9 ms·

Mobile home parks are universally reviled by city councils for reducing property values around them, hence there is very aggressive zoning against them. Any typ

Mobile home parks are universally reviled by city councils for reducing property values around them, hence there is very aggressive zoning against them. Any type of affordable housing will have the same problem, "it's great, but we don't want it around here". We could solve the problem of homelessness in a heartbeat by just subdividing large residential properties into tiny apartments with just 1 bed and a compact bathroom. But who wants a capsule hotel for the homeless on their street? Homelessness is always and everywhere a lack of social safety net and class problem, not a housing supply problem (although that could be one of the apparent symptoms).

chaosite 4y ago
If I'm reading your comment correctly, housing supply problem being an apparent symptom seems to be your way of saying "we could fix that easily if we wanted to, but we aren't fixing it, therefore we don't want to fix it." And I don't exactly disagree, but surely you see how it's just slightly more complicated than that, and also how fixing the housing supply symptom (i.e., homing the homeless) would really help?
- mjevans 4y ago
  There should be enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a given area, and it should be housing people would want to live in. That includes the currently homeless, and also those who can't afford to live where the rest of their life says they should. Lack of social safety nets and lack of affordable housing both come from the same root cause, too much greed combined with too little empathy. 'I got mine, time to kick the ladder off the wall.'
  - midasuni 4y ago
    Ok. 400 million people globally want to live in Manhattan. How do you solve that?
    - dathos 4y ago
      Do you think that's because Manhattan is such a great place to live or because people globally would love a life that's not a life of poverty?
    - black_13 4y ago
      [dead]
    - imtringued 4y ago
      Build more Manhattans.
      - gruez 4y ago
        1. That wasn't the original claim, which was "There should be enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a given area". People don't want to live in Manhattan 2, they want to live in Manhattan. 2. "Build more Manhattans" is easier said than done. Even petro-states with astronomical amount of money to splash around have a hard time building a "Manhattan". Dubai might be very shiny and the financial capital of the middle east, but it's no Manhattan.
        mjevans 4y ago
        Also, "claim" is too strong. This is the __aspirational__ sort of should. "We SHOULD all be kind to each other."
    - ben_w 4y ago
      Is that a hypothetical or your actual belief?
    - mjevans 4y ago
      I don't know Manhattan very well, only what I've seen on TV and in Movies. Back of napkin answer: Build bigger buildings, lots of them. All of those 'quaint' places with 2-6 story buildings? 50-60+ story sky-scrapers. However that's probably also the answer you assumed. Yes that would change the 'character' of a place, because the only way of keeping that the same is to keep the number and type of people in a place the same. How could someone preserve an idea that directly contradicts a reality? No, there would need to be a new idea that supports the desired conditions. Hopefully a good idea that is well executed. As another commenter said, 'more ''Manhattans''' is another way, try to replicate the sort of feel / idea at existing scale or larger in other locations. My own comment was about the technical and physical goals a society should strive for, which are within reach, should we the people have the will to reach for them.
  - lotsofpulp 4y ago
    Where do I sign up for my 10k sq ft lot on the Southern California coast?
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      That's not at all what the parent post is suggesting.
      - lotsofpulp 4y ago
        I know. The point was it is easy and useless to write: >There should be enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a given area, and it should be housing people would want to live in. The hard part comes in executing, where you have to define “housing people would want to live in (which people?)” and who is in the set of “everyone” whose opinion is gathered about wanting to live in a certain area.
proc0 4y ago
In my opinion government should be subsidizing private companies to compete for creative solutions to solve the problem and reward the winner that solves it. Whatever the solution I think we've seen government has not been able to solve it. Maybe some business can give some basic work in exchange for food and housing, and for laws to adjust and allow this. If enough of these types of jobs existed it could be a way out of homelessness. And I agree, although housing is the objective, it's not necessarily the solution to the problem, mainly because of how markets keep going up and space is limited. People need a way to start earning income without worrying about rent.
- dathos 4y ago
  How about we start actively taxing private companies that feel the need to make a quick buck over people backs? Especially without contributing any real value to society, and with society I don't mean the economy.
  - TheGigaChad 4y ago
    [dead]
  - luckylion 4y ago
    Who decides what is "real value" and how much of it is being contributed by some activity?
    - alistairSH 4y ago
      We can start by implementing policies designed to reduce rent seeking activities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
  - golergka 4y ago
    How about we solve society's problems without taking other people's property with violence or threat of violence?
prawn 4y ago
We have an offering in my city where apartments/housing is dedicated for a mix of homeless and low-income earners, with on-site support/training. I don't know if it's changed slightly, but I remember something about it originally having a mix including more typical renters as well. I think the idea was that each tenant would be exposed to a mix of people rather than all near-homeless risking it becoming a ghetto. https://www.housingchoices.org.au/south-australia/common-ground-adelaide-and-port-augusta/ https://www.housingchoices.org.au/south-australia/common-gro... https://community.solutions/about-us/the-team/rosanne-haggerty/ https://community.solutions/about-us/the-team/rosanne-hagger... Traditionally, welfare housing here is/was clumped in squat, dingy homes and made for less-desirable areas with depressed pricing. There was also a scheme (NRAS?) whereby property owners could receive a tax rebate in exchange for offering their property at below market rent. Not sure if it's still active. "NRAS, which commenced in 2008, provides an annual financial incentive for up to 10 years to approved participants who rent dwellings to eligible people on low to moderate incomes at a rate at least 20 per cent below market rent. NRAS dwellings are not social housing–they are affordable private rental homes." https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/housing-support/programmes-services/national-rental-affordability-scheme https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/housing-support/...
golergka 4y ago
You would solve homelessness problem for some people and create a crime problem for others.
- cornholio 4y ago
  Do you presume the homeless have become so due to their intrinsic criminal tendencies? If that's the case, any citizen has a legitimate objection against crime, so there is no solution to homelessness other than segregating them into some walled of, far away city.
  - troon-lover 4y ago
    [dead]
  - bluGill 4y ago
    You cannot talk about the homeless as some monolithic group of people that are all the same. Some of them are schizophrenic and their nature is crime because their brain is haywire. Some of them are addicts (both legal and illegal) who would be nice people if given treatment for their problem. Some are at nice people, but they are at the bottom of the intelligence chart (not to be confused with IQ, but instead what people think of as intelligence despite it not being well defined) and mentally unable to hold a job that could support themselves. There is a lot more, but I'm not a homeless expert. The above are just specific people I know (either family or family of close friends). Some homeless are also criminals, some are not. Some of the criminals would turn away from crime if given the proper help, some will not. Some of them will refuse help unless it is forced on them - we have as a society rejected the needed force because of rampant abuse in the past. Each situation is different. Some of them are easy to solve - most are not.
  - golergka 4y ago
    No. I presume that low-income neighbourhoods have higher crime rates than high-income neighbourhoods, which is universally backed up by statistics.
    - 4y ago
m463 4y ago
I remember looking for housing in the bay area and noticing there were were some mobile home parks with space rent of ~ $300/month, which is cheap. Turns out it was at an over-50 community. I guess there are some demographics that don't trouble city councils (maybe even match the city council's demographics)
- treeman79 4y ago
  50 year old people have much lower violent crime rates. More likely to keep a constant eye out for trouble makers.
kjghkjghkjgh 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ybessyehsyehs 4y ago
[flagged]
throwaway426079 4y ago
Who wants to live in a capsule either?
- thephyber 4y ago
  It depends what the other options are. Mobile homes aren't great, but they beat a tent or a cardboard box. And they provide some stability compared to not having any tenant / property rights.
  - Mezzie 4y ago
    Also a cheap option that doesn't involve sharing walls. I looked into living in them because I have PTSD and hypervigilance + the lack of insulation in the buildings/apartments affordable to the poor = a living hell. And without addressing the PTSD, I couldn't have the fortitude for a job paying any better.
  - Caboose8685 4y ago
    I rented one for a while and it was far better than 'not great'. Only downside really was the noise from the air circulator located inside, otherwise it was pretty much a normal 3 bed 2 bath small home.
    - olyjohn 4y ago
      Don't worry, I'm sure someone will come along and suggest we build $150,000 tiny houses, or shipping container houses. Mobile homes are just not cool enough for the bro who wants to save the homeless.
  - olyjohn 4y ago
    Wow do you really think a mobile home is only slightly better than a tent or cardboard box?
    - thephyber 4y ago
      I didn’t say that. You might benefit from re-reading what I wrote and assume the best possible interpretation of what I wrote.
walrus01 4y ago
Not just mobile home parks but many small cities and even entire counties have zoning laws prohibiting manufactured homes, which even has the effect of blocking the assembly of some quite high end products that come in 3 or 4 huge "chunks", totaling something larger than a double wide, and are assembled together on site.
orthoxerox 4y ago
> But who wants a capsule hotel for the homeless on their street? The same people that don't want the homeless literally sleeping on their street?
- bluGill 4y ago
  Those people want the capsule hotel in some other city - or at least on the other side of their city.
- fghjjjjhg 4y ago
  I am sympathetic but I suppose I am one of the person's you describe here. I do not want homeless in my street. I actually don't mind someone sleeping but unfortuantely if you are homeless, lying down isn't the only thing you do on the street. And if it's allowed, how many homeless people are you ok with on your street. I suppose with homeless people on the street, you can anything from just a person keeping to himself to mental health issues to drug use to crime. Now would I want that where my kids play/walk etc. I'll be honest, I do not. Now let me talk about property values too. I worked hard and saved up for x years and bought a house in a good neighborhood (location, location, location as they say), took up a 30 year loan. Now, if the property values drop because there's a homeless camp in the street, then I am under water for a long time, potentially even losing my house. My home, which was also me building wealth for myself when I get old, will also loose value now. If you suddenly take away value from my biggest and long term investment that took years of work, yes, I would not want that either. I understand the problem and I will support solutions, but just saying let people live on the street in front of my house is simply not one of them.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    Imo you bought a house, not the exclusive right to call the streets "yours." If someone has only a street as their home, their claim to calling it theirs is at least as strong as yours. This attitude is pervasive and subtle but important to challenge in ourselves. Homeless people are citizens, they are the public, they are residents of your city and your neighborhood. They aren't some other, external element that is transiently present. They are your neighbors.

chaosite 4y ago

If I'm reading your comment correctly, housing supply problem being an apparent symptom seems to be your way of saying "we could fix that easily if we wanted to, but we aren't fixing it, therefore we don't want to fix it." And I don't exactly disagree, but surely you see how it's just slightly more complicated than that, and also how fixing the housing supply symptom (i.e., homing the homeless) would really help?

mjevans 4y ago
There should be enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a given area, and it should be housing people would want to live in. That includes the currently homeless, and also those who can't afford to live where the rest of their life says they should. Lack of social safety nets and lack of affordable housing both come from the same root cause, too much greed combined with too little empathy. 'I got mine, time to kick the ladder off the wall.'
- midasuni 4y ago
  Ok. 400 million people globally want to live in Manhattan. How do you solve that?
  - dathos 4y ago
    Do you think that's because Manhattan is such a great place to live or because people globally would love a life that's not a life of poverty?
  - black_13 4y ago
    [dead]
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Build more Manhattans.
    - gruez 4y ago
      1. That wasn't the original claim, which was "There should be enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a given area". People don't want to live in Manhattan 2, they want to live in Manhattan. 2. "Build more Manhattans" is easier said than done. Even petro-states with astronomical amount of money to splash around have a hard time building a "Manhattan". Dubai might be very shiny and the financial capital of the middle east, but it's no Manhattan.
      - mjevans 4y ago
        Also, "claim" is too strong. This is the __aspirational__ sort of should. "We SHOULD all be kind to each other."
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Is that a hypothetical or your actual belief?
  - mjevans 4y ago
    I don't know Manhattan very well, only what I've seen on TV and in Movies. Back of napkin answer: Build bigger buildings, lots of them. All of those 'quaint' places with 2-6 story buildings? 50-60+ story sky-scrapers. However that's probably also the answer you assumed. Yes that would change the 'character' of a place, because the only way of keeping that the same is to keep the number and type of people in a place the same. How could someone preserve an idea that directly contradicts a reality? No, there would need to be a new idea that supports the desired conditions. Hopefully a good idea that is well executed. As another commenter said, 'more ''Manhattans''' is another way, try to replicate the sort of feel / idea at existing scale or larger in other locations. My own comment was about the technical and physical goals a society should strive for, which are within reach, should we the people have the will to reach for them.
- lotsofpulp 4y ago
  Where do I sign up for my 10k sq ft lot on the Southern California coast?
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    That's not at all what the parent post is suggesting.
    - lotsofpulp 4y ago
      I know. The point was it is easy and useless to write: >There should be enough housing for everyone that wants to live in a given area, and it should be housing people would want to live in. The hard part comes in executing, where you have to define “housing people would want to live in (which people?)” and who is in the set of “everyone” whose opinion is gathered about wanting to live in a certain area.

proc0 4y ago

In my opinion government should be subsidizing private companies to compete for creative solutions to solve the problem and reward the winner that solves it. Whatever the solution I think we've seen government has not been able to solve it. Maybe some business can give some basic work in exchange for food and housing, and for laws to adjust and allow this. If enough of these types of jobs existed it could be a way out of homelessness. And I agree, although housing is the objective, it's not necessarily the solution to the problem, mainly because of how markets keep going up and space is limited. People need a way to start earning income without worrying about rent.

dathos 4y ago
How about we start actively taxing private companies that feel the need to make a quick buck over people backs? Especially without contributing any real value to society, and with society I don't mean the economy.
- TheGigaChad 4y ago
  [dead]
- luckylion 4y ago
  Who decides what is "real value" and how much of it is being contributed by some activity?
  - alistairSH 4y ago
    We can start by implementing policies designed to reduce rent seeking activities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking
- golergka 4y ago
  How about we solve society's problems without taking other people's property with violence or threat of violence?

prawn 4y ago

We have an offering in my city where apartments/housing is dedicated for a mix of homeless and low-income earners, with on-site support/training. I don't know if it's changed slightly, but I remember something about it originally having a mix including more typical renters as well. I think the idea was that each tenant would be exposed to a mix of people rather than all near-homeless risking it becoming a ghetto. https://www.housingchoices.org.au/south-australia/common-ground-adelaide-and-port-augusta/ https://www.housingchoices.org.au/south-australia/common-gro... https://community.solutions/about-us/the-team/rosanne-haggerty/ https://community.solutions/about-us/the-team/rosanne-hagger... Traditionally, welfare housing here is/was clumped in squat, dingy homes and made for less-desirable areas with depressed pricing. There was also a scheme (NRAS?) whereby property owners could receive a tax rebate in exchange for offering their property at below market rent. Not sure if it's still active. "NRAS, which commenced in 2008, provides an annual financial incentive for up to 10 years to approved participants who rent dwellings to eligible people on low to moderate incomes at a rate at least 20 per cent below market rent. NRAS dwellings are not social housing–they are affordable private rental homes." https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/housing-support/programmes-services/national-rental-affordability-scheme https://www.dss.gov.au/our-responsibilities/housing-support/...

golergka 4y ago

You would solve homelessness problem for some people and create a crime problem for others.

cornholio 4y ago
Do you presume the homeless have become so due to their intrinsic criminal tendencies? If that's the case, any citizen has a legitimate objection against crime, so there is no solution to homelessness other than segregating them into some walled of, far away city.
- troon-lover 4y ago
  [dead]
- bluGill 4y ago
  You cannot talk about the homeless as some monolithic group of people that are all the same. Some of them are schizophrenic and their nature is crime because their brain is haywire. Some of them are addicts (both legal and illegal) who would be nice people if given treatment for their problem. Some are at nice people, but they are at the bottom of the intelligence chart (not to be confused with IQ, but instead what people think of as intelligence despite it not being well defined) and mentally unable to hold a job that could support themselves. There is a lot more, but I'm not a homeless expert. The above are just specific people I know (either family or family of close friends). Some homeless are also criminals, some are not. Some of the criminals would turn away from crime if given the proper help, some will not. Some of them will refuse help unless it is forced on them - we have as a society rejected the needed force because of rampant abuse in the past. Each situation is different. Some of them are easy to solve - most are not.
- golergka 4y ago
  No. I presume that low-income neighbourhoods have higher crime rates than high-income neighbourhoods, which is universally backed up by statistics.
  - 4y ago

m463 4y ago

I remember looking for housing in the bay area and noticing there were were some mobile home parks with space rent of ~ $300/month, which is cheap. Turns out it was at an over-50 community. I guess there are some demographics that don't trouble city councils (maybe even match the city council's demographics)

treeman79 4y ago
50 year old people have much lower violent crime rates. More likely to keep a constant eye out for trouble makers.

kjghkjghkjgh 4y ago

[flagged]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

ybessyehsyehs 4y ago

[flagged]

throwaway426079 4y ago

Who wants to live in a capsule either?

thephyber 4y ago
It depends what the other options are. Mobile homes aren't great, but they beat a tent or a cardboard box. And they provide some stability compared to not having any tenant / property rights.
- Mezzie 4y ago
  Also a cheap option that doesn't involve sharing walls. I looked into living in them because I have PTSD and hypervigilance + the lack of insulation in the buildings/apartments affordable to the poor = a living hell. And without addressing the PTSD, I couldn't have the fortitude for a job paying any better.
- Caboose8685 4y ago
  I rented one for a while and it was far better than 'not great'. Only downside really was the noise from the air circulator located inside, otherwise it was pretty much a normal 3 bed 2 bath small home.
  - olyjohn 4y ago
    Don't worry, I'm sure someone will come along and suggest we build $150,000 tiny houses, or shipping container houses. Mobile homes are just not cool enough for the bro who wants to save the homeless.
- olyjohn 4y ago
  Wow do you really think a mobile home is only slightly better than a tent or cardboard box?
  - thephyber 4y ago
    I didn’t say that. You might benefit from re-reading what I wrote and assume the best possible interpretation of what I wrote.

walrus01 4y ago

Not just mobile home parks but many small cities and even entire counties have zoning laws prohibiting manufactured homes, which even has the effect of blocking the assembly of some quite high end products that come in 3 or 4 huge "chunks", totaling something larger than a double wide, and are assembled together on site.

orthoxerox 4y ago

> But who wants a capsule hotel for the homeless on their street? The same people that don't want the homeless literally sleeping on their street?

bluGill 4y ago
Those people want the capsule hotel in some other city - or at least on the other side of their city.
fghjjjjhg 4y ago
I am sympathetic but I suppose I am one of the person's you describe here. I do not want homeless in my street. I actually don't mind someone sleeping but unfortuantely if you are homeless, lying down isn't the only thing you do on the street. And if it's allowed, how many homeless people are you ok with on your street. I suppose with homeless people on the street, you can anything from just a person keeping to himself to mental health issues to drug use to crime. Now would I want that where my kids play/walk etc. I'll be honest, I do not. Now let me talk about property values too. I worked hard and saved up for x years and bought a house in a good neighborhood (location, location, location as they say), took up a 30 year loan. Now, if the property values drop because there's a homeless camp in the street, then I am under water for a long time, potentially even losing my house. My home, which was also me building wealth for myself when I get old, will also loose value now. If you suddenly take away value from my biggest and long term investment that took years of work, yes, I would not want that either. I understand the problem and I will support solutions, but just saying let people live on the street in front of my house is simply not one of them.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  Imo you bought a house, not the exclusive right to call the streets "yours." If someone has only a street as their home, their claim to calling it theirs is at least as strong as yours. This attitude is pervasive and subtle but important to challenge in ourselves. Homeless people are citizens, they are the public, they are residents of your city and your neighborhood. They aren't some other, external element that is transiently present. They are your neighbors.