[HN Gopher] Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness
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Austin takes a bet on tiny homes to ease homelessness
Author : fendrak
Score : 48 points
Date : 2024-01-13 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| TexanFeller wrote:
| Looks like this housing is built outside of town, so it might
| actually work! One things cities do wrong is trying to house
| homeless people near downtown. It's dramatically more expensive
| to do it there, so there will never be enough housing or will to
| pay for it. The housing that was built for "low income artists to
| be able to live here" was even more of a joke. A bunch of condos
| downtown that were priced uncomfortably high for entry level tech
| workers. Nothing say artists have to live downtown! City planners
| just can't think outside the downtown box.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| This is a funny thing. I recently looked into living in a
| central location downtown, and all the rents are far beyond my
| means as a Section 8 participant. But if you put "affordable
| housing" way out in the boonies, then how do residents access
| any services at a reasonable price? If we need to run all over
| town for stuff, why live in a God-forsaken location like that?
|
| Downtown in my metro area is not only a transit hub, but a
| central location for goods and services. I could easily walk
| around, catch a bus or an eScooter, and have everything I want
| within mere blocks. Instead, these "affordable housing"
| developments are in suburbs where you've got one bus line and a
| Starbucks 3 blocks away, and your grocery stores are nowhere to
| be found, and your place of employment is way across town. Just
| not making sense.
| PBnFlash wrote:
| One upside of minimum wage is lots of places have competitive
| salaries
| thriftwy wrote:
| I'm just not sure how you get these problems unironically.
|
| What's so hard about having a grocery store and reliable
| transit to downtown?
|
| The notorious St. Petersburg's Murino district is located
| outside city's boundary but it has a metro station, several
| grocery stores, bakeries, bars and other shops. It's not like
| US poor have no disposable income at all. Kudrovo has worse
| transit options but features an absolutely huge mall you can
| walk to.
|
| Of course, if having choice everybody would prefer living in
| walkable distance to downtown, this is why normally it is so
| expensive, and you can only make it affordable by making it a
| miserable experience.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| I don't know, but many cities do not have reliable transit.
| Hourly busses that stop after 9pm doesn't help at all. And
| thars the case for a lot of the western part of the US.
|
| Also, thst grocery store may not exactly be profitable and
| be worth keeping up. Especially if Walmart or something use
| to station there and then left.
| thriftwy wrote:
| I believe this is an unique US situation where you are
| unable to scale down Walmart. Just make a Walmart Lite
| with no jeans ot TVs but only food. Then these can be
| built practically everywhere, offering the same
| competitive prices. There are half dozen of chains like
| this in Russia and they often open on the other sides of
| same street.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _What 's so hard about having a grocery store and
| reliable transit to downtown?_
|
| Are you asking what's difficult about living far away from
| people's support networks and abilities to provide for
| themselves?
| charlie0 wrote:
| "you can only make it affordable by making it a miserable
| experience." This hurts because it's so true. We need to
| get over car-centric cities, but that's only happening
| slowly and those areas are the most expensive areas. That
| housing won't be going to those who need it the most.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| What the GP describes is a generally accepted need by
| planners, etc. Regarding grocery stores, look up 'food
| deserts'.
|
| Also, when you are working multiple jobs, you have even
| less time for overhead like commutes to distant jobs and
| services.
| mulmen wrote:
| Hmm, when I hear "artist housing" I always assumed they meant
| "interesting people who make music and maybe paint". But
| "interesting" is too subjective to be real. Freestyle
| watercolor is no foundation of an economy.
|
| We should not judge other humans by their ability to make rent.
| Some of my best friends struggle to do that.
|
| But for a city making rent is all that really matters. They
| don't care if you literally create art. They care if you buy
| coffee and pay sales tax.
|
| So, do city planners look at "artists" as a revenue stream?
|
| This is the same demographic that stereotypically spends the
| better part of a million bucks on an undergraduate education
| with no expectation of return.
|
| Does "artist" mean "liberal artist"? As in "willing and able to
| buy in to and comply with a middle class lifestyle?"
| roughly wrote:
| There's always a funny tension on the city trying to draw in
| artists to make a downtown area more palatable, too, in that
| good artists and good art is often intended as a challenge to
| the status quo - the goal is to make people uncomfortable.
|
| I say this as a Berkeley-living lefty: the left often seems
| to espouse policies whose practical outcomes far exceed their
| actual appetite for discomfort or willingness to engage with
| real diversity.
|
| (Standard HN disclaimer: if the above doesn't apply to you,
| it doesn't apply to you - but look me in the eye and tell me
| you don't know what I'm talking about.)
| charlie0 wrote:
| What, building outside the expensive areas of a city? That
| would just make too much sense.
|
| The politicians give tax breaks and in many times, outright
| pays $$$$$ for these private services to those in need. The
| owners of those services in turn donate part of the profits
| back to the politicians. It's just a hidden way for the
| politicians to transfer wealth from the tax-payer base back to
| themselves in a clever cloak of woke-ness. I mean, who hasn't
| heard of the 700K+ single bedroom houses for the needy in Los
| Angeles. I'm sure this happens everywhere. It's really
| unfortunate, and brazen tbh, that such fleecing occurs in plain
| site. Meanwhile, those who really need the help don't get it
| because it was never really about them. It was just about the
| optics.
|
| https://ktla.com/news/los-angeles-is-spending-up-to-837000-t...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| People, including unhoused ones and artistic ones, need to live
| near downtown because that's where jobs and services are,
| including needed social services, and transportation to the
| rest of the city, as well as community. In typical cities, the
| art galleries, museums, schools, etc. are downtown.
|
| If you have a family and spend your time with them and at work,
| a home away from the city center makes sense. If you need to do
| a lot with people outside your home, then you want to be where
| the people are.
| ajmurmann wrote:
| Then let's build something that's appropriate for the
| location with the highest land price and not tiny shoeboxes.
| JeffSnazz wrote:
| > One things cities do wrong is trying to house homeless people
| near downtown.
|
| It's pretty critical to build housing where there's actually
| need, or it won't do much.
| IAmNotACellist wrote:
| Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack homes.
| It's a very loaded and misleading term. There are usually many
| other problems that they need help with, and homelessness is
| often just a symptom.
| jakderrida wrote:
| Yeah, maybe. But a tiny home isn't gonna hurt.
| mft_ wrote:
| Let's not let perfect be the enemy of good, hey?
|
| And I'm no expert, but I imagine there's a circular
| relationship between the issues that homeless people have. Not
| having a home often means no address (unless they're able to
| access a PO box or similar?) so difficulty receiving mail or
| getting a bank account; it can mean less physical security so a
| higher risk of being a victim of crime (e.g. theft, assult); a
| higher risk of problems with the police; probably greater risk
| of ill health due to living conditions; and far less
| psychological security - to name but a few.
| theteapot wrote:
| > Homeless people often aren't homeless because they lack
| homes.
|
| So your saying homeless people actually do have homes??
| davidw wrote:
| Research indicates that expensive housing makes homelessness
| much worse.
|
| https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/everything-you-think-you-know-...
|
| Indeed, it's the primary driver of homelessness.
|
| Things like drugs and mental health make things worse, but "at
| the margin" as economists say, if your housing is cheap, you
| might be able to hold on to it even if you have some problems
| with an addiction. There are plenty of wealthy people with drug
| habits who are not homeless.
| badgersnake wrote:
| That's only relevant if you're trying to prevent
| homelessness. The article is about people who are already
| homeless. They may not have had these problems when the
| became homeless, but being homeless ain't easy.
|
| That's not to say housing costs aren't a problem, they are
| but they have to be prepared for other problems as well.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The majority of homeless people are homeless for economic or
| relationship reasons like loss of job/income, insufficient
| income, breakups and divorce, and lack of affordable
| housing[1].
|
| The fastest growing demographic of homeless people are entire
| families.
|
| [1] https://homelesslaw.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/10/Homeless_...
| akira2501 wrote:
| From your own link.. that's only the top cause for families,
| which is only 30% of the total population. The causes for
| individuals are different and they represent the majority.
|
| Finally.. this is all from a survey from the "U.S Conference
| of Mayors" which is mostly a lobbying organization as far as
| I can tell.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Right, depression and other mental health conditions, various
| addictions, heath problems, lack of basic numeracy and
| literacy. These need to be dealt with as well.
| theteapot wrote:
| I know PhDs that have been homeless. Housing affordability
| and job security is a real issue.
| cqqxo4zV46cp wrote:
| It certainly makes things easier, actually. You can be homeless
| because you were priced out of the market. Homelessness can be
| both the cause and the effect of other issues. My partner works
| in mental health / AOD, and repeatedly exclaimed how much
| pressure was 'accidentally' taken off so many people when
| lockdown-era economic incentives gave people in my area a
| better shot at just getting back on their feet. Housing matters
| an awful lot.
| szundi wrote:
| The moment until they lose their homes they are not homeless.
| dbt00 wrote:
| If you read the article, this is discussed. It's not a panacea
| but helping some people is better than shrugging and helping
| none.
| cglan wrote:
| Definitely not against this, since any housing is good, and I
| hate letting perfect be the enemy of good, but not sure why we
| are so intent on scaling the concept of a single family home down
| to 200sqft.
|
| Townhouses in NYC have existed for over a hundred years, and
| generally across the world are an extremely viable concept for
| dense and cheap housing. It's perfectly possible to build cheap
| townhomes that can house 6 or 12 families each, without being
| oppressing mega apartment complexes. Townhomes in NYC were a
| working class concept originally. We could be erecting thousands
| of cookie cutter townhomes in somewhere like Austin for dirt
| cheap housing. The density would bring better benefits in terms
| of infra scalability, mixed use, and public transportation. All
| these solutions feel like they're silly middle school solutions
| for a problem that was solved hundreds of years ago
| crooked-v wrote:
| The reason you don't see those is that middle-density housing
| is indirectly or directly illegal in almost every major US
| metro area. Developers would love to build that kind of thing
| because it gets snapped up immediately wherever it's available,
| but they're not allowed to do so.
| wyldfire wrote:
| Townhomes are present all over the city of Austin and
| surrounding areas. At least in this case it's not an
| obstacle.
| travoc wrote:
| A tiny home installed adjacent to other tiny homes is just
| called an "apartment" and there are millions of them across
| the U.S.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Middle-density housing is all the things that are in
| between a single home and an apartment building: duplexes
| and triplexes, row houses, dense townhouses, multiple small
| cottages on a single plot of land, etc. They're typically
| all both cheaper to build than apartment buildings and
| better liked by the residents, but zoning in most US cities
| doesn't allow any of it.
| samstave wrote:
| There is another reason - single-family dwelling housing.
|
| As an example I proposed to the City of Alameda a few years
| back to develop a tiny-home community on the base end of the
| island...
|
| I was working with tiny home manufacturers but the city had
| their zoning laws set that tiny homes would not work - even
| in a planned area:
|
| the zoning requirements were that each lot must be 2,000 SF
| min. for any dwelling - and can only have one primary
| entrance... but here was the reason that is important:
|
| You could not put more than one unit on anything less than
| 2,000 as multiple units in that area cannot have separate
| entrances and shared utilities - otherwise its condidered an
| apartment building and would require a single entrance,
| cannot share power, water, etc.
|
| Sothe zoning laws (and permitting process) need to be
| overhauled in most municipalities to accomodate tiny home
| groups - regardless if the intended residents are from the
| homeless population or single/couples that want that
| lifestyle irrespective income/career style.
| bequanna wrote:
| This rings false. Townhomes are seen in large numbers in
| almost all suburbs and I don't think they inspire the same
| NIMBY fury that apartments do.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| In my experience, they do, but they're marketed as luxury
| housing so the stigma isn't as apparent to your typical
| person who is sympathetic to NIMBYism.
| lolinder wrote:
| From a bit of googling I think that there are different
| conceptions of what a townhome is across different regions, so
| it might be helpful to describe exactly what you're referring
| to.
|
| Where I live, a townhouse/townhome is more or less just a
| single-family home without space to the left and right--it has
| a front door and usually at least a second story (sometimes
| three), it most often has a garage, and the left and right
| walls are shared with the next unit [0]. Typical total living
| area between all the floors is 1000-1500 sqft.
|
| Judging from the picture in the article, the kind of townhome
| that I'm thinking of would absolutely not be a more efficient
| use of land per housing unit than what they're doing here with
| these tiny homes.
|
| I'm assuming that you're referring to something different?
|
| [0] This is typical of what I think of as a townhome, if
| anything a bit _more_ efficient than most:
| https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2914-Yates-St-Denver-CO-8...
| foobarian wrote:
| Didn't communist high rises kinda have this format. Or various
| Tokyo apartments?
| ozten wrote:
| I've volunteered to build a tiny home in Seattle and have seen
| this deployed in my neighborhood and a few other sites.
|
| It is a feel good thing, but the reality is...
|
| These are a fraction of what is actually needed. It is symbolic.
|
| The residents are removed from mental health and other services
| and plopped into a suburban neighborhood without community or
| resources.
|
| The host families are not trained social workers, but they are
| forced into a tenuous management role between the tiny homes
| project and the resident.
|
| The one I helped build is no longer enrolled in the program, due
| to these and more failures of not having a long term sustainable
| system.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| "Housing First" is such a bit like communism - perfect in
| theory. The problem is you need "second" and "third" things
| too, and the political will often just doesn't exist.
|
| I lived near a "housing first" facility that was no better than
| a homeless encampment.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's just like communism in that it entirely ignores the
| needs and capacity of an individual and makes them slaves to
| the idealism of the state.
|
| They're no better than a homeless encampment because you
| can't give people a house and then expect them to act like a
| homeowner overnight. It was the wrong problem to solve, and I
| think people rush to solve it out of self conscious guilt and
| a desire to quickly make the _apparent_ parts of the problem
| disappear from common view.
|
| It's a cruel and ridiculous strategy.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I have found that many people who receive housing benefits
| are very poor stewards of their personal resources.
|
| The first thing someone does when they get housed is to
| invite all their homeless friends over, to shower, to eat,
| to crash, to do drugs, to play games, whatever.
|
| So your typical Section 8 housing recipient is not just a
| single person/family benefiting from housing, they're
| dragging in their entire circle of loser friends who don't
| have those benefits, and so now you've got a cluster of
| mooches who aren't invested nor responsible for disruption
| or damage in that community.
|
| It's really an unfortunate thing, and I just saw it over
| and over again. So many people lose their benefits very
| quickly because they can't resist helping other folks out,
| but that's not what you do with welfare and entitlements.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Community First, which the article references, has hundreds of
| these tiny houses and homeless residents. They have on-site
| activities, farming, a clinic, an outdoor movie theater, and a
| rotating staff of volunteers that contribute time and
| assistance.
|
| I volunteered there about 5 years ago. One of the residents I
| met told me not everyone thrives there and they churn out back
| to the streets, but it's still 400 fewer homeless people as a
| result.
| jackblemming wrote:
| If the rich have their way we're all going to be living like this
| within a few decades. Probably even worse.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Cities can't politically organize to build housing because the
| payoff is after any of the politicians being in office. It's
| too long term.
|
| You'd think developers would be the most powerful lobby in
| terms of local politics. But the collective defense of housing
| value inflation is almost stronger than social security in
| terms of uniting boomers
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Tiny homes reduce housing density and effectively necessitate car
| usage to connect people to services which is already unaffordable
| and will only become more unaffordable. Electric golf carts and
| public transit do not solve this problem.
|
| Sounds like an awful plan to me. Increasing energy costs mean we
| need to densify instead of sprawl. I'd be thinking apartments,
| townhouses, vertical mixed use developments. Things which
| generally make commuting on foot or light transit more viable.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| No they don't. Austin has plenty of density in its urban core
| and has been knocking down single family homes for high rises
| on a constant basis for the last 20 years. Either way, this is
| a homeless community that reduces tents from underpasses, it
| has nothing to do with density.
| alamortsubite wrote:
| > Tiny homes reduce housing density and effectively necessitate
| car usage to connect people to services which is already
| unaffordable and will only become more unaffordable. Electric
| golf carts and public transit do not solve this problem.
|
| Why would tiny homes necessitate car usage? What's the issue
| with public transportation?
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| "Tiny homes reduce housing density and effectively necessitate
| car usage . . . "
|
| Compared to what? Most of the USA, and ESPECIALLY Texas, is
| full of single-family homes at 4-7 per acre. Tiny homes can
| easily be 20-24 per acre. Zoning and banking prevents building
| tiny home communities. We are awash in suburbia and you claim
| tiny homes reduce housing density?!?
| closeparen wrote:
| You can certainly have a housing crisis of the form that incomes
| are too low relative to the construction materials and labor
| involved in normal amounts of built square footage using normal
| methods. Most urban housing crises, though, are about
| increasingly stiff competition for land. Only the vertical axis
| can save you there.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| I never understood why even though homelessness is concentrated
| in the U.S. cities where car ownership is difficult (NYC, SF,
| some parts of Boston), when said areas only account even
| collectively for a fairly small portion of the country's overall
| population. Wouldn't it make more sense to help these people get
| a vehicle, and hwlp them resettle in areas that already have much
| cheaper housing and are desperate for workers? Such places might
| even have local government incentives if these new arrivals could
| commit to staying for a certain period.
|
| Surely a large number of them are working low barrier to entry
| jobs that exist widely across the U.S.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| It does not make sense, vehicle usage is expensive, becoming
| more expensive due to energy costs increasing over time, and
| car owners are not paying for the true cost of their cars
| because externalities like the environmental impact of cars
| isnmt priced in.
|
| A major policy objective is to get climate change under
| control, sprawl directly makes that problem worse.
|
| Also think about why it is that some cities are so big. Usually
| big cities have access to a port, a railway, things that make
| moving goods cheap. New York has ports, Boston has ports, SF
| has ports, and part of the reason housing is so expensive is
| that being next to water constrains the space available for
| development. Building towns in bumfuck nowhere may be cheap in
| terms of land but that's because actually living there results
| in high prices for daily living.
|
| What makes more sense is a hub and spoke model. You don't
| nessecarily want people living in a big city, but you can still
| efficiently move goods from the big city to "spoke" cities, and
| then you have these "spoke" cities adopt things like
| high/medium density housing like apartments, townhouses, and
| mixed vertical commercial/residental. Have some residents with
| cars, some without, so the latter can bum off the former. Take
| advantage of shared transportation options like package
| delivery (shared truck) or ride sharing (shared cars). Also by
| doing things in this way, you have to ensure people have
| services they need locally available and can easily afford to
| access them even if they have no car.
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| Housing first does not work.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Compared to what though. Because the status quo also isn't
| working.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| It's a community and it works pretty well. Go check it out if
| you find yourself in Austin.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Ghettos.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| This community isn't a ghetto. I've volunteered there. If
| you're ever in Austin you should go visit.
| JeffSnazz wrote:
| What's wrong with building properly dense public housing?
| jamestimmins wrote:
| I remember seeing the Mobile Loaves and Fishes trucks constantly
| handing out food around Austin in the early 2000s and hearing
| about them trying to get this community off the group in 2008.
|
| Pretty incredible to see what has come of faithfulness and
| persistence over 26 years.
| apapapa wrote:
| What's wrong with trailer parks
| Podgajski wrote:
| I am homeless and I am permanently disabled with bipolar disorder
| schizoaffective type.
|
| I want to say first that housing first works. The stress of me
| being homeless is worse for my mental illness. And I applaud
| Austin for actually doing something.
|
| Secondly, the biggest mistake they make is that they want to
| segregate low income people out of society. this is part of the
| problem. I don't know if the solution to this, but I know it's
| the problem. It makes us feel alienated and lesser. This is the
| most likely reason why these communities always seem to fail.
|
| Also, putting these far outside of the city takes people away
| from resources like other people said. I'll tell you when my
| depression is bad it's much much harder for me to take a bus for
| 45 minutes than it is for me to walk for 10 minutes.
|
| There is no fix for housing because the problem is not housing.
| It's financial capitalism and individual greed. I lost my housing
| because I was kicked out of the studio. I was renting after my
| lease came up and they listed it as an Airbnb making twice as
| much then when I was living there. They did not have to do this,
| they chose to do it.
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