5 ms·

> The most recent ACS stats said there were >40k vacant units in the city. It’s critical to note that “vacant” can mean a lot of things when the census starts

by RC_ITR 5y ago

> The most recent ACS stats said there were >40k vacant units in the city. It’s critical to note that “vacant” can mean a lot of things when the census starts throwing the term around. For example, in San Francisco it could mean any of the following: * 6,694 of those vacancies were units currently listed for rent that hadn’t yet found tenants. Another 1,031 were homes for sale that didn’t yet have buyers. * 6,294 were homes with either current owners or renters that were just not living there. This can happen for any number of reasons: hospital stays, long trips out of town, delayed move-ins, even cases of homeowners who have died but are still technically counted as the resident. * 8,523 were “occasional use” homes—i.e., these were second homes, vacation homes, some types of short-term rentals, or just any unit that was accounted for but not lived in most of the year. *Finally, the census designated 11,760 homes in the catch-all category of “other vacant,” which primarily means vacancies without an obviously stated cause. For a city with 800K residents, 8k 'occasional use' homes and 10k 'potentially vacant' homes is not a lot. And it's not as though this crisis was caused by those numbers going up faster than residents. So yeah, more housing is 100% the answer.

abeppu 5y ago
Again, I agree that we likely need to build more housing. But when you're living in a "humanitarian crisis", leaving empty units empty is a luxury which we currently choose to permit. But that choice isn't mandatory, and it does reflect on us. If a property hasn't sold for months, why _shouldn't_ someone be able to live in it? Some units listed for rent remain listed for an extended period. I lived across from a unit which was empty for more than 18 months. It was listed at substantially above market, and the landlord was just being picky. Should it remain her prerogative to leave it empty until she finds the tenant of her dreams if in the meantime people's lives may be threatened by living without shelter? Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe you think the rights of a property owner to make decisions about how they will profit from their property is more important than all the other considerations, including risks to life. Is it yes for all such goods in short supply? When hospitals didn't have ventilators, if you had functional ventilators unused and in storage, would it have been ethical to let them remain there? Should it have been legal? These are all choices. And currently we choose to privilege rights of property owners above a human right to shelter. And when we do build, if we build luxury condos, that's a choice too. If we repeatedly and consistently decide that it's more important that property owners and developers be able to make as much money as they can than for people to be housed, then we've chosen to have a homeless crisis, because we're a homeless crisis kind of people with homeless crisis values. Hooray, we got what we want.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  The government could forcefully take properties from owners and chuck random people off the street in to them. The majority of these properties will end up ruined. Or the government could build their own housing to use for this purpose. I can tell you which idea would be more popular with voters.
  - abeppu 5y ago
    hypothetical public program: "We notice you haven't been able to fill this unit for 6 months. We're going to give you market rate based on the neighborhood and square footage, for this person to live here." property owner: "But what about my right to discriminate of people I don't like the look of?" > The majority of these properties will end up ruined. Show me the ruined apartments from a program that tried this. I'm skeptical because there are supportive housing programs, and the complaint I normally hear is that they don't have nearly enough capacity to meet the real need, not that once residents get placed they "ruin" their units. > Or the government could build their own housing to use for this purpose. I can tell you which idea would be more popular with voters. And show me the many many public housing projects we've built because public housing is so popular. In SF, neighborhoods have a pretty consistent track record of fighting back against any housing that doesn't increase their comps. Note that mostly there aren't actually public housing projects for them to push back against, but rather projects from non-profits like TNDC or Mission Housing.
    - simonsarris 5y ago
      > Show me the ruined apartments from a program that tried this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes
      - Gigachad 5y ago
        This looks like a nightmare. The problem is if you gather all of the lowest people in one building, it becomes hell on earth. But if you disperse them, you have a building full of decent people and one person who writes tags on the hallways and leaves trash around. So the rest of the building rightfully wants that one individual kicked out and you end up at homelessness again. You also have no leverage against these people. For normal people you can threaten them with fines, etc. But for some people, they have nothing to lose and do not care about any punishment you apply.

by RC_ITR 5y ago

abeppu 5y ago

Again, I agree that we likely need to build more housing. But when you're living in a "humanitarian crisis", leaving empty units empty is a luxury which we currently choose to permit. But that choice isn't mandatory, and it does reflect on us. If a property hasn't sold for months, why _shouldn't_ someone be able to live in it? Some units listed for rent remain listed for an extended period. I lived across from a unit which was empty for more than 18 months. It was listed at substantially above market, and the landlord was just being picky. Should it remain her prerogative to leave it empty until she finds the tenant of her dreams if in the meantime people's lives may be threatened by living without shelter? Maybe the answer is yes. Maybe you think the rights of a property owner to make decisions about how they will profit from their property is more important than all the other considerations, including risks to life. Is it yes for all such goods in short supply? When hospitals didn't have ventilators, if you had functional ventilators unused and in storage, would it have been ethical to let them remain there? Should it have been legal? These are all choices. And currently we choose to privilege rights of property owners above a human right to shelter. And when we do build, if we build luxury condos, that's a choice too. If we repeatedly and consistently decide that it's more important that property owners and developers be able to make as much money as they can than for people to be housed, then we've chosen to have a homeless crisis, because we're a homeless crisis kind of people with homeless crisis values. Hooray, we got what we want.

Gigachad 5y ago
The government could forcefully take properties from owners and chuck random people off the street in to them. The majority of these properties will end up ruined. Or the government could build their own housing to use for this purpose. I can tell you which idea would be more popular with voters.
- abeppu 5y ago
  hypothetical public program: "We notice you haven't been able to fill this unit for 6 months. We're going to give you market rate based on the neighborhood and square footage, for this person to live here." property owner: "But what about my right to discriminate of people I don't like the look of?" > The majority of these properties will end up ruined. Show me the ruined apartments from a program that tried this. I'm skeptical because there are supportive housing programs, and the complaint I normally hear is that they don't have nearly enough capacity to meet the real need, not that once residents get placed they "ruin" their units. > Or the government could build their own housing to use for this purpose. I can tell you which idea would be more popular with voters. And show me the many many public housing projects we've built because public housing is so popular. In SF, neighborhoods have a pretty consistent track record of fighting back against any housing that doesn't increase their comps. Note that mostly there aren't actually public housing projects for them to push back against, but rather projects from non-profits like TNDC or Mission Housing.
  - simonsarris 5y ago
    > Show me the ruined apartments from a program that tried this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabrini%E2%80%93Green_Homes
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      This looks like a nightmare. The problem is if you gather all of the lowest people in one building, it becomes hell on earth. But if you disperse them, you have a building full of decent people and one person who writes tags on the hallways and leaves trash around. So the rest of the building rightfully wants that one individual kicked out and you end up at homelessness again. You also have no leverage against these people. For normal people you can threaten them with fines, etc. But for some people, they have nothing to lose and do not care about any punishment you apply.