Affordable Housing Crisis in America. What is being done about it?

[lil devils x]

AS most are aware that even though unemployment rates had gone down in the Unites States prior to the Pandemic, Homelessness was increasing even FASTER than it had before. Homelessness was at it's lowest point in over a decade in 2016, primarily due to the funding of programs to assist low income families by the Obama Administration, but due to Trump's reversals on affordable housing access, it has been steadily increasing since 2017. Instead of expanding Obama's affordable housing program that allowed lower income families access to safer neighborhoods, better schools and jobs, Trump not only ended Obama's housing programs, but he also did not offer an alternative. Trump's plan is to make it even more difficult for the homeless to access basic resources and instead of actually trying to help the situtaion.

In 2017, Trump slashed the HUD budget by $6.2 billion. That was when the previous decline in homelessness started to reverse and instead increase again:

Community Development Block Grants, the HOME program, and the Choice Neighborhoods initiative are all eliminated in President Donald Trump’s budget proposal released today.

The new administration’s fiscal 2018 blueprint slashes funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) by $6.2 billion, or 13.2%, from current levels, with the agency receiving $40.7 billion in gross discretionary funding.

There are also major cuts to public housing and rental assistance programs that millions of low-income families and seniors rely on to meet their housing needs. (Read more about potential cuts to public housing programs.)

In addition, funding for the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corp., better known as NeighborWorks America, would be eliminated.

https://www.housingfinance.com/policy-legislation/trump-plan-slashes-hud-budget-by-62-billion_o

Although Trump did not officially end Obama's suburban initiative to help low income families have access to better schools and safer neighborhoods until 2020, there was no enforcement or funding for this under his administration since he took office, so it was essentially already dead from the point in time he took office regardless. Trump thinks this is a " feature" not a flaw and is now promoting it as why people should vote for him:

"You know the suburbs, people fight all of their lives to get into the suburbs and have a beautiful home,” Trump said during a talk in Midland, Texas. “There will be no more low-income housing forced into the suburbs. … It’s been going on for years. I’ve seen conflict for years. It’s been hell for suburbia.”

Trump boasts of pushing low-income housing out of suburbs

The connection between the president’s denigration of low-income housing and racial segregation was not lost on his critics.

www.politico.com

President Donald Trump is on a mission to save the suburbs, warning Americans that Joe Biden would bring chaos to their communities by promoting affordable housing.

At least a dozen times since June, he has painted Biden as a threat to the suburban American Dream. He even enlisted HUD Secretary Ben Carson to jointly pen an Aug. 16 op-ed saying Democrats want to reimpose “the Obama-Biden dystopian vision of building low-income housing units next to your suburban house.”

Trump is going to war on low-income housing in suburbs. He once embraced it.

The president's dramatic about-face on the issue came after widespread racial justice protests this summer.

www.politico.com

Biden plans to reverse this course and is offering the housing vouchers I had discussed in an earlier thread that would allow low income families to be able to move into better areas:

" Joe Biden has a housing policy agenda that is ambitious, technically sound, and politically feasible, and that would — if implemented — be life-changing for millions of low-income and housing-insecure households.

According to original modeling by Columbia University scholars, it could cut child poverty by a third, narrow racial opportunity gaps, and potentially drive progress on the broader middle-class affordability crisis in the largest coastal cities as well. "

"The centerpiece is simple. Take America’s biggest rental assistance program — Section 8 housing vouchers — and make it available to every family who qualifies. The current funding structure leaves out around 11 million people, simply because the pot allocated by Congress is too small. Then pair it with regulatory changes to help the housing market work better for more people. It’s the general consensus approach among top Democratic Party politicians and left-of-center policy wonks. "

Details on how this works here:

Joe Biden’s surprisingly visionary housing plan, explained

Cut child poverty by a third, break down racial segregation, and stabilize the economy.

www.vox.com

We are all expecting the homelessness crisis in the US to get much worse as a result of the Pandemic, and this help will not come soon enough for many, but at least we may have hope that some help will come if we manage to get Trump out of office so that something can be done to address the situation long term. What we need to do in the meantime is for everyone to bombard their representatives in both congress and their states legislature as well as their governors to get relief moving for all of those losing their homes right now. The housing crisis honestly needs to be declared a national emergency and Congress should not be able to go home until it is resolved because the people will not even have a home to go home to if it is not.

EDIT: And Before someone attempts to say that Obama's housing initiative didn't help anyone, It helped my own low income family members find housing so I know for a fact it WAS working, not just reducing the number of homeless on paper. It meant a great deal to the millions of families affected by this.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

Could you point me to where I could find out what parts if the country are feeling the brunt of this? I'm also interested in what places haven't felt the sting yet.

 

[lil devils x]

Could you point me to where I could do and out what parts if the country are feeling the brunt of this? I'm also interested in what places haven't felt the sting yet.

In the immediate, we need to pressure congress to pass the relief package. Without it, millions more people will be evicted. It is actually happening all over the US right now, there really isn't anywhere that hasn't been hit by unemployment/ underemployment due to the pandemic. It hits places like California the hardest due to them taking the brunt of it from multiple fronts:
1) California has a massive affordable housing shortage.
2) Gentrification is at nightmarish levels in cities like San Francisco and when they fail to make a place for the people to go when they push them out of their homes they are literally just left on the streets instead .
3) Almost all of the other States in the US often "solve" their homeless problems by paying to bus all of their homeless TO CALIFORNIA. Due to so many areas being unsurvivable for rough sleepers, the north due to the cold, and states like Texas have killer heat and cold, these cities here just pay for bus tickets to " make them someone else's problem" and ship them out. The homeless take the tickets because there are no local resources available for them at all, many cities do not even have homeless shelters at all and they know they will die here sleeping outside. So all of California's homeless problem isn't actually just their problem alone, they are receiving the homeless from all across the US as well.

If you want to be able to help locally in your own area, you can google" volunteering homeless resources in my area" and you will get results for organizations nearby that you can help.
Other than that we have some other organizations that are really good as well:

Assisting Those Experiencing Homelessness

Volunteers of America works to end homelessness by helping homeless find housing: providing safe shelter, meals, and essential services such as employment.

www.voa.org

If you can help with construction, Habitat for humanity actually build, repair and provide homes for low and middle income families as well:

Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity is a nonprofit organization that helps people in your community and around the world build or improve a place they can call home. Donate, volunteer and raise your voice in support of decent and affordable housing.

www.habitat.org

There was a local organization here that was helping with bill assistance a couple of years ago, but it appears they have closed down due to lack of funding. You just have to look in your area to see what is available there locally to help. On a national level, we have to keep contacting congress to get the relief package funded. ESPECIALLY if you are in a republican district as I am due to them being the ones who are blocking the $600 unemployment relief necessary to help keep these people in their homes right now. If you do not know who your representatives are this tells you how:

Contact Your U.S. Senators and Representatives

To find and contact your U.S. Senator: Visit the Senate website (www.senate.gov). Conduct a search using the Find Your Senators pull-down menu in the upper right corner (select your state and click Go). On the results page is a link to the Senators’ website, contact information, and links to an...

www.ala.org

Contacting your governor's office and letting them know that you want them to extend holds on evictions and extend unemployment right now will also help. The more people who do so increases the likelihood that they act.

 

[Gordon_4]

Sweet Fred Astaire is being done about it so far as I can tell.

 

[Gergar12]

The Biden shilling is getting insane. Maybe if Biden wasn't the senator from MBNA and his son wasn't hired by them I would belive half of Biden's propositions.

 

[Revnak]

Rent prices will continue to rapidly expand until the tech and gentrification industries are brought to heel. Random extra funds to people in Section 8 will mostly contribute to an increase in rent in Section 8 housing in the worst case, and is largely insufficient in the best case. Finally, homelessness is a completely solvable problem if the state just bought some housing and provided free shelter to people with some limited management, offering drug and mental health services as well. This isn’t done because it would be best implemented on a local level where it gets shut down by NIMBY land lords.

 

[lil devils x]

Rent prices will continue to rapidly expand until the tech and gentrification industries are brought to heel. Random extra funds to people in Section 8 will mostly contribute to an increase in rent in Section 8 housing in the worst case, and is largely insufficient in the best case. Finally, homelessness is a completely solvable problem if the state just bought some housing and provided free shelter to people with some limited management, offering drug and mental health services as well. This isn’t done because it would be best implemented on a local level where it gets shut down by NIMBY land lords.

We actually need all of the above. Families without drug and mental health issues need safe neighborhoods and good schools. People with drug and mental health issues need easily access drug rehabilitation and mental health services, but those same people really do not need to be around the young children needing to be able to walk to kindergarten. Kids walking to school do not need to deal with needles or some guy doped up out of his mind jerking off in a parkinglot or any of the other issues we encounter when dealing with that community. We need to be able to address all of these issues at once, there isn't a one size fits all solution here and why we had multiple agencies working on this prior to Trump, and will again once we get him out of there.

 

[meiam]

It's a pretty easy problem to solve, you just need to build more high density housing. That's pretty much it. The main reason why price have increased so much over the last few decades is because city population have increased faster than new housing are being built (the number of new housing being built every years has actually gone down over time in most city despite the increase in price).

If you give everyone X$ every month for rent then all apartments rent will increase be X$ that same month. Price are dictated by what people are willing (ie forced since they have limited choice of where they work) to pay and the supply of housing. Giving more money to peoples just means they're willing to pay more while doing nothing about supply. More people want to live in cities than currently do (hence crazy long commute time and traffic).

California has a massive homeless/housing issue primarily because they have insane amount of red tape, regulation and NIMBY that prevent building enough high density housing.

Construction is also a pretty inefficient industry, it's highly fragmented and very slow at adopting new techniques (like building more part off-site, which is way more efficient). Unions are very strong and push for some absurd regulation, like certificate for every position even when they're not really needed, making it hard for people to move to area where the demand for their skill is highest. This means that construction is needlessly expensive and slow, which further compound the problem.

 

[Worgen]

Well this does explain why there are tons more homeless around since trump took over. I have no idea why I didn't assume he had a lot more to do with it then I did.

 

[Revnak]

We actually need all of the above. Families without drug and mental health issues need safe neighborhoods and good schools. People with drug and mental health issues need easily access drug rehabilitation and mental health services, but those same people really do not need to be around the young children needing to be able to walk to kindergarten. Kids walking to school do not need to deal with needles or some guy doped up out of his mind jerking off in a parkinglot or any of the other issues we encounter when dealing with that community. We need to be able to address all of these issues at once, there isn't a one size fits all solution here and why we had multiple agencies working on this prior to Trump, and will again once we get him out of there.

Because you’re describing different issues, homelessness vs rising rent. They’re related but distinct. Resolving homelessness with free public housing is separate from resolving rent with cheaper public housing and the end of the gentrification industries (obviously the kinds of housing involved would be distinct). Continuing to handle the issue through private land lords will fail due to NIMBYism and the fact that land lords are shit. It should be noted that previous attempts to address housing concerns are part of what created the 08’ housing crisis, as they relied on granting people easy credit and led to a rapidly increasing housing bubble. Private sector oriented solutions will do this same thing again and again.

 

[lil devils x]

Because you’re describing different issues, homelessness vs rising rent. They’re related but distinct. Resolving homelessness with free public housing is separate from resolving rent with cheaper public housing and the end of the gentrification industries (obviously the kinds of housing involved would be distinct). Continuing to handle the issue through private land lords will fail due to NIMBYism and the fact that land lords are shit. It should be noted that previous attempts to address housing concerns are part of what created the 08’ housing crisis, as they relied on granting people easy credit and led to a rapidly increasing housing bubble. Private sector oriented solutions will do this same thing again and again.

Rising rent = homelessness, that is why we have so many children in the tent cities now. You are talking about drug and mental health issues, which exist among some of the homeless and is a serious issue that needs addressed on it's own, but does not apply to all of our current homeless. It isn't always even about " cheaper rent", some families have no income at all and yet still need safe housing as well as good schools too. People with medical conditions that require special living conditions also need to have safe housing close to their doctors and medical facilities and they too are not safe around drug addicts and those with severe mental health issues as well as they cannot even defend themselves and the reality is wherever the people with severe mental health issues and drug issues are going to be housed is necessarily going to have issues with violence and odd goings on, as it comes with the territory. When My friend Matt from high school was in and out of rehab, before drugs eventually killed him, you never knew when he was going to think he had witches after him or he would be walking around outside naked and not realize it or run around with a gun thinking people were watching him. That is the reality of what we deal with, and that is not a safe environment for children, the elderly or the disabled to be in. A person needing oxygen to survive cannot have a guy who thinks witches are after him running into their home and ripping out their oxygen tubes. That is the sort of thing we need to make sure we factor into the planning when we are addressing the solutions.

What created the housing crisis was the reselling of debt and falsifying the loans in addition to predatory lending trying to force people into loans they could not afford rather than allow them to take smaller loans. Banks refusing to do smaller loans was at the core of the problem. For example, they would only approve a couple for a $100,000 + home but not for an $80,000 home they could afford which caused them to fall behind on their payments. That was how this got so bad as the loans piled up.

What I would like to actually see is they buy the homes outright for them in more of a grant rather than just make it easier for them to buy the homes themselves. IF you earn under a certain amount, you qualify for a grant to buy the home and it would help solve much of the inequality issues that are currently just getting worse. Expecting poor people to be able to pay it back is the problem, not that they need help.

 

[lil devils x]

It's a pretty easy problem to solve, you just need to build more high density housing. That's pretty much it. The main reason why price have increased so much over the last few decades is because city population have increased faster than new housing are being built (the number of new housing being built every years has actually gone down over time in most city despite the increase in price).

If you give everyone X$ every month for rent then all apartments rent will increase be X$ that same month. Price are dictated by what people are willing (ie forced since they have limited choice of where they work) to pay and the supply of housing. Giving more money to peoples just means they're willing to pay more while doing nothing about supply. More people want to live in cities than currently do (hence crazy long commute time and traffic).

California has a massive homeless/housing issue primarily because they have insane amount of red tape, regulation and NIMBY that prevent building enough high density housing.

Construction is also a pretty inefficient industry, it's highly fragmented and very slow at adopting new techniques (like building more part off-site, which is way more efficient). Unions are very strong and push for some absurd regulation, like certificate for every position even when they're not really needed, making it hard for people to move to area where the demand for their skill is highest. This means that construction is needlessly expensive and slow, which further compound the problem.

We have to careful in the process however, to make sure we are not creating " slums". Small compact housing isn't adequate for families. What often winds up happening is they try to cram too many people in too small of space and it isn't livable. We also have the issue of demographics and creating different solutions to address different the problems. The elderly and disabled are not able to climb stairs and need handicap access to everything with wider parking spaces and a therapy pool for physical rehab, not a pool full noisy rowdy kids or young adult party goers. We really need to address all these demographics in different ways and none of them are really being addressed well at all. Children need safe outdoor spaces where they can have birthday parties and swing sets and be able to walk to and from school, safely. These are all part of the homeless population and sadly it is getting worse by the day. AT this point though, even if we managed to get some form of UBI implemented, it wouldn't be near enough to solve the problem due to lack of the right type of housing for the demographics in the right locations to meet their needs. Many of the homeless refuse the options made available to them because they are literally better off sleeping in their van near what they need to be near than they are accepting a room at the local slums. Hell it is often safer sleeping rough than it is living in some of the high density housing areas. You are less likely to be shot, raped and robbed. From what I have seen available in the metroplex, I would rather sleep in a box than go anywhere near the high density housing they have available.

I remember being shown this apartment once while looking for an apartment when I was in my 20's, first I went up this winding staircase with all the lights broken out to a long hall full of doors without doorknobs on them to empty closets to where anyone could be hiding in any one of them at any time. There were so many, I have to wonder what whoever designed that nightmare was actually thinking. The lights were still all busted out.. Then the realtor shows me this apartment that is across the hall from an apartment with a sawed off shotgun leaning up against the wall outside the door... Needless to say I didn't even finish looking at the apartment .. I just got the hell out of there.

 

[meiam]

We have to careful in the process however, to make sure we are not creating " slums". Small compact housing isn't adequate for families. What often winds up happening is they try to cram too many people in too small of space and it isn't livable. We also have the issue of demographics and creating different solutions to address different the problems. The elderly and disabled are not able to climb stairs and need handicap access to everything with wider parking spaces and a therapy pool for physical rehab, not a pool full noisy rowdy kids or young adult party goers. We really need to address all these demographics in different ways and none of them are really being addressed well at all. Children need safe outdoor spaces where they can have birthday parties and swing sets and be able to walk to and from school, safely. These are all part of the homeless population and sadly it is getting worse by the day. AT this point though, even if we managed to get some form of UBI implemented, it wouldn't be near enough to solve the problem due to lack of the right type of housing for the demographics in the right locations to meet their needs. Many of the homeless refuse the options made available to them because they are literally better off sleeping in their van near what they need to be near than they are accepting a room at the local slums. Hell it is often safer sleeping rough than it is living in some of the high density housing areas. You are less likely to be shot, raped and robbed. From what I have seen available in the metroplex, I would rather sleep in a box than go anywhere near the high density housing they have available.

I remember being shown this apartment once while looking for an apartment when I was in my 20's, first I went up this winding staircase with all the lights broken out to a long hall full of doors without doorknobs on them to empty closets to where anyone could be hiding in any one of them at any time. There were so many, I have to wonder what whoever designed that nightmare was actually thinking. The lights were still all busted out.. Then the realtor shows me this apartment that is across the hall from an apartment with a sawed off shotgun leaning up against the wall outside the door... Needless to say I didn't even finish looking at the apartment .. I just got the hell out of there.

Well high density housing are rife with crime because they have a large number of poor people in close proximity. But spreading the poor people over a large area in low density housing isn't going to reduce the crime rate, it'll just spread it out. The statistic will look better but that won't help. Even then there's plenty of low density area that are slums. Poor people make for poor neighbourhood, poor neighbourhood have low house cost which attract more poor people, as soon as the poor people get a break they leave, ensuring the place stays poor. You can try to heavily police those neighbourhood to try and reduce the crime, but that's really not a solution without heavy police reform. But even then, once things improve house cost rise which price out the poor people who are force to move further away, usually in new or declining poor area.

Ultimately there simply isn't enough place to build plenty of low density house, you either have few houses that are very expensive or many tight cheap house. There's no other solution, land is limited. Subsidizing based on income doesn't really make sense, it's essentially telling people who have good job in cities they should just resign themselves to long commute time so poor people get to live in the cities. And on top of that you have to tax them so that other people get to enjoy living in the city on their dime, I think it's obvious why these policy are not popular.

There just isn't a perfect solution, even if you do help poor people with their rent, they'll still naturally crowd together in concentrated area which will create slum, just subsidised slum (with landlord pocketing the subsidy). But if you lower housing price by building lots of cheap housing you'll at least lower the amount of money poor people have to spend on housing which will increase their buying power (same as subsidy) but you'll allow more peoples to live in cities (where they want to live). It's just a better solution.

As far as people with special conditions, if they're not working then they really should be encouraged to move away from city, where setting up low density housing is feasible. Ultimatly they might want to live in the city but whoever would take their place in the house/apartment also want to live in the city. I don't see how taxing the second person (and force them to endure long commute) just so the first person get their wishes is fair.

 

[lil devils x]

SNIP.

I agree that in order to solve this we may have to spread out to the suburbs, but I think that may also help solve a lot of the problems associated with it at the same time. In the US at least, we have more options than are available in more condensed nations so I actually do see we have more options available here that would be a huge improvement. I see the problem itself is trying to create "poor areas" separate from other areas in the first place. The current housing shortage is actually being driven by the wealthy, their corporations and investors:

How corporations are buying up houses — robbing families of the American Dream

One morning in 2012, Phoenix real-estate developer Geoff Jacobs was playing golf when he got a surprising phone call. One of his employees, trying to bid on a house they wanted at auction, told him…

nypost.com

What we really need to do here is greatly increase taxes on individuals and corporations buying multiple homes, and large homes enough so that we will be able to provide low and no income families with housing in already existing neighborhoods and new middle class suburbs. Poor =\= crime. Lack of resources is what increases crime. I grew up poor, but the neighborhood I grew up in was not. My brothers and sisters did not steal, 3 of us were actually at the top of our class. We have homeless kids who are valedictorians, and many more would be able to accomplish so much more if just given access to the proper resources. We still have drug addicts in wealthy neighborhoods, just their families can afford to send them to more expensive rehabilitation centers instead of the street corner. In the wealthier neighborhoods, there re far more resources available to address the problems than there are in the poor neighborhoods. My proposal is to eliminate the poor neighborhoods all together and instead use the taxes from taxing individuals and corporations who own multiple properties to buy the poor and low income families nice houses in good neighborhoods, buy the elderly and disabled homes in existing and new elderly and retirement communities, and pay for the more costly mental health and drug rehabilitation services that are currently only serving the wealthy. Instead of creating substandard solutions we actually give them a real step up and give them the same access that those more fortunate have to higher quality resources ending the cycle of poverty that is created by resource scarcity in low income neighborhoods.

I grew up with kids whose families owned 10+ homes, luxury cars, yachts.. The habitat for humanity in my neighborhood built homes in this same neighborhood and gave them to low income families. That changed their lives more than anything else could. It gave them the resources necessary to have a future. In the US, the wealthy have enough wealth to make every single man, woman and child, illegal or not in the US " wealthy", while at the same time, our poor are often even more poor than the poor in 3rd world nations. This is why I see Biden's voucher program here a step in the right direction, not nearly enough that is needed, but a program that can be expanded on if we adequately increase the funding and who qualifies. New home builders will continue to build homes as long as they sell, we are not trying to make the houses a lower quality but instead of making it easier for low income families to buy the home themselves, they will qualify for the home being bought for them, like Habitat for humanity has been doing here already, but on a much larger scale.

I also think we need to do away with " section 8 zoning" altogether and instead they can buy a home anywhere, any house ( that is within reason of course) in any neighborhood, and the neighbors will have no idea whether or not they are a low income family or not as it should be funded on the federal level and their personal information be kept private because honestly here, you have no idea if the wealthy guy moving down the street is a a cocaine addict or not, and wealthy or poor makes no difference as to whether or not they will be a good neighbor. You have wealthy assholes who will drive their hummer through your yard or a poor neighbor you plays their guitar on their front porch, whether or not they are wealthy or poor is irrelevant to that fact. In wealthy neighborhoods you still have families practicing the tuba and drums for their school band that are just as annoying as the guy in the poor neighborhood working on his car. I see this as all the same problems, just one group has access to resources and one group does not. providing access to the same resources solves the problem of access. Nosy neighbors wanting to be able to judge their neighbors have no business needing to know whether or not the family that moved in down the street is low income or not, and this should help give those who need it most an opportunity to change the cycle of poverty that not having access to resources creates.

We can also temporarily house the homeless in hotels, as we saw increasingly utilized during the pandemic as a means of emergency housing. In the past, we have the issue of hotels refusing to cooperate with this, but due to the pandemic, we luckily had an increased level of cooperation and I would like to see this continued. Hotels are only a temporary solution, this whole problem of having people living in hotels for month's even years is a problem as well because hotels are not really built for extended living and everyday living expenses are increased when trying to live in a hotel. Getting them into permanent housing, in good neighborhoods, that meet their needs, as soon as possible should be the goal.

 

[Buyetyen]

As far as people with special conditions, if they're not working then they really should be encouraged to move away from city, where setting up low density housing is feasible. Ultimatly they might want to live in the city but whoever would take their place in the house/apartment also want to live in the city. I don't see how taxing the second person (and force them to endure long commute) just so the first person get their wishes is fair.

Encouraged by what means?

 

[lil devils x]

Encouraged by what means?

Yea, that could actually kill them to move too far from their hospital if they require medical treatment that rural hospitals do not provide. Most of the smaller hospitals in the suburbs are not equipped to handle more severe health issues and they have to transfer them to the downtown hospital instead. We actually need to ensure we keep that population in close proximity to the hospital as a higher priority than those who are working in the city because a longer drive to work isn't going to kill them but a longer drive to the hospital will kill those with medical requirements.

The elderly and disabled need access to proper medical resources as well as live in a community equipped to handle those needs as well. That is why I would rather have the government just outright pay for them to live in the retirement communities instead of place them in areas where they will be more at risk as they currently have been. Though right now, in most places they are not helping them at all and many of the rough sleepers are actually elderly and medically disabled. 40% of the homeless that are recorded are actually disabled. That is a huge chunk of medical neglect right there.

 

[lil devils x]

I also think that it is important that the shift to address homelessness needs to be permanent "life" solutions rather than view it as temporary. We need to stop paying "rent" and just buy the people good homes in safe neighborhoods. No more paying slum lords and paying rent for toxic properties allowing these people to exploit and profit from the housing crisis. By actually buying the people homes we stop giving people incentives to exploit the homeless and build bad properties all together. We need to eliminate the idea that" if we fix this then it will be too expensive for people to live there" . If we stop paying rent and only buy or build quality properties, hopefully it will push slum lords and those buying up all the properties with the intention of exploiting the housing shortage out of business. As far as I am concerned, if these companies buying up all the properties to hike the rent lose their arse on having done so already and are forced to dump their properties on the market instead, that is a plus.

We have 40% of the homeless being disabled because they often have no income and fell through the cracks in social security disability. We have to plan for people to not be able to have any income at all for the rest of their lives, not expect them to ever be able to pay back any of the money spent and for them to have a quality environment provided for them so they will not be forced to leave it to seek safety elsewhere. For the longest time, we have been treating these people as invisible and not mattering, and that has to change in order to address this long term.

 

[Tireseas]

There's a lot of theories as to how to deal with the housing crisis in metropolitan areas, but the only solutions that I've been able to see as effective have been to relax certain building requirements for multi-family units and dramatically increasing public transit resources and locations in order to make commuting via public transit more affordable, faster, and easier to access. Fast track any commercial property with residential housing as a part of it (whether its condos or apartments) so that land use is maximized for residential housing. The aim is simple: increase supply faster than the population increases and ensure rent/mortgage prices aren't spiking in certain localities by having more spread out and accessible transportation.

As for dealing with homelessness, a "housing first" approach as been the most effective overall. While I'm skeptical of public housing projects due to past performance and a pattern of neglect by housing authorities, long term leases with landlords whereby the city effectively rents a residential unit for 5-10 years in exchange for a constant and consistent payment scheme (as well as a renovation stipend at the end of the term and an indemnification against the landlord for damages sustained by tenants) may be a way to prevent over-concentration of individuals in a way that tends to exacerbate public health issues of violence and substance abuse.

 

[lil devils x]

There's a lot of theories as to how to deal with the housing crisis in metropolitan areas, but the only solutions that I've been able to see as effective have been to relax certain building requirements for multi-family units and dramatically increasing public transit resources and locations in order to make commuting via public transit more affordable, faster, and easier to access. Fast track any commercial property with residential housing as a part of it (whether its condos or apartments) so that land use is maximized for residential housing. The aim is simple: increase supply faster than the population increases and ensure rent/mortgage prices aren't spiking in certain localities by having more spread out and accessible transportation.

As for dealing with homelessness, a "housing first" approach as been the most effective overall. While I'm skeptical of public housing projects due to past performance and a pattern of neglect by housing authorities, long term leases with landlords whereby the city effectively rents a residential unit for 5-10 years in exchange for a constant and consistent payment scheme (as well as a renovation stipend at the end of the term and an indemnification against the landlord for damages sustained by tenants) may be a way to prevent over-concentration of individuals in a way that tends to exacerbate public health issues of violence and substance abuse.

The problem with relaxing building restrictions and speeding up projects is you wind up with the same problems I had that caused one of my apartment buildings to burn down. They cut corners and made unsafe housing that later had to be all torn down due to it being a hazard. Most people in my building lost everything they had due to this. We are also not actually addressing the actual issues here by doing so, because the housing shortage is being artificially inflated by these companies buying up ALL the houses. Long term, I think we would resolve more by not paying rent at all and instead actually buying properties so we aren't just rewarding slum lords and allowing people to profit and mark up properties exploiting the poor. The ability to profit from the poor's misfortune is a big part of the problem fueling inadequate and unsafe housing as well and really should be ended.

With the Housing voucher program Biden is discussing here, we wouldn't be concentrating the poor into one region, they would be spread out in the suburbs, we just need to increase funding, increase the amount spent per voucher, and expand who qualifies and just buy the properties outright and not expect them to pay it back. The previous "lending programs" were only lending programs and not grants. Homelessness and the affordable housing crisis are one in the same. 40% of the homeless are considered disabled, but I do think that number should be higher and would be with proper examination and diagnosis, that they also do not have access to. Part of the problem with the statistics on drug use and mental disorders among the homeless is that they also consider people with chronic conditions that require pain medication " substance abusers" . They are classifying them as such if they tell them they are in pain and need medications or test positive for pain medication that was prescribed for them when if the same happened to a wealthy or middle class person, they would be treated and not classified as such at all. People often confuse medication dependence and addiction, and they are not the same thing. People often NEED their pain medication or they cannot properly function due to their pain levels they are in without medication. These patients are considered dependent, and should be given medication as long as it is not abused . An Addict on the other hand uses it to get high, uses more of it than prescribed and often uses a number of other substances as well because it isn't about treating their conditions, it is about feeding their addiction. Sadly they lump these groups as one in the homeless community and that is not an accurate assessment. I have attempted to help staff at the shelter understand the difference but I don;t think it really sunk in with them because they did not appear capable of determining the difference and instead treat those who need medical treatment the same as the addicts and it just makes a bad situation worse.

Often the mental health issues were actually caused by them becoming homeless rather than it being a condition that was necessarily dangerous to the general public and will get better once they are no longer in a constant state of desperation to survive. They are not separating these issues in their statistics. Just from what I saw working at the shelter alone, the majority of people seeking help there , at least in this area, were not substance abusers, nor did they have severe mental health issues. Most were actually had a an untreated or under treated medical condition that prevented them from working. They were medically disabled and unfit for work. They are never going to be able to afford to pay a mortgage or rent themselves. We have disabled parents with children as well who need access to good homes and schools, and cramming them into apartments that are too small only makes things worse for them than if they are able to access resources in the suburbs like the local families here are, for example, the local habitat for humanity builds and repairs homes and has actually given them to local families AND paid their tax bill so the family can afford to live there. Trying to just make bills and not having to pay the monthly mortgage makes it so much easier on families than expecting them to pay rent or mortgages they cannot afford. Hell in this area, we have bill assistance programs, tax assistance programs, and they build houses, but that is the difference between the resources available in wealthy communities vs poor ones. That is why I would rather buy them houses in wealthy suburbs with plenty of funding for local resources available than try to cram them into hazardous tiny apartments elsewhere where the resources will be overtaxed. All that does is segregate the poor from everyone else and continue the cycle of poverty rather than give their kids a better chance of not falling back into poverty themselves.

 

[Tireseas]

The problem with relaxing building restrictions and speeding up projects is you wind up with the same problems I had that caused one of my apartment buildings to burn down. They cut corners and made unsafe housing that later had to be all torn down due to it being a hazard. Most people in my building lost everything they had due to this. We are also not actually addressing the actual issues here by doing so, because the housing shortage is being artificially inflated by these companies buying up ALL the houses. Long term, I think we would resolve more by not paying rent at all and instead actually buying properties so we aren't just rewarding slum lords and allowing people to profit and mark up properties exploiting the poor. The ability to profit from the poor's misfortune is a big part of the problem fueling inadequate and unsafe housing as well and really should be ended.

Indeed, that's also a major concern. Generally, the requirements I'm referring to are things like traffic studies and other aspects not directly related to the construction of buildings and their applicable safety requirements. NIMBYism and a rather needlessly complex approval process are more barriers to contraction (particularly economical construction) than health and safety codes. In the Seattle area, for example, neighborhood counsels effectively needed to sign off on any substantial project, and NIMBYs would pack into those meetings to prevent the kind of construction needed to increase available capacity. You also have zoning requirements that limit multi-family projects dramatically while single-family neighborhoods are effectively untouched. All of these things are not unique to Seattle and many metro areas of all sizes have similar rules that stymie and increase the costs to construct the housing needed to reduce costs.

(There's actually good discussions of these unnecessary regulations on a few episodes of Vox's the Weeds podcast, including an interview with Conor Dougherty and another with Scott Peters)

[Cont.]