6 ms·

First article I found said the SLC program was successful for 95% of those placed in a home. IIRC, the housing first program in Seattle was similarly effective

First article I found said the SLC program was successful for 95% of those placed in a home. IIRC, the housing first program in Seattle was similarly effective. I agree that it’s not as exhaustive as some of the more boastful claims, but I think the better question to ask is why these programs have been cut in favor of far less effective and far more expensive ones.

pyuser583 3y ago
Effective at what? I lived near a motel that was part of a “housing first” initiative in SF. People treated the hotel like home base, and still spent their nights howling. I had to move the screaming was so loud. Not to mention the drugs, human trafficking, etc. In terms of environment, it didn’t deduce things like human feces on the street. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but the neighborhood was mostly unlivable. That’s not a real solution.
- tfourb 3y ago
  Good housing first programs do not cluster beneficiaries but try to integrate them into "normal" neighborhoods and provide them with ongoing support by social workers, medical attention, etc. Just dumping a couple of dozen homeless people in a motel is not a great way to approach this, I agree.
  - pyuser583 3y ago
    NY requires low income housing to be distributed among middle-class neighborhoods. It’s helpful, but creates massive backlogs. Plenty of homeless people are on waiting lists. It makes it impossible to convert money into housing. You have to wait until you find a vacancy in middle class neighborhood. They can’t just buy a place and put people there - which is how housing usually works.
    - tfourb 3y ago
      Why can't they? Municipality-owned housing is a thing in many places around the world and is generally cost-covering even when rented out to low-income housesholds. In many places (i.e. Germany and Austria), even some of the most desirable middle-income housing is owned by local governments so it's nothing that has to come with stigma attached to it. Housing always needs planning permission and that is something local governments have huge sway over. You can easily imagine that to get planning permission, developers have to cede 15% of the land to the local municipality or have to construct housing that has 25 years of priority for municipality-nominated tenants. It has been done.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - pyuser583 3y ago
        How does the city owning the land improve things?
        tfourb 3y ago
        private landlords maximize profits or personal utility (if they live in the property themselves). Usually that means creating middle-income detached housing or large apartments with very high rental values or conformant to some idealized middle class image. When housing is tight, it also drives up rents enormously, because landlords will increase rents even if the cost of running the apartments doesn't rise and pocket the difference as profit. Municipalities as landlords can focus their investments differently. They can build low-cost housing designed for low-income or lower-middle-class families/individuals and rent them out at cost. This gives local politics huge leverage over the housing market and enables them to prioritize certain groups (i.e. families or homeless people) for preferred access to affordable and well situated housing. In Vienna for example, around 220.000 units are publicly owned, offering space for a large share of the 1.8 million inhabitants of the city. If managed well, the city can strongly influence rent prices and conditions for certain segments of the population. In my view, every city should aspire to own at least 30% of the total housing stock and more than 50% of the housing stock for low-income tenants.

pyuser583 3y ago

Effective at what? I lived near a motel that was part of a “housing first” initiative in SF. People treated the hotel like home base, and still spent their nights howling. I had to move the screaming was so loud. Not to mention the drugs, human trafficking, etc. In terms of environment, it didn’t deduce things like human feces on the street. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but the neighborhood was mostly unlivable. That’s not a real solution.

tfourb 3y ago
Good housing first programs do not cluster beneficiaries but try to integrate them into "normal" neighborhoods and provide them with ongoing support by social workers, medical attention, etc. Just dumping a couple of dozen homeless people in a motel is not a great way to approach this, I agree.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  NY requires low income housing to be distributed among middle-class neighborhoods. It’s helpful, but creates massive backlogs. Plenty of homeless people are on waiting lists. It makes it impossible to convert money into housing. You have to wait until you find a vacancy in middle class neighborhood. They can’t just buy a place and put people there - which is how housing usually works.
  - tfourb 3y ago
    Why can't they? Municipality-owned housing is a thing in many places around the world and is generally cost-covering even when rented out to low-income housesholds. In many places (i.e. Germany and Austria), even some of the most desirable middle-income housing is owned by local governments so it's nothing that has to come with stigma attached to it. Housing always needs planning permission and that is something local governments have huge sway over. You can easily imagine that to get planning permission, developers have to cede 15% of the land to the local municipality or have to construct housing that has 25 years of priority for municipality-nominated tenants. It has been done.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - pyuser583 3y ago
      How does the city owning the land improve things?
      - tfourb 3y ago
        private landlords maximize profits or personal utility (if they live in the property themselves). Usually that means creating middle-income detached housing or large apartments with very high rental values or conformant to some idealized middle class image. When housing is tight, it also drives up rents enormously, because landlords will increase rents even if the cost of running the apartments doesn't rise and pocket the difference as profit. Municipalities as landlords can focus their investments differently. They can build low-cost housing designed for low-income or lower-middle-class families/individuals and rent them out at cost. This gives local politics huge leverage over the housing market and enables them to prioritize certain groups (i.e. families or homeless people) for preferred access to affordable and well situated housing. In Vienna for example, around 220.000 units are publicly owned, offering space for a large share of the 1.8 million inhabitants of the city. If managed well, the city can strongly influence rent prices and conditions for certain segments of the population. In my view, every city should aspire to own at least 30% of the total housing stock and more than 50% of the housing stock for low-income tenants.