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I remember seeing favelas in Brazil next door to ultraluxury apartments 10 years ago thinking that this is probably what the future of the US was going to be li

by pydry 5y ago

I remember seeing favelas in Brazil next door to ultraluxury apartments 10 years ago thinking that this is probably what the future of the US was going to be like if wealth inequality steadily kept climbing. And here it is. r > g in the flesh - the other side of "the magic of compounding".

nine_k 5y ago
I'd say that many of the homeless are homeless because they could not live in the society. This is why they ran out of money and housing, not the other way around. What could help them is psychological / psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation from addictions, and offering some better prospects in life than to get wasted every day. This is not a (purely) money distribution problem.
- pydry 5y ago
  American investors who swing liberal try very hard to deal with the cognitive dissonance of "I'm a good person who cares about homeless people" and "I want my portfolio to really excel". The two are not compatible, though. This is very much reflected in American investor owned media (all media, pretty much). This is, realistically, why Americans perceive the cause and effect of homelessness and poor mental health to be reversed. The reality is seen in Finland where homelessness was completely solved just by adopting a "house people first" policy. This policy is at the same time going to keep a lid on house prices, rental income and REITS in your portfolio. Hence why it's politically impossible in America and why we strangely keep hearing from Very Smart Talking Heads on TV that 200% rent increases actually have very little to do with those homeless camps.
  - aerostable_slug 5y ago
    San Francisco's Housing First program has been an expensive failure. The only real beneficiaries were and are the owners of the SROs. My research indicates similar outcomes in some European locales, while Finland appears to be an outlier with markedly better success than, say, Scotland. Providing no-strings-attached housing in the United States appears to do little but get rain off people's heads. That is not really solving the problem — having lived near some of these projects, the street people continue being street people (substance abuse, crime, etc.) but now they can go inside when it rains or the SF Sheriffs show up to recover fugitives. They largely do not progress after getting the keys to the SRO room. That does not strike me as a 'win'.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Apparently SF housing first program spent between $4-$14 million to spend on temporarily renting out cheap motels. That's supposed to be expensive? That's pathetic. It'll provide temporary accomodation for a handful of people at most. I understand the political imperative to declare it a failure though. House prices uber alles.
      - aerostable_slug 5y ago
        You don't get it — I'm not motivated by property values. I'm motivated by 1.) the massive waste of taxpayer dollars that could go elsewhere, and 2.) my compassion for people who really need help, not just a room. San Francisco spends over $100,000 per homeless individual, per year. It is ridiculous that I kept seeing the same faces doing the same things for years, and of course their population has grown and continues to grow. Throwing money at the problem doesn't work in the United States. The continued advocacy for these programs seems to be rooted in either progressive wishful thinking or simple graft (there's a lot of money changing hands).
        nate_meurer 5y ago
        Have you read anything about Denver's housing-first program? I haven't taken the time to read up on it, but the popular narrative around here is that it's been successful enough to be worth expanding.
        aerostable_slug 5y ago
        I haven't seen enough data yet, at least not from sources that aren't obviously predisposed to bias one outcome or another. That said, I imagine there would be some significant differences simply due to the weather. Also, the metrics for "success" sometimes seem questionable. Example: percentage of residents still in the same residence a year later. Aren't we trying to help them progress out of the lot they're in and towards returning to a productive member of society? Stagnating in a room just means they're dying slower, not becoming better. What I've seen firsthand is 'street people' moving from a tent or the like into an SRO, but continuing with their addictions, criminal behavior (often to sustain said addictions), etc. I've even seen people whom I know have a room in an SRO on 6th street (SF) produce bodily waste in an alley because they didn't feel like going back inside. I would think a better metric would be the percentage who move from a housing-first program into transitional housing, or rehab, or find employment, or some other indicia we're doing something other than giving them a roof and calling it a day.
  - thatguy0900 5y ago
    You see the same with a lot of rich conservatives and Jesus' statements on whether rich people can go to heaven. A lot of mental gymnastics. Rich people want to feel like good people, even if it's nearly impossible to actually square that circle.
- scollet 5y ago
  > they could not live in the society The society is broken then. When are people going to reconcile this?
  - nisegami 5y ago
    Coming from someone who relates a lot to the idea, but manifests it in vastly different ways, I'm not convinced that society needs to be "for" everyone. Some people just can't exist within it.
- pleb_nz 5y ago
  "This is not a (purely) money distribution problem." Agreed, it's a much deeper issue in modern society. But treatments like those you mention are not a complete solution. They're a sticking plaster on a wet wound. Society will need to change at it's core and the issues show worse in places where the biggest changes are needed.
- more_corn 5y ago
  What about the doctors he talked to who just moved to Oakland and are saving up to get an apartment? What about people making $11/hr serving coffee and can’t get more than 20hrs wk because the boss doesn’t want to pay benefits? Or the school teacher making $42k/yr? If rent is $3k/mo a lot of people get squeezed out. Sure there are people who can’t cope and can’t function, but we regularly pay people far less than it costs to live, and that is the leading cause of homelessness. And even the people with fragile mental health or substance addiction are far more likely to overcome those issues if they have housing stability.(see the housing first initiative in Utah for evidence) What’s the answer I hear you asking? Build. More. Housing. Housing prices in the Bay Area go up 15% a year. More people move here than we build housing by a factor of 3. Pop quiz from Econ 101. What happens when demand grows at 3x the rate supply does? Since we’re not stinkin commies we probably don’t want to say people aren’t allowed to move here, so the supply side of the equation is all we have to work with. Many cities have figured this out. Pick the most successful one and copy it. Take a look at Vienna for starters. I leave that research as a task for the reader (it’ll be fun trust me) Without drastic intervention on the housing supply side the problem will continue to get worse as we continue to squeeze the most vulnerable people out the bottom of the housing market.
Proven 5y ago
onecommentman 5y ago
If you define “next door” by time to reach, then NYC had that contrast ever since the street car/subway was available. Extreme wealth, spend a nickel (or walk a block) and then see wretched poverty. So nothing really new…it was/is the reality of Manhattan since the late 1800s. And the future of “the US” is actually your projected future for a fairly tiny geographic region of densely urban US, something the other 95+% of Americans look at with a combination of bemusement and amazement. It’s been a few decades since those dense urban areas have been considered any sort of default desired social or cultural target for most Americans or American culture as a whole. It was different 70 years ago…

by pydry 5y ago

nine_k 5y ago

I'd say that many of the homeless are homeless because they could not live in the society. This is why they ran out of money and housing, not the other way around. What could help them is psychological / psychiatric treatment, rehabilitation from addictions, and offering some better prospects in life than to get wasted every day. This is not a (purely) money distribution problem.

pydry 5y ago
American investors who swing liberal try very hard to deal with the cognitive dissonance of "I'm a good person who cares about homeless people" and "I want my portfolio to really excel". The two are not compatible, though. This is very much reflected in American investor owned media (all media, pretty much). This is, realistically, why Americans perceive the cause and effect of homelessness and poor mental health to be reversed. The reality is seen in Finland where homelessness was completely solved just by adopting a "house people first" policy. This policy is at the same time going to keep a lid on house prices, rental income and REITS in your portfolio. Hence why it's politically impossible in America and why we strangely keep hearing from Very Smart Talking Heads on TV that 200% rent increases actually have very little to do with those homeless camps.
- aerostable_slug 5y ago
  San Francisco's Housing First program has been an expensive failure. The only real beneficiaries were and are the owners of the SROs. My research indicates similar outcomes in some European locales, while Finland appears to be an outlier with markedly better success than, say, Scotland. Providing no-strings-attached housing in the United States appears to do little but get rain off people's heads. That is not really solving the problem — having lived near some of these projects, the street people continue being street people (substance abuse, crime, etc.) but now they can go inside when it rains or the SF Sheriffs show up to recover fugitives. They largely do not progress after getting the keys to the SRO room. That does not strike me as a 'win'.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Apparently SF housing first program spent between $4-$14 million to spend on temporarily renting out cheap motels. That's supposed to be expensive? That's pathetic. It'll provide temporary accomodation for a handful of people at most. I understand the political imperative to declare it a failure though. House prices uber alles.
    - aerostable_slug 5y ago
      You don't get it — I'm not motivated by property values. I'm motivated by 1.) the massive waste of taxpayer dollars that could go elsewhere, and 2.) my compassion for people who really need help, not just a room. San Francisco spends over $100,000 per homeless individual, per year. It is ridiculous that I kept seeing the same faces doing the same things for years, and of course their population has grown and continues to grow. Throwing money at the problem doesn't work in the United States. The continued advocacy for these programs seems to be rooted in either progressive wishful thinking or simple graft (there's a lot of money changing hands).
      - nate_meurer 5y ago
        Have you read anything about Denver's housing-first program? I haven't taken the time to read up on it, but the popular narrative around here is that it's been successful enough to be worth expanding.
        aerostable_slug 5y ago
        I haven't seen enough data yet, at least not from sources that aren't obviously predisposed to bias one outcome or another. That said, I imagine there would be some significant differences simply due to the weather. Also, the metrics for "success" sometimes seem questionable. Example: percentage of residents still in the same residence a year later. Aren't we trying to help them progress out of the lot they're in and towards returning to a productive member of society? Stagnating in a room just means they're dying slower, not becoming better. What I've seen firsthand is 'street people' moving from a tent or the like into an SRO, but continuing with their addictions, criminal behavior (often to sustain said addictions), etc. I've even seen people whom I know have a room in an SRO on 6th street (SF) produce bodily waste in an alley because they didn't feel like going back inside. I would think a better metric would be the percentage who move from a housing-first program into transitional housing, or rehab, or find employment, or some other indicia we're doing something other than giving them a roof and calling it a day.
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  You see the same with a lot of rich conservatives and Jesus' statements on whether rich people can go to heaven. A lot of mental gymnastics. Rich people want to feel like good people, even if it's nearly impossible to actually square that circle.
scollet 5y ago
> they could not live in the society The society is broken then. When are people going to reconcile this?
- nisegami 5y ago
  Coming from someone who relates a lot to the idea, but manifests it in vastly different ways, I'm not convinced that society needs to be "for" everyone. Some people just can't exist within it.
pleb_nz 5y ago
"This is not a (purely) money distribution problem." Agreed, it's a much deeper issue in modern society. But treatments like those you mention are not a complete solution. They're a sticking plaster on a wet wound. Society will need to change at it's core and the issues show worse in places where the biggest changes are needed.
more_corn 5y ago
What about the doctors he talked to who just moved to Oakland and are saving up to get an apartment? What about people making $11/hr serving coffee and can’t get more than 20hrs wk because the boss doesn’t want to pay benefits? Or the school teacher making $42k/yr? If rent is $3k/mo a lot of people get squeezed out. Sure there are people who can’t cope and can’t function, but we regularly pay people far less than it costs to live, and that is the leading cause of homelessness. And even the people with fragile mental health or substance addiction are far more likely to overcome those issues if they have housing stability.(see the housing first initiative in Utah for evidence) What’s the answer I hear you asking? Build. More. Housing. Housing prices in the Bay Area go up 15% a year. More people move here than we build housing by a factor of 3. Pop quiz from Econ 101. What happens when demand grows at 3x the rate supply does? Since we’re not stinkin commies we probably don’t want to say people aren’t allowed to move here, so the supply side of the equation is all we have to work with. Many cities have figured this out. Pick the most successful one and copy it. Take a look at Vienna for starters. I leave that research as a task for the reader (it’ll be fun trust me) Without drastic intervention on the housing supply side the problem will continue to get worse as we continue to squeeze the most vulnerable people out the bottom of the housing market.

Proven 5y ago

onecommentman 5y ago

If you define “next door” by time to reach, then NYC had that contrast ever since the street car/subway was available. Extreme wealth, spend a nickel (or walk a block) and then see wretched poverty. So nothing really new…it was/is the reality of Manhattan since the late 1800s. And the future of “the US” is actually your projected future for a fairly tiny geographic region of densely urban US, something the other 95+% of Americans look at with a combination of bemusement and amazement. It’s been a few decades since those dense urban areas have been considered any sort of default desired social or cultural target for most Americans or American culture as a whole. It was different 70 years ago…