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“Homelessness is a Housing Problem”: More housing lowers homelessness

30 points by jseliger 4y ago

Proven 4y ago
namecheapTA 4y ago
A home in SF is over $1 million, or a 1 bedroom apartment is $3000. How much would home prices have to fall to make it 'affordable' and a viable option compared to homelessness? Are there really people living on the street because they can't find an apartment for $1200? But they aren't willing to move 90 miles to Merced for an $800 studio?
- imtringued 4y ago
  Singapore solved the homelessness problem with public ownership of land. It clearly is something systematic about land ownership that encourages people to have more land than they personally need which results in some people having less land than they personally need. Another answer would be to just move the damn jobs somewhere else.
  - pydry 4y ago
    Singapore solved the problem with a massive public housing program (HDB) because in the 1960s Lee Kuan Yew was terrified of the domestic communist party's popularity. The communists were (and always have been) pretty keen on building enough apartment blocks to house everybody. PAP is not communist but is famously unafraid of ripping off opposition party policies at the same time as crushing them by more conventional means. They did the same thing again in the 90s with a popular party set up to protest large class sizes in schools. They took the policy, watered it down a bit and then bullied the party into nonexistence. Singapore kind of semi works as an authoritarian country in a way no others could because of the uncomfortable proximity of its people to its rulers brings accountability that wouldnt exist elsewhere: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/13/naypyidaw-on-hudson-isolated-capitals-are-more-corrupt/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/13/naypyidaw-on-hudson-iso... but it's still largely run by thugs.
zthrowaway 4y ago
Isn’t it also a drug problem? Boiling it down to just housing doesn’t seem like it will fix anything. There’s way too many factors. If someone living in a home currently falls into drug addiction, there’s a good chance they go into financial ruin and lose their home. That said there’s definitely a lack of supply with housing especially in places like SF.
- pydry 4y ago
  If you owned a sizable property portfolio thats certainly what youd want people to think and if you own a sizable property portfolio you just might own a TV channel, magazine or newspaper as well and be able to project this idea to the masses. Unfortunately, if governments fixed the problem by increasing supply then that means lower rents so landlords would have less money to buy coke with. So that's a non starter. It's probably better all round if we throw a bit of cash at methadone clinics for all the homeless people who tried to salve the crushing pain of being priced out on to the street by taking drugs. Yeah, it's complicated. It's a good thing that we have reliable, objective media to educate us about the real story.
- rasz 4y ago
  Drugs, just like mass shootings, are the result of widespread mental health problems. https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-mental-hospitals-contribute-to-homelessness-here https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...
  - zthrowaway 4y ago
    Absolutely. We need to put our focus higher up the stream.
dumpsterdiver 4y ago
I thought that the movie Dredd gave a pretty believable portrayal of what a post-homelessness world might look like. Gigantic, self-contained slums that can basically be locked down like prisons.
- pawsforthought 4y ago
  Realistic if your approach to the problem is one of barbarism. If, on the other hand, you give homes to people who need them, unconditionally (and provide support for addiction and mental health problems), you get people off the streets and they can and do rebuild their lives [1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...
  - dumpsterdiver 4y ago
    > Realistic if your approach to the problem is one of barbarism. To be fair, the history of humanity is overwhelmingly marred by barbarism. When it comes to establishing and maintaining governance, humanity appears to have a penchant for isolating and punishing groups that fall outside of the in-crowd. For instance, look at heavily policed neighborhoods populated mostly by low income families. Are those neighborhoods really so different from the megastructure block housing units in the movie Dredd? The only thing that really changed from here to there is the population density.

30 points by jseliger 4y ago

A home in SF is over $1 million, or a 1 bedroom apartment is $3000. How much would home prices have to fall to make it 'affordable' and a viable option compared to homelessness? Are there really people living on the street because they can't find an apartment for $1200? But they aren't willing to move 90 miles to Merced for an $800 studio?

imtringued 4y ago
Singapore solved the homelessness problem with public ownership of land. It clearly is something systematic about land ownership that encourages people to have more land than they personally need which results in some people having less land than they personally need. Another answer would be to just move the damn jobs somewhere else.
- pydry 4y ago
  Singapore solved the problem with a massive public housing program (HDB) because in the 1960s Lee Kuan Yew was terrified of the domestic communist party's popularity. The communists were (and always have been) pretty keen on building enough apartment blocks to house everybody. PAP is not communist but is famously unafraid of ripping off opposition party policies at the same time as crushing them by more conventional means. They did the same thing again in the 90s with a popular party set up to protest large class sizes in schools. They took the policy, watered it down a bit and then bullied the party into nonexistence. Singapore kind of semi works as an authoritarian country in a way no others could because of the uncomfortable proximity of its people to its rulers brings accountability that wouldnt exist elsewhere: https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/13/naypyidaw-on-hudson-isolated-capitals-are-more-corrupt/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/13/naypyidaw-on-hudson-iso... but it's still largely run by thugs.

zthrowaway 4y ago

Isn’t it also a drug problem? Boiling it down to just housing doesn’t seem like it will fix anything. There’s way too many factors. If someone living in a home currently falls into drug addiction, there’s a good chance they go into financial ruin and lose their home. That said there’s definitely a lack of supply with housing especially in places like SF.

pydry 4y ago
If you owned a sizable property portfolio thats certainly what youd want people to think and if you own a sizable property portfolio you just might own a TV channel, magazine or newspaper as well and be able to project this idea to the masses. Unfortunately, if governments fixed the problem by increasing supply then that means lower rents so landlords would have less money to buy coke with. So that's a non starter. It's probably better all round if we throw a bit of cash at methadone clinics for all the homeless people who tried to salve the crushing pain of being priced out on to the street by taking drugs. Yeah, it's complicated. It's a good thing that we have reliable, objective media to educate us about the real story.
rasz 4y ago
Drugs, just like mass shootings, are the result of widespread mental health problems. https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-mental-hospitals-contribute-to-homelessness-here https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-menta...
- zthrowaway 4y ago
  Absolutely. We need to put our focus higher up the stream.

dumpsterdiver 4y ago

I thought that the movie Dredd gave a pretty believable portrayal of what a post-homelessness world might look like. Gigantic, self-contained slums that can basically be locked down like prisons.

pawsforthought 4y ago
Realistic if your approach to the problem is one of barbarism. If, on the other hand, you give homes to people who need them, unconditionally (and provide support for addiction and mental health problems), you get people off the streets and they can and do rebuild their lives [1]. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle-helsinkis-radical-solution-to-homelessness https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/jun/03/its-a-miracle...
- dumpsterdiver 4y ago
  > Realistic if your approach to the problem is one of barbarism. To be fair, the history of humanity is overwhelmingly marred by barbarism. When it comes to establishing and maintaining governance, humanity appears to have a penchant for isolating and punishing groups that fall outside of the in-crowd. For instance, look at heavily policed neighborhoods populated mostly by low income families. Are those neighborhoods really so different from the megastructure block housing units in the movie Dredd? The only thing that really changed from here to there is the population density.