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I have some bad news for "housing advocates": More housing will never be the solution to the homeless problem. You want to see a lot of drug users and homeless

I have some bad news for "housing advocates": More housing will never be the solution to the homeless problem. You want to see a lot of drug users and homeless people? You'll find them in areas of dense housing. Secondly, there is no "housing shortage". You're just looking in the wrong place. That's like saying there is a shortage of air in outer space.

jdavis703 5y ago
> You'll find them in areas of dense housing. Correlation is not causation. Perhaps homelessness is discouraged in low-density areas. Try putting up a tent up in front of nice homes in a single family neighborhood and the cops will quickly tell the camper to move on. But setting up camp under a downtown highway? One can probably last at least a few weeks before public works sweeps out the camp.
adventured 5y ago
One of the most important things for San Francisco - regarding homelessness - is to utilize housing first principles to remove the homeless from the streets. There is not plenty of housing for that in SF and there is very little will to change that. They have the wealth base to do it, they have the income base to do it. They're a mix of cowards and immoral misers (those who refuse to act). 2019: "Bolstered by its transformative tech industry, San Francisco has the most billionaires per capita than any other city, according to a new study from Wealth-X that measures the number of billionaires and where they live in the world. For every 11,612 people in San Francisco, the study says, there's one billionaire. And that's a much smaller ratio than the second most billionaire-dense city. In New York City, there are 81,211 inhabitants for every one billionaire." https://money.com/san-francisco-billionaire-density-income-inequality/ https://money.com/san-francisco-billionaire-density-income-i...
- icelancer 5y ago
  Money is not the issue. NIMBYism is. And many so-called leftist people love the idea of affordable public housing... just not near them.
  - TedShiller 5y ago
    I wish for dense housing, because I could then buy a house. However, I also know it won't solve any of those problems it's supposed to solve.
d4mi3n 5y ago
In the interest of making your argument stronger, it may be worth addressing that when folks discuss housing shortages, they mean "affordable housing shortages". It's generally good policy to argue towards the strongest and most charitable interpretation of a counter argument if your goal is to persuade. As a counter to your statement: I believe the crux of the issue is not just more housing, though having more housing available for low and middle class workers is important, but the fact that we (the US) as a country have a bit of a paradox in how we think about hosing: 1. We generally want everyone to be able to afford to have some kind of shelter. 2. We expect all real estate to increase in value over time. We can't have both, but until we change how we think about real estate and it's role as an asset, we're unlikely to have a robust, long term solution to a lack of housing that's affordable to the average worker.
csee 5y ago
There's no shortage, technically, because supply and demand finds equilibrium, but that equilibrium is at an extremely high price which is pricing out everyone except the rich.

jdavis703 5y ago

> You'll find them in areas of dense housing. Correlation is not causation. Perhaps homelessness is discouraged in low-density areas. Try putting up a tent up in front of nice homes in a single family neighborhood and the cops will quickly tell the camper to move on. But setting up camp under a downtown highway? One can probably last at least a few weeks before public works sweeps out the camp.

adventured 5y ago

One of the most important things for San Francisco - regarding homelessness - is to utilize housing first principles to remove the homeless from the streets. There is not plenty of housing for that in SF and there is very little will to change that. They have the wealth base to do it, they have the income base to do it. They're a mix of cowards and immoral misers (those who refuse to act). 2019: "Bolstered by its transformative tech industry, San Francisco has the most billionaires per capita than any other city, according to a new study from Wealth-X that measures the number of billionaires and where they live in the world. For every 11,612 people in San Francisco, the study says, there's one billionaire. And that's a much smaller ratio than the second most billionaire-dense city. In New York City, there are 81,211 inhabitants for every one billionaire." https://money.com/san-francisco-billionaire-density-income-inequality/ https://money.com/san-francisco-billionaire-density-income-i...

icelancer 5y ago
Money is not the issue. NIMBYism is. And many so-called leftist people love the idea of affordable public housing... just not near them.
- TedShiller 5y ago
  I wish for dense housing, because I could then buy a house. However, I also know it won't solve any of those problems it's supposed to solve.

d4mi3n 5y ago

In the interest of making your argument stronger, it may be worth addressing that when folks discuss housing shortages, they mean "affordable housing shortages". It's generally good policy to argue towards the strongest and most charitable interpretation of a counter argument if your goal is to persuade. As a counter to your statement: I believe the crux of the issue is not just more housing, though having more housing available for low and middle class workers is important, but the fact that we (the US) as a country have a bit of a paradox in how we think about hosing: 1. We generally want everyone to be able to afford to have some kind of shelter. 2. We expect all real estate to increase in value over time. We can't have both, but until we change how we think about real estate and it's role as an asset, we're unlikely to have a robust, long term solution to a lack of housing that's affordable to the average worker.

csee 5y ago

There's no shortage, technically, because supply and demand finds equilibrium, but that equilibrium is at an extremely high price which is pricing out everyone except the rich.