Current Events > How to Fix the Housing Crisis

(+) Yeah! (+)

Delirious_Beard posted...

that's kind of my point

"just give all the unused homes to the homeless" is not a feasible solution for too many reasons to list

Housing First programs have proven you wrong about that, for decades.

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Rent prices in SF have declined by like 12% this year just because of people leaving from the corona virus and NIMBYs still want to pretend housing isn't a supply and demand issue lol

Just build a few high towers in every single city problem solved

Shablagoo posted...

Perhaps, but when it comes to housing at least in America there isnt scarcity. There are 6 empty homes for every homeless person in America (some estimates actually put it much higher, like 30 empty homes).

You're confusing scarcity with supply here fyi, homes are a scare resource no matter what.

But saying there's no supply shortage is wrong anyway. For one thing national statistics are meaningless because the homeless population isn't distributed evenly across the country. 26% of homeless people live in California alone! Meaning empty homes elsewhere aren't of any use to them.

This isn't a complicated problem. There is high demand to live in certain cities that are producing disproportionately high amounts of jobs, but these same cities have terrible zoning policies that deliberately limit the supply of new housing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pb2lo5sOc6M

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Shablagoo posted...

Housing First programs have proven you wrong about that, for decades.

it's interesting, and i'm curious if the cost-benefit would remain relative at a dramatically larger scale (ie all homeless) or if at a certain point it becomes a net loss. there's also still issues of substance abuse, housing stability is a very important step, but it doesn't inherently offer support systems and sense of community

there's also again the matter of building more houses to accommodate at that level. which is kind of already the issue to begin with. residents oppose development already.

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Resurrecting the concept of flophouse would take a lot of pressure off of housing problems.

21WIVES_CHILL posted...

Then how do you explain unemployed people buying new* cars?

*Barely functional and ancient preowned junkers for 500$

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Housing first is a strategy, it's not just giving people an abandoned house

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Prismsblade posted...

People hitchhike all the time regardless of however unrealistic you think it is. So again, idk what you're trying to say or prove.

Trying to make a living in a high cost city with low supply and high demand, with no money, job, education or skills is truly unrealistic. And if these people refuse to lower their standards, leave, and uplift themsevles elsewhere then.....goodluck is all I can say.

And people get hurt/killed during that, despite how much you want to downplay it. Further, whole families don't hitchhike, and it's next to impossible to hitchhike from a large city to a specific small town (where there may not even be jobs).

While those circumstances in a high cost city may be true, saying "Just leave all support you may have from friends and family, hitchhike while potentially being hurt/killed to arrive in a new place where you don't have any residence, and then HOPE you can find a job" isn't the cure all you think it is.

While people may need to change standards/expectations, you seem fixated on this "Get out the city, even if it means you end up in worse circumstances", while there are MULTIPLE other ways to address this problem (housing first for example).