3 ms·

Then you're just back to where you began -- a situation where government is going to need to takeover, because nobody can make a profit selling flophouses to in

Then you're just back to where you began -- a situation where government is going to need to takeover, because nobody can make a profit selling flophouses to indigent single men if they're required by law to make them as nice as middle-class apartments. What modern Westerners seem entirely unwilling to acknowledge or accept is that if you require by decree that all accommodations look like middle-class accommodations, then you'll absolutely be able to get rid of all those worse accommodations, but you won't have done anything to address the reasons they existed in the first place.

tshaddox 5y ago
> nobody can make a profit selling flophouses to indigent single men if they're required by law to make them as nice as middle-class apartments. What exactly do you mean when you say "as nice as middle-class apartments"? Are you talking about how nice the carpeting and hardwood flooring is? How nice the building looks from the outside? How likely the roof is to leak or collapse? How safe the electrical wiring and fire suppression systems are?
- dionidium 5y ago
  What if it's closer to the latter? Like, what if the building doesn't have GFCI outlets in the kitchens? And maybe the roof in one of the bathrooms leaks and there's been a bucket under it for the last few months? And maybe the heat was out for 12 days last month? What then? What if the price of saying, "sorry, that's unacceptable" is that those men sleep on the street, instead? In the West that's exactly what we've done. We've said, sorry, no, you can't provide housing that looks like that, so the operators of those establishments said, OK, then, I won't. And now those men sleep on the street. We seem to think that we can demand of proprietors whatever we want and they'll have no choice but to comply. But it's simply not true. At some threshold they'll just shut down. And then I guess we can celebrate the elimination of "substandard" housing and declare ourselves morally cleansed.
  - tshaddox 5y ago
    I get what you're saying, but surely there ought to be some limit on how unsafe a rental property can be, right? For one thing, at some point it actually won't even be true that "it's better than sleeping on the street." When the cheap electrical wiring causes a fire that burns down the apartment building and kills a few dozen people, that probably wasn't better than if the victims had slept on the street that particular night. So if your landlord is selling you a nightly probability that you'll be safer than if you had slept on the street, this "better than the street" sound bite sounds a little less appealing. Not to mention that the rentees probably aren't properly informed of these probabilities. Secondly, I think it's a false dichotomy in practice. I find it very hard to believe that basic safety codes alone cause the difference between SRO-style buildings and "luxury" or even "middle-class" apartments. What percentage of that $800k was spent on the GFCI outlets in the kitchen?
    - dionidium 5y ago
      To be clear, I'm not an ideological libertarian. I just happen to think these are genuinely difficult problems and the tradeoffs aren't always obvious. In some cases, we won't like any of the options. So, yes, I agree with you. Surely there must be some limit. But what's optimal?
      - tshaddox 5y ago
        I don't claim to be able to draw up very specific legal code here, or even that there is some "objectively optimal" answer. I just don't think "it's better than sleeping on the street" is a great mode of argument, because 1) it might not even be true if people were fully informed of the risks associated with every rental unit and 2) even if it is true, society might not be willing to allow landlords to earn unrestricted profit from renting units that are infinitesimally "better than sleeping on the street."

tshaddox 5y ago

> nobody can make a profit selling flophouses to indigent single men if they're required by law to make them as nice as middle-class apartments. What exactly do you mean when you say "as nice as middle-class apartments"? Are you talking about how nice the carpeting and hardwood flooring is? How nice the building looks from the outside? How likely the roof is to leak or collapse? How safe the electrical wiring and fire suppression systems are?

dionidium 5y ago
What if it's closer to the latter? Like, what if the building doesn't have GFCI outlets in the kitchens? And maybe the roof in one of the bathrooms leaks and there's been a bucket under it for the last few months? And maybe the heat was out for 12 days last month? What then? What if the price of saying, "sorry, that's unacceptable" is that those men sleep on the street, instead? In the West that's exactly what we've done. We've said, sorry, no, you can't provide housing that looks like that, so the operators of those establishments said, OK, then, I won't. And now those men sleep on the street. We seem to think that we can demand of proprietors whatever we want and they'll have no choice but to comply. But it's simply not true. At some threshold they'll just shut down. And then I guess we can celebrate the elimination of "substandard" housing and declare ourselves morally cleansed.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  I get what you're saying, but surely there ought to be some limit on how unsafe a rental property can be, right? For one thing, at some point it actually won't even be true that "it's better than sleeping on the street." When the cheap electrical wiring causes a fire that burns down the apartment building and kills a few dozen people, that probably wasn't better than if the victims had slept on the street that particular night. So if your landlord is selling you a nightly probability that you'll be safer than if you had slept on the street, this "better than the street" sound bite sounds a little less appealing. Not to mention that the rentees probably aren't properly informed of these probabilities. Secondly, I think it's a false dichotomy in practice. I find it very hard to believe that basic safety codes alone cause the difference between SRO-style buildings and "luxury" or even "middle-class" apartments. What percentage of that $800k was spent on the GFCI outlets in the kitchen?
  - dionidium 5y ago
    To be clear, I'm not an ideological libertarian. I just happen to think these are genuinely difficult problems and the tradeoffs aren't always obvious. In some cases, we won't like any of the options. So, yes, I agree with you. Surely there must be some limit. But what's optimal?
    - tshaddox 5y ago
      I don't claim to be able to draw up very specific legal code here, or even that there is some "objectively optimal" answer. I just don't think "it's better than sleeping on the street" is a great mode of argument, because 1) it might not even be true if people were fully informed of the risks associated with every rental unit and 2) even if it is true, society might not be willing to allow landlords to earn unrestricted profit from renting units that are infinitesimally "better than sleeping on the street."