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This is consistent with a comment I left a few months ago: CA has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing

This is consistent with a comment I left a few months ago: CA has been underbuilding housing for close to 50 years (https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/14/sf-housing/) and now has a severe housing shortage, to the point where a parodic response, like "California will try absolutely anything to reduce homelessness, except build more housing" (https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-end-homelessness-except-build-more-homes https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/i-will-do-anything-to-en...) is the only reasonable one. I've worked on Prop HHH and other proposals designed to reduce homelessness in California: https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-fills-back-proposition-hhh-facilities-program/ https://seliger.com/2017/08/30/l-digs-hole-slowly-economics-..., but none of them work, or can work, without making housing easier to build. Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, and other income supports to keep a person housed. As the cost of housing goes up, the number of people who fall from the margins of "housed" to "homeless" goes up with it. So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they're factors exacerbated by housing costs. They're really red herrings relative to overall housing costs. The homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform, and the removal of barriers to new housing, whether those barriers are height maximums, parking space minimums, or "neighborhood input" or "community input," both of which are functionally barriers to building anything, anywhere.

iamalexm 5y ago
Not just zoning reform, we need to make actual free housing for people. We have an economy that can't provide enough jobs. We have a surplus of goods. We don't need people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, we just need to give people a place to live and some food to eat so they can contribute and potentially dig themselves out of any hole they have found themselves in.
- 6f8986c3 5y ago
  > We have an economy that can't provide enough jobs. Bullshit. There is plenty of work that needs to be done. People are just paid to not do it. In urban areas, they become political slaves, and in rural areas, it destroys any chance they might have of building a local economy.
  - tehwebguy 5y ago
    Citation needed! This bad meme became very popular when the federal gov paid out an extra $600 (then $400, then $300) / wk in unemployment insurance benefits. In reality UI benefits have been utterly destroyed in some states (see FL -- underfunded, payout is dirt and getting approved or denied took people months) and in the rest of the states the payouts are so low they were totally insufficient. Perhaps the biggest lie, however, is that people can just stay on these benefits or turn down work -- they are time limited per recipient and turning down work / quitting your job makes you ineligible!
- jdavis703 5y ago
  Even government run public housing charges rent. Making housing free will mean even larger subsidies are required for construction, which means fewer units built overall.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Even government run public housing charges rent. IIRC, the norm is sliding-scale income contingent with a minimum of zero, so, it only sometimes charges rent, and has costs associated with identifying whether to charge and, if so, the rent to charge, charging, tracking, and collecting it.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
    We’re well beyond the point where this is a valid argument to make.
- rufus_foreman 5y ago
  >> We have an economy that can't provide enough jobs That's so wrong. There are more job openings right now than there are unemployed workers. Explain it to me, how is that "an economy that can't provide enough jobs"?
mullingitover 5y ago
> The homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform, and the removal of barriers to new housing, whether those barriers are height maximums, parking space minimums, or "neighborhood input" or "community input," both of which are functionally barriers to building anything, anywhere. California recently enacted a law with teeth, it requires regions to meet specific, aggressive housing goals, and if the regional proposals don't pass the scrutiny of the state government the region completely loses control over its zoning rules.
- potatolicious 5y ago
  Some action has happened on that front that's promising - but IMO the most promising thing about these new laws isn't how effective they will be (mildly) but the attitudinal changes they represent. The RHNA rules are riddled with loopholes, and cities are already finding creative ways to jumping through them. Most notably it does not strictly require that zoned capacity be likely (or even possible) to develop. You'll find examples where cities have proposed rezoning mountain-side lots on steep ravines in order to fulfill state RHNA mandates, knowing full-well that any actual project would be unbuildable. Time will tell if state regulators will have the teeth to go after cities for this kind of blatant bad faith NIMBYism.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    It almost seems like the law was created with the full intent of tearing down local zoning privileges en masse. I won't get my hopes up, but I would love to see that.
- mdorazio 5y ago
  I wasn't at all surprised when damn near every community appealed the new RHNA rules (49 jurisdictions tried last I checked). I was surprised when only two were successful. We'll see what they actually end up doing, but it's a nice step in the right direction.
burlesona 5y ago
Actually just removing all public comment would be more impactful than anything. In nearly every jurisdiction, including places like SF (edit: Bay Area not only SF proper), there is ample housing theoretically permitted under current zoning. The problem is we don’t have rule of law in cities, we have fickle and subjective rule by angry mob. Whether a building meets zoning codes should be a straightforward yes or no question that results in a fairly quick turnaround for a building permit, or a specific list of defects from the code and remedies that would bring the project into compliance.
- Seattle3503 5y ago
  > Actually just removing all public comment would be more impactful than anything. In nearly every jurisdiction, including places like SF, there is ample housing theoretically permitted under current zoning. Is there a source for this?
  - jeffbee 5y ago
    I doubt it, because the nameplate capacity of San Francisco after its 1970s downzoning was very close to its actual size now. Same for Los Angeles, which was down-zoned from 10 million to 4 million in the 1970s. https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/programs/housing/housing-supply/zoning/ https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/programs/housing/housing-supply/z...
  - burlesona 5y ago
    Sorry, let me clarify: the SF _Bay Area_ has a lot more housing theoretically allowed within existing zoning. But I’ll admit, in the case of the Bay Area, it’s such a desirable place to live that if they build a million homes tomorrow I’m not sure it would satisfy demand, though I do think that would be enough to move us down the price curve a bit.
- thereisnospork 5y ago
  This. If a proposed building meets the zoning requirements, it should be able to be built, full stop. To build anything you have to kowtow to the local building commission and the extortion of local groups[0]. Simply decreeing that it is a property owner's right to 'build a 5 story apartment building on a lot zoned for 5 story apartment buildings[1]' would do so much to alleviate housing pressure. [0]Invariably environmental studies will be insufficient, traffic studies will be insufficient, the color of the neighborhood will be disrupted, gentrification!, etc. [1]Consistent with rules and codes clearly defined, preferentially with affirmative defense against frivolous legal action.
6f8986c3 5y ago
This, this, this. And we need to make it easier to build and run something other than single-family dwellings. Boarding houses used to be a common fixture in the US: think a cross between a dorm and a military barracks. Give the residents decently secured lockers and some private security with actual teeth[1], not to mention some counseling, and the folks that land here might actually stand a chance at rebuilding their lives. [1] As in "Sell meth here, and we will literally chuck you out the door like yesterday's garbage. Lawsuits don't mean shit to us."
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > As in "Sell meth here, and we will literally chuck you out the door like yesterday's garbage. Lawsuits don't mean shit to us." Public and public-subsidized housing already has that kind of policy (and much broader than that since it extends beyond “sell”, “meth”, and “here”) in the US by federal mandate; its a driver of homelessness, not a solution.
potatolicious 5y ago
> So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they're factors exacerbated by housing costs. They're really red herrings relative to overall housing costs. This is such a good point that it really deserves hammering-home. The causal relationship with mental illness and substance abuse, and homelessness, is bidirectional. Homelessness causes both mental illness and substance abuse (you try existing with no roof, no food, few possessions, and constantly being treated as subhuman) - but also pre-existing mental illness and substance abuse are far easier (and for the folks in the back who can't be swayed by humanism: cheaper) to tackle when the person has stable housing. Housing is not the only lever we can pull to reduce homelessness, but it really is the largest one.
slg 5y ago
>before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness And to build off this, recent counts[1] have found that 26% of Los Angeles's homeless population has mental health issues and 32% has "difficulties with drug or alcohol use". Even if there is zero overlap in those two groups and those issues all originated before the person became homeless (both of those are clearly not true) that would still leave 42% of people who are homeless and don't have either of those issues. It isn't complicated. A majority of the homeless population is homeless because they simply can't afford a home. [1] - https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=4561-2020-homeless-count-key-messages https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=4561-2020-homeless-count-...
- zug_zug 5y ago
  Okay, but help me understand... San Francisco and LA are incredibly expensive places to live. So are you proposing to build so many new apartments in SF or LA that rent drops by over 1,000 a month? It definitely strikes me that there are a million places to live in this country that are dirt cheap, and there's a 0% chance SF becomes one of them. Maybe there's some data I'm missing about homeless people who can afford $2500 in rent but are on the street because they can't afford $3000, otherwise it just seems the two issues really aren't as connected as people tend to claim. Part of me wonders if the "angry about rent prices for the homeless" people on HN happen to be angry about rent prices that THEY have to pay...
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    > So are you proposing to build so many new apartments in SF or LA that rent drops by over 1,000 a month? Don't want to speak for OP, but I definitely do. Government would not have to build anying, only get out of the way of people who want to build on their own land. The Bay Area could easily be a world class metro area with 20 million people, all sleeping indoors.
    - nate_meurer 5y ago
      Do you know of any cities of 20 million+ people with no homeless? Or even one million?
harlanji 5y ago
Thanks. I’ve lived homeless and borrowed a lot from VanLife for 3 years in SF. Here’s my work on the subject; still in progress: Https://Harlanji.com/urban-camping-pro One of my projects is analyzing my data during various housing periods in the past 3-10 years like receipts, as a basis for the Physics concept art at the end. It’s open source and writing is not my primary vocation but I have the distilled experience there and am working on editing and the data. Thanks for addressing drugs and mental illness as you did, as well. I’d add that those things likely increase as people are stuck on the street and face adversity and lose hope. I manage to evade detection as homeless for the most part, got tough in lockdown without showers and with reduced bathroom access. Hard to stay employed without a shower, hence housing is critical to the bootstrap process of “get a job, bum!”
beerandt 5y ago
>margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, In most of the country, Section 8 housing sets an artificially high floor on the price of rentals. Military bases often have a similar impact. In both cases, landlords (rationally) price rentals the highest amount they know the government will pay. As section 8 has become more prevalent in the last decade (being a requirement for most types of speculative construction financing due to Dodd Frank), it has become more and more influential in determining "market" rates of rental housing. Which is also why you see apartment complexes competing via "features", and not price. I don't know what the solution is, but it's classic unintended consequences that "affordable housing" requirements have led to higher prices.
- Gunax 5y ago
  I am a bit surprised to hear this, as I've always had section 8 applicants offer less than market rate. Owners only accept it because tenants often stay longer, and the rent is guaranteed (you're paid by the government directly, and the tenant reimburses the government their portion).
  - beerandt 5y ago
    Right- and that was my experience with it as well, up until the last decade or so. The benefits you list are also true for markets that would "naturally" be priced lower than section 8 limits. The policies hud put in place to try and get nicer areas and more landlords to accept section 8, really just translated into being policies of willing to pay higher rent amounts. There's some circular reasoning going on, in that higher priced rentals must be nicer or in nicer areas. And the bigger apartment company players know how to game it, especially with new construction in cheaper areas of high rent zip codes.
tootie 5y ago
This site always makes me smile https://newyorkyimby.com/ https://newyorkyimby.com/
grawprog 5y ago
I'm not sure why this isn't common sense but I see this problem happening in the town I live in right now. Average rent these days seems to start at around $2000 Canadian for a 1 bedroom/bachelor suite. Minimum wage is $15/h. Wage for an average job is between $15-$20/h. $15/h is $2400/m gross and like $1600-$1800 net depending on your employer's accountant. It's literally not possible to afford even a bachelor suite on minimum wage where I live. I see homeowners complain on facebook about tenants not paying rent. Many of these homeowners are also business owners paying their employees minimum wage. The homeless population in town has expanded exponentially over the last year. Homeowners complain about that. There's a huge disconnect I just don't understand. You can't pay people less than what average rent cost per month then complain there's homeless people. Either jobs need to pay more or rent needs to go down. It's just not reasonable at all currently. You can't draw blood from stone as it were.
- runarberg 5y ago
  Indeed. Homelessness is about housing like living is about breathing. Yes, OP makes a point with their empirical data plotted neatly on a scatterplot demonstrating a nice correlation between housing availability and homelessness. So OP found a nice variable that they can fit in their models. Great. But OP cannot conclude that this is the whole story. Ignoring wage stagnation leaves a pretty big hole in their explanation on what homelessness is about.
  - grawprog 5y ago
    I'm not entirely sure why models are necessary. It's basic math. if (job_pay < food + rent + basic_living_expenses){ ++homelessness } else{ sustainable_society() } Real basic logical shit honestly.
    - nly 5y ago
      In reality there are way more loops than this, since markets tend to be self correcting. One problem right now is some wealth variables are being incremented in loops that you can only break in to if you have assets, like in the property market.
nobody9999 5y ago
>Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors While that is definitely true, I'd add that less than ten percent[0] of homeless people have drug dependency/mental health issues, as was discussed recently[1] on HN. Which bolsters your point that it's affordable housing that's at issue. I live in NYC and that's one of our biggest issues too, but for different reasons [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27953080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27953080 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27948732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27948732
kktkti9 5y ago
The inability to build housing is emotionally coupled to lack of political will to raise taxes, empower workers… The owners want to keep power. We’re basically servicing last generations success in that we’re obliged to let them fund our way of life. I don’t owe some chud who got rich in the 90s deference due to 30+ year old success. It’s the same with house building; we have to prop up these imagined values of people who “won” before we were born. Tax the rich or eventually the poor will outnumber them and eat them.
jsjohns2 5y ago
> Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. I live in Santa Monica, CA. The notion that mental illness and drugs are not the primary contributors to homelessness runs totally counter to common sense and my lived experience. Today, on 4th & Pacific, there was a man passed out asleep on a the median in broad daylight. No tent. Just splayed out baking in the sun. Earlier this week, I saw a man stop by each trash can along the Venice boardwalk to dig through and pick out half-eaten fast food. Eyes rolled back. An emaciated old woman passed out in the sand in a fetal position. A man using a power drill on the air and muttering to himself. These people are not on the margins. They are never bouncing back. Homes could be $0 and they would still be on the streets. And they are the rule not the exception. Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- padobson 5y ago
  And they are the rule not the exception. Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue? As a long time volunteer and giver to drug rehab programs, I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but I still agree with OP. People don't really like drugs. That kind of addiction is usually closely connected to something else in their life going wrong. If the only happiness you can find in your life is in a pill or a pipe, then that's where you will go until it destroys you. This is where OP's "on the margins" argument comes back. If housing is more affordable, you'll have fewer miserable people and fewer people on drugs. If you transform public schools from prisons/daycares into institutions that actually feed and empower the curiosity of children, they'll have less a reason to buy drugs from each other. If you make it easier for people to start businesses and follow their dreams, they'll have a purpose that feeds them instead of a chemical. You can't eliminate the drug problem this way, but it can be improved on the margins simply by giving more people an easier path to happiness.

iamalexm 5y ago

Not just zoning reform, we need to make actual free housing for people. We have an economy that can't provide enough jobs. We have a surplus of goods. We don't need people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, we just need to give people a place to live and some food to eat so they can contribute and potentially dig themselves out of any hole they have found themselves in.

6f8986c3 5y ago
> We have an economy that can't provide enough jobs. Bullshit. There is plenty of work that needs to be done. People are just paid to not do it. In urban areas, they become political slaves, and in rural areas, it destroys any chance they might have of building a local economy.
- tehwebguy 5y ago
  Citation needed! This bad meme became very popular when the federal gov paid out an extra $600 (then $400, then $300) / wk in unemployment insurance benefits. In reality UI benefits have been utterly destroyed in some states (see FL -- underfunded, payout is dirt and getting approved or denied took people months) and in the rest of the states the payouts are so low they were totally insufficient. Perhaps the biggest lie, however, is that people can just stay on these benefits or turn down work -- they are time limited per recipient and turning down work / quitting your job makes you ineligible!
jdavis703 5y ago
Even government run public housing charges rent. Making housing free will mean even larger subsidies are required for construction, which means fewer units built overall.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Even government run public housing charges rent. IIRC, the norm is sliding-scale income contingent with a minimum of zero, so, it only sometimes charges rent, and has costs associated with identifying whether to charge and, if so, the rent to charge, charging, tracking, and collecting it.
- TheSpiceIsLife 5y ago
  We’re well beyond the point where this is a valid argument to make.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
>> We have an economy that can't provide enough jobs That's so wrong. There are more job openings right now than there are unemployed workers. Explain it to me, how is that "an economy that can't provide enough jobs"?

mullingitover 5y ago

> The homelessness problem is intractable without zoning reform, and the removal of barriers to new housing, whether those barriers are height maximums, parking space minimums, or "neighborhood input" or "community input," both of which are functionally barriers to building anything, anywhere. California recently enacted a law with teeth, it requires regions to meet specific, aggressive housing goals, and if the regional proposals don't pass the scrutiny of the state government the region completely loses control over its zoning rules.

potatolicious 5y ago
Some action has happened on that front that's promising - but IMO the most promising thing about these new laws isn't how effective they will be (mildly) but the attitudinal changes they represent. The RHNA rules are riddled with loopholes, and cities are already finding creative ways to jumping through them. Most notably it does not strictly require that zoned capacity be likely (or even possible) to develop. You'll find examples where cities have proposed rezoning mountain-side lots on steep ravines in order to fulfill state RHNA mandates, knowing full-well that any actual project would be unbuildable. Time will tell if state regulators will have the teeth to go after cities for this kind of blatant bad faith NIMBYism.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  It almost seems like the law was created with the full intent of tearing down local zoning privileges en masse. I won't get my hopes up, but I would love to see that.
mdorazio 5y ago
I wasn't at all surprised when damn near every community appealed the new RHNA rules (49 jurisdictions tried last I checked). I was surprised when only two were successful. We'll see what they actually end up doing, but it's a nice step in the right direction.

burlesona 5y ago

Actually just removing all public comment would be more impactful than anything. In nearly every jurisdiction, including places like SF (edit: Bay Area not only SF proper), there is ample housing theoretically permitted under current zoning. The problem is we don’t have rule of law in cities, we have fickle and subjective rule by angry mob. Whether a building meets zoning codes should be a straightforward yes or no question that results in a fairly quick turnaround for a building permit, or a specific list of defects from the code and remedies that would bring the project into compliance.

Seattle3503 5y ago
> Actually just removing all public comment would be more impactful than anything. In nearly every jurisdiction, including places like SF, there is ample housing theoretically permitted under current zoning. Is there a source for this?
- jeffbee 5y ago
  I doubt it, because the nameplate capacity of San Francisco after its 1970s downzoning was very close to its actual size now. Same for Los Angeles, which was down-zoned from 10 million to 4 million in the 1970s. https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/programs/housing/housing-supply/zoning/ https://www.lewis.ucla.edu/programs/housing/housing-supply/z...
- burlesona 5y ago
  Sorry, let me clarify: the SF _Bay Area_ has a lot more housing theoretically allowed within existing zoning. But I’ll admit, in the case of the Bay Area, it’s such a desirable place to live that if they build a million homes tomorrow I’m not sure it would satisfy demand, though I do think that would be enough to move us down the price curve a bit.
thereisnospork 5y ago
This. If a proposed building meets the zoning requirements, it should be able to be built, full stop. To build anything you have to kowtow to the local building commission and the extortion of local groups[0]. Simply decreeing that it is a property owner's right to 'build a 5 story apartment building on a lot zoned for 5 story apartment buildings[1]' would do so much to alleviate housing pressure. [0]Invariably environmental studies will be insufficient, traffic studies will be insufficient, the color of the neighborhood will be disrupted, gentrification!, etc. [1]Consistent with rules and codes clearly defined, preferentially with affirmative defense against frivolous legal action.

6f8986c3 5y ago

This, this, this. And we need to make it easier to build and run something other than single-family dwellings. Boarding houses used to be a common fixture in the US: think a cross between a dorm and a military barracks. Give the residents decently secured lockers and some private security with actual teeth[1], not to mention some counseling, and the folks that land here might actually stand a chance at rebuilding their lives. [1] As in "Sell meth here, and we will literally chuck you out the door like yesterday's garbage. Lawsuits don't mean shit to us."

dragonwriter 5y ago
> As in "Sell meth here, and we will literally chuck you out the door like yesterday's garbage. Lawsuits don't mean shit to us." Public and public-subsidized housing already has that kind of policy (and much broader than that since it extends beyond “sell”, “meth”, and “here”) in the US by federal mandate; its a driver of homelessness, not a solution.

potatolicious 5y ago

> So yes, mental illness and drug abuse are factors, but they're factors exacerbated by housing costs. They're really red herrings relative to overall housing costs. This is such a good point that it really deserves hammering-home. The causal relationship with mental illness and substance abuse, and homelessness, is bidirectional. Homelessness causes both mental illness and substance abuse (you try existing with no roof, no food, few possessions, and constantly being treated as subhuman) - but also pre-existing mental illness and substance abuse are far easier (and for the folks in the back who can't be swayed by humanism: cheaper) to tackle when the person has stable housing. Housing is not the only lever we can pull to reduce homelessness, but it really is the largest one.

slg 5y ago

>before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness And to build off this, recent counts[1] have found that 26% of Los Angeles's homeless population has mental health issues and 32% has "difficulties with drug or alcohol use". Even if there is zero overlap in those two groups and those issues all originated before the person became homeless (both of those are clearly not true) that would still leave 42% of people who are homeless and don't have either of those issues. It isn't complicated. A majority of the homeless population is homeless because they simply can't afford a home. [1] - https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=4561-2020-homeless-count-key-messages https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=4561-2020-homeless-count-...

zug_zug 5y ago
Okay, but help me understand... San Francisco and LA are incredibly expensive places to live. So are you proposing to build so many new apartments in SF or LA that rent drops by over 1,000 a month? It definitely strikes me that there are a million places to live in this country that are dirt cheap, and there's a 0% chance SF becomes one of them. Maybe there's some data I'm missing about homeless people who can afford $2500 in rent but are on the street because they can't afford $3000, otherwise it just seems the two issues really aren't as connected as people tend to claim. Part of me wonders if the "angry about rent prices for the homeless" people on HN happen to be angry about rent prices that THEY have to pay...
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  > So are you proposing to build so many new apartments in SF or LA that rent drops by over 1,000 a month? Don't want to speak for OP, but I definitely do. Government would not have to build anying, only get out of the way of people who want to build on their own land. The Bay Area could easily be a world class metro area with 20 million people, all sleeping indoors.
  - nate_meurer 5y ago
    Do you know of any cities of 20 million+ people with no homeless? Or even one million?

harlanji 5y ago

Thanks. I’ve lived homeless and borrowed a lot from VanLife for 3 years in SF. Here’s my work on the subject; still in progress: Https://Harlanji.com/urban-camping-pro One of my projects is analyzing my data during various housing periods in the past 3-10 years like receipts, as a basis for the Physics concept art at the end. It’s open source and writing is not my primary vocation but I have the distilled experience there and am working on editing and the data. Thanks for addressing drugs and mental illness as you did, as well. I’d add that those things likely increase as people are stuck on the street and face adversity and lose hope. I manage to evade detection as homeless for the most part, got tough in lockdown without showers and with reduced bathroom access. Hard to stay employed without a shower, hence housing is critical to the bootstrap process of “get a job, bum!”

beerandt 5y ago

>margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. The lower the cost, the easier it is for family, SSDI, Section 8, In most of the country, Section 8 housing sets an artificially high floor on the price of rentals. Military bases often have a similar impact. In both cases, landlords (rationally) price rentals the highest amount they know the government will pay. As section 8 has become more prevalent in the last decade (being a requirement for most types of speculative construction financing due to Dodd Frank), it has become more and more influential in determining "market" rates of rental housing. Which is also why you see apartment complexes competing via "features", and not price. I don't know what the solution is, but it's classic unintended consequences that "affordable housing" requirements have led to higher prices.

Gunax 5y ago
I am a bit surprised to hear this, as I've always had section 8 applicants offer less than market rate. Owners only accept it because tenants often stay longer, and the rent is guaranteed (you're paid by the government directly, and the tenant reimburses the government their portion).
- beerandt 5y ago
  Right- and that was my experience with it as well, up until the last decade or so. The benefits you list are also true for markets that would "naturally" be priced lower than section 8 limits. The policies hud put in place to try and get nicer areas and more landlords to accept section 8, really just translated into being policies of willing to pay higher rent amounts. There's some circular reasoning going on, in that higher priced rentals must be nicer or in nicer areas. And the bigger apartment company players know how to game it, especially with new construction in cheaper areas of high rent zip codes.

tootie 5y ago

This site always makes me smile https://newyorkyimby.com/ https://newyorkyimby.com/

grawprog 5y ago

I'm not sure why this isn't common sense but I see this problem happening in the town I live in right now. Average rent these days seems to start at around $2000 Canadian for a 1 bedroom/bachelor suite. Minimum wage is $15/h. Wage for an average job is between $15-$20/h. $15/h is $2400/m gross and like $1600-$1800 net depending on your employer's accountant. It's literally not possible to afford even a bachelor suite on minimum wage where I live. I see homeowners complain on facebook about tenants not paying rent. Many of these homeowners are also business owners paying their employees minimum wage. The homeless population in town has expanded exponentially over the last year. Homeowners complain about that. There's a huge disconnect I just don't understand. You can't pay people less than what average rent cost per month then complain there's homeless people. Either jobs need to pay more or rent needs to go down. It's just not reasonable at all currently. You can't draw blood from stone as it were.

runarberg 5y ago
Indeed. Homelessness is about housing like living is about breathing. Yes, OP makes a point with their empirical data plotted neatly on a scatterplot demonstrating a nice correlation between housing availability and homelessness. So OP found a nice variable that they can fit in their models. Great. But OP cannot conclude that this is the whole story. Ignoring wage stagnation leaves a pretty big hole in their explanation on what homelessness is about.
- grawprog 5y ago
  I'm not entirely sure why models are necessary. It's basic math. if (job_pay < food + rent + basic_living_expenses){ ++homelessness } else{ sustainable_society() } Real basic logical shit honestly.
  - nly 5y ago
    In reality there are way more loops than this, since markets tend to be self correcting. One problem right now is some wealth variables are being incremented in loops that you can only break in to if you have assets, like in the property market.

nobody9999 5y ago

>Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors While that is definitely true, I'd add that less than ten percent[0] of homeless people have drug dependency/mental health issues, as was discussed recently[1] on HN. Which bolsters your point that it's affordable housing that's at issue. I live in NYC and that's one of our biggest issues too, but for different reasons [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27953080 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27953080 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27948732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27948732

kktkti9 5y ago

The inability to build housing is emotionally coupled to lack of political will to raise taxes, empower workers… The owners want to keep power. We’re basically servicing last generations success in that we’re obliged to let them fund our way of life. I don’t owe some chud who got rich in the 90s deference due to 30+ year old success. It’s the same with house building; we have to prop up these imagined values of people who “won” before we were born. Tax the rich or eventually the poor will outnumber them and eat them.

jsjohns2 5y ago

> Edit to add: before someone mentions "mental illness" and "drugs" and other contributors to homelessness, yes those are real factors: that said, the lower the cost of housing, the easier it is for someone on the margin of being housed or being homeless to stay housed. I live in Santa Monica, CA. The notion that mental illness and drugs are not the primary contributors to homelessness runs totally counter to common sense and my lived experience. Today, on 4th & Pacific, there was a man passed out asleep on a the median in broad daylight. No tent. Just splayed out baking in the sun. Earlier this week, I saw a man stop by each trash can along the Venice boardwalk to dig through and pick out half-eaten fast food. Eyes rolled back. An emaciated old woman passed out in the sand in a fetal position. A man using a power drill on the air and muttering to himself. These people are not on the margins. They are never bouncing back. Homes could be $0 and they would still be on the streets. And they are the rule not the exception. Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue?

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padobson 5y ago
And they are the rule not the exception. Meth is dirt cheap, widely available in Los Angeles, and it induces psychosis. Isn't it obvious that's the issue? As a long time volunteer and giver to drug rehab programs, I'm very sympathetic to this argument, but I still agree with OP. People don't really like drugs. That kind of addiction is usually closely connected to something else in their life going wrong. If the only happiness you can find in your life is in a pill or a pipe, then that's where you will go until it destroys you. This is where OP's "on the margins" argument comes back. If housing is more affordable, you'll have fewer miserable people and fewer people on drugs. If you transform public schools from prisons/daycares into institutions that actually feed and empower the curiosity of children, they'll have less a reason to buy drugs from each other. If you make it easier for people to start businesses and follow their dreams, they'll have a purpose that feeds them instead of a chemical. You can't eliminate the drug problem this way, but it can be improved on the margins simply by giving more people an easier path to happiness.