[HN Gopher] Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of home...
___________________________________________________________________
Rising rent, not poverty, is the real driver of homelessness
Author : paulpauper
Score : 208 points
Date : 2023-01-06 17:37 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.kcrw.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.kcrw.com)
| slibhb wrote:
| When people talk about "homelessness," they're often referring to
| street people. Most technically homeless people aren't street
| people, they're between jobs or living in their car or something
| like that.
|
| It seems clear that lower rent/housing prices would help with
| homelessness but I don't think it would help street people.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| To further your point, the U of Chicago recently released a
| report that around 50 percent of homeless individuals are
| employed.
| mindover wrote:
| In the US or in Chicago? I doubt 50% of homeless people in CA
| are employed... but I could be wrong.
| trynewideas wrote:
| US HUD segments homeless populations into three dimensions:
|
| - sheltered vs. unsheltered homelessness
|
| - chronic homelessness, where "chronic" is defined as a person
| with a disability who is "continuously homeless for one year or
| more, or has experienced at least four episodes of homelessness
| in the last three years where the combined length of time
| homeless on those occasions is at least 12 months."
|
| - individuals ("households that were not composed of both
| adults and children") and families
|
| As of mid-December, the US point-in-time counts of those
| were:[1]
|
| 233,832 total unsheltered homeless
|
| 348,630 total sheltered homeless
|
| -
|
| 216,495 unsheltered individuals
|
| 204,897 sheltered individuals
|
| -
|
| 78,615 unsheltered chronically homeless individuals
|
| 49,153 sheltered chronically homeless individuals
|
| -
|
| More than half of all counted unsheltered chronically homeless
| individuals in the United States in December were in California
| (44,120 of 78,615; 56% of total unsheltered chronically
| homeless, 7.6% of total US homeless).
|
| 1:
| https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2022-...
| paxys wrote:
| How long do these temporary displaced people stay in that state
| before eventually becoming "street people" themselves?
| duped wrote:
| The term "chronically" homeless refers to an individual who
| has been unhoused for longer than a year.
| trynewideas wrote:
| https://www.ssph-
| journal.org/articles/10.3389/ijph.2021.1604...
|
| > Among the 44,197 homeless shelter stays, on average, a
| homeless shelter stay was about 77 days, with the median 30
| days, and the maximum of 5,030 days (the entry date started
| in 2002 for this extreme case). ... 2,872 (~6.5%) homeless
| shelter stays were just 1 day long, 6,726 homeless shelter
| stays (~15%) were between 2 days and 5 days, and 34,695
| homeless shelter stays (78.5%) were 10 days or longer. About
| 81% of all homeless shelter stays were by clients who have
| experienced recidivism.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I think if we could just help the out of sorts, hardship cases
| that are 'newer' homeless, or maybe classified as 'under-
| housed', which may include couch-surfers, car/van-lifers, etc.
| I mean there's levels to homelessness some of which is mental
| health related and such, some people actually maybe could
| prefer that life for reasons. There's a lot who are forced into
| it, and are just down on their luck. These should be a much
| easier subsection to target for at least fixing things a bit.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| It doesn't help that we are basically doing the opposite. In
| my experience you pretty much have to already be homeless to
| get any help. It would be nice if you didn't have to lose
| everything before you get assistance.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| High rent is due to lack of space to house people as inflation is
| due to too much liquidity in the market.
|
| "Everything is made up and the points don't matter!"
| robotnikman wrote:
| The scariest part imho is the huge housing and apartment owning
| conglomerates, not the small guy who happens to be renting out a
| house.
|
| Its the large housing corporations which don't care about
| difficulties paying rent, and unlike the small guy they have an
| army of lawyers ready to crush anyone in their way. They also
| have the money and power to influence local politics in a way
| that favors them.
| selectodude wrote:
| I get it. I know a _lot_ of people who cover their rent but
| losing their jobs would be an immediate severe issue. Housing
| insecurity is really scary.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| The real issue is that apartment managers can come after you
| for the remainder of your lease. You can suddenly be in 10-20k
| of debt if you need to break your lease early. That's both more
| accessible and worse than many medical debt horror stories.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Even without that, you're still easily $2k in the hole and
| that all on its own is scary - the long-term repercussions of
| "evil by bureaucracy" are, of course, even worse; but the
| very beginning is plenty terrible, enough that there doesn't
| need to be a "real issue" here for it to be bad.
| twblalock wrote:
| If you signed an agreement to pay a certain amount, for a
| certain number of months, and then you don't do it, the
| counterparty should be able to come after you.
|
| I understand that some of the people who break leases are
| experiencing hardship, but others are just breaking their
| leases because they can -- and a lot more people would do
| that if it was easier. That would put landlords on the
| defensive and result in more restrictive lease agreements
| and/or higher rents to reduce the risk, which would
| ultimately make things worse for all the renters who really
| do intend to honor their agreements to the best of their
| ability.
|
| Also, in many places, landlords are legally obligated to make
| a good-faith attempt to find replacement tenants before they
| sue lease-breakers for the remaining rent.
| gpvos wrote:
| Those kinds of contracts should simply be illegal.
| twblalock wrote:
| Why?
| deathanatos wrote:
| There's "covering risk", and there's tenant lock-in.
|
| I have no problem with requiring a tenant to rent for a
| year, to prevent quick turnover and the risk and costs
| associated with that.
|
| But multiple landlords now have all had the same policy:
| the lease will _never_ go month-to-month, basically. You
| _can_ , but e.g., for my current lease, it costs ~60%
| _more_ to go month to month. This creates _bizarre_ pay-off
| points, and greatly raises the costs of trying to move.
| When it 's "+$2k/mo to go month-to-month", that's not risk-
| reduction, that's just greed, trying to make sure I can't
| move.
|
| IME, it used to be that after you rented for a while (e.g.,
| a year), the lease went month-to-month. You were a long-
| term stable renter, and you'd paid enough rent at that
| point to cover the overheads of finding a new tenant and
| making the necessary touch-ups to the apartment. (Beyond
| what was covered by security deposit.)
|
| (I recently had this conversation with my parents recently.
| The previous generation has _no idea_ about some of the
| provisions that renters of my generation are having to put
| up with.)
|
| An average price of $18,000 to break lease on a 3+ year old
| lease is absurd. We need more housing, to drive competition
| in the rental & housing markets.
|
| If I ever get to buy a house (... if my landlord doesn't
| first capture any gains I might get...) the first thing
| I'll have to do is not get to live in it: the most logical
| course of action would be to rent it short term, until I
| can get out of my own lease.
| aorloff wrote:
| Requiring a full year lease, instead of month-to-month,
| is the landlords only option under just cause eviction.
| Otherwise the landlord is essentially a non-party to the
| lease (the rent board and tenant dictate the future
| terms).
| danaris wrote:
| That sounds like something that's true in particular
| jurisdictions, but probably not nationwide...
| twblalock wrote:
| I was renting until just a few years ago and I never had
| a lease longer than 12 months, and it was actually
| difficult to find one longer than that.
|
| I'm not sure where you live, but in a lot of places, a
| landlord refusing to allow a lease to go month-to-month
| is illegal.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| In Seattle there are many places that will do leases
| longer than 12 months e.g. my current lease is 36 months.
| It may not be the default but if you ask they are often
| amenable.
| dinosaurdynasty wrote:
| Making month-to-month 60% more expensive is effectively
| refusing to allow it to go month-to-month
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes it probably varies by location. And if housing supply
| were more plentiful then landlords could compete on more
| flexible lease terms as well as actual monthly rent. When
| housing is scarce they can demand whatever price and
| terms they want.
|
| When I've lived in areas where housing was not scarce, it
| was reasonably easy to find apartments that would do
| month-to-month leases right from the start.
| superfrank wrote:
| They're not super common, but they are out there. I'm in
| Seattle and my first lease here was 13 months and second
| was 14 months. When we were first looking, we probably
| found 3 out of the 15 places we looked at that were
| offering up to 15 months. I've actually got friends in
| this building (https://www.thenoloseattle.com/) on a two
| year lease and there are plenty of 18 month leases still
| available on their website right now.
| deathanatos wrote:
| The term of the lease isn't materially longer than 12
| months. (Mine actually is >12 mo, but not by a whole
| lot.) But at the end of the (say) 12 months, you sign the
| next lease, for another (say) 12 months, or move out.
| (The rent invariably goes up, at this point.)
|
| It's at those individual lease boundaries that I (rather
| technically) have the opportunity to go month-to-month,
| if I want to be bled dry.
|
| My note about it being a 3+ year lease is the total time
| we've rented, consecutively. That the lease is broken
| into separate segments by the contract is an
| implementation detail, when discussing recovering the
| costs of / managing the risk of short-term tenants. I'm
| not a short term tenant, after having been here for that
| long.
|
| > _a landlord refusing to allow a lease to go month-to-
| month is illegal._
|
| That's news to me! I've never lived in such a place, and
| boy would that be nice. A cursory Google search indicates
| that, in my jurisdiction, "allows the landlord or tenant
| to end a month-to-month lease at any time, as long as
| they give 30 days' notice". The state I lived in
| previously is the same.
|
| (This is where the nuance of "what the lease actually
| says" meets the "how it is implemented".) Technically, my
| lease becomes month-to-month at the end of its lease
| period. To my landlord, not signing a new lease would
| result in (their, legally speaking) 30 days notice to
| move out. (They've made this somewhat apparent to us in
| the past, as they tend to not send out the new terms soon
| enough and then get antsy when they're not signed.) They
| want the increased rent, and it appears they'll get it
| from me, or the market.
| twblalock wrote:
| > They want the increased rent, and it appears they'll
| get it from me, or the market.
|
| Is that wrong? Do you think you are entitled to live in
| someone else's property, at a price below what others in
| the market would pay, for as long as you like?
|
| There has to be some balance here. Someone is contracting
| to let you live in their property. If they don't get
| something out of it, why should they do it? Why would
| anyone be a landlord? And if nobody wanted to be a
| landlord, wouldn't it be harder for you to find a place
| to live in your price range?
| freeone3000 wrote:
| If nobody wanted to be a landlord, it'd be so much easier
| to find a place to live -- so many vacancies, so much
| empty space, so little occupied land...
| twblalock wrote:
| Uh, no, there would be no options other than home
| ownership or homelessness (or government housing
| projects, which are only options in certain areas and are
| always pretty bad).
|
| Rentals don't just exist without landlords to own and
| maintain them. No apartment buildings would get built if
| there weren't landlords ready to buy them from the
| property developers. The existing ones would be left
| vacant because it would be cheaper than filling them and
| keeping them habitable.
|
| Every time the government makes it harder to be a
| landlord, they also make it harder to be a renter. Even
| well-intentioned programs like rent control always end up
| impacting the majority of renters negatively.
|
| If you are a renter, the best thing you can do for
| yourself is to advocate for more housing and more
| landlords to rent it from. It's supply and demand.
| [deleted]
| johnpublic wrote:
| A friend of mine who recently moved to the US from the UK put it
| to me like this: "imagine one state says they will pay out
| benefits without a permanent address. Where do you think the
| homeless are going to move to?"
| shoo wrote:
| The "The Obvious Answer to Homelessness" by Jerusalem Demsas,
| published by The Atlantic (linked in another comment by thamer)
| argues that this hypothesis is falsified, and can cite
| research:
|
| > Few Republican-dominated states have had to deal with severe
| homelessness crises, mainly because superstar cities are
| concentrated in Democratic states. Some blame profligate
| welfare programs for blue-city homelessness, claiming that
| people are moving from other states to take advantage of
| coastal largesse. But the available evidence points in the
| opposite direction--in 2022, just 4 percent of homeless people
| in San Francisco reported having become homeless outside of
| California. Gregg Colburn and Clayton Aldern found essentially
| no relationship between places with more generous welfare
| programs and rates of homelessness. And abundant other research
| indicates that social-welfare programs reduce homelessness.
| cjwilliams wrote:
| These self reported studies are not good measures. They need
| to find out where these people were last employed or
| attending school.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Is there any state where you can't get benefits without a
| permanent address or am I missing something here?
| jankyxenon wrote:
| Is street homelessness really driven by people who couldn't pay
| their rent? You would think they'd stay away from drug-addled
| violent tent cities - and sleep in a car or at a friend's house.
|
| Too many ideas seem to be conflated with the umbrella term
| "homeless"
| ajmurmann wrote:
| To add to that, if rent use too high in SF, becoming homeless
| in SF isn't your only other option. I know plenty of people who
| thought rent was too high in SF and they moved to other cities
| rather than onto the street. Further I hear that in Portland
| 50% of homeless arrive homeless in the city. Doesn't sound like
| a high rent issue, but an issue with addiction that or severe
| mental health issues.
| jrockway wrote:
| I see where you're coming from, but if you go to the extreme
| and anyone could have a private room for $1 a month, would
| anyone be living on the streets?
| Kaytaro wrote:
| Yes, that's already the case in some parts of the country
| with vacant homeless shelters, except they're not even $1.
| jankyxenon wrote:
| Absolutely yes they would. I know someone in my extended
| family on the streets - his problem is addiction. Lot's of
| people are willing to offer a roof.
|
| I know that's anecdata - but you asked about the extreme
| case.
| jrockway wrote:
| Is it because buildings refuse to house people with
| addiction problems, or that the extra $1/month is better
| used in their mind to get the next dose of the substance?
| jankyxenon wrote:
| The roof typically comes with the stipulation of no drugs
| (or even rehab).
|
| That's untenable to the addict.
| mindslight wrote:
| Those conditions make the offering quite different from
| being able to rent your own room inexpensively. One of
| the facets of having your own place is that you can do
| whatever you want there, whether it be drugs or whatever.
| That might not be healthy, and it's quite understandable
| why family would put conditions on offering a free room,
| but people do value their autonomy.
| fnimick wrote:
| The roof also comes with a loss of any sense of personal
| autonomy and the threat of violence from other people in
| the shelter.
|
| There's a reason people treat them as a last resort, and
| it's not drugs. It's that being in a shelter opens you up
| to abuse.
| mindover wrote:
| Unlike the street?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yes. Some people just want zero responsibilities and living
| on the street gives them that. Living in housing _always_
| has conditions.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Street homelessness is more visible, but it is smaller in scale
| than those who are living in their car/on a friend's couch.
| dionidium wrote:
| It's obviously both. If you're a heroin addict in West Virginia
| you just rent a trailer with a revolving list of fellow addicts
| for like $400 month and you beg or steal enough to get by.
| Plus, you're in a part of town where nobody is really going to
| notice you.
|
| That doesn't work in San Francisco.
|
| So did the heroin make you homeless or the high prices? It's
| kind of a silly question. It's both, in some sense.
|
| That's why we see a direct correlation between the cost of rent
| and homelessness.
| jankyxenon wrote:
| But my question is - if you can't pay rent in LA, what draws
| you to set up camp in skid row? Why add that burden of living
| there on top of everything else you're dealing with?
| halfnormalform wrote:
| Originally, Skid Row was where the railroad tracks ended.
| Now it is where the social services providers are
| clustered.
| dionidium wrote:
| Well, yeah, which is why the people who say addiction isn't
| a factor at all are being more than a little silly. Rent is
| a factor, but drug addicts make poor decisions in a crisis,
| obviously. And it's no coincidence that addicts have a
| weaker support system; most of them have spent years
| wearing it thin by the time they hit rock bottom.
| ck2 wrote:
| You start with sleeping in your car for "just a little while"
| until one day the car breaks or you can't renew tag/insurance.
|
| Or your friends get burnt out with the unpaid roommate using
| resources idea.
|
| Hop skip and jump away from "real" street homelessness.
|
| Been there. Amazed sometimes I made it out because it breaks
| your brain, just the lack of sleep enough days in a row will
| make the best minds broken.
| jankyxenon wrote:
| Awesome to see that you broke out of that. If you don't mine
| my asking, did you join a street community in a downtown
| core, or did you use any social services to help?
|
| Did you meet a lot of people in a similar situation to you on
| the street?
| thamer wrote:
| The current link points to the website of a radio station that
| only posted a brief summary of a much longer article from The
| Atlantic. Maybe the URL in this post should be changed to the
| original?
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2023/01/homeles...
|
| _edit:_ actually the original link already has a submission on
| HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33961543
| braingenious wrote:
| The wording for this is hilariously bad. "Poverty" isn't the real
| driver of homelessness so long as you define poverty in a way
| that it's unrelated to your ability to shelter yourself!
|
| This sort of tired, pointless game of "if you define words
| differently, sentences have different meanings!" is so oddly
| popular on here, especially when it comes to housing.
|
| I personally go by the dictionary definition of poverty:
|
| _1 a : the state of one who lacks a usual or socially acceptable
| amount of money or material possessions_
|
| If the landlords in your city use some scummy software (1) to
| provide cover for them deciding that they should help themselves
| to 110% of your paycheck and that results in your inability to
| live indoors, you're functionally impoverished.
|
| 1. https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/26/23479034/doj-
| investigati...
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Needs a [in overpriced cities] tag, like [in mice]
| nickpinkston wrote:
| There's also a good argument that rent/housing affects more of
| our broader lives than anything else - often called "The Housing
| Theory of Everything".
|
| https://www.worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-e...
|
| If you're interested in helping the housing problem across the
| US, I encourage you to check out: YIMBY Action who does local
| activism across the US, and particularly active in SF Bay Area
| and CA.
|
| https://yimbyaction.org/
|
| Full disclosure, I'm on the board, but I joined because the ROI /
| growth are both crazy. We have a tiny budget / staff but have a
| huge impact on the discourse, passing various laws and pushing
| cities to follow the law to approve housing. We're now at an
| inflection point and need to scale our model out.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| LVT now. Truly the solution to all our economic problems.
| [deleted]
| nickpinkston wrote:
| If only!
|
| If you like LVT, you'll love this Twitter account haha:
| https://twitter.com/yhdistyminen
| WalterBright wrote:
| Should check the drug addiction rate among the street dwellers
| before drawing such conclusions.
|
| In Seattle, 90% are addicted to drugs or alcohol, or are mentally
| ill.
|
| https://komonews.com/news/local/komo-news-special-seattle-is...
| g_sch wrote:
| As other commenters have mentioned, people living on the street
| don't comprise the majority of unhoused people. It does seem
| like California has a higher overall percentage of "unsheltered
| unhoused" people among the unhoused. But e.g. here in NYC the
| vast majority of unhoused people move in and out of the
| (largely corrupt, poorly maintained, highly restrictive)
| shelter system, and a only small percentage live on the street
| or in the subway.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| That number seems unbelievably high. LAHSA for example found
| that only 15% of homeless individuals have a substance abuse
| disorder.
|
| https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3422-2019-greater-los-ang...
| garbagecoder wrote:
| You just missed the distinction. Talk to people who work with
| "street people" and they will tell you almost all either
| suffer from mental illness or addiction. This is not the same
| as people who are housing insecure.
| throwaway742 wrote:
| Good point I did miss that. They also included mentally ill
| with substance abuse disorders.
| dano wrote:
| Building more housing is tossed out as if this is a single
| dimension economics problem, like widgets in Freshman econ.
|
| Perform a capacity utilization study of all available housing,
| where Capacity is the number of room days of housing available
| and utilization is the amount it is actually occupied. Then tag
| each of these housing units (room) across multiple dimensions
| including cost, location, house, apartment, condo, etc..
|
| Find out how existing housing is _actually_ being used and how
| much it is being used. Then adjust the financial incentives to
| change the usage to what you think it ought to be.
|
| I live in an medium to high cost of living location and the
| number of underutilized properties due to second homes,
| opportunistic rentals, and basic investment properties (downtown
| condos) is substantial.
|
| If someone can point me to a city that has performed a Housing
| Capacity Utilization study, I'd like to read it.
| woah wrote:
| What a bizarrely complicated argument to try to refute the most
| basic law of supply and demand.
|
| Many economists have proven over and over that building more
| housing means that there are more places for people to live.
| The burden of proof is on you, since you are the one making
| outlandish claims.
|
| The number of "underutilized properties" is likely a few
| percent in your area. "Most condos are empty and owned by
| foreigners" is a myth perpetuated by NIMBYs and conspiracy
| theorists.
|
| Even if it was true, the best way to screw over these shadowy
| foreign empty-building-owning figures would simply be to build
| more housing so that it's not an artificially scarce investment
| asset. The value of their investment would plummet and they
| would have to sell it or take on tenants.
| andrewla wrote:
| The homeless debate, especially around housing, has become a
| nightmare of semantic creep and rising metricism [1].
|
| Metricism is the tendency to focus on measurable things; in
| principle a noble goal, but more often than not you can't
| actually measure the thing you're interested in, so you measure
| something similar and then pretend you're measuring the thing you
| want, and when you're done, you've implemented solutions which
| reduce your metric but have no effect on the underlying problem.
|
| What is the problem of "homelessness"? Is it transient
| homelessness, where people, through a run of bad luck or
| circumstance, find themselves unable to afford housing, but
| otherwise are functional in society?
|
| Or is the problem the much more visible problem of mentally ill
| and otherwise unstable individuals wandering the streets and
| pushing kids on to subway tracks?
|
| The latter is the homeless problem that people care about (I
| mean, we are human, we care about both, but if I had to choose
| which one I'd rather fix, as a New Yorker, the latter takes
| priority). Fixing this problem, though, is incredibly hard --
| there's the intersection of human rights, involuntary
| confinement, and the otherwise incredible complexity of managing
| mental health in a free society.
|
| But this is SOOOOOOO hard to measure! It's much easier to just
| measure the people who are "unhoused", pretend you're solving the
| "homeless problem", and show that you can make the numbers go
| down. The problem being solved by increasing housing and lowering
| rents is not the problem of people walking down the subway
| screaming about electricity and knocking cell phones out of
| people's hands -- he is more than a couple of rent payments away
| from being okay.
|
| [1] metricism is my own neologism; closest analogy is James C.
| Scott's "legibility" or Goodhart's "observed statistical
| regularity" or even the drunk "looking for the keys where the
| light is good" but I'm more specifically concerned about
| fetishizing around metrics specifically.
| dudeinjapan wrote:
| It's far easier to point at imaginary causes for imaginary
| problems than it is to talk about the real causes of real
| problems.
| jlmorton wrote:
| Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco. You control all
| of the zoning regulations, and many of the permitting
| requirements. You have a AA+ credit rating, and even in today's
| higher rate environment, you can borrow billions of dollars at
| 6%.
|
| You already own oodles of land. You can build to whatever height
| you want within reason, because you control the zoning, and you
| even control many of the ordinances that allow citizens to block
| development (though certainly not all, like CEQA and NEPA). So
| you have lots of lands to build on, and what you build is largely
| in your control.
|
| Construction costs in San Francisco are sky-high, at $440 sq ft.
| But people will happily pay you $40/sq foot per year for housing,
| probably for 75 years.
|
| How is this not the easiest decision in the world?
|
| Create a housing development agency, become a permanent
| developer, and landlord. Never stop building. Put proper
| incentives in place, so that employees at the agency can partake
| in the profits, incentivizing them to be efficient. Never stop
| doing this.
|
| You might not be great at this at first, but fifty years later
| you will be.
| kupopuffs wrote:
| Because there's more to governing than the cost/benefit
| analysis of the business of landlording
|
| More homes means more people means more headaches, without
| proper planning.
|
| You'll need to build infrastructure and steadily govern your
| rising population. Not impossible, but definitely more
| overhead.
|
| And surely all your building will lower the price of housing
| around the area, thus making you and your fellow rich San
| Francisco friends, less rich.
| lapama wrote:
| [flagged]
| mindover wrote:
| Right - just build more housing. Forget about failing
| utilities, packed roads, overwhelmed social services, crowded
| schools! Just build more skyscrapers and move half of the
| country to SF so that we can all drown in shit together.
|
| This oversimplification that we just need to build more houses
| is amusing. SF is a tiny city, stuffing more people here won't
| resolve many of the problems that already make life here
| difficult. And no, it won't lower rent by much: SF doesn't
| exist in a vacuum, more people will move here and will keep
| rent as high as before.
| aschearer wrote:
| Theoretically, sure. In reality, people have invested a lot of
| money in housing and want to preserve that investment. I recall
| a time in Seattle where the mayor and city council proposed
| removing most of the zoning restrictions in the city. Within
| weeks course was reversed[1]. Personally, I think it was a good
| proposal, but it's hard to convince homeowners to give an inch.
| While I think that's bad for society, I can't blame people for
| looking out for one of their largest investments.
|
| [1]: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/mayor-
| mur...
| avelis wrote:
| They would in theory never run out of development projects for
| 20+ years. Many large cities could fall into this category as
| well. The pressure to not piss off homeowners is atrocious.
| paxys wrote:
| The city of San Francisco isn't some independent entity. It is
| made up of people, a lot of whom already own houses and/or
| don't want higher buildings and more neighbors and/or don't
| want to be in the business of building and managing housing. If
| you think about individual incentives rather than what is right
| and wrong then it makes perfect sense.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Sounds like you're proposing government run high-rise housing
| projects. Can you name any that are not dangerous, crime-ridden
| hellholes?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Singapore, but only because it targets the middle class and
| results in ownership. Poorer Singaporeans are in a different
| system of smaller rentals (still public housing).
| wffurr wrote:
| Venice
| BirdieNZ wrote:
| Singapore
| scarmig wrote:
| Singapore.
| iwanttocomment wrote:
| What a goofy statement.
|
| How much land does San Francisco truly own that isn't already
| used for an essential purpose? Are you encouraging them to turn
| the parks or schools into housing? That's not going to make SF
| an attractive community.
|
| Are you encouraging them to use eminent domain to out existing
| single-family homeowners? That's really not going to go well.
|
| Assuming that you raze the parks and schools and seize single-
| family homes to build high-density rentals as you suggest, the
| average life span in the US is 77 years. Assuming people still
| leave the house at 18, that's 59 years of renting... if those
| people choose not to buy elsewhere, given that you've razed the
| parks and the schools.
|
| I don't think you understand how hamstrung San Francisco is in
| regards to the amount of available land it could actually
| develop.
| tinyspacewizard wrote:
| If you're a benevolent dictator then it's easy and obvious. But
| there are powerful vested interests and elections to win.
| geodel wrote:
| This makes me think if I like policies of oppressive
| politicians they are _benevolent dictators_ if not they are
| _third world tyrants_
| jollyllama wrote:
| This; the landlords will destroy you if you dare to try this.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| Judging from what I've seen of SF politics its much more
| homeowners, who have far more power, than landlords.
| t-writescode wrote:
| A landlord is, by definition, a homeowner.
| hyuuu wrote:
| i think they are completely separate?
|
| landlord: may or may not own a home, but have a property
| to rent out, may it be a residential or commercial like a
| warehouse. They may not even own the home they live in,
| which is surprisingly very typical to cut cost and deploy
| money in other ways.
|
| homeowner: own the property they reside in.
| dnissley wrote:
| In this case the commenter is specifically referring to
| the class of people who own a home they live in.
| dionidium wrote:
| Yeah, the thing I always say about the people who complain
| about tech workers and gentrification in a place like San
| Francisco is like, look, if you can't figure out how to gain
| from an influx of wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality,
| nerdy tech workers, then that's really on you. What a gift! Any
| city would be lucky to have that "problem." You have to
| _actively_ work to make that a negative (by, say, refusing to
| allow almost any new housing for literally decades).
|
| The consequences of that decision are fairly obvious and
| straightforward and they've by now been explained to everybody
| 50 times, but this is the path these cities choose anyway! It's
| their choice and it's what they keep choosing.
|
| Cities like San Francisco have said clearly, firmly, and
| repeatedly: "we would rather suffer a housing crisis than allow
| the city to change too rapidly." At this point what else can
| you say in response?
| danjac wrote:
| Maybe San Francisco is just not suitable any more? There's
| nothing magic about SF's geography that makes it a tech hub.
| It's not a mining town that needs to be next to coal or
| minerals, or a ski resort town that needs some mountains and
| snow. It's based on work that can literally be done anywhere.
|
| Hollywood, after all, was just a dusty desert town that
| became the hub of the movie business because it was easier to
| move there and start a new one than dealing with Edison's
| lawyers back East, so maybe the tech industry needs to get
| out of SF, start a new hub somewhere else, and leave the city
| to the NIMBYs.
| klipt wrote:
| Tech hubs grow organically from network effects. It's
| impossible to move the whole network in one go.
|
| Best you can do is make one network gradually shrink and
| another one gradually grow somewhere else.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| Counterpoint: Shenzhen
| carom wrote:
| Can we just move them to the US in one go? Asking for a
| friend.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > There's nothing magic about SF's geography
|
| It includes two of the world's top ten universities,
| incredible natural beauty there and nearby, excellent
| weather (locals complain, as locals do, but it's
| wonderful), and all the resources and people are gathered
| there. It's hard to imagine the return on investment of
| moving.
| malandrew wrote:
| It's easy to imagine it moving. The people doing the work
| are the ICs (individual contributors), and up until
| recently, SF was the only place to go to have a top notch
| career in tech. People sacrificed to live in SF as junior
| to mid level engineers because eventually they would get
| to the point where they are a senior engineer and make
| enough to afford housing. But now the housing has gotten
| so expensive that even the senior ICs have difficulty
| justifying sticking around because they are on a
| treadmill that takes years to save enough for a down
| payment (as prices keep rising). You need like $400k
| saved to buy in SF and you'll still end up with a
| $6000/mo mortgage. You have to be a couple. Enough have
| figured this is a raw deal and have fled to other places
| like Seattle and Austin. So many in fact that you can now
| have just as promising a career today as someone could
| only get in SF 10-20 years ago. Eventually SF will find
| it hard to attract new ICs to the area and you'll end up
| with an aging cohort of mid level managers, directors and
| staff level engineers that have fewer and fewer people to
| manage.
|
| Companies won't keep increasing total comp for junior
| engineers in SF when they can grow their offices in other
| cheaper cities instead.
|
| You need a robust pipeline of junior folks and SF is
| increasingly strangling that pipeline and other cheaper
| cities are as attractive as SF once was.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| It's also a place that is relatively welcoming to people
| from almost any part of the world. It's not perfect (no
| where is) but there a lot of places in the US where if
| you came from another continent or practiced an unusual
| religion you would feel more uncomfortable then you would
| in SF. That's a quality it has possessed for decades, for
| historical reasons.
| avmich wrote:
| I can think about Stanford as the first one... the other
| one is probably Berkeley. I'm quite surprised they both
| are in world's top ten universities - actually, skeptical
| about that. "Incredible natural beauty" is not only at
| least somewhat subjective, but definitely is not
| exclusive to SF. Weather is good, but even Honolulu and
| Miami would argue, not to mention quite a few other
| places, even if they are minority overall - so the
| weather is not that unique.
|
| People - yes, currently the state of the people is well
| tuned in favor of SF (SFBA). But the question still
| remains.
| twelve40 wrote:
| no need to be skeptical, it's just one search away:
| https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-
| universities/ra...
|
| You may even ignore this particular ranking, but it
| really doesn't matter, because neither Honolulu nor
| Miami, with all due respect, have anything close to
| either school, let alone both (or half a dozen of UC's in
| driving distance)
|
| Also, very subjective, but I can't bear the humidity in
| FL and HI for more than a week, so saying it's all
| similarly good weather in all those places doesn't make
| sense to me.
|
| But really, it's a _combination_ of all of these things
| in one place.
| avmich wrote:
| Combination is good, agree. For separate points, the
| argument stands.
|
| And the combination is likely the product of people,
| gradually accumulated in the area. So, yes, the
| intellectual potential is great. But that could be moved
| some hundreds miles away relatively easily, or at least
| replicated to a high degree - partially because of the
| sad situation with housing.
| dasil003 wrote:
| This is a questionable take on two levels.
|
| First, yes, yes there is something magic about SF's
| geography, it's the closest major city to the largest VC
| hub in the world. These companies thrive on young talent
| that prefers to live in a city. It's not dissimilar to the
| gold rush 170 years ago when you think about it.
|
| Second, what do you mean "San Francisco is just not
| suitable any more"? The tech companies and their employees
| are the least impacted by rising housing costs. By and
| large they are doing alright, so what is their incentive to
| uproot everything and randomly go roll the dice somewhere
| else which would A) not have a critical mass of VC in their
| backyard and B) will offer no guarantee of not reacting
| exactly the same as SF.
|
| Keep in mind, 20 years ago there was barely any tech in San
| Francisco proper. Sure there tech employees who chose to
| live there and suffer the commute to the peninsula, as is
| their prerogative being free individuals residing in the
| US. The reason tech moved in was because SF offered tax
| breaks--they wanted their piece of the tax revenue and
| daily spending from well-to-do tech workers. If the city
| really felt tech being there was the problem they have a
| lot of levers (eg. raise taxes, zoning changes, etc) to
| push it out. Of course they don't want to do that because
| it would cause far more economic harm than good. NIMBYs are
| of course willing to entertain the charade of successful
| tech companies as the scapegoat because it keeps their home
| values sky high while deflecting to the amorphous "tech
| companies", who in fact they have zero control over policy
| and at best marginal interest in addressing the issue at
| all.
| c7b wrote:
| Both tech and VC are vastly more mobile than anything to
| do with the gold rush or even other 'technology' sectors
| with heavy physical assets, it's purely a coordination
| game.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| _it 's the closest major city to the largest VC hub_
|
| San Jose has entered the room. San Francisco is cute and
| that's why people like it and ignore San Jose.
| twelve40 wrote:
| haha fair enough, closest cute major city : ) As a
| longtime South Bay resident, it's super-boring down here
| and actually many of the same problems, expensive and
| lots of homeless.
|
| But all of that is beside the point. The real interesting
| question is whether the companies will yank the leash
| Musk-style and have everyone come back here, or not.
| There is a lot of hype in both directions, but I'd say
| that debate is not settled yet.
| WesternWind wrote:
| Just FYI, San Jose is bigger than San Francisco in terms
| of population and square miles.
|
| That's not to say that SF might not be more of a major
| city than SJ, in fact I would say that personally I think
| it is in terms of culture and history and social impact,
| but it's at least debatable.
| twelve40 wrote:
| I think SJ vs SF distinction is not very material to this
| thread. The OG Silicon Valley of HP and Fairchild
| Semiconductor fame liked to build corporate campuses
| around Stanford on cheap (at the time) land. 90's Yahoo,
| Doubleclick, Google followed suit. In the late 2000's, a
| new wave of startups like Twitter figured they don't have
| to stick to corporate code and just move up to a more fun
| city up north, combined with some tax breaks from SF
| specifically. How does it matter? It's the same area (i
| drive up and down every day) with much the same problems.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| "Hollywood, after all, was just a dusty desert town that
| became the hub of the movie business because it was easier
| to move there and start a new one than dealing with
| Edison's lawyers back East..."
|
| Yes, but also no. Keep in mind the popularity of Westerns
| in the 1930's-1950's and the ease with which you can get to
| desert/mountain/beach/city/forest/etc settings within a
| relatively short drive from L.A.
|
| That said, I generally agree with your point.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And sunshine. Sunshine helps when you're shooting
| outdoors. Southern California has more sunny days than
| the east.
| dasil003 wrote:
| And a bit of haze helps the aesthetic as well.
| WalterBright wrote:
| After all, the Battle of the Bulge did take place in the
| California desert. Medieval England looks like
| California, too. Even the alien worlds of Star Trek look
| suspiciously like California.
| malandrew wrote:
| Hollywood also had more days of great weather than anywhere
| else and this was especially important for maintaining
| production schedules.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| I can't imagine any place will be much of a 'joy' to live in,
| if there's no barista's, waiters, etc who can afford to live
| within a 2 hour radius.
|
| I mean, if you want a 'servant' class, then you need to at
| least make it worth their while and ability to thrive.
| Everyone wants to be able to go to Olive Garden, or
| McDonald's but there won't be these places if people can't
| afford to live there.
|
| There will always be lesser jobs, but not if nobody can live
| for the wage given to them. The only answer is more housing,
| and/or higher wages. Probably both, but esp more housing.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of
| wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech
| workers, then that's really on you. What a gift!
|
| Those tech workers, once they move, are not customers, they
| are the city. It's their city as much as anyone's, any
| failures or successes are theirs; what have they done?
| lelandbatey wrote:
| New arrivals to a city, no matter their socioeconomic
| status, in the aggregate, have less influence than folks
| who are long established in the city. It's a human thing.
| adasdasdas wrote:
| They made it easier/more profitable to develop land by
| driving prices up
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _what have they done?_
|
| This should be easy to answer once the city starts cutting
| its budget.
| fnimick wrote:
| > the people who complain about tech workers and
| gentrification in a place like San Francisco
|
| The people who are complaining about this are not the same
| people who are restricting housing access.
|
| A similar dynamic happens in Boston, where people are
| resentful of gentrifiers, and I can't blame them. They're not
| the ones voting to block housing, it's the already rich
| people in the area who do that.
| mc32 wrote:
| People are of two minds: on the one hand they complain of
| "middle class flight" decimating the tax base. on the other
| hand they complain when the middle class "gentrify" a
| neighborhood.
|
| The Mission is probably a decent example. It used to be
| more or less like Noe Valley many decades back. Then people
| moved out and was settled by people looking for
| affordability --then decades later, as housing in Noe
| Valley etc., was exhausted the Mission was "gentrified" in
| a slow cycle and people again complain.
| Aunche wrote:
| > The people who are complaining about this are not the
| same people who are restricting housing access.
|
| The majority of them think that YIMBY is useless or
| counterproductive because only luxury apartments are being
| built. There have even been protests against this [1]. The
| main problem is that most housing advocacy is focused on
| taxing tech workers and using that to subsidize rents,
| which of course does nothing for housing costs, but does
| help landlords.
|
| [1] https://sf.curbed.com/2019/8/7/20759029/excelsior-
| protest-65...
| zozbot234 wrote:
| When building is made a luxury, only luxuries get built.
| _Quelle surprise_! And this is supposed to be an argument
| _against_ YIMBY?
| xxpor wrote:
| No, it's both. There's an unholy alliance between the two.
| fnimick wrote:
| Why would renters want property values (and therefore
| rents) to go up due to a lack of supply?
| raincom wrote:
| People who live in rent-controlled apartments seem to be
| against gentrification, as they end up losing their rent-
| controlled apartments for new construction.
| jonas21 wrote:
| They don't. But getting people to understand supply and
| demand is hard. Getting them to blame visible changes in
| the neighborhood (e.g. fancy new apartment buildings
| going up) is easy.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Yes, they are. What do you think "anti-gentrification
| activism" boils down to, in practice? Build more and drive
| prices down? Of course not, the activists will conveniently
| tell you that this makes gentrification _worse_! Which
| totally defies economic logic: there 's only so much demand
| in the world for places like Manhattan!
| majormajor wrote:
| > Which totally defies economic logic: there's only so
| much demand in the world for places like Manhattan!
|
| How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do
| you think there is?
|
| The more the price drops, of course, the demand will go
| up. So how much "in the world" at both current prices and
| also if, say, prices went down by 5%? 10%? 50%? 75%? I
| think there's enough currently-unmet demand to keep the
| prices from falling far even if you add supply.
|
| (You can also increase demand _by_ building. This is the
| goal of every property developer ever, after all. To make
| it worth more than it was when they found it.)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| The effective demand for places like Manhattan comes from
| the highly productive economic activity that can be
| pursued in such places. So if the demand for places like
| Manhattan (or Tokyo, Seoul, Shanghai etc.) really was
| that boundless, that would be plenty of reason to build
| as many of them as possible and speed towards that post-
| scarcity techno-utopia.
|
| (But the ghost cities of China actually show how this can
| go wrong. So, as it turns out, you can only YIMBY so
| much.)
| majormajor wrote:
| I don't think the demand is literally boundless, but I
| think the idea that we could _easily_ outpace demand with
| construction to dramatically increase affordability is
| wildly optimistic.
|
| I'd rather build new Dallases, or denser Dallases, than
| try to double the density of Manhattan, because it will
| both be easier to find/acquire un-utilized land to use,
| and because the amount of work required to double the
| density of Manhattan is much more intense, construction-
| wise.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Of course density should be pursued wherever it's
| cheapest to do so. The point of thinking about the
| Manhattan case is that this is the natural endpoint of
| any sort of "more housing and higher density always leads
| to higher prices" argument. It clarifies to what extent
| that argument can possibly work, as a matter of basic
| logic.
| majormajor wrote:
| As far as I can tell, the Manhattan case tells us that we
| aren't even close to the "building more will cause prices
| to fall" point anywhere in the US. And because of that,
| _building more where it 's cheaper_ is a better strategy
| for controlling costs than _building more where it 's
| already expensive_.
|
| Manhattan was brought up to mock the idea that
| construction could make prices worse for existing
| residents, I don't think it shows that at all.
|
| Is it any wonder that "you're dumb, building more will
| lower prices" hasn't been a persuasive argument to people
| who've seen construction push up prices around them for
| decades _without_ the promised lowering of prices yet?
| That 's just asking for a leap of faith that this time
| will be different, we'll hit the magic tipping point,
| without any actual evidence for that.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Expensive" city centers in the U.S. have comparable
| density to bog-standard suburban towns in the rest of the
| developed world. By all indications, we're nowhere near
| the "tipping point" where trying to increase density
| there would physically be so costly as to be
| unsustainable. That's something NYC can perhaps
| legitimately worry about, but I'm not sure how that could
| apply to other high-demand places in the U.S.
| majormajor wrote:
| The tipping point of concern for the anti-gentrification
| crowd isn't "is it profitable to upzone", it's "will
| upzoning make things cheaper" and those are VERY
| different questions.
|
| But just going on the numbers for the former question,
| the "expensive" city centers in the US generally start
| with Manhattan, Brooklyn, SF, and whatever you'd call
| "center" of LA. And they don't seem that far behind a lot
| of the rest of the developed world...
|
| Manhattan is >70k/sqmile.
|
| Brooklyn is 37k/sqmile.
|
| SF is ~19k/sqmile.
|
| LA is 8k/sqmile.
|
| So what are the "bog-standard suburban towns" you think
| they're comparable to?
|
| I can't think of many, and my searching isn't turning
| many up. Milan appears to be 20k/sqmile while Rome is
| 6k/sqmile. And those aren't "bog standard suburbs" like a
| Marietta, Georgia; those are central cities! Let's go
| bigger and even more central - London is 15k/sqmile,
| Paris is 53k/sqmile. Tokyo is ~17k (and larger, more like
| a double-size LA, there), but not overall denser than the
| US's expensive city centers. Manchester, in the UK, is
| 5450/sqmile. Stuttgart is 7,800/sqmile.
|
| Manchester is apparently comparable to San Jose! So
| again, seems like the way to fix is it to focus on the
| places further down the list, like an Austin, TX, at
| 3k/sqmile.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > How much demand "in the world" to live in Manhattan do
| you think there is?
|
| Probably somewhere between 4-5 billion people I'd guess.
| WalterBright wrote:
| > You can also increase demand by building
|
| The solution to high housing prices, obviously, is to
| demolish whole blocks of housing.
| majormajor wrote:
| Obviously the extremes are stupid, but hey...
|
| Think about it - that works just as well if you take it
| to the extreme as "rebuild the entire city denser" - once
| you knock down the entire city, that land is gonna be
| worth a lot less.
|
| And the demolition approach has the advantage of costing
| less than rebuilding everything after you demo it!
|
| It's also a good way to _force_ demand to move around,
| right?! Hell, if you demolished Manhattan and everyone
| there moved to other cities in the US, I wonder if the
| average rent and /or mortgage payments of the displaced
| people would go down...
| pwinnski wrote:
| Who knows? Pretty easily 40 million like Tokyo has, and
| that would already be more than double the current
| population. Possibly much more.
|
| There are a lot of people held back by nothing but cost,
| so dropping prices would increase demand. There are also
| people held back by other factors, but some of those
| would also likely be relieved by building more housing.
| luckylion wrote:
| Especially for a city that is explicitly progressive, why the
| "all rapid change is bad, it must take decades or centuries,
| otherwise it's not natural" approach?
|
| Germany's large cities have similar issues where they don't
| want to start building new districts because it'd be
| artificial and not naturally grown building by building. And
| it's better to have rents double every 10 years, apparently.
|
| I don't get the "why", but the approach is fairly explicit --
| and politicians get reelected while following it, so I guess
| it's what "the people" want.
| bradlys wrote:
| Well - to be more clear - SF is socially progressive. It is
| incredibly fiscally conservative. It is part of Silicon
| Valley - a neoliberal paradise.
|
| The whole area is incredibly classically liberal and not
| socialist leaning at all... After all - becoming a tycoon
| is everyone's wet dream there.
| klipt wrote:
| > SF is socially progressive. It is incredibly fiscally
| conservative
|
| Wouldn't "fiscally conservative" mean low taxes and low
| spending?
|
| I believe SF spends about $57,000 annually per homeless
| person which doesn't sound very fiscally conservative.
|
| Of course a lot of that money goes missing while being
| funneled through the homeless industrial complex...
| bradlys wrote:
| > low taxes and low spending?
|
| Almost no one in power in the USA is actually low taxes
| and low spending. Maybe a few libertarians scattered
| throughout the country that managed to get a seat but
| they're a very small minority.
|
| Everyone is all about high taxes and high spending. It's
| just "high taxes for thee but not for me". So, for
| instance, republicans will repeal taxes on the rich and
| large corporations even when we already tax the middle
| class W2 earners more than the rich already. Similarly,
| republicans are huge for the MIC. So much for being
| fiscally conservative when they want to spend literally
| hundreds of billions of dollars on a stupid boondoggle
| airplane that no one gives a shit about.
|
| Democrats have the same issues. They also have a hardon
| for the MIC and spending on stupid shit. The dems in SF
| will spend it on stupid trashcans or whatever nonsense
| that doesn't move the bar at all.
|
| They will tax the hell out of the working class and spend
| the money on shit that doesn't improve the material
| conditions of everyday people. It's why we can't have
| healthcare. Both parties have no interest because that
| doesn't make their lobbyists money.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _no one in power in the USA is actually low taxes and
| low spending_
|
| Wyoming says hello.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Quickly throwing up cheap mass housing without also
| organically growing the services and rest of the community
| is how you get food deserts and ghettos though. I'm not
| saying it shouldn't be done, just pointing out where it's
| gone wrong in the past and why people may be hesitant to
| try again.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Food deserts are the result of theft driving away low
| margin businesses that don't want to absorb the hit.
| hellotomyrars wrote:
| Food deserts are not the result of theft. Food deserts
| exist outside of SF or other cities that are accused of
| being so soft on crime and all crime is legal. Food
| deserts are incredibly common in rural areas, especially
| as a result of their non-density. But hell, when I lived
| in Jacksonville( which is a consolidated city-county) I
| was 10+ miles from any grocery store. North side has
| developed a lot since I left and that is no longer true
| but in many rural areas the only places opening up are
| dollar generals which are taking advantage of the
| economics of whatever local grocery store is charging and
| offering an alternative to driving 30+ miles to the
| nearest Walmart. A sad state of affairs.
|
| I live in Pacific County WA and it is an economically
| depressed area with an outsized cost of living. Groceries
| are absurdly expensive relative to the average income in
| the area and you could probably get the same groceries
| for half th price by driving to where the closest Walmart
| is( which is 30 or so miles from where I live.
| pwinnski wrote:
| This is a popular trope, but companies have already begun
| walking back their claims of rampant theft[0].
|
| There are increased profits when building in more
| prosperous areas, so one might understand why companies
| choose to do so given limited resources. But lower
| profits in inner cities are not always about theft so
| much as a lack of cash.
|
| 0. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/walgreens-may-have-
| cried-t...
| WalterBright wrote:
| That isn't what the article says. It says Walgreens is
| walking back their anti-theft measures because it's
| costly and ineffective and the customers don't like them.
| prottog wrote:
| The article doesn't support your claim. What it supports
| is the idea that for Walgreens as a whole, shrinkage
| isn't a make-or-break issue. It says nothing about
| whether Walgreens will choose to place or keep a store at
| a high-theft location or whether a mom-and-pop store can
| survive in the same.
|
| The grocery business is famous for having very thin
| margins, so anything that cuts in will necessarily cause
| fewer options for the people of that area. Academic
| studies have generally shown that this is in fact not a
| trope but fact.
| jorvi wrote:
| That is how things happen in the US. In most North-
| Western European countries, city planning and zoning is
| taken very seriously.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Not so, there are blighted areas even in places like
| London.
| MonkeyMalarky wrote:
| Don't the suburbs/banlieues of Paris have quite the
| reputation as well?
| zozbot234 wrote:
| "Food deserts and ghettos" are also the outcome of
| broader housing scarcity and lack of amenities. Where the
| only cheap areas around are those that have become cheap
| merely by virtue of being terrible to live in, and are
| since stuck in that vicious cycle.
| luckylion wrote:
| It doesn't have to be "plan & build it within 12 months,
| and don't worry about anything but apartment buildings".
| It's not a new problem, it's been a constant topic (here,
| in Germany) for at least 15 years, with every year ending
| with "we have 2000 new apartments, but we need 20000 a
| year to keep up with demand". And city planners put their
| hands into their pockets and say "well, you can't rush
| these things..."
|
| What will come first: commercial cold fusion energy or a
| return to actually building housing in Western cities?
| glass3 wrote:
| Neither. Why would significant further growth happen in
| Western (European) cities if cheap solar energy and space
| is available in North Africa?
| colechristensen wrote:
| It's really the opposite, they wanted to gain too much from
| it.
|
| If your city wants to keep it's style of residential density,
| fine, limit commercial growth, stop adding jobs to the city
| if you won't add housing to match it. And that would be fine,
| plenty of other places would benefit from spreading the tech
| wealth around.
| vkou wrote:
| > if you can't figure out how to gain from an influx of
| wealthy, highly-educated, low-criminality, nerdy tech
| workers, then that's really on you
|
| Oh, people are gaining from them. It's just that the people
| gaining are generally the people who already have political
| power.
|
| Someone who owns their home doesn't mind seeing land values
| quadruple, thanks to this influx of free tech money.
|
| Someone who is renting, so that they can save up money for a
| downpayment, whose service industry wages have _not_
| quadrupled in that period of time minds very, very much.
| r00fus wrote:
| > Imagine you're a municipality like San Francisco.
|
| I couldn't get past this because the analogy breaks down
| already. SF as a polity is not controlled by one person or
| single department. The power is highly decentralized (the Board
| of Supervisors hold most of the keys).
|
| Thus, even if you have someone who can make sweeping changes,
| likelihood is they'd never get elected in such a setup (or if
| they do, be able to effect change).
| AaronM wrote:
| Even if they could make sweeping changes, the local
| homeowners would drag those new developments to court for 25
| years
| novok wrote:
| The BoS & electorate create laws, bureaucracies, structures
| and courts that would create those 25 year court cases in
| the first place. The properly allocated elected set of
| judges, supervisors, mayor and DAs can make most of those
| disappear in the first place by changing the law, how the
| government runs and how the courts run and rule on cases,
| complete with prioritizing court cases for the few they
| don't have a choice in getting rid of to make them get
| through the system quickly.
| samman wrote:
| Another factor to consider is that there may also be
| significant infrastructure upgrades required to support the
| increase in population, and costs might increase dramatically
| when you consider increased water usage in an already drought
| stricken region.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| The city government doesn't want to solve the issue.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That means the citizens don't want to solve it.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| > How is this not the easiest decision in the world?
|
| Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want more
| people to near to them so they vote against any and all change.
|
| Welp!
|
| This is why higher orders of government need to step in to
| "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy
| changes you describe. This gives the local municipalities cover
| to enact the good policies that the selfish rich would kill at
| the ballot box.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| No, just average people, who built the community over time
| into something desirable, that were promised with zoning laws
| that it would be the type of community (single family homes,
| etc) that they wanted, and that then dedicated the majority
| of their lifetime earning power to purchase a home there.
|
| There are how many acres of land in this country? Why do you
| have a right to overrule the will of people in one
| comparatively small community to force that community to be
| something else, in the name of affordable housing, when there
| is so much land available elsewhere? You want it, build it,
| commit your life to it, like they did in paying so much of
| their lifetime income into their family home. If we were a
| tiny island country you might have an argument, but there is
| soooo much land in this country, arbitrarily picking one
| small area because that is where you want to be is not a
| right.
| thebradbain wrote:
| No one in San Francisco today built it to what it is. That
| city hasn't changed in any substantial way since before
| 1960.
|
| It's long been coasting off its past success.
| kansface wrote:
| I'd say removing the interstate from the Embarcadero and
| Hayes Valley is a substantial improvement, but your point
| still stands. That was politically unpopular and required
| a major earthquake.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > No, just average people, who built the community over
| time into something desirable, that were promised with
| zoning laws that it would be the type of community (single
| family homes, etc) that they wanted, and that then
| dedicated the majority of their lifetime earning power to
| purchase a home there.
|
| No one was promised that the zoning laws wouldn't someday
| change.
|
| Maybe what's really needed is a complete repeal of
| proposition 13. If homeowners want to block local
| development leading to increasing housing costs, they can
| at least pay for it in their taxes.
| nradov wrote:
| You are welcome to put a repeal of Proposition 13 on the
| next ballot. All it takes is a $2000 fee and some signed
| petitions. https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/ballot-
| measures/how-qualify...
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| Frankly that's a waste of time. People are are all too
| happy not paying their fair share of taxes and will fight
| hard to preserve that inequity. The clearly correct
| approach is for the state to continue its current path of
| overruling local zoning ordinances and to allow increases
| in density against the will of local homeowners.
| celestialcheese wrote:
| Categorizing 575k signatures as just "some signed
| petitions" is some unreal minimization of the cost and
| difficulty to get this done.
|
| 2022 ballot measures "Cost per required signature" was
| $16.18. [1]. Between $6.4m -> $18.8m to get a prop on the
| ballot.
|
| 1 - https://ballotpedia.org/California_ballot_initiative_
| petitio...
| woah wrote:
| This is the problem with promoting a highly illiquid and
| undiversified asset, bought with extreme government-backed
| leverage, as an ideal savings and investment strategy for
| people who don't know any better.
| Joeri wrote:
| You don't even need to build, there's plenty of cheap
| already built housing in places like detroit. Ask yourself:
| why do people prefer to live in san francisco so much more
| than detroit? It has nothing to do with the housing market.
| Solving the housing problem might not need to involve
| housing policies at all, just creating reasons for people
| to want to look for housing in other places.
| 8note wrote:
| Seems fine, paired with limitations that they can't sell
| the places for more than they bought them for, nor can they
| charge rent over $100/mo.
|
| If you're trying to keep it the same, keep it the same
| mikem170 wrote:
| Existing homeowners would prefer to profit from a vibrant
| dynamic and growing community, they just need to screw
| over all the newcomers bringing that growth, those people
| who need new housing, by not allowing new housing, which
| drives up their property values.
|
| They don't block job creation, which attracts people,
| they just block new housing. And then complain about the
| homeless.
| majormajor wrote:
| > Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don't want
| more people to near to them so they vote against any and all
| change.
|
| Sometimes poor established renters _also_ don 't want change.
|
| In the 20th century a lot of cities grew practically 'out of
| nowhere'. Why has that stopped? That's a _great_ pressure
| relief valve and gets new buyers /renters out of a vicious
| feedback loop caused by the tendency of already cash-or-
| property-rich people to concentrate resources.
|
| "The opportunity/jobs are there" is historically the answer,
| for millennia of cities. But does it have to be that forever?
| In the 20th century US, there were a lot of explicit
| government interventions and such that caused things like the
| defense industry to sprawl across countless different states
| and counterbalance it. What would that look like in a
| post-2020 world?
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| > Sometimes poor established renters also don't want
| change.
|
| The way this is framed is so insidious. The "change" that
| "poor established renters" don't want is more expensive
| housing that _they can 't afford_ that will incentivize
| their _current landlords_ to _raise the rent_ on the
| properties they have and also change the local businesses
| to also raise prices.
|
| It's not the same change.
| novok wrote:
| Cities out of nowhere do exist in function in the USA,
| there are plenty of cities where people can buy for cheap.
| New settlements get started due to something unique about
| the place, be it ports, resources, trade route nexuses, and
| so on. The USA was a frontier and thus these cities were
| established. You'll notice in western europe you don't see
| many new towns either for 100s of years, because it's
| frontier was settled long time ago.
|
| People want to live in SF because of the effective social
| networks that develop there and access to it's labor
| market. Cities are essentially representations of different
| labor markets, and labor markets in specific places develop
| because there is something unique about the place, or they
| seed crystal into a form of 'labor black hole' as a new
| industry develops.
| majormajor wrote:
| Sure, but we explicitly tried to counter those forces in
| the US, including through government policy to build
| industry in areas where it wasn't before.
|
| Moving the defense industry to be less-concentrated in
| Los Angeles was deliberate and wasn't moving to
| "frontier" towns. It was moving to towns that were
| created for one purpose but had been somewhat "skipped
| over" after that in favor of the biggest cities.
|
| I think it's probably worth trying to incentivize that
| more today. It still happens organically some (big
| companies moving HQs out of expensive areas, for
| instance), but probably could stand to happen more.
| prottog wrote:
| I'm a big fan of the German style of federalization,
| where federal agencies are spread out around the nation,
| instead of all being headquartered in one federal
| capital. The Ministry of Defence is headquartered in
| Bonn; the BfV in Cologne; the Bundespolizei in Potsdam.
|
| There's no reason why we can't do the same in the US, and
| have the USDA be headquartered in Kansas City, the
| Treasury in New York, the DOT in Indiana, and Interior in
| Colorado. It would be a material step towards "draining
| the swamp".
| orangecat wrote:
| _Unfortunately wealthy established homeowners don 't want
| more people to near to them so they vote against any and all
| change._
|
| Yes, combined with useful idiot "anti-gentrification"
| activists who have convinced themselves that the concept of
| supply and demand is a capitalist myth.
| jmoak3 wrote:
| Useful idiot is a great term for this.
|
| It's ironic that the same people who want to prevent
| gentrification are the actual "bootlickers" after all. I
| ended up leaving San Francisco over this sort of stuff to
| go to my hometown with a cheaper cost of living.
|
| Here in Louisville, we have fewer things going on than most
| metros. Yet every time a new apartment complex comes up a
| good amount of people scream bloody murder that it will
| raise rents unless 30% of it is marked "below market rate".
| This causes developers to spend their time building
| elsewhere, so that new options don't emerge to drive down
| rents. The city is objectively less wealthy than most other
| metros in the USA.
|
| Nobody has ever said "stop farming, all that food is
| allowing more people to live, and now food is more
| expensive", yet they will repeat it time and time again
| with housing. Instead they correctly think, "farm more, if
| we get more people on Earth they can help us farm even more
| food. Also we can finally have enough people to have
| doctors."
|
| Funny enough my state has 80% of the doctors per capita
| that California has, and 60% of the doctors per capita that
| New York has[1].
|
| It's very frustrating to see people here fighting to stunt
| growth, and force their own young out to nearby cities with
| more open minds that let people make choices. For example,
| the state is debating between prioritizing poorly allocated
| pensions and lowering our tax rate. We're currently
| committed to lowering the income tax from 5% to 0% over 10
| years but it's continually framed as theft to benefit the
| wealthy by opponents. Meanwhile Tennessee and Texas
| continue to have a 0% income tax and take our children and
| new businesses. The limited job market + wages and new
| business formations here reflect this. Everyone thinks of
| Kentucky as a poor state - people don't know we have one of
| the higher tax rates as well.
|
| The only thing these anti-growthers are accomplishing is
| making sure the same elites who made these people's lives
| meek stay relatively powerful by upholding the very
| structures that enrich the elites. Maybe the elites are the
| ones driving the conversation?
|
| I know I'm soapboxing here but wealth, a clean environment,
| ample jobs, and the ability for your own children to make a
| living in your region is as much a choice as anything else
| in this life. I'm thankful that San Francisco chose to let
| jobs develop there, but sad they chose not to allow me to
| settle there. I proudly work remotely for a CA company, and
| hope other states can copy the choices CA made to allow
| businesses and workers to flourish, and learn from their
| mistakes which are currently sending them away.
|
| If you choose to stop chaining your neighbor good things
| will flow.
|
| [1] https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/workforce/this-
| state-h...
| prottog wrote:
| It's a very common mindset -- one of wealth being zero-
| sum. If you believe that for whatever reason, it's very
| easy to be against growth, because you think growth will
| come out of your own pockets.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Wealth is not utility. There are very strong reasons to
| think that the greater the level of _absolute_ wealth,
| the greater the impact of relative condition vs. absolute
| condition is on what people actually experience, and that
| therefore, as the overall level of wealth increases,
| growth with poor distributional features goes from being
| beneficial (yes, some people are getting much richer, but
| a large mass of people are going from starving to less
| starving) to neutral to a net negative in social terms as
| the baseline moves up.
|
| Now, of course, the _best_ solution, if and to the extent
| possible, is to keep the growth and lose the
| distributional problems, rather than the other way
| around.
| [deleted]
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I've just become negatively polarized into supporting
| gentrification at this point. Seems like the alternative is
| crime ridden, blighted cities without amenities.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Well yes, but why "negatively polarized"? Gentrification
| is just a somewhat derogatory word for "amenities that
| attract people to want to live in the area". It doesn't
| have to mean increased prices; that will depend on how
| easy it is to build real-estate there. A place can be
| perfectly "gentrified" in the amenities sense and be just
| a quaint, high-density town or neighborhood with average
| or even low housing costs.
| laidoffamazon wrote:
| I agree, that's what I support it to be!
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>This is why higher orders of government need to step in to
| "force" municipalities to enact some of these sorts of policy
| changes you describe.
|
| The people that live there, don't want their
| city/neighborhood to change in a certain way, so people that
| don't live there should force them to do it?
|
| Why are people that aren't even voters in that location have
| a say at all?
| fxleach wrote:
| It's not "their" city/neighbourhood. It existed before them
| and it will exist after. What gives someone a right to move
| in and create laws to make it harder for other people to do
| the same thing they did? I understand they actually have
| that right, it's just shitty to have that kind of mindset.
| supersour wrote:
| The state has an interest in keeping its cities
| economically healthy, perhaps more than the city government
| itself which is focused on appeasing citizens with its
| delivery of police/recreation services. The state
| government can act more dynamically since it has a wider
| voter base to consider, including those who would like to
| live in the city but are pushed out.
|
| The Valley must maintain some level of competitiveness with
| other city hubs, else the techxodus worsens and California
| loses a large portion of their economy and tax revenue.
| This is an existential threat to California, and the
| residents of the valley will lose out in the long run.
| woah wrote:
| If all decisions were best made at the most local possible
| level, then we wouldn't have highways or trains, and
| slavery would still be legal in the South
| reader_x wrote:
| A municipality is run by a group of individuals elected by
| other individuals, whereas you have framed your housing policy
| proposal as if pitching to a dictator.
|
| Imagining how we might govern unfettered by frustrating
| negotiations with others is fun but dangerous.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I am one of those tech workers that moved to the Bay Area. The
| chance of me living here in 20 years is essentially zero. The
| governments here were granted a golden era of prosperity and
| have mostly squandered it.
|
| Trillions of dollars have been minted here, but you wouldn't
| know it just by driving around. Public services are abysmal.
| Horrible public transportation.
|
| In another 20 years if the winds shift to some other place in
| the country/world people will look back at Silicon Valley and
| ask how it could manage not to thrive, and the inescapable
| answer is greed and incompetence.
| lapama wrote:
| [flagged]
| ROTMetro wrote:
| Ah yes, government housing blocks. What worked so well in the
| past, why did it ever go out of style, I forget?
| jeffbee wrote:
| The government is run by and for the benefit of the established
| land owners and they don't want housing, they want excess
| returns. Simple.
| rr888 wrote:
| That really make sense because if you own land high density
| buildings make land much more valuable.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _government is run by and for the benefit of the
| established land owners_
|
| Do San Francisco's renters fail to turn out to vote? (Serious
| question.)
| closeparen wrote:
| To the extent that SF renters are organized, they're
| organized around groups and ideologies that don't
| prioritize supply a solution. They're focused on things
| like rent control, just cause eviction,
| foreign/institutional investor boogeymen, and preventing
| even substantially or fully below-market housing
| developments because they still threaten to upset what
| renters believe is a delicate balance their
| neighborhoods/communities depend on.
|
| It makes sense, renters who are politically engaged and
| organized are more likely to be long-term residents, and
| being able to _preserve_ your tenancy /community is a
| different thing from being able to easily move or upgrade.
| akavi wrote:
| I don't know about SF in particular, but nationwide, yes,
| renters turn out to vote at a far lower rate than
| homeowners[0] (67% vs 49%)
|
| [0] https://www.apartmentlist.com/research/renter-voting-
| prefere...
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _nationwide, yes, renters turn out to vote at a far
| lower rate than homeowners_
|
| Wider than I expected. Thank you.
|
| Asking because in New York, renters turn out, and that
| drives policy outcomes. (They're also less likely to
| think supply and demand is a myth.)
| mrguyorama wrote:
| By and large, poorer people vote less than wealthy
| people. It is harder to vote in america as a poorer
| person in many areas, arguably on purpose.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _harder to vote in america as a poorer person in many
| areas, arguably on purpose_
|
| Is this true in San Francisco?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Unfortunately at this point, you've reached the end of my
| knowledge. I assume California has reasonable mail in
| voting procedures. That should make the "cost" of voting
| very very minimal. Do we still see poor people voting
| less there? I don't know actually.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Alternative question:
|
| * do San Francisco renters turn out to Town Hall meetings,
| local elections, pester their representatives and put in as
| much #not-bribery as landowners?
| BigRedDog1669 wrote:
| Town Hall type meetings only take curated questions
| normally and heavily gatekeep who is allowed to speak.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Town Hall type meetings only take curated questions
| normally and heavily gatekeep who is allowed to speak_
|
| Then it's not a town hall. Town hall means anyone can ask
| questions. You may need to line up. But that's it.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yes, they very much do. The voter turnout gap by housing
| tenure is about 20 percentage points (e.g. 70% turnout for
| owners and 50% for renters). Also the voter registration
| gap is massive because many renters are not eligible to
| vote or face hurdles registering due to lack of permanent
| address. Finally, the people who would benefit from new
| housing construction in a place like San Francisco are
| often registered to vote in some other jurisdiction. The
| people who already live in S.F. have no particular
| compelling interest in a new apartment tower, but the
| prospective tenants of those apartments who would vote for
| them aren't all voters in that city.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| And lower income people are far more likely to be renters
| than landowners. Lower income jobs are less likely to
| provide time off to vote. Even if mail-in voting is
| allowed such low-income jobs are also less likely to
| provide time off to attend city council meetings or
| public hearings or other such things.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Yup. Census data shows that non voters with incomes less
| than $20k/year give transportation issues as the reason
| in 8% of cases, but only 0.1% of people with incomes over
| $100k give this reason.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > Do San Francisco's renters fail to turn out to vote?
|
| They aren't the best but when thy do vote they've somehow
| managed to link voting for housing to being a form a racist
| gentrification.
| [deleted]
| thefounder wrote:
| Ok but why do all the people need to live in city center? There
| is enough housing/land, just not in "prime" location.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| It's an issue with the zoning laws. Back when it became
| illegal to ban black people from your neighborhood the next
| best thing was to ban the kind of housing that black people
| could afford. So the only place where it's legal to put the
| kind of housing that addresses the problem is in the city
| centers which were already established and therefore out of
| scope for the zoning restrictions. (more on this:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfsCniN7Nsc)
| rr888 wrote:
| > But people will happily pay you $40/sq foot per year for
| housing,
|
| Some, but most families couldn't afford it.
| whiddershins wrote:
| I don't understand this thesis. In terms of visible homelessness
| a huge percentage are untreated mentally ill and/or drug addicted
| to such an extent that they won't be able to afford housing at
| any price level.
|
| The article offers no data to support the claim, just some
| anecdotal observations.
| janalsncm wrote:
| Cities like Milwaukee have very low homelessness. Is it because
| the people there are just less mentally ill? Less prone to drug
| addiction? Of course not. (In fact in a state with cold, dark
| winters and where there is a bar on every corner, you'd expect
| the opposite.)
|
| No, it's because of the low cost of housing and because of
| their Housing First initiative.
|
| Housing First works and it's only because of a lack of
| political will that it's not being used in more places.
| ejb999 wrote:
| Its also possible that it is very hard to be truly homeless
| in the winter in many places in the USA, and being someplace
| warm year-round, makes being homeless easier. Just like being
| someplace that is less likely to arrest you for openly doing
| drugs in public. If you make it easy to do drugs without
| consequences, easy to live on the streets year round, you are
| pretty much guaranteed of getting more of those things.
|
| I live someplace where it routinely gets well below 0F in the
| winter, for weeks on end - if you live someplace like that,
| you do your best to make different life choices if you do not
| have a death wish.
| nickradford wrote:
| Two sides of the same coin really
| t-writescode wrote:
| "It's not that we don't pay people enough, it's that living
| costs too much"
| deburo wrote:
| Indeed it can happen, imagine a state in which taxes are
| higher than elsewhere.
| danaris wrote:
| Ah, yes, _taxes_ , famously the biggest contributor to cost
| of living, _especially_ for the poorest among us... /s
| TSiege wrote:
| Not exactly since the largest cause of housing insecurity is
| the fact that there simply isn't enough homes (at least where
| we need them). Paying everyone more wouldn't solve that issue,
| it'd just make rents rise further
| e_commerce wrote:
| [dead]
| joh6nn wrote:
| If rents rise to a level that you can't find a home, aren't you
| by definition impoverished? Is there some aspect of this
| distinction that I'm not grasping?
| jeffbee wrote:
| But the other thing is not necessarily true. Lots of places
| have high poverty and little homelessness.
| exabrial wrote:
| No it is not. Raising rent is a correlated effect, not a
| causation. All cases of homelessness are highly individualized.
| They usually follow a pattern such as this:
|
| 1. The setup: Some sort of condition or pattern of life choices
| that isn't intrinsically harmful, but combined with other things,
| will become overwhelming once the bottom drops out. The lack of
| community and isolation from a support network are key indicators
| that a person is at risk.
|
| 2. An Event: divorce, disease, severe mental illness, tragedy,
| etc that causes their steady state to change significantly.
|
| 3. An Aftermath: Poor coping mechanisms such as hard drug usage,
| alcoholism, and other short sighted choices, combined with the
| inability to bounce back from things in step 1, lead to the
| bottom falling out. With no support network, the individual falls
| out of normal society and ends up on the street. Addictions can
| develop and the person becomes trapped.
|
| ^ These three things aren't mine, It's something a social worker
| pointed out to me.
| jeffbee wrote:
| This theory is wrong and it is easy to see why. Rates of
| homelessness are not correlated with "life choices" or "events"
| at all. Mental illness rates don't vary much geographically and
| they don't correlate with homelessness. Same with drug abuse
| and disease. However housing costs are very strongly correlated
| with homelessness.
|
| Great book on the subject:
| https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/
|
| Edit: prospective reply guys need to explain why W. Virginia,
| the place with by far the biggest drug abuse problem, also has
| the least homelessness.
| dionidium wrote:
| It's not wrong, though. This is just a rephrasing of the same
| problem. Imagine two people, one with a family that will take
| them in in an emergency and another with nobody. They both
| become heroin addicts. The addiction results in a job loss
| and a few arrests. Soon they've sold all their possessions,
| their health is declining, and they're behind on rent.
|
| Person A puts their tail between their legs and goes and
| sleeps in mom's basement.
|
| Person B becomes homeless.
|
| It would be fairly deranged to say that "life choices" and
| "events" didn't matter "at all," that the second person's
| homelessness can be entirely explained by the lack of
| supportive family. It's both things. Homelessness arises when
| poor choices intersect with a lack of options.
| fnimick wrote:
| And what happens when your hypothetical "emergency" isn't
| due to a personal failing?
|
| There are people homeless in the US right now because of
| medical debt due to illness, is that their fault too?
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Medical debt can be discharged in bankruptcy, there's no
| reason anyone should become homeless over it.
| hezralig wrote:
| Have you tried renting with a lack of a credit score or
| with a tanked score? It is increasingly out of reach.
| dionidium wrote:
| I don't feel a ton of emotions about phrases like,
| "personal failing" one way or the other, so it doesn't
| really make that much difference to me and I'd just say
| that obviously the illness _was a factor_. That 's what
| we're talking about here: whether to describe obvious
| factors as such. It would be equally silly to claim that
| the illness in that case was not relevant.
| anm89 wrote:
| > Rates of homelessness are not correlated with "life
| choices"
|
| What could this possibly even mean? Someone roles a dice and
| then somebody materializes on the side of the road with a
| tent and a shopping cart and a fentanyl addiction?
|
| This person just existed in a choiceless state up until the
| exact moment where the gained agency and simultaneously
| became homeless?
| janalsncm wrote:
| It means that poor choices and addiction can't explain why
| San Francisco has so much higher homelessness than other
| places like West Virginia, which has much higher addiction
| rates.
| 1024core wrote:
| > There are a lot of poor people in Utah, there are a lot of poor
| people in Detroit and Philadelphia, but we don't see the kinds of
| homelessness that we do in Los Angeles, San Francisco,...
|
| Because where would you rather be if you're poor and homeless?
| Detroit or San Francisco? Philly or La? I know where I'd rather
| be in such a situation!
|
| Add to poverty drug addiction and poor life choices and you have
| basically nixed any chances of renting a place.
| janalsncm wrote:
| I have heard this line a lot, and it shouldn't go unchallenged.
| Most homeless people don't plan to be homeless anywhere, and
| certainly don't plan to move from Detroit to LA to be homeless.
| Many poor but non-homeless people have never left their state,
| so it's pretty hard for me to imagine a homeless person
| gathering enough money for a cross-country trip to supposedly
| homeless Mecca. And most homeless people are only temporarily
| homeless.
|
| Many people also aren't aware of the fact that a sizable
| percentage of homeless people _have jobs_. So "poor life
| choices" can prevent a person from having a roof over their
| head, but apparently not from working.
|
| No, what is clear is that there is a direct relationship
| between an influx of people, lack of new housing, and an
| increase in homeless people. Did people suddenly become more
| predisposed to mental illness and drug addition when housing
| demand went up? Of course not. Most of the homeless people in a
| city are from that city.
|
| In places with Housing First, there is a huge decrease in
| homelessness of course, but also in other associated problems
| like mental illness and drug addiction.
| Lendal wrote:
| More theorizing. Why don't they just ask the homeless, on an
| individual level, why they're homeless? They know better than we
| do. It's not like they're animals, such that we can't ask them a
| simple set of questions.
|
| My personal theory? The reason there's more homeless in LA and
| NYC is because LA and NYC are huge. There's more of everything in
| those cities. Why shouldn't there be more homelessness as well?
| zzz345345 wrote:
| [flagged]
| jmyeet wrote:
| There are levels of homelessness.
|
| The first level is one where you don't have permanent shelter.
| Maybe you're staying on a friend's couch or in your sibling's
| basemenet. But not long term. You may have several such
| situations and bounce between them. These arrangemenets tend to
| be temporary and are triggered by the loss of a job or rising
| rent or divorce or a number of other factors. These people are
| larely invisible.
|
| The next level of homelessness is when you're exhausted your
| temporary options and you end up living in your car. You are
| likely still employed and need your car to get to and from work
| (because America). This too is a temporary situation. Towns and
| cities don't like people living in cars. You may get harassed by
| police. You may get towed. Your car may just stop working and you
| can't affrod to repair it. On top of that, you may have a bunch
| of parking violations you can't afford. You may have to deal with
| crime (eg people breaking into your car and stealing your stuff).
| These people are a little more visible but are still mostly
| invisible. Like I've seen cars people are clearly living in but
| my guess is that 95% of people don't see it.
|
| The third level is where you've lost your car and now you're
| living on the streets. This is the first truly visible level of
| homelessness. This experience is traumatic and dangerous. This is
| where you may start self-medicating (eg drugs, alcohol). It's
| more difficult to hold down a job so you may lose that too. Crime
| will affect your daily life. You will be harassed by the police
| who will randomly move you somewhere else to get you temporarily
| out of sight. Such people will tend to find some form of
| community for self-protection, which is why you have encampments.
|
| The last level is where you've been on the street so long that
| you have serious medical and mental health issues. You may well
| have substance abuse issues too. You likely will have suffered or
| at least witnessed serious violent crime. The self-medicating
| continues. At this point it is incredibly hard to come back from
| this.
|
| My point here is that when people talk about homelessness they
| only talk about visible homelessness (ie the last 2 levels). But
| the problems begin way before then. It starts with a lack of
| housing security.
|
| The most important thing to do for homeless people is to find
| them somewhere to live. It's not a shelter. Those have their own
| dangers and issues. This is what people mean when they talk about
| a "housing first" policy towards homelessness.
|
| We, in the US, live in the richest country on Earth. There is
| absolutely no reason why we can't feed and house and provide
| medical care for every man, woman and child in this country. But
| we don't because some people don't want to give anything to other
| people. Some think it'll somehow "encourage" homeless people and
| stop them from being "lazy".
|
| Instead we pour billions of dollars into an incredibly
| ineffective and highly militarized police force. Homelessness and
| poverty breeds crime. The only way to address that is to address
| the underlying cause. A lot of places simply ship their homeless
| to coastal blue states.
|
| Just this week, NYC agreed to pay a man $135,000 in settlement
| after an NYPD officer decided to drag him out of a mostly empty
| subway car for having a bag on the seat and then lie about what
| happened [1]. That officer faced no disciplinary action and still
| works for the NYPD.
|
| The worst thing to happen in the West is the financialization of
| the housing market. Everybody treats housing as an investment.
| We've created an incentive to make housing more expensive for the
| less fortunate. We create policies to make housing unaffordable.
| This is by design at this point.
|
| [1]: https://pix11.com/news/local-news/man-dragged-from-train-
| by-...
| exolymph wrote:
| The non-visible homeless (people down on their luck, to an
| approximation) get mentally sorted into the vast category of
| "that's unfortunate but it doesn't affect me directly," which
| might influence people's votes or charitable donations, but
| doesn't arouse much passion for most of us.
|
| By contrast, the visible homeless are a visceral inconvenience,
| even a danger, so people feel strongly about how that problem is
| addressed. As a smallish woman, I am on high alert in certain
| areas of San Francisco, Oakland, etc. I'm not all that likely to
| be accosted, but if I ever am, it will be a big deal, so
| navigating those places is nerve-wracking because my threat-
| detection is constantly dialed up.
|
| I would compare it to, like, road planning versus traffic
| enforcement. The former has far-reaching, long-term impact (like
| housing policy) but the latter is what gets people heated, due to
| the immediate impact in their day-to-day lives.
|
| ---
|
| Full disclosure, reposting a comment from a similar thread:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33961731
| themitigating wrote:
| "visceral inconvenience"
|
| The problem with the homeless isn't how it offends your senses.
|
| "I'm not all that likely to be accosted, but if I ever am, it
| will be a big deal, so navigating those places is nerve-
| wracking because my threat-detection is constantly dialed up."
|
| Have you ever thought that being this worried about threats is
| something you're partially responsible for?
| novok wrote:
| Are you a large tall white man by any chance?
| googlryas wrote:
| Every self preservation instinct is something each person is
| ultimately responsible for, but that doesn't mean that is the
| only dial that can be adjusted to solve the issue.
|
| Some people really do worry too much.
|
| Some areas really could be cleaned up so that random people
| feel comfortable moving through them without threat of
| assault.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Some areas really could be cleaned up
|
| Cleaned? People who are homeless are dirt?
| johnnylambada wrote:
| Way to strawman a comment
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I'm guessing that you misunderstand the threats, and are much
| more likely to be hit by someone in an SUV. I've spent lots and
| lots of time in cities; I've never had a problem with a
| homeless person.
| exolymph wrote:
| I've never been hit by another car, but I have been yelled at
| and followed by street people. So...
| mattpallissard wrote:
| A variant of this comment comes up every time someone
| expresses tense situations.
|
| I used to live around the corner from homeless services in
| the greater Seattle area and commute by foot after dark
| regularly. I never got physically assaulted but certainly
| would have if I didn't have my wits about me.
|
| Are most homeless folks problematic? Absolutely not. Is there
| higher prevalence of mental illness, drug abuse, and other
| things that lend themselves to irratic behavior among that
| demographic? Absolutely.
|
| It's ok to be both compassionate and recognize that there is
| a real safety/health issue. We don't have to minimize
| someone's experience based on "the numbers"
| misterprime wrote:
| Would you count having to step over an active urine stream on
| your way to the grocery store as "a problem"?
|
| How about walking with your pregnant wife past someone who is
| splitting his time yelling at the sky and scratching his
| crotch from the inside of his pants?
|
| Sure, in both scenarios we weren't physically harmed, but it
| certainly made us feel unsafe and uncomfortable. It's not
| something that I think we should all just get used to.
| Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote:
| Those are great opportunities to teach your children about
| the consequences of an apathetic voting base. It's also a
| great time to nurture children's empathetic abilities by
| teaching them to juxtapose indecent behavior, mental
| illness, poverty, and general despair.
|
| Want more action? Try protesting and demanding solutions
| that include no questions asked housing, healthcare, food,
| water, and basic essential communication technology and
| interconnection.
|
| Unless people want to misery murder homeless people en
| masse, the above is the solution. Hard stop. Don't like it?
| That's not my problem, I'm not complaining about desperate
| people from a place of immense privilege.
| joenot443 wrote:
| There are so many countries on earth with a far, far more
| apathetic voting base than San Francisco which face a
| fraction of the homeless issues. It's not fair to tell
| regular citizens that the homeless people harassing them
| on their walk to work are only there because they haven't
| protested hard enough, that's just baloney.
|
| Something's very, very wrong in SF and it's absolutely
| okay for tax paying law abiding citizens to be making
| noise about it.
| mindover wrote:
| People in the neighborhoods with fewer problems (let's
| face it, there are many very quiet expensive
| neighborhoods in the Bay Area) have very "progressive"
| views on the homelessnesses. They don't experience its
| effects frequently, so don't think it's a big problem.
| They vote for policies that grow social services for the
| homeless, even though those policies don't work. But the
| idea they have is that these services just need more
| money. And then more money again, and again.
| ejb999 wrote:
| >>Those are great opportunities to teach your children
| about the consequences of an apathetic voting base
|
| I think you would be much better off using those
| opportunities to teach your kids to stay away from drugs
| and alcohol, and to study hard and work hard - so they
| don't end up like that.
| NotYourLawyer wrote:
| How many SUVs have you been hit by?
|
| (Don't even answer, it's irrelevant anecdata.)
| scifibestfi wrote:
| That's a luxury belief.
| mindover wrote:
| How do you define a "problem"? Is poop on the streets a
| problem? Used syringes? Mountains of trash? High people
| blocking public areas? Mentally ill people shouting at night
| and waking up whole neighborhoods? Physical assaults on
| weaker looking people (women, elderly, etc)? This is the
| everyday reality in SF.
| toofy wrote:
| i'm confident that someday in the future we'll look back at our
| insistence on profiting off housing as a huge miscalculation.
| janalsncm wrote:
| It should be seen as a blight on leadership, a catastrophic
| failure of the free market due to seeing homes as a commodity
| rather than a necessity.
| atdrummond wrote:
| I've lived on the streets and worked with homeless charities for
| years and years.
|
| I am extremely skeptical this is case and for those whom it is
| true, I expect them to fall into the class of "transient
| homeless" who experience it for a short period.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Transient homeless (those who have fallen upon hard times, and
| may still have a job, but no longer have a place for their
| family to live) make up around 80% of the homeless population.
|
| Solving that would be a huge win for society.
| andrewla wrote:
| Sure, but not really the policy outcome that people are
| thinking of when they talk about solving the "homeless
| problem". The guy passed on in the subway car next to his own
| feces is not going to be helped in any way by these policies.
|
| There are no good solutions here that respect the rights of
| the individual and also our collective right to live in a
| civil society. Involuntarily detention through the criminal
| justice system (horrifying) or the mental health system
| (completely dehumanizing) are the best tools we have, other
| than having compassionate people who will devote time and
| effort and individual attention to the victims of mental
| health or pathological substance abuse problems.
| cjwilliams wrote:
| No reason why mental institutions cant be compassionate and
| devote time and effort to individuals. Much better than
| letting these people live in their own excrement in the
| subway.
| TSiege wrote:
| Before the pandemic this problem really seemed intractable for a
| lot of metro areas, but now with WFH taking hold we've been given
| a potential life raft if we jump on it.
|
| Office space cannot get converted into homes overnight. There's a
| lot of remodeling and rethinking of how to fit an apartment into
| one, but it's a chance nonetheless. The biggest burden is likely
| to be the cause of the problem in the first place, zoning.
| Hopefully we learn from the past and correct this while we can
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| For some reason I doubt that developers will be looking to
| convert that office space into affordable housing.
| ioblomov wrote:
| The focus on affordability in new housing is, I think, a
| glaring example of short-term thinking. I mean sure, those
| sparkling new condos that somehow managed to squeak by the
| municipal approval process (the length and cost of which are
| no small part of why they cost so much) may be out of reach
| for most people, especially newcomers. But with time--or even
| sooner after, say, I don't know, a recession?--what was once
| luxury condos may become decidedly middle-class housing.
|
| NYC where I live is chock-full of housing developments which
| began either as affordable
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacDougal-
| Sullivan_Gardens_H...) or luxury
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ansonia) and that, with
| the vicissitudes of economic cycles and time, flipped their
| tax brackets (and sometimes _more than once_ ).
|
| The point is, supply is supply and, given enough time, the
| economics will take care of themselves.
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| Building luxury downtown apartments and saying that they'll
| making housing more affordable for everyone really feels
| like trickle down housing to me, ESPECIALLY when combined
| with an argument that the economics will take care of
| themselves.
| anonuser123456 wrote:
| Why? They don't like money?
| jrockway wrote:
| What is the path to profitability you see? They pretty much
| have to gut rehab the building to add kitchens and
| bathrooms, in an economy where loans are pretty expensive.
| Is that competitive with people selling existing move-in
| ready housing stock in a down market? Do you want to be the
| first person to sign a contract in one of these
| conversions? (Not to mention the usual "new construction"
| taxes that are seller-paid on existing housing, but buyer-
| paid on new construction.)
|
| I think everyone is incentivized to sit on what they have
| now and offer cheap leases. I also think that cities are
| incentivized to bring workers back to the office. Like in
| NYC, we spent billions of dollars on a new commuter
| railroad terminal that opens this year, and upgrades to run
| more trains per hour during rush hour. I don't think the
| state is going to step in and offer free money to make more
| housing.
|
| All in all I love the idea of converting offices to
| housing. Working from home is great, and affording your own
| home is even better. But, I don't think the economy wants
| either of them :/
| danaris wrote:
| Unless you're referring to something besides the baseline
| interest rate (in which case you might need to clarify,
| as it's non-obvious why it would be the case), loans
| aren't "pretty expensive" now: they were "absurdly cheap"
| for the last decade.
|
| Setting your baseline during the post-financial-crisis
| period of permanent zero interest rates is not
| particularly realistic.
| t-writescode wrote:
| Scarcity drives prices up. If we keep the housing supply
| lower than it needs to be, landlords can continue to excuse
| raising prices on their X*mortgage < rent condos,
| apartments and *plexes.
| itake wrote:
| My understanding is commercial real estate operates a bit
| differently than residential. The value of the property is
| based on a multitude of factors and the people that invest
| in commercial are not making an investment in residential.
|
| For example, the value of the property is based on the last
| or current rent they have received. It is better for the
| property owner to not have a tenant, than it is to accept a
| lower lease because it impacts their financing agreements
| and property valuations.
| TSiege wrote:
| I never said affordable housing. Just having more housing
| period would help at this point. However, that doesn't seem
| to be true in NYC when we incentivized it and we built a lot
| of affordable housing. Just not enough
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-06 23:02 UTC)