11 ms·

The US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter. Not sure it's the outcome we

by ipaddr 2y ago

The US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter. Not sure it's the outcome we all want.

marssaxman 2y ago
Simpler than that: just roll back the restrictive zoning codes which have been making sufficient development infeasible for many years, thus creating a steadily growing housing deficit. When laws have turned the housing market into a game of musical chairs, someone is guaranteed to be left outside.
- mywittyname 2y ago
  I'm often skeptical of simple solutions like this. They tend to assume that the regulation causes the problem, but when looked at more critically, it's clear that the regulation is a formalization of a combination of consumer & business preference. For example, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations. If you get into the gritty details, you'll find that they have a whole bunch ofloopholes that seem to favor larger trucks & SUVs. Many people will point to these regulation as causing people to buy light trucks & SUVs, but the data seems to suggest consumers prefer to buy these vehicles and auto manufacture prefer to sell them (they are extremely profitable). I postulate that, if CAFE requirements were eliminated, the best selling vehicle in the USA would continue to be the F-series and other trucks and SUVs would continue to dominate the top 10, because the regulations are influenced by consumer preference, not the other way around. I think the same logic applies to zoning. People largely want to own single family homes (SFH) in the suburbs; builders largely want to build SFHs in the suburbs. There's no reason to believe that changes in zoning will cause a meaningful shift in consumer and business preference. In the handful of ultra expensive metro areas, sure it might move the needle because economics trump preference, but in most of the USA, there's plenty of space to build housing. It's hard to imagine a developer in Pittsburgh choosing to build housing in an industrial area in the city over some empty land on the outskirts.
  - marssaxman 2y ago
    I appreciate your skepticism! The proposition that rates of homelessness are primarily driven by housing costs has actually been well supported in research - this Pew article contains many useful references: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/... As per econ 101, high prices are a function of scarcity relative to demand: we can reasonably claim that regulations which restrict housing development, which by their nature must increase scarcity and therefore housing costs, therefore also lead to increased rates of homelessness. > In the handful of ultra expensive metro areas, sure it might move the needle That's a good point, but those are exactly the places which have significant homelessness problems. In general, this is not a housing preference issue, because opposition to upzoning does not come from people who aspire to live in single-family homes, but from people who already own them. This is a typical example: https://www.change.org/p/whittier-neighbors-against-seattle-upzoning-proposal https://www.change.org/p/whittier-neighbors-against-seattle-... As usual with these things, the complaints include a cloud of nitpicky nonsense surrounding a central concern over "neighborhood character", which is a polite way of saying "we don't want apartment-dwelling poor people coming to live near us".
    - toss1 2y ago
      >>which is a polite way of saying "we don't want apartment-dwelling poor people coming to live near us". NO, it is most definitely NOT that. It is overwhelmingly exactly what people say it is — maintaining the character of a neighborhood that everyone there has paid higher cost of entry, cost of taxes, and cost and time of maintenance and upgrades to maintain. Don't make claims in areas where you have zero knowledge just because you think it helps your point. I'm in a small sub-/ex-urban town with a rural character which has zoning, and have been involved in local issues. I've never met a single person who feels the way you claim (although there are surely a few examples somewhere). No one looks down on the low income ppl who are here because their families were here before housing started to get tight and expensive. Most everyone either grew up here or came specifically because they WANT to live in a quieter area, have some wildlife, maintain gardens, etc. No one is avoiding poor people, they are SEEKING quiet and green spaces where you can do outdoor activities. Moreover, saying that zoning in locales like this should be changed to accommodate low-income high-density housing is just stupid. Yes, the current homeowners could get rich subdividing their properties, razing the trees and putting up condos. Great, maybe you get a lower-income population. But getting ANYWHERE useful from here, even groceries or convenience stores, is a 5-10 mile car ride, and the rail station to the big city is 25min away by car. Any low income person is now condemned to replace housing expenses with car expenses, purchase/lease, maintenance, insurance, fuel, etc.. And, they now have a big commute reducing their time available. It is really simple to just blame other people and yell "they're just greedy!", and it surely makes you feel better and more righteous. It is much harder to actually figure out complex problems and create solutions that work.
barbazoo 2y ago
That's your assumption. Instead, mine is that it would require some kind of wealth transfer to pay for the social services.
- ipaddr 2y ago
  Paying for the social services is possible. The difficult issue is some people don't want to go to a homeless shelter because they want to maintain a level of freedom while others fear they will be robbed/raped at the shelter. Do you force them inside?
  - barbazoo 2y ago
    > The difficult issue is some people don't want to go to a homeless shelter because they want to maintain a level of freedom while others fear they will be robbed/raped at the shelter. A bit of a strawman, social service doesn't have to mean homeless shelter, so no, no one is forcing anyone to do anything. Problem is in many places at least where I live, there just isn't enough money to serve all the people that need the various levels of help.
    - ipaddr 2y ago
      Homeless people go to homeless shelters from that point they could go into secondary housing or other programs. In my city they wanted to end homelessness 25 years ago. They had enough money to do so and went ahead. They found a 1/3 refused to come in even on the coldest days for various reasons. The fight became do you let them stay and sleep on the street or do you force them into shelters/jails. What is more humane? The let's leave them on the street but send people to feed them approach won over the forcible removals. So homelessness remained. When people say they want to end homelessness I don't think they realize they need to jail some of them.
JamesLeonis 2y ago
There are 10 million empty homes [0] and ~700,000 homeless. No matter how you slice those numbers you still have more empty housing stock than homeless right now. [0]: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf (page 4)
- s1artibartfast 2y ago
  What does that mean for the next steps? Does the government eminent domain the houses, arrest the homeless, and then ship them out to Detroit or wherever the surplus houses are?
  - throw_pm23 2y ago
    The "surplus houses" are not just in Detroit but also around Central Park, NY, where people buy them as investment.
    - s1artibartfast 2y ago
      so what is the operational theory then?
      - throw_pm23 2y ago
        one can describe the situation and its causes without prescribing solutions
        s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Don't seem so suggest a cause unless they can be connected
  - JamesLeonis 2y ago
    Housing as infrastructure, like roads and electricity. We will exit an era where housing prices always rise, because both taxes and insurance will become unaffordable. I see a combination of publicly managed apartments (like Germany or Austria) with a much smaller private market for houses. The end-game is housing managed like infrastructure, with most of it publicly managed but a few privately managed/owned houses for unique or highly desirable spaces. There is also a crisis in affordability of apartments, with a report [0] showing a collapse in lower-cost apartments that is partially driving homelessness. It is especially hard for fixed-income folks. > arrest the homeless Most homeless are working homeless. They crash with friends and family, or they live in their cars/trailers. Others are pushed to the periphery or out of their job market entirely; San Fransisco's struggle for service workers is a reflection of this trend, but it's hardly unique to the Bay Area. We need workers for just about everything, and those workers need a place to stay. While this won't solve street-level homelessness, right now most homeless programs cannot move recovering people into permanent housing due to affordability and shortages. There are long waitlists right now for Housing and Urban Development subsidized housing because of the shortages. There are camp grounds or shelters, but those are only temporary. Having more stock available also means these homeless programs can provide much needed stability for recovering people and get them away from places/people that might cause them to relapse. > Does the government eminent domain the houses I see a collapse in house prices, and that might cause private equity to dump a bunch of housing stock into the market. To prevent a total collapse government would step in and be a buyer-of-last-resort, which will kickstart the publicly managed housing initiative. Another is insurance, where private insurers step away leaving governments to either rebuild after disaster or face a new homeless crisis. There's also banks holding a lot of mortgage paper that can go underwater forcing another intervention. I see plenty of cases of market dysfunction that requires government to step in without explicitly eminent domain, which is why I see housing-as-infrastructure becoming the 21st century solution. [0]: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/press-releases/new-report-shows-rent-unaffordable-half-renters-cost-burdens-surge-record-levels https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/press-releases/new-report-shows...
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter Immigrants are a tiny fraction of the homeless [1]. And we’ve tried criminalising homelessness; incarceration is forced shelter and incredibly expensive. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30739834/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30739834/
- stevenicr 2y ago
  according to that 'adults participating in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions' .. It also says foreign born is 1% vs native at 1.7% - so they are both 'a tiny fraction' Whether or not a large percentage, or a large number or small number of immigrants are homeless or not, one must assume that if 11 million people left the US next month, the price of rent in many places may go down a bit, and some currently unhoused people might be able to afford a cheaper place. Of course another side is that wages in some industries will rise, and that may put more people into a position where they can afford an apartment. What I'd like to see is how inexpensive optional housing can be made.
- ipaddr 2y ago
  In Canada the majority of shelter beds go to refugee claimants. I believe it is highly like many illegals in the US are homeless and make up the majority of homeless people. They are not part of the numbers you provided.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > In Canada the majority of shelter beds go to refugee claimants. Is there data someplace that shows it? > I believe it is highly like I believe that angry gods cause rain. What does it matter?
    - lostlogin 2y ago
      In 2022, the majority (90.3%) of shelter users were Canadian citizens, which has been the case for all years of analysis since 2015. The proportion of refugees and refugee claimants in the shelter system was 2.0% in 2022, up from 2021 (0.9%) but down compared to pre-pandemic (2019, 4.1%). Pandemic travel restrictions in 2020 and 2021 may have contributed to a decrease in the number of asylum claims, with a partial recovery in 2022. https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/homelessness-sans-abri/reports-rapports/data-shelter-2022-donnees-refuge-eng.html#toc_5 https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/homelessness-sans-a...

by ipaddr 2y ago

The US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter. Not sure it's the outcome we all want.

marssaxman 2y ago

Simpler than that: just roll back the restrictive zoning codes which have been making sufficient development infeasible for many years, thus creating a steadily growing housing deficit. When laws have turned the housing market into a game of musical chairs, someone is guaranteed to be left outside.

mywittyname 2y ago
I'm often skeptical of simple solutions like this. They tend to assume that the regulation causes the problem, but when looked at more critically, it's clear that the regulation is a formalization of a combination of consumer & business preference. For example, Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations. If you get into the gritty details, you'll find that they have a whole bunch ofloopholes that seem to favor larger trucks & SUVs. Many people will point to these regulation as causing people to buy light trucks & SUVs, but the data seems to suggest consumers prefer to buy these vehicles and auto manufacture prefer to sell them (they are extremely profitable). I postulate that, if CAFE requirements were eliminated, the best selling vehicle in the USA would continue to be the F-series and other trucks and SUVs would continue to dominate the top 10, because the regulations are influenced by consumer preference, not the other way around. I think the same logic applies to zoning. People largely want to own single family homes (SFH) in the suburbs; builders largely want to build SFHs in the suburbs. There's no reason to believe that changes in zoning will cause a meaningful shift in consumer and business preference. In the handful of ultra expensive metro areas, sure it might move the needle because economics trump preference, but in most of the USA, there's plenty of space to build housing. It's hard to imagine a developer in Pittsburgh choosing to build housing in an industrial area in the city over some empty land on the outskirts.
- marssaxman 2y ago
  I appreciate your skepticism! The proposition that rates of homelessness are primarily driven by housing costs has actually been well supported in research - this Pew article contains many useful references: https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2023/08/22/how-housing-costs-drive-levels-of-homelessness https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/... As per econ 101, high prices are a function of scarcity relative to demand: we can reasonably claim that regulations which restrict housing development, which by their nature must increase scarcity and therefore housing costs, therefore also lead to increased rates of homelessness. > In the handful of ultra expensive metro areas, sure it might move the needle That's a good point, but those are exactly the places which have significant homelessness problems. In general, this is not a housing preference issue, because opposition to upzoning does not come from people who aspire to live in single-family homes, but from people who already own them. This is a typical example: https://www.change.org/p/whittier-neighbors-against-seattle-upzoning-proposal https://www.change.org/p/whittier-neighbors-against-seattle-... As usual with these things, the complaints include a cloud of nitpicky nonsense surrounding a central concern over "neighborhood character", which is a polite way of saying "we don't want apartment-dwelling poor people coming to live near us".
  - toss1 2y ago
    >>which is a polite way of saying "we don't want apartment-dwelling poor people coming to live near us". NO, it is most definitely NOT that. It is overwhelmingly exactly what people say it is — maintaining the character of a neighborhood that everyone there has paid higher cost of entry, cost of taxes, and cost and time of maintenance and upgrades to maintain. Don't make claims in areas where you have zero knowledge just because you think it helps your point. I'm in a small sub-/ex-urban town with a rural character which has zoning, and have been involved in local issues. I've never met a single person who feels the way you claim (although there are surely a few examples somewhere). No one looks down on the low income ppl who are here because their families were here before housing started to get tight and expensive. Most everyone either grew up here or came specifically because they WANT to live in a quieter area, have some wildlife, maintain gardens, etc. No one is avoiding poor people, they are SEEKING quiet and green spaces where you can do outdoor activities. Moreover, saying that zoning in locales like this should be changed to accommodate low-income high-density housing is just stupid. Yes, the current homeowners could get rich subdividing their properties, razing the trees and putting up condos. Great, maybe you get a lower-income population. But getting ANYWHERE useful from here, even groceries or convenience stores, is a 5-10 mile car ride, and the rail station to the big city is 25min away by car. Any low income person is now condemned to replace housing expenses with car expenses, purchase/lease, maintenance, insurance, fuel, etc.. And, they now have a big commute reducing their time available. It is really simple to just blame other people and yell "they're just greedy!", and it surely makes you feel better and more righteous. It is much harder to actually figure out complex problems and create solutions that work.

barbazoo 2y ago

That's your assumption. Instead, mine is that it would require some kind of wealth transfer to pay for the social services.

ipaddr 2y ago
Paying for the social services is possible. The difficult issue is some people don't want to go to a homeless shelter because they want to maintain a level of freedom while others fear they will be robbed/raped at the shelter. Do you force them inside?
- barbazoo 2y ago
  > The difficult issue is some people don't want to go to a homeless shelter because they want to maintain a level of freedom while others fear they will be robbed/raped at the shelter. A bit of a strawman, social service doesn't have to mean homeless shelter, so no, no one is forcing anyone to do anything. Problem is in many places at least where I live, there just isn't enough money to serve all the people that need the various levels of help.
  - ipaddr 2y ago
    Homeless people go to homeless shelters from that point they could go into secondary housing or other programs. In my city they wanted to end homelessness 25 years ago. They had enough money to do so and went ahead. They found a 1/3 refused to come in even on the coldest days for various reasons. The fight became do you let them stay and sleep on the street or do you force them into shelters/jails. What is more humane? The let's leave them on the street but send people to feed them approach won over the forcible removals. So homelessness remained. When people say they want to end homelessness I don't think they realize they need to jail some of them.

JamesLeonis 2y ago

There are 10 million empty homes [0] and ~700,000 homeless. No matter how you slice those numbers you still have more empty housing stock than homeless right now. [0]: https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf (page 4)

s1artibartfast 2y ago
What does that mean for the next steps? Does the government eminent domain the houses, arrest the homeless, and then ship them out to Detroit or wherever the surplus houses are?
- throw_pm23 2y ago
  The "surplus houses" are not just in Detroit but also around Central Park, NY, where people buy them as investment.
  - s1artibartfast 2y ago
    so what is the operational theory then?
    - throw_pm23 2y ago
      one can describe the situation and its causes without prescribing solutions
      - s1artibartfast 2y ago
        Don't seem so suggest a cause unless they can be connected
- JamesLeonis 2y ago
  Housing as infrastructure, like roads and electricity. We will exit an era where housing prices always rise, because both taxes and insurance will become unaffordable. I see a combination of publicly managed apartments (like Germany or Austria) with a much smaller private market for houses. The end-game is housing managed like infrastructure, with most of it publicly managed but a few privately managed/owned houses for unique or highly desirable spaces. There is also a crisis in affordability of apartments, with a report [0] showing a collapse in lower-cost apartments that is partially driving homelessness. It is especially hard for fixed-income folks. > arrest the homeless Most homeless are working homeless. They crash with friends and family, or they live in their cars/trailers. Others are pushed to the periphery or out of their job market entirely; San Fransisco's struggle for service workers is a reflection of this trend, but it's hardly unique to the Bay Area. We need workers for just about everything, and those workers need a place to stay. While this won't solve street-level homelessness, right now most homeless programs cannot move recovering people into permanent housing due to affordability and shortages. There are long waitlists right now for Housing and Urban Development subsidized housing because of the shortages. There are camp grounds or shelters, but those are only temporary. Having more stock available also means these homeless programs can provide much needed stability for recovering people and get them away from places/people that might cause them to relapse. > Does the government eminent domain the houses I see a collapse in house prices, and that might cause private equity to dump a bunch of housing stock into the market. To prevent a total collapse government would step in and be a buyer-of-last-resort, which will kickstart the publicly managed housing initiative. Another is insurance, where private insurers step away leaving governments to either rebuild after disaster or face a new homeless crisis. There's also banks holding a lot of mortgage paper that can go underwater forcing another intervention. I see plenty of cases of market dysfunction that requires government to step in without explicitly eminent domain, which is why I see housing-as-infrastructure becoming the 21st century solution. [0]: https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/press-releases/new-report-shows-rent-unaffordable-half-renters-cost-burdens-surge-record-levels https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/press-releases/new-report-shows...

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> US could end homelessness but would need to stop immigration and change the constitution which could force people in shelter Immigrants are a tiny fraction of the homeless [1]. And we’ve tried criminalising homelessness; incarceration is forced shelter and incredibly expensive. [1] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30739834/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30739834/

stevenicr 2y ago
according to that 'adults participating in the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions' .. It also says foreign born is 1% vs native at 1.7% - so they are both 'a tiny fraction' Whether or not a large percentage, or a large number or small number of immigrants are homeless or not, one must assume that if 11 million people left the US next month, the price of rent in many places may go down a bit, and some currently unhoused people might be able to afford a cheaper place. Of course another side is that wages in some industries will rise, and that may put more people into a position where they can afford an apartment. What I'd like to see is how inexpensive optional housing can be made.
ipaddr 2y ago
In Canada the majority of shelter beds go to refugee claimants. I believe it is highly like many illegals in the US are homeless and make up the majority of homeless people. They are not part of the numbers you provided.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > In Canada the majority of shelter beds go to refugee claimants. Is there data someplace that shows it? > I believe it is highly like I believe that angry gods cause rain. What does it matter?
  - lostlogin 2y ago
    In 2022, the majority (90.3%) of shelter users were Canadian citizens, which has been the case for all years of analysis since 2015. The proportion of refugees and refugee claimants in the shelter system was 2.0% in 2022, up from 2021 (0.9%) but down compared to pre-pandemic (2019, 4.1%). Pandemic travel restrictions in 2020 and 2021 may have contributed to a decrease in the number of asylum claims, with a partial recovery in 2022. https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/homelessness-sans-abri/reports-rapports/data-shelter-2022-donnees-refuge-eng.html#toc_5 https://housing-infrastructure.canada.ca/homelessness-sans-a...