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It's a nice victory story for the YIMBYs hoping to win over the upper-/middle class trying to retain the narrative that the market will provide "affordable" hou

It's a nice victory story for the YIMBYs hoping to win over the upper-/middle class trying to retain the narrative that the market will provide "affordable" housing (not what this even demonstrates, but anyway), but this isn't going to get people off the street. We need a public housing sector to appropriately meet everyone's needs. Otherwise this is just a game of justifying "who deserves housing", a discussion over which I'll never agree with the market.

mgfist 1y ago
0.2% of Americans are homeless. Why is housing always about the homeless? Yes, getting people off the street is important. But there's few other topics where a solution that helps 99.8% of people is dismissed because it doesn't help 0.2% of people (I don't even agree that it doesn't help them, but I'll be charitable for the sake of making my point).
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > Why is housing always about the homeless? To me, poverty is basically the only thing worth talking about when it comes to politics. Nothing else is going to get me to the voting box—to me, a platform that doesn't focus on poverty reduction doesn't even understand the point of government, the economy, or trying to work together. I suspect other folks who think this way are going to be disproportionately loud.
  - spankalee 1y ago
    People in poverty have to pay for housing. Reducing the price of housing helps them, and may even help them climb out of poverty. Building more housing reduces the price of housing.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      > People in poverty have to pay for housing. No, they don't have to. That's a decision our society has made, and in my opinion it was a horribly evil one.
      - spankalee 1y ago
        Even if the government is paying for housing for them, cheaper housing means that the government can pay for more people's housing. Building housing reduces the price of housing...
        MangoToupe 1y ago
        > cheaper housing means that the government can pay for more people's housing. Which we will never do, because it depresses property values. Look "abundance" bullshit would make sense in a continuum of housing policy. But by itself we're just doubling-down on reinforcing homelessness as an american institution.
- at-fates-hands 1y ago
  Right now in cities homelessness is often associated with addiction or mental illness. We spend billions every year giving these people resources to get off the street, get treatment for addiction or mental illness. Right now? Many, many, many of those people have no desire to get off the streets or get clean or get treatment for their mental illness - despite the copious amounts of safety nets and other programs designed specifically to help those people. I agree, we already have programs designed to help those who need it - focusing on the larger percentage of the population just makes sense if you're concerned about having bigger positive outcomes.
next_xibalba 1y ago
So you're telling me if an additional, say, 100k units came on the market in Denver in the next year, housing prices wouldn't fall dramatically such that all working people could afford housing? Working people should be able to afford housing near where they work. So let's press the gas pedal on building. The mentally ill and drug addicted should be subject to mandatory treatment or jail until such time as their underlying condition is mitigated to the extent that they can work and afford housing. Free housing doesn't work. In fact, it exacerbates individual dysfunction. It is cruelty masquerading as kindness.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > all working people could afford housing? Hey, if that's the metric you're pushing for, good for you. I'm pushing for housing as a human right. I never caught the calvinist bug of "torture the non-productive until they conform and perform" method of population management.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > housing as a human right Why not just shelter?
  - next_xibalba 1y ago
    Human rights don't depend on the compulsory labor of others. They are inherent. Housing doesn't qualify. "torture the non-productive until the conform or perform" is possibly the most inflammatory framing of "you should not make other people pay for your housing" I've seen.
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      > Human rights don't depend on the compulsory labor of others. The ones that are worth fighting for do. Otherwise what is the point except to excuse acting like an asshole?
  - Ray20 1y ago
    Don't you see the huge contradiction here? Housing doesn't just spring up on our streets by Jesus' will, so by making people responsible for providing housing for other people, you're literally calling for "torture until they conform and perform".
jeffbee 1y ago
Lowering the rent stops people from becoming homeless which is a necessary element of ending homelessness.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  > Lowering the rent stops people from becoming homeless which is a necessary element of ending homelessness. Sure but by this reasoning you could justify any effort as sufficient. At some point you have to make the personal judgement on what effort is enough. I don't really see any effort focusing on anything short of homelessness as worth the oxygen in the room it consumes.
  - spankalee 1y ago
    Who said anything here about "sufficient"?
    - MangoToupe 1y ago
      Nobody; you can read this. What's your point? I realize americans don't give a shit about the homeless; you'd have to be retarded to think otherwise.
      - spankalee 1y ago
        The point is that jeffbee literally said "a necessary element", and you rebutted with saying that it wasn't sufficient. No one said it was sufficient, so who knows who you're even arguing against?
tptacek 1y ago
Until you reach transient shelter beds, which may not be saturated in a region (in some places in Chicagoland the work is going into outreach to get people off the street and into shelter beds as much as it is in expanding the number of beds), every additional unit of housing you build frees up some unit at or below that unit on the stack of housing. The effect percolates all the way down to long-term supportive housing rooms. I don't really understand the intuition people have for how anything else could be the case. You make new housing available, people move into it, leaving vacancies. Pretty simple.
- Marsymars 1y ago
  > every additional unit of housing you build frees up some unit at or below that unit on the stack of housing. The effect percolates all the way down to long-term supportive housing rooms. This makes intuitive sense to me, but I've really struggled to explain it in a way that makes it click for people.
  - tptacek 1y ago
    Just ask: whoever moves into the new place, where did they live before? Does their previous apartment vanish into the ether? This is an aside to your thing here, but I don't think any of us can do better than the HN commenter on the other housing thread today who said (paraphrasing) that this concern about building market-rate housing is like expressing concern that nobody builds used cars.
- MangoToupe 1y ago
  I don't have the impression most of my "fellow" americans even gave a damn about homelessness to begin with, so perhaps what you read as misunderstanding the market might simply be a disagreement of values—one party cares about the homeless, the other cares about salaried employees. May we all truly rot in shit.

mgfist 1y ago

0.2% of Americans are homeless. Why is housing always about the homeless? Yes, getting people off the street is important. But there's few other topics where a solution that helps 99.8% of people is dismissed because it doesn't help 0.2% of people (I don't even agree that it doesn't help them, but I'll be charitable for the sake of making my point).

MangoToupe 1y ago
> Why is housing always about the homeless? To me, poverty is basically the only thing worth talking about when it comes to politics. Nothing else is going to get me to the voting box—to me, a platform that doesn't focus on poverty reduction doesn't even understand the point of government, the economy, or trying to work together. I suspect other folks who think this way are going to be disproportionately loud.
- spankalee 1y ago
  People in poverty have to pay for housing. Reducing the price of housing helps them, and may even help them climb out of poverty. Building more housing reduces the price of housing.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    > People in poverty have to pay for housing. No, they don't have to. That's a decision our society has made, and in my opinion it was a horribly evil one.
    - spankalee 1y ago
      Even if the government is paying for housing for them, cheaper housing means that the government can pay for more people's housing. Building housing reduces the price of housing...
      - MangoToupe 1y ago
        > cheaper housing means that the government can pay for more people's housing. Which we will never do, because it depresses property values. Look "abundance" bullshit would make sense in a continuum of housing policy. But by itself we're just doubling-down on reinforcing homelessness as an american institution.
at-fates-hands 1y ago
Right now in cities homelessness is often associated with addiction or mental illness. We spend billions every year giving these people resources to get off the street, get treatment for addiction or mental illness. Right now? Many, many, many of those people have no desire to get off the streets or get clean or get treatment for their mental illness - despite the copious amounts of safety nets and other programs designed specifically to help those people. I agree, we already have programs designed to help those who need it - focusing on the larger percentage of the population just makes sense if you're concerned about having bigger positive outcomes.

next_xibalba 1y ago

So you're telling me if an additional, say, 100k units came on the market in Denver in the next year, housing prices wouldn't fall dramatically such that all working people could afford housing? Working people should be able to afford housing near where they work. So let's press the gas pedal on building. The mentally ill and drug addicted should be subject to mandatory treatment or jail until such time as their underlying condition is mitigated to the extent that they can work and afford housing. Free housing doesn't work. In fact, it exacerbates individual dysfunction. It is cruelty masquerading as kindness.

MangoToupe 1y ago
> all working people could afford housing? Hey, if that's the metric you're pushing for, good for you. I'm pushing for housing as a human right. I never caught the calvinist bug of "torture the non-productive until they conform and perform" method of population management.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > housing as a human right Why not just shelter?
- next_xibalba 1y ago
  Human rights don't depend on the compulsory labor of others. They are inherent. Housing doesn't qualify. "torture the non-productive until the conform or perform" is possibly the most inflammatory framing of "you should not make other people pay for your housing" I've seen.
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    > Human rights don't depend on the compulsory labor of others. The ones that are worth fighting for do. Otherwise what is the point except to excuse acting like an asshole?
- Ray20 1y ago
  Don't you see the huge contradiction here? Housing doesn't just spring up on our streets by Jesus' will, so by making people responsible for providing housing for other people, you're literally calling for "torture until they conform and perform".

jeffbee 1y ago

Lowering the rent stops people from becoming homeless which is a necessary element of ending homelessness.

MangoToupe 1y ago
> Lowering the rent stops people from becoming homeless which is a necessary element of ending homelessness. Sure but by this reasoning you could justify any effort as sufficient. At some point you have to make the personal judgement on what effort is enough. I don't really see any effort focusing on anything short of homelessness as worth the oxygen in the room it consumes.
- spankalee 1y ago
  Who said anything here about "sufficient"?
  - MangoToupe 1y ago
    Nobody; you can read this. What's your point? I realize americans don't give a shit about the homeless; you'd have to be retarded to think otherwise.
    - spankalee 1y ago
      The point is that jeffbee literally said "a necessary element", and you rebutted with saying that it wasn't sufficient. No one said it was sufficient, so who knows who you're even arguing against?

tptacek 1y ago

Until you reach transient shelter beds, which may not be saturated in a region (in some places in Chicagoland the work is going into outreach to get people off the street and into shelter beds as much as it is in expanding the number of beds), every additional unit of housing you build frees up some unit at or below that unit on the stack of housing. The effect percolates all the way down to long-term supportive housing rooms. I don't really understand the intuition people have for how anything else could be the case. You make new housing available, people move into it, leaving vacancies. Pretty simple.

Marsymars 1y ago
> every additional unit of housing you build frees up some unit at or below that unit on the stack of housing. The effect percolates all the way down to long-term supportive housing rooms. This makes intuitive sense to me, but I've really struggled to explain it in a way that makes it click for people.
- tptacek 1y ago
  Just ask: whoever moves into the new place, where did they live before? Does their previous apartment vanish into the ether? This is an aside to your thing here, but I don't think any of us can do better than the HN commenter on the other housing thread today who said (paraphrasing) that this concern about building market-rate housing is like expressing concern that nobody builds used cars.
MangoToupe 1y ago
I don't have the impression most of my "fellow" americans even gave a damn about homelessness to begin with, so perhaps what you read as misunderstanding the market might simply be a disagreement of values—one party cares about the homeless, the other cares about salaried employees. May we all truly rot in shit.