where now) that had separate entrances for the subsidized units. It's definitely not egalitarian in some sense, but if it allows more subsidized housing to be built for people that need it, is it really better just to not do it?
  - perardi 5y ago
    Mm, yes, this is closer. You see this with other goods too, notably cars. Creating a car that meets all contemporary safety standards is hugely expensive. Is that safety a net good? Yes. Does it have societal costs? You betcha.
  - bilbo0s 5y ago
    It was NYC. (Manhattan.) And they didn't have separate entrances for subsidized units, they had separate entrances for wealthy penthouse owners who really did have greater security concerns than the run of the mill residents living on lower floors. People who can afford a 20 to 50 million dollar penthouse do think long and hard about security. But the masses simply ignored the service provision aspect and screamed "Why do you guys have a poor people door!?!?!"
    - euroderf 5y ago
      I guess I didn't get the memo. When we say "security" in this context, what do we mean ? Kidnaping ? Assassination ?
      - FDSGSG 5y ago
        More basic things like robberies. It's nice to have the building security guy open the door of your car and walk you inside when you're carrying hundreds of thousands worth of jewelry on you. I don't live in a dangerous area (Westminster), but targeted robberies happen here too. I (and much less my girlfriend with her high jewellery obsession) wouldn't feel super comfortable living in a townhouse or apartment building without 24/7 security staff. If someone wants to kidnap or assassinate you, this kind of security will probably do nothing to stop them. At least it'll disincentivize robberies, there are easier targets out there.
baron816 5y ago
It’s not just NIMBY-ism, and NIMBY-ism isn’t what drove these away. What it is is pretty much the minimum mage—housing has to meet a minimum threshold in quality or else it can’t exist. Never mind that people might still be willing to live there and are able to make their own decisions. And some people might not have other options. To many, this seems like exploitation. They’d rather have people living on the street than have a business make money off of them.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Bingo. And it's not even the exploitation. Believe it or not, it's the fact that there is no one to hold liable if things go wrong. At root, it's about on which head does liability rest. You don't meet code, firefighters rush in, and the staircase collapses. Who do the cops and the firefighters go after? If it's the owner of the SRO, then no real estate investor will build one. (At least, not one that isn't up to code.) You can try to loosen the code, but the firefighters are only going to allow you to cut so much before their unions have your picture up on billboards around town as the big, bad, slumlord pushing for substandard housing. Owning a lot of real estate is not a picnic, and you learn a lot of things you never knew before about how local politics work.
  - Spooky23 5y ago
    My dad ran section 8 programs for a decade or more. They meet higher code standards than many suburbia “luxury” apartments. Slumlords who don’t maintain buildings to code are bottom of the barrel renting to a very limited and desperate clientele. Encouraging that is nuts. The notion that evil firefighter unions are making real estate expensive by advocating for codes that put them out of business is probably the most ill-informed comment I’ve read in some time. Absurd. Getting rid of balloon frames and cocklofts raised construction costs... but saved thousands of lives.
- imtringued 5y ago
  >They’d rather have people living on the street than have a business make money off of them. Considering the way these cities are going they will end up with a lot of people on the street.
gwright 5y ago
I know I'm working from incomplete data and confirmation bias, but it seems to me that those who fight against permanent facilities also seem to be against taking action against ad-hoc encampments. This just one of an almost endless set of contradictions I see in discussions of public policy these days.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  I'm fair certain Karen is leading the charge to shut down ad-hoc encampments as well. Let's be honest, we have a lot of Karens in the US, and they're well known for not liking things like tent cities.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - dang 5y ago
    Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26880612 and make your substantive points without swipes.
- brendoelfrendo 5y ago
  The conclusion we can draw from this is that "people" (in quotes because, as you say, this is an incomplete data set) don't want to solve the problem of homelessness, they simply want to remove the visible signs of it in their local area. Make them go somewhere else, as it were. To be fair, this is not necessarily one person holding a contradictory position, but the only realistic outcome of a process where people can't agree on a solution; several groups agree the encampments are a problem, but if they can't agree on a solution than the only action taken is removing the encampments.
barry-cotter 5y ago
If you want to use gendered raced insults go for it but if you would prefer to be more accurate and inclusive you could use NIMBY, middle class homeowner or environmentalist.
caturopath 5y ago
A big part of the missing SROs are the lack of ones that don't target itinerant men, such as are found in much of the world. The accommodations aren't the problem, the perception is -- plenty of medium- and high-income people in low-density areas participate in house shares. But since SROs are illegal almost everywhere in the US, the few that have stuck in our memory are the ones for folks who didn't have any other real choice, rather than the ones that were simply the best choice. I'm not sure how perception might shift. If I were to spitball, steps might include finding catchy names that combine student housing, nursing homes, and general-audience SROs and finding a couple flagship projects where luxury towers have high-floor SROs geared toward minimalist tech/finance bros and rich people in need of a crash pad.
- bmarquez 5y ago
  I was about to comment the exact same thing. There needs to be SRO's catered to non-poor people just needing a place to crash while exploring a city, minimalists, etc. Outside America the hostel/guesthouse scene worked well for me as a longer term traveler, I even met others doing the "digital nomad" thing and fairly well-off people so there isn't a stigma like in America. When I mention the concept of hostels (even private room ones) to less-traveled Americans, some rolled their eyes and made comments about personal safety, poverty, and "not having your own big space."
  - caturopath 5y ago
    This isn't the only place where this happens in urbanism, of course. One such issue is busses. People with a choice will gladly ride trains and streetcars, but busses are stigmatized. It turns out that if you design a bus line a certain way, busses are every bit as good a transportation system as light rail up to a pretty high throughput, and often cheaper (always cheaper upfront). But even places with really good Bus Rapid Transit lines, folks don't want to get on a bus to get them where they're going faster. This is HN, I suspect many of us have taken company busses. I've known tons of people making over 500k/yr who took a bus to work in the US. And that was a bus that gets stuck in traffic! People not wanting to take a bus is not fundamental to the mode, it's a perception thing. In much of the world, there's no stigma, and everyone will gladly take a bus if that's the best way to get where they're going.
Spooky23 5y ago
Lol. Only on HN. I got rid of an SRO in my neighborhood. It was a shitshow... drug deals, issues with open containers and prostitution, car break ins, etc. There are NIMBY assholes. But there are people who just want to live their life peaceably. Something like an SRO can turn from OK to a nightmare with a change in management or ownership. Nobody in their right mind wants one nearby.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
watwut 5y ago
It is always womens fault. Whatever it is.
- dang 5y ago
  I understand the frustration but comments like this just make things worse, so please don't.
dang 5y ago
> Karen I'd put this in the same category as "ok boomer" (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20boomer&sort=byDate&type=story&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...). Society may be divided about how ok those putdowns are relative to others, but in an HN context it's flamebait and name-calling, so it breaks the site guidelines. Your comment would be fine without it. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

maxerickson 5y ago

My small town has turned down apartment buildings for reasons like 'preserving the character of a run down building built after 1970' and 'not wanting to have apartments near a planned business hotel'. The people opposing the projects absolutely don't want them built. For the one, there was also a discussion of having more poor people in the area that is a few hundred feet from the poorest census block in the county.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

I live in a hundred year old SRO in a blighted downtown area. It's how I got back into housing after years of homelessness. I wanted to be an urban planner before life got in the way, so I see all the things wrong in my downtown and have some idea of what broke and why. So one of my online projects is a website called Project: SRO trying to put together info about where things went wrong and how we could course correct. http://projectsro.blogspot.com/ http://projectsro.blogspot.com/

peter303 5y ago

There is dorm style co-living housing aimed recent college grads. Private bedroom, but most every other kind of room is "community". I have wondered if these places could discriminate against frugal older adults.

peter303 5y ago

In the 19th century there were boarding houses aimed at working men. They bedded like this and had communal meal service.

FqOD4xih7Uq6m9Z 5y ago

Like Doya in Japan? https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g?t=334 https://youtu.be/kBPyN3LE65g?t=334