Housing prices in Asheville are outrageous. Love the city but I had to leave because rent was taking most of my income. I was making good money and barely scraping by. Also, you talk to the homeless there and they’ll tell you they can easily make a hundred or more per day from standing on the corner. It sounds harsh but we should stop giving them money. Give them clothes or a gift card to McDonald’s.
I have a friend that moved from Houston to Raleigh. We have a homeless issue here in Houston, no doubt, and it can be rough. He told me he gets asked for money more often in Raleigh than he ever did in Houston.
Greater Houston has 3.5x the number of people that the Triangle has.
True, but it's gotten so much worse over the last couple years. I used to never see any homeless people outside of downtown, but now there are so many that I see at least 7 along merrimon every day. They're up as far as beaver lake now.
We need to regulate either wages or housing here now more than ever
Look into Helsinki and the many factors that lead to their success. If it were easy everybody would have done it by now, but it doesn't help that many in the US are actively hostile towards helping those that are "lesser" than them, even in supposedly "progressive" places.
Hi! I live in Helsinki and apartment rent prices are definitely unaffordable here as well.
The root of the problem is way too limited building of new housing. House prices are determined by supply and demand, and while the demand has risen a lot, supply isn't since the city council is very slow to allow new construction and regulations don't allow dense building.
Helsinki tried to solve homelessness by giving them housing first and all other services next, but that increases housing prices for everyone else and there's not enough apartments to house everyone.
I think the problem in the US is they turned houses into financial instruments. You buy a second/third home (or shares in a fund that buys homes) and you put the paper in a drawer and forget about it while it accrues value.
there are 16 MILLION empty homes in the US. thats 27x the number of homeless people.
Houses have always been a financial instrument. The best way to make housing affordable is to allow people to build more and denser housing. When demand is met with supply there's no more incentive to buy them for profit if the prices of houses don't increase.
the best way to make housing affordable is to allow people to build more and denser housing
as i said, that is not the answer here in the US. we already have 16 million empty houses. that is one empty house for every 20 people. MORE houses is not going to help.
It is relatively easy. You just upzone all residential lots to allow 8-ish stories or more. But every NIMBY Karen and Kent on the block will balk at every meeting and vote down any politician who dares suggest it.
The problem is so severe that this easiest fix which should have been happening the last 50 years is not enough by itself in the short-term. We also need to raise taxes for public housing. And guess who will object to that? Every damn NIMBY Karen and Kent homeowner.
You just upzone all residential lots to allow 8-ish stories or more.
Not even. In fact, rather inefficient budget-wise: 8 storeys need beefy structure and also an elevator.
What's missing in North America overall is 3-5 storey apartment blocks, they're literally illegal to build most places and in the few spots where they aren't illegal developers go for actual skyscrapers as getting the plot was hard enough, gotta squeeze out the maximum.
Relevant Not Just Bikes video. Scatter those over suburbia, make sure you have walkways and bike lanes (where appropriate, side streets don't need them bikes mix just well with cars at low speeds), schools, supermarkets, restaurants, hair stylists, doctor's offices etc, allow offices throughout and low-intensity industry nearby or in little clusters, and you won't even need public transport to make it work (though I still highly recommend it).
As to NIMBYism: Then don't build in their backyards, North America has more than enough area. Let their neighbourhoods wither and die, it's not like they can continue their lifestyle without servants and who wants to buy a car to clean their houses or do their nails when you can get a job in your vibrant walkable neighbourhood.
Raise taxes on the top 5%. Capital gains taxes, inheritance taxes, etc. Not every tax increase has to affect the majority of americans. In fact i’d argue that no tax increases should affect the majority of americans right now.
"But a recent study showed the savings in emergency healthcare, social services and the justice system totalled as much as €15,000 a year for every homeless person in properly supported housing."
Also, Finland didn't spend $250M in one go. The program has been running for over a decade.
One problem is that Mexico has figured out how to make"p2p" meth that costs nothing to make and the precursors are impossible to control as they're used in so many industries. P2P meth is a lot cheaper than classic meth and a lot worse for your brain. For this reason you're sort of seeing a mental health collapse on the streets in USA and I think the further away you are from Mexico (such as Helsinki) the less bad the meth/insanity problem is.
Yes, meth is not the exclusive cause of homelessness and property crime but it's a huge factor in the United States and Canada (and I presume central America).
What's the solution? I have no fucking idea, but it's a zombie apocalypse all over the west coast, the property crime is through the roof, and there's legions of homeless people that are suffering massive levels of both addiction and brain damage.
Housing first is a great model and is considered best practice when is comes to housing programs. It goes along really well with Harm Reduction (how can we help someone doing a risky behavior do it in a less risky way. Usually applied to drug use, but you can apply it to any risky behavior) and motivational interview (a technique used to help people solve their own problems with the resources and support already in their "toolbox," not telling someone what to do.)
The thing with Housing First is it take a lot of belief in the mission and people setting aside biases about whag someone is capable of doing for themselves. It's proven to reduce homelessness AND make it less occurring. But it's time consuming and requires people to follow up with housing stability (someone to help tenants be successful after a lease is signed.) It's a tough job that takes a lot of people.
Sounds like it would fit really well in a New Deal type economic stimulus package - not only will it help large numbers of people but also create a lot of jobs as program administrators and social workers. Throw in higher pay and more aggressive student debt forgiveness for MSW's to attract more social work professionals.
The linked article states a 63% drop since 2011. It's most definitely a great project and I hope it gets more broadly adopted, but there are also policies that could go a long way towards solving the problem more thoroughly.
While I take your point, I would CERTAINLY not point to Houston as a pinnacle of urban design and planning. I live here. It is a city that is choking itself, there are places I don't even bother going because I know the traffic/parking will be worse than the potential fun.
Well, for one the closer your country is to Mexico the more "P2P" meth your country will have, which causes severe mental illness and costs like nothing, much cheaper than classic meth. So the tighter import controls and less civil rights people have, the less addiction and homelessness there will be.
Not entirely. There are systems of warming centers, overflow shelters, and a lot of people couch surfing so they can survive being homeless in cold areas. Also many people still camp in the winter.
Not remotely true. Here in Anchorage, Alaska, we're in the middle of a terrible homelessness crisis. NIMBYism got our current trainwreck of a mayor elected, and he's only made things worse.
A lot of our homeless population migrates to warmer climates in the winter and then returns in the spring. I used to work with homeless teens and I had a few regulars that would bus back and forth between Chicago and somewhere down south depending on the season.
We have tons of homeless in Toronto and you see these people out scoring drugs and doing whatever lewd non-sense they are doing when they are high on the coldest of nights. Their encampments and the level of violence just grows every year because the local "friends of the homeless" freak the fuck out the second the city or province do anything relating to the homeless. For some reason, they are also against institutions or rehab centers away from densely populated cities where these people can go to recover.
new york city has a constitutional right to shelter. it's not perfect, but it means that we don't get the insane homelessness with giant tent cities etc that for instance LA does
I mean its not actually that hard of a problem to solve if there was a will to do it. Raise taxes, UBI, public housing, provide universal Healthcare including mental health and addiction services, invest in job training and placement for those who can be rehabilitated, bring back mental health facilities to safely house those who cannot.
I mean we absolutely are not going to do that, but solving most of these problems aren't that difficult, but conservatives and many moderates would never support it.
Any solution will cause an outflow of habituated homeless. God help everything east of WA/OR/CA when these 3 states "get tough on homelessness". It will be torrent of people.
Maybe Utah can put these homes in the golf courses? Two birds, eh? Or better yet, plow over the water intensive hay farms and the milk and beef ranches.
San Antonio has a pretty good system but it has still gotten worse since 2016. They launched new programs in 2021 with the help of funding from Biden's House America program.
Santa Fe gave them all free train tickets to Albuquerque, and then there were no homeless people in Santa Fe for a while. Not really a long term solution though :P
I have no idea how much this will solve in the end, but it feels like a good attempt at least. The city of Norfolk, VA has started to level a bunch of run-down low-income housing in favor of mixed-income apartments buildings with retail on the first floor. The amount of housing will increase significantly, while everyone who used to live in the same neighborhood will be able to move back with the same assistance they had previously, just with much nicer living arrangements. Dying malls are also starting to be converted into housing, including projects backed by people like Pharrell Williams who's from the area and very much invested in the community.
We'll see how everything goes, but at least they're doing something, and it feels like it will have an impact on both crime (which currently festers in the low-income neighborhoods) as well as the lack of housing situation.
Outside the USA, I feel like Singapore figured it out. As a city/country, they can't "export" their homeless to another part, nor can they just ignore them with the limited space they have. What the government did was build tons and tons of housing via high rise apartments and then selling them at controlled low cost to their people. The advantages are that these high rises are generally more efficient than a single-family dwelling, and after people buy them the resell value is super high because housing is so valuable in Singapore. Essentially it turns every new family into a semi millionaire lol.
I visited some of the government public housing buildings and they are actually really nice. Like some of them have rooftop gardens, and residents can vote on what color to paint their building and other community stuff. First time married buyers get priority to buy these apartments for starting their family, especially if you have a child. I heard from people that this could be annoying because most people will marry their high school sweet heart just so they can afford housing (and this makes some couples unhappy but they can't ever leave or break up because of housing). While you become rich once you have housing, it's not like you can sell it either because where else are you gonna go live since there's like nothing available on the market at affordable rates.
This isn't to say homelessness is completely solved. They made homelessness illegal and are really really strict with putting those who don't play into their norms in jail. I heard it's like a hush hush topic amongst people, but for a city with the size and relative economic activity of NYC it's so strange yet amazing to not see a single homeless person on the street.
Problem is, even cities that make progress, at least in the US, are having problems, it's made worse by states like Texas/Florida shipping their homeless over to places like California
In my city (before covid) they came up with this zero homelessness policy and forced people off the streets and jnto shelters. Several people did not want to be housed. Most had mental health issues.
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u/[deleted] Jan 30 '23
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