5 ms·

Except that it’s cities which prioritize services that have this problem — eg, Seattle.

by zmgsabst 3y ago

klyrs 3y ago
It's also the cities for which housing is most unaffordable.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  Seattle has a levy on the ballot for a massive increase in property taxes in order to make housing more affordable. I am not making this up.
  - RugnirViking 3y ago
    I don't think property tax factors much at all into land price. Else wouldn't land price be relatively consistent across locations with same tax systems
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      It factors very much into the rent price. Lots of people think the property tax is paid by the landlord, and think increasing it sticks it to the landlord, but it is paid by the renters.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    See also California in 2009 had a proposal in their budget for a $1.2 million commission to promote the blueberry industry- paid for by a new tax specifically on blueberries.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    A levy of 45 cents per $1000, which according to the seattle times: > The bulk of money raised from the new levy, $707 million, would go toward the construction of new subsidized rental homes and improvements to aging affordable apartments. Those programs are focused on housing for people making 60% of area median income or less, about $74,000 a year for a family of three. Nearly two-thirds of the funding would fund housing for those making even less, 30% of area median income or $37,000 for a family of three. The current levy (passed in 2016) is 25 cents per $1000. A tax of a few hundred dollars per year on a million dollar home isn't making an impact on housing affordability. Expanding the availability of affordable housing might. I'm skeptical that $707M is enough to make a dent.
    - ianburrell 3y ago
      The total Seattle property tax is $8.29 per $1000. $.20 is a massive 2% increase.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        $707 million is a massive amount of money.
        klyrs 3y ago
        That's projected over 7 years, so $101 million per year. The city's annual budget is nearly 6 billion dollars. While $707 million sounds big, it's quite small relatively speaking. If you'd rather criminalize homelessness, build prisons and courts, employ more cops and prosecutors and prison guards, and defense lawyers for the inevitable lawsuits that arise from inhumane treatment, you might want to work up a budget for all that. And tell me where the money is going to come from, in a state with no income tax.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        The state gets plenty of money in taxes. So does the city - nearly 6 billion dollars.
        klyrs 3y ago
        Define "plenty." So far your argument has taken the form "this is a big number." It isn't convincing.
        ianburrell 3y ago
        The tax is $970 million over 7 years, with $707 million for buying and maintaining housing. Remember that each apartment costs something like $200K. That covers acquiring the estimated 3400 apartments plus maintenance for existing ones. The levy is an order of magnitude too small to fix problem. King County has 40,000 homeless. Also, I don't think the levy is for chronic homeless since it doesn't have programs to help them. The problem may be too big for local government and needs federal government to help out.
  - vkou 3y ago
    When you buy a house, what you pay for it is determined by the mortgage you can afford. If interest rates go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go up, house prices go down. In the long term, it's a net wash. That and the people on the boundary of homelessness are renters, not homeowners. Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      > Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property. If landlords cannot make a reasonable rate of return, they will not enter the market, and existing ones will exit. This will reduce the supply, and then the rents will rise.
      - Timon3 3y ago
        Logically this would increase ownership rates (since the landlords exiting the market will over-supply houses, lowering the price), which will remove pressure from the renting market, lowering the price.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        Landlords leaving the market reduces supply, which will increase price.
        vkou 3y ago
        A landlord leaving the market doesn't take the house with him.
        Timon3 3y ago
        Landlords leaving the market sell to people who previously had to rent and can now own their own house. Since many landlords leave at once, people can buy houses cheaply. Where is the problem in my logic?
      - 3y ago
vkou 3y ago
They are the cities that have to make up the slack for the rest of the country not pulling its weight, and exporting its poverty and problems to them. Or they are the cities with the worst housing affordability problems. Or they are just the cities that have these public services. Not a lot of people complaining about homeless people riding the subway in rural Texas, because rural Texas doesn't have a subway. ---- Seattle, by the way, got a 'prosecute everything and restart the war on drugs' city attourney and a 'sweep the homeless away' mayor. Strangely enough, neither policy has done shit to resolve any of the problems. Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone... It took the state legislature to fix the city's problem (by banning SFH zoning, and hitting NIMBYs over the head with a stick), and maaaaybe we'll see the fruits of that policy ripen in a decade or two.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  Seattle ended up changing to those policies because of their previous “let vagrants do whatever and spend endless amounts on services” failures — and people who pay taxes were understandably upset that negative results were produced for huge sums of money. The situation improved for average people after those changes. > Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone Yes, everyone is better off when parks are drug vagrant free and possible to be enjoyed by everyone — even if that policy doesn’t solve every problem. Toxic empathy is saying you should destroy society and afflict everyone with suffering because you haven’t yet created Utopia — and I think the responses to me show why excluding other voices under the guise of “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG” failed in cities like Seattle. You need both law and order and compassion for society to flourish. The only part we agree on is that cleaning up the mess is a decade scale challenge — especially now that toxic empathy has taken Seattle down the wrong path for the past decade.
  - klyrs 3y ago
    > “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG” If you're going to make fun of people like this, you shouldn't expect thoughtful responses.
drewcoo 3y ago
So in Seattle you house the homeless in a giant Rem Koolhaas terrarium. There are worse things. When I lived there, I didn't know many other software folks who used the public library system at all. Not because of smelly homeless people. It was just more convenient for them to buy anything they wanted to read/watch/listen to. And there were lots of convenient branch libraries for kids - better than trekking to the terrarium downtown anyway.
- WalterBright 3y ago
  The vast bulk of books are available used on Amazon for a couple dollars & shipping. I buy a lot that way. The local public library doesn't have the books I want to read. But the library does have DVDs I can borrow and watch, and music CDs I can borrow and see if I like. Netflix will parcel out a miniseries one disk at a time, while I can borrow the box set from the library and binge it.

Except that it’s cities which prioritize services that have this problem — eg, Seattle.

klyrs 3y ago

It's also the cities for which housing is most unaffordable.

WalterBright 3y ago
Seattle has a levy on the ballot for a massive increase in property taxes in order to make housing more affordable. I am not making this up.
- RugnirViking 3y ago
  I don't think property tax factors much at all into land price. Else wouldn't land price be relatively consistent across locations with same tax systems
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    It factors very much into the rent price. Lots of people think the property tax is paid by the landlord, and think increasing it sticks it to the landlord, but it is paid by the renters.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  See also California in 2009 had a proposal in their budget for a $1.2 million commission to promote the blueberry industry- paid for by a new tax specifically on blueberries.
- klyrs 3y ago
  A levy of 45 cents per $1000, which according to the seattle times: > The bulk of money raised from the new levy, $707 million, would go toward the construction of new subsidized rental homes and improvements to aging affordable apartments. Those programs are focused on housing for people making 60% of area median income or less, about $74,000 a year for a family of three. Nearly two-thirds of the funding would fund housing for those making even less, 30% of area median income or $37,000 for a family of three. The current levy (passed in 2016) is 25 cents per $1000. A tax of a few hundred dollars per year on a million dollar home isn't making an impact on housing affordability. Expanding the availability of affordable housing might. I'm skeptical that $707M is enough to make a dent.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    The total Seattle property tax is $8.29 per $1000. $.20 is a massive 2% increase.
    - WalterBright 3y ago
      $707 million is a massive amount of money.
      - klyrs 3y ago
        That's projected over 7 years, so $101 million per year. The city's annual budget is nearly 6 billion dollars. While $707 million sounds big, it's quite small relatively speaking. If you'd rather criminalize homelessness, build prisons and courts, employ more cops and prosecutors and prison guards, and defense lawyers for the inevitable lawsuits that arise from inhumane treatment, you might want to work up a budget for all that. And tell me where the money is going to come from, in a state with no income tax.
        WalterBright 3y ago
        The state gets plenty of money in taxes. So does the city - nearly 6 billion dollars.
        klyrs 3y ago
        Define "plenty." So far your argument has taken the form "this is a big number." It isn't convincing.
      - ianburrell 3y ago
        The tax is $970 million over 7 years, with $707 million for buying and maintaining housing. Remember that each apartment costs something like $200K. That covers acquiring the estimated 3400 apartments plus maintenance for existing ones. The levy is an order of magnitude too small to fix problem. King County has 40,000 homeless. Also, I don't think the levy is for chronic homeless since it doesn't have programs to help them. The problem may be too big for local government and needs federal government to help out.
- vkou 3y ago
  When you buy a house, what you pay for it is determined by the mortgage you can afford. If interest rates go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go down, house prices go up. If property taxes go up, house prices go down. In the long term, it's a net wash. That and the people on the boundary of homelessness are renters, not homeowners. Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property.
  - WalterBright 3y ago
    > Rents are set by what the market will bear, not by what it costs the landlord to own the property. If landlords cannot make a reasonable rate of return, they will not enter the market, and existing ones will exit. This will reduce the supply, and then the rents will rise.
    - Timon3 3y ago
      Logically this would increase ownership rates (since the landlords exiting the market will over-supply houses, lowering the price), which will remove pressure from the renting market, lowering the price.
      - WalterBright 3y ago
        Landlords leaving the market reduces supply, which will increase price.
        vkou 3y ago
        A landlord leaving the market doesn't take the house with him.
        Timon3 3y ago
        Landlords leaving the market sell to people who previously had to rent and can now own their own house. Since many landlords leave at once, people can buy houses cheaply. Where is the problem in my logic?
    - 3y ago

vkou 3y ago

They are the cities that have to make up the slack for the rest of the country not pulling its weight, and exporting its poverty and problems to them. Or they are the cities with the worst housing affordability problems. Or they are just the cities that have these public services. Not a lot of people complaining about homeless people riding the subway in rural Texas, because rural Texas doesn't have a subway. ---- Seattle, by the way, got a 'prosecute everything and restart the war on drugs' city attourney and a 'sweep the homeless away' mayor. Strangely enough, neither policy has done shit to resolve any of the problems. Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone... It took the state legislature to fix the city's problem (by banning SFH zoning, and hitting NIMBYs over the head with a stick), and maaaaybe we'll see the fruits of that policy ripen in a decade or two.

zmgsabst 3y ago
Seattle ended up changing to those policies because of their previous “let vagrants do whatever and spend endless amounts on services” failures — and people who pay taxes were understandably upset that negative results were produced for huge sums of money. The situation improved for average people after those changes. > Oh, now the camp isn't in the park, it's on the street bordering the park, what an improvement for everyone Yes, everyone is better off when parks are drug vagrant free and possible to be enjoyed by everyone — even if that policy doesn’t solve every problem. Toxic empathy is saying you should destroy society and afflict everyone with suffering because you haven’t yet created Utopia — and I think the responses to me show why excluding other voices under the guise of “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG” failed in cities like Seattle. You need both law and order and compassion for society to flourish. The only part we agree on is that cleaning up the mess is a decade scale challenge — especially now that toxic empathy has taken Seattle down the wrong path for the past decade.
- klyrs 3y ago
  > “mUh SyStEmS tHiNkInG” If you're going to make fun of people like this, you shouldn't expect thoughtful responses.

drewcoo 3y ago

So in Seattle you house the homeless in a giant Rem Koolhaas terrarium. There are worse things. When I lived there, I didn't know many other software folks who used the public library system at all. Not because of smelly homeless people. It was just more convenient for them to buy anything they wanted to read/watch/listen to. And there were lots of convenient branch libraries for kids - better than trekking to the terrarium downtown anyway.

WalterBright 3y ago
The vast bulk of books are available used on Amazon for a couple dollars & shipping. I buy a lot that way. The local public library doesn't have the books I want to read. But the library does have DVDs I can borrow and watch, and music CDs I can borrow and see if I like. Netflix will parcel out a miniseries one disk at a time, while I can borrow the box set from the library and binge it.