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Congrats to https://cayimby.org/ https://cayimby.org/ and https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/ for all their work on this! Great organizations to
by davidw 4y ago
Congrats to https://cayimby.org/ https://cayimby.org/ and https://yimbyaction.org/ https://yimbyaction.org/ for all their work on this!
Great organizations to get involved with if you care about other people being able to afford a place to live.
- encoderer 4y ago[flagged]
- shuckles 4y agoWhy is it nonsense for the state to fund shelter programs by buying out non-viable businesses (empty motels at the height of the pandemic), bailing out both business owners and building shelter capacity at much lower cost than building it new?
- encoderer 4y agoSuppose you buy every hotel in the sfba and move in every homeless person, totally clearing the streets. What happens next? Just no more homeless? No, more homeless will appear. They will fill the same corners and tents that you just cleared the month before. This is not a solution. This is a grift.
- davidw 4y ago> No, more homeless will appear It's not like they magically respawn or something. There are people who have studied the root cause of homelessness, and: it's housing. Sure, other factors make things worse, but there's more homelessness where housing is expensive. Which stands to reason: when a thing is expensive, fewer people can afford it. https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/ https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/ That's why, ultimately, the biggest YIMBY win is going to be not helping out people currently homeless, but stopping the pipeline in the first place by having enough housing.
- encoderer 4y agoThey really do re-spawn if being homeless now means being given a nice, new, clean place to live. Why wouldn’t they?
- Larrikin 4y agoDo you really think people with housing would become homeless in hopes of getting a new place?
- encoderer 4y agoI think there are a lot of people actually living with relatives and friends who would “become homeless”
- celestialcheese 4y agoNo, but people are mobile, and the houseless are also people who communicate through the internet and share where assistance is available. If free, safe lodging is available without restrictions, demand will quickly outstrip supply with folks moving from other cities (LA, Seattle, Portland, etc) to fill the available rooms. It's a $50 bus ticket, city officials will likely fund these tickets for them to get to SF to take advantage of this. SF had programs for this exact thing to get homeless out of SF [1] 1 - https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvg7ba/instead-of-helping-homeless-people-cities-are-bussing-them-out-of-town https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvg7ba/instead-of-helping-ho...
- ryan_lane 4y agoWhich means every city should do this to reduce their homeless population. The "don't do it because homeless people will move from elsewhere to get this benefit" is a race to the bottom. Housing homeless people reduces overall homelessness. If we do it enough, everyone will be housed. Part of this is lowering housing prices, another part of this is housing people who can't house themselves (for various reasons).
- shuckles 4y agoYou are making something of an induced demand argument that basic services for people who can't care for themselves will generate more such people. Fortunately, most people of sound mind understand that living in a former Motel 6 is not a good life and in practice the number of people who are "incentivized" by it are much less than the number of people taken off the streets by shelter. That's why cities with robust shelter programs like Houston have far fewer unsheltered homeless people.
- nielsbot 4y agoPlease read this article, I think it might change your perspective a bit: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homelessness-affordable-housing-crisis-democrats-causes/672224/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
- davidw 4y agoOnce someone has a home, they're no longer homeless, so it's a good strategy in some circumstances. Even where that person has other 'issues', it's a lot easier to deal with those once they're in a stable location. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-people.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/14/headway/houston-homeless-... https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homelessness-affordable-housing-crisis-democrats-causes/672224/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
- Vaslo 4y ago[flagged]
- femiagbabiaka 4y agoCiting an article or publication in rebuttal would be a more productive way to make this critique..
- seattle_spring 4y agoWhich ironically would be from something like the Daily Wire or Zero Hedge.
- jojobas 4y agoYou can help yourself to the info on what happened when homeless people were put in hotels during covid. Most of them are homeless for because they can't live in a home.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- frosted-flakes 4y agoSeems like a decent short-term plan, if it were to be properly funded and actually run like a hotel, minus the profits.
- mikestew 4y agoOther than calling "nonsense", you haven't really made the case against for something that has precedent. Care to take another whack at it?
- encoderer 4y ago$550,000 a unit. Come on. You can’t be serious that this is a solution. https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-health-california-coronavirus-pandemic-835c2091c63c199d397346a497e7ae49 https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-business-health-califor...
- lapetitejort 4y ago> CEO John Maceri said the state has set up local governments for success, but it will take a combined effort of politicians and service providers to sustain the program. He estimates conversion costs will be far less than $550,000 per unit, the going rate for building from the ground up. I assume this is where you got your number? Why skip the "far less" part?
- encoderer 4y agoJust fast googling. Here’s another source at $300k - still insane. https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-san-francisco-awarded-grants-to-covert-hotels-into-housing-for-homeless-residents.amp https://www.ktvu.com/news/oakland-san-francisco-awarded-gran...
- sterlind 4y agoThe only to solve homelessness in a city, definitionally, are getting the homeless to move out, or getting them housing. Given the insane real estate prices in the area, $550K seems accurate to buy them housing. Unless you plan to round them up and ship them to camps, or find a way to get them jobs that pay well enough to lease a $550K unit, you're sort of out of options.
- encoderer 4y ago
- Fauntleroy 4y agoCan you elaborate on how this is "nonsense"?