LogFAQs > #960387774

Blightzkrieg posted...

I visited Halifax last month and was shocked by the amount of homeless camps I saw.

The fact that the housing/wage crisis has been ignored for so long and continues to be ignored is fucking unreal. When people start burning shit down, I can't say I'll blame them.

Well, it's not that easy TO fix.

Let's say you want to build affordable housing. We'll ignore the question of what 'affordable' actually is and if this means mini-houses, apartment complexes, or something else. Where are you going to build it? You can't just throw people out of their homes. You'd need to get viable land in order to do so. Maybe you're lucky and in a city with a decent chunk of land that's abandoned and under city control but for most cities this means they'd need to buy the property from their current owners, tear up things like parks, or acquire new land on the outskirts of the city. This can get STUPIDLY expensive especially if the current owner, for whatever reason, doesn't want to move. It would suck to plop down several million dollars to buy the land to build a new apartment only to be stopped because the Jenkins decide that they wanna keep Grandpappy's house ruining your whole plan.

Then it needs to be zoned properly and that can easily take several months and potentially involve things like public hearings. Worse, a lot of people, while they may champion affordable housing, don't want said housing actually built in their neighborhood. They don't mind it being built in some other neighborhood where it's not going to affect their property value and whatnot, but in THEIR neighborhood? Nope. So expect a LOT of unhappy residents voicing their complaints, voting against, threatening to not re-elect any politician who supports it, and whatever else you can think of. Politicians will basically get brownie points for championing affordable housing but also striking it down until it's built in some garbage part of the city no one cares about (and even then expect massive pushback from the people who live/work there, just fewer people able to push back than elsewhere).

Once that's all done you need to get things like contractors to build said housing and, well, the homeless ain't gonna pay for it. They don't have money in the first place. That means it's all going on the City's bill with little to no chance of any return investment on the cash. Maybe some people will be able to constantly pay rent but it's unlikely the majority will be able to.

And, once it's all done, you then still have the problem of KEEPING it affordable which is a lot harder than it sounds. It's going to take careful management and may even mean restricting the entire area from increasing in value just so that the people who live there can continue to live there.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be done. I fully believe everyone should be able to afford a home of their own in at least some manner instead of having to rent or go homeless. I'm saying that, if you think it's as easy as the city going 'put in affordable houses at this spot and here's a sack of money that will cover the cost' then you're wrong.