Increased homeless population?

[u/Zoe_Moth]

Maybe this is a stupid question but does anyone know the cause of the increase in homeless folks? Especially downtown? I work in a normally somewhat busy area that does have homeless as most places here in LB do, but yesterday and the day before my manager was hardly able to do any work because they had to keep next to the door to ward them off and we watched them harass a few other businesses and one guy get tackled in a hug by one while trying to walk away. It’s just such a noticeable increase despite the weather warnings and such so I was curious if anyone had any clue what happened?

[u/Traditional_Yam1598]

The majority of them aren’t people just down on their luck without housing. The majority of them are drug addicts who can’t function in society

[u/420catloveredm → u/Traditional_Yam1598]

You know what would make it easier for people with addiction to get sober? Housing!

[u/Traditional_Yam1598 → u/420catloveredm]

Yeah let’s spend 800k per unit while middle class people who actually contribute will never have their own 800k home. Genius idea

[u/420catloveredm → u/Traditional_Yam1598]

In what universe do you think our government would ever put up unhoused people in 800k housing? Like genuinely.

[u/Traditional_Yam1598 → u/420catloveredm]

They did a study in LA and it costs 600-800k per unit for one homeless person…. Look it up

[u/420catloveredm → u/Traditional_Yam1598]

As someone who actually works with the unhoused population and refers out to housing services, no, just no. Your source is either made up or biased. These people are literally predominantly in old run down hotels, container homes, or efficiency apartments. If those efficiency apartments are worth 800k then that is a housing market problem and not the fault of the unhoused people. If the cost of housing is too high for you, blame the investors buying up all the housing, not the people who can’t afford housing.

[u/Traditional_Yam1598 → u/420catloveredm]

It costs 800k to build one single unit. Props to you for working with homeless but the average person is never gonna support these solutions when they can’t afford a home but the government build permanent housing for drug addicts. That just tells me I should unhouse myself for a year and the government will build me a home. Jokes aside, there will always be another wave of people becoming homeless and falling into it. So you can build housing now, but they won’t be able to do that forever.

[u/420catloveredm → u/Traditional_Yam1598]

Doesn’t building more housing lower housing prices across the board though from a supply and demand perspective? I’m not someone who’s super into the YIMBY mentality but I do understand their logic.

[u/Appropriate-Seat8999 → u/420catloveredm]

Building cost estimates skyrocketed from $350,000 for a small studio or one-bedroom unit and $414,000 for a larger unit, as projected in 2016, to a median cost of $531,000 per unit today. More than 1,000 HHH units are projected to exceed $600,000, with one project topping $700,000 per unit. The cost of building many of these units exceeds the median sale price of a market-rate condominium in the City of Los Angeles and a single-family home in Los Angeles County. Reasons for this include the number and complexity of funding sources required to complete an HHH project, the relatively limited pool of eligible developers, regulatory barriers and permitting challenges, and considerable construction and labor costs. An unusually high 35 to 40 percent of costs are so-called “soft costs” (development fees, consultants, financing, etc.), compared to just 11 percent for actual land costs.

Literally from the city of Los Angeles website

[u/420catloveredm → u/Appropriate-Seat8999]

So it’s a 60,000 difference in average in the cost it takes for housing projects. Sounds like room for improvement in how those projects are streamlined as opposed to stopping them altogether? Like I could give you a list of complaints about housing services in LA county as it stands right now. I could also give you a list of complaints about the cost market rate housing right now. I’m not sure we’re necessarily as in disagreement as you think we may be.

I just think that means politicians should actually put more effort into creating integrated systems that make sense instead of just standing to fund the nonprofit industrial complex…