10 ms·
I will do anything to end homelessness except build more homes (2018)
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- scandox 1y agoA bit broad. I guess the broadness of satire that people enjoy probably is a measure of how close the revolution is?
- lyu07282 1y agoAlso kind of the simplicity of the problem: You have homeless -> give them homes = no more homeless. Just build a shit ton of public housing. It really doesn't help the liberals argument that in the last 40 years, China raised 800 million people out of poverty. [1] [1] according to the communists at the world bank: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/lifting-800-million-people-out-of-poverty-new-report-looks-at-lessons-from-china-s-experience https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
- scoofy 1y agoIt's not just about homelessness though, sure the article is, but the crisis is not. It's about standard of living and making sure we are building a future where people have better lives than the previous generations. We need housing to approach the cost of production for people to build wealth. Otherwise, we will always have rent-seeking by existing homeowners. Whether we do that by gigantic public housing projects, non-profit coop developments, or markets building housing for profit is almost irrelevant to the point that it's currently effectively illegal to build housing in the vast majority of cities. We should be looking to Vienna, which has had the most success at keeping urban housing affordable and available. They did so by always building more housing all the time. They're doing basically the opposite of what we do in CA where we fight about which type of housing we should build one or two buildings of. We need to just legalize and fast track housing of all kinds.
- vitarnixofntrnt 1y ago[dead]
- onetokeoverthe 1y ago[dead]
- dkga 1y agoI enjoyed reading it, even if it leaves a bitter taste by knowing that it is describing a very real feeling. Also I like how the author also relates the NIMBY problem to sabotaging public transportation initiatives.
- a2tech 1y agoThis is not helpful, funny, or intelligent. It’s a child’s rant about the world. At the end of the day, the reason more housing isn’t built is that the incentives are greater to not build it. You can build a high rise with shoebox apartments that have to be aggressively managed and make a profit. Or you can build a high rise with half the units, higher reoccurring revenue and less hassle and make 2x the immediate profit. At the end of the day as long as there is demand for more expensive housing that’s what’s going to get built.
- wiseowise 1y agoI really want to see a whole town built in US out of commie block style high rises or Chinese dystopian ant nests, and how quickly it will devolve into a ghetto, because there’s no authoritarian arm to keep it in check.
- MichaelGlass 1y agoThe typical counterpoint to this NIMBYism isn't, communism, but rather most of Texas (where there's loosening zoning law) or West Virginia (where there's abundant poverty and social problems but also abundant housing).
- hotmeals 1y agoSo Manhattan with less brick and more modern insulation?
- MichaelGlass 1y agoI thought it was funny. And sad. The incentives you're talking about -- they're missing because of NIMBYist overregulation. The whole point of NIMBYism is to use regulation to hamstring the positive incentives in the market. "There's demand for twenty units here but the place is zoned for a single unit." or "There's demand for twenty units but the city demands that if we build a multitenant unit, we have to do a twenty-year environmental survey first". Do you live in a place with a homeless crisis. Guess what: You're a citizen and you have some agency. Democracy can be a backstop to "pure" (or mis-regulated) market forces. I, for one, enjoy clean drinking water (and also: a good deal from a healthy competitive market).
- _dark_matter_ 1y agoThis isn't everywhere. I live in Nashville and we have SO MUCH housing being built. Just apartment building after apartment building after apartment building.
- bradfa 1y agoIs any of it affordable for the median household income in your area? If so, that’s great!
- dzhiurgis 1y agoNew housing doesn't have to be affordable for everyone. Median income goes towards old housing.
- willis936 1y agoWhen more people are being priced out of a market than new housing units are added, then yeah they do need to be cheaper to make housing more available. The net result is more stratification, not less. Ask anyone how to make cheap housing though. No one has a convincing answer. I'm convinced that it's the right question.
- rvnx 1y agoDefault on U.S. debt. A U.S. default would spike interest rates, crash bond markets, trigger a credit freeze, and destroy consumer confidence. Mortgages would become unaffordable. Mass foreclosures and job losses would crush demand. Asset fire sales would follow. Housing prices would collapse. This would also reshuffle assets, so speculators and highly leveraged people would be punished instead of being rewarded. It will also cleanup the situation for future generations so kids won't have to be under extreme debt to pay back in some way to government, because the older people lived above their means.
- willis936 1y agoThat's how you make existing housing cheap. That's not how you make new housing cheap. We still have a shortage.
- yunohn 1y ago> I’m the kind of person who contributes to society by starting companies that leverage technology to build smart tea kettles that brew themselves while you sleep at night. I’m a fucking innovator. Is there a reason that the press is always making scapegoats out of tech nerds? The vast majority of people are not employed in tech, and are part of the same society and have very similar self interests. Truly tired of everything being a criticism of Silicon Valley, as if everyone else are saints.
- simiones 1y agoI don't think it's making scapegoats per se. But Sillicon Valley has been very influential in the public discourse in the previous 1-2 decades, and huge SV (or tech in general) entrepreneurs have used their success and money to gain an outsized political influence on many of these issues. Bill Gates and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel are some of the most obvious figures that have driven public policy discourse (and Elon Musk at least even had a direct hand in the implementation of said policies), but there are many others. What you're seeing is a backlash to this influence, and the fairly disastrous consequences it has usually had.
- xmodem 1y agoThe tech industry has played an out-sized role in the economic distortions to society the article is satirising. Maybe you should take a look inside yourself just to check that you're not taking this satirical article as a personal attack.
- _1tem 1y agoI'm a SaaS founder and I have the exact same criticism of tech. America is where some of the most brilliant minds and advanced technology and trillions in VC funds go towards building ad-tech and scrolling algorithms and B2B SaaS spreadsheet replacement apps while essentials like food and housing and healthcare get worse and more expensive.
- smcin 1y agoMcSweeney's seems to spread the criticism around fairly, not just scapegoating tech: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/minutes-from-the-latest-meeting-of-the-council-of-landlords https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/minutes-from-the-latest-... https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/welcome-to-westillwork-the-nursing-home-for-people-who-cant-afford-to-retire https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/welcome-to-westillwork-t...
- Ccecil 1y agoFrom what I have seen there isn't a housing shortage as much as an "affordable housing" shortage. Just my observation. Tons of overpriced apartments being built at 2x the price of the average renter. Housing subsidies will be next. Another attempt to prop up the rampant capitalism by means of socialism.
- gloxkiqcza 1y agoThe issue is skewed supply and demand. If it’s profitable to buy housing as an investment, lower to middle class folk can’t compete with the upper class and businesses in the purchasing power, no matter how much housing gets build. I’m not sure whether there’s a good solution to this problem.
- Raed667 1y agoThere is. Progressive taxation. Your first purchase is tax free. Second is a percentage and the more you accumulate the higher the percentage.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoI'm trying to see how this would work. Would this be single family homes only? Duplexes and triplexes? Apartments/condos?
- klntsky 1y agoHomelesness exists in the US because it's comfortable to be homeless in a rich society. It is not always a result of choice, but so is living in a home. Still, I sincerely believe more people would choose to be homeless if they tried it, because there is nothing inherently bad in living in a tent if the climate allows it. It's just like tourism but with more amenities available due to urban infra + the stigma (that people mostly learned to ignore due to cultural conditioning of the 70s-today period).
- bisRepetita 1y ago>it's comfortable to be homeless in a rich society Do you know this first hand? Have you tried it?
- simiones 1y agoThis is a ridiculously silly take. Homelessness greatly reduces your life span, it makes you many times more likely to be a victim of both crime and of police violence, and it makes many simple parts of regular society inaccessible to you.
- sumeno 1y agoThis is one of the all time worst takes I've ever seen on HN
- comrade1234 1y agoI live in Zurich - the tightest rental market in the world (.7% availability) but don't really have a homeless problem for some reason. I have met a lot of people that have had to move to neighboring cities though.
- maxweylandt 1y agoHow is public transport to nearby commuter towns? If it's affordable/convenient/reasonably quick that can help a lot, I suspect. (But am quite ignorant so appreciate correction!)
- joshvm 1y agoVery good, generally. It's affordable by Swiss standards, which is to say expensive for tourists but remarkably good value if you're a resident on a median salary. The cost of the whole-country annual rail pass costs less than a point to point season ticket in the UK, and there is no peak travel. So you should never pay more than 3-4k a year. Most people just get a half price card (often employer subsidised) and/or a local pass which is generally better value unless you're commuting between cities.
- _petronius 1y agoSwitzerland has the best rail system in the world (IMHO). One app can manage ticketing across all public transit in the entire country, and it is extremely fast and reliable. Lots of people who work in Zürich, for example, commute in from Zug (due to lower taxes in the neighboring canton).
- nic547 1y ago> extremely fast It's generally called "as fast as necessary", more focused on total journey lenght with the clock-face schedule across the whole country. Other countries certainly have faster trains.
- _petronius 1y ago
- vintermann 1y agoIs lack of enough homes the main reason for homelessness?
- dado3212 1y agoYes. https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/ https://homelessnesshousingproblem.com/
- corpzo 1y ago[dead]
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoI think that's not necessarily the most important question. A more important one is "are more homes (dwellings) the easiest way to reduce homelessness?", and "do more dwellings reduce the number of rough sleepers?", to which the answer is "yes". During Covid lockdowns, the UK housed all street-homeless people at four days notice (other countries did this too). This was possible because of the sudden availability of hundreds of thousands of vacant hotel rooms. For at least a little while, a massive influx of supply of dwellings entirely eliminated rough sleeping in the UK, mitigating the harshest impacts of homelessness for thousands.
- bisRepetita 1y agoWas it mandatory to be out of the streets, police enforced? Were the hotels free for the homeless population? Trying to figure out whether it was the increase of availability only, or combined of forced housing/low price point.
- OtherShrezzing 1y agoVoluntary - a small population chose to stay on the streets. The accommodation & some meals were provided at no cost to the individual.
- foul 1y agoWhen you examine an island of critical business development with desperate need for workforce yes, otherwise you will mostly find rent and prices that compromise life conditions. Basic needs aren't a market you can easily disrupt (unless you plan to let a class of slaves or poors be created).
- oldpersonintx2 1y ago[dead]
- nilirl 1y agoWould this be considered creative non-fiction? Do you remember that teacher in school who would sometimes lash out at a poorly performing student? This made me feel like I was watching a frustrated lash out from someone who cares. Captures the author's feelings; but fails as a piece of persuasion.
- JodieBenitez 1y agoI know next to nothing about the US but France has 3 million unoccupied housings. https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7727384 https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/7727384
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- throwaway290 1y agoHow did that happen? People buy houses and then not live there like Canada? Or there is not enough people? Can I move to france and live for free pls
- ta32423hoi2h 1y agoSure, if you don't mind living out in the sticks :P France has a big concentration of people around the big cities with a big empty diagonal in the middle of the country, form south-west to north-east (literally called 'la diagonale du vide'). Not only are you far from anything resembling a city, but infra for public & private transport are lacking. So if you can wfh and find a place with good 4g/5g coverage, and you won't miss social interactions, it can be great value. But as soon as you get closer to e.g. Paris or Lyon, things look very different.
- throwaway290 1y agoSounds about perfect where do I sign up.
- ta32423hoi2h 1y agoThere are lots of websites where you can search for rural housing in france, but it's quite fragmented so there is no real one-stop-shop where you can find everything. You can start here though: https://www.proprietes-rurales.com/ https://www.proprietes-rurales.com/ (I am not affiliated in any way with the website, was just the first one i found)
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- hnthrowaway0315 1y agoHow did homeless become homeless though? 1. They never had a home before so they kept living like that 2. They had a home before but then they couldn't afford it (or whatever other reason) I doubt we have a lot of case 1 (born without a home). For case 2, I doubt building more homes work, because if you are homeless, that not only means that you can't afford buying a home, but you cannot afford renting one as well, and you are most likely jobless. I doubt building more homes are going to solve the issues. For case 2 you need more social housing and other support.
- energy123 1y agoThere's probably almost 100 million Americans existing under rental stress. This prevents them from being able to save and invest. That means they have no insurance policy if they lose their job. If rent was lower, which it is in places that build more, then this is less likely to happen.
- hnthrowaway0315 1y agoThis is a fair point. And better protection regulations too so owners cannot hike rents as they so wish. We have it in Canada so not sure about the US, but I guess at least some states have some sort of protection.
- energy123 1y agoRent control doesn't work. The unintended negative side effects are too large.
- amanaplanacanal 1y agoYep. Rent control means less housing gets built, the exact opposite of what we want.
- yellow_lead 1y ago> For case 2, I doubt building more homes work, because if you are homeless, that not only means that you can't afford buying a home, but you cannot afford renting one as well, and you are most likely jobless. It's not always all or nothing - sometimes you might be able to afford rent if rent were cheaper. > For case 2 you need more social housing and other support. "Build more homes" includes social aka public aka "affordable housing".
- mola 1y agoSry lack of new houses doesn't seem like a cause for homelessness. Of you can't afford a house in the big city, you move to a smaller one. The problem is lack of a working welfare infrastructure. People become homeless because they're unlucky and once they're down, it's almost impossible to get back up.. it's a failure of state at so many levels. Real estate development is the least of them
- tpoacher 1y agoSpeaking from a London perspective, though I'm sure a NY one is worse, not better. > Sry lack of new houses seems doesn't seem like a cause for homelessness. If you can't afford a house in the big city, you move to a smaller one. This would only make sense if the smaller houses were reasonably priced as opposed to the bigger ones. This is not the case. And creating more housing would absolutely be a step in the right direction in terms of reducing extreme housing prices. Unless you don't believe in demand and supply economics, that is. > Once they're down, it's almost impossible to get back up Yes but that's partly because they can't afford to rent even basic lodging, let alone afford to buy one, and a basic roof over one's head is a pivotal basic need for most things one needs to do in life.
- acdha 1y agoThis kind of problem rarely has a single cause but housing costs put pressure on many of them. High housing costs mean people save less and are more vulnerable to other events cascading into homelessness. They also increase stress levels because people live further away from their jobs and spend more time and money commuting while being less able to care for their families, which can have generational impacts when older kids aren’t studying because they’re taking care of younger siblings while their parents work and commute. It also inflated prices for almost everything else because businesses are paying more for their space and have to pay their workers more, too. That doesn’t mean that we don’t also need things like better support and easily-accessible government healthcare, but we have to recognize that these things are all connected. Salt Lake City somewhat famously found immediately housing people helps with mental/substance abuse issues simply because all of the other problems in life are more approachable when you’re not sleeping on the street, missing appointments, and having your essentials stolen.
- gadders 1y agoI don't think housing will help the people with mental health issues and addiction problems. Honestly I think sometimes building (compassionate, 21st century) mental health "asylums" and treatment centres would do more to end homelessness.
- watwut 1y agoBeing homeless makes peoples mental health issues massively worst then whatever there was before. So yes, housing actually helps people with mental health issues. And yes, as housing becomes less available, people with mental health issues are among the worst affected.
- TimPC 1y agoThis is a scapegoat at best in areas with high homelessness. The mentally ill and drug abusers are the most visible part of the homeless population not all the homeless population. There are also complex relations to cause vs effect where mental illness may be at manageable levels until a crisis like homelessness exacerbates it or drug use may be a result of being homeless instead of a cause.
- jvanderbot 1y agoThe mentally ill and drug abusers are also the ones who need to be dealt with in a way totally separate from those who are struggling but trying to get back on their feet and need a place to shower and sleep safely. They cause disproportionate damage to cities and the cause of aiding homeless itself. It's asinine to conflate the two issues and waffle back and forth between "more houses" and nimby name-calling. Neither will help. We should have 21st century asylums and more houses. I won't accept a false choice, we can do both. (I'd argue we also need subsidized job relocation programs so people don't get stuck in high CoL areas looking for minimum wage jobs. There are very affordable areas to live in USA that want workers, let's make this market more efficient).
- bmicraft 1y agoAnd yet it works almost flawlessly everywhere it's been tried. But sure, the US is different, special. That's always the argument, right?
- djexjms 1y agoReading this comment thread was a fun way to start my day. Always funny to see people react to satire about them.
- dang 1y ago"Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community." It's reliably a marker of bad comments and worse threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deafpolygon 1y agoSounds privileged.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- beAbU 1y agoGiving housing to the homeless means we change the homeless into neighbours. And who the hell wants a poor person as a neighbour.
- bitlax 1y ago[flagged]
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoWhat does this have to do with poor or homeless people?
- bitlax 1y agoYou don't understand. I'm a real person who's had real experiences. I am now disinclined to invest in housing for the homeless because you won't take my real problems seriously. If you actually don't understand the connection you should refrain from commenting.
- ujkhsjkdhf234 1y agoYou sound like the exact person this article is satirizing.
- bitlax 1y agoI doubt you could describe the target of this piece but it is not people like myself. That is not to say that the piece should taken seriously. She would have been wiser to simply tweet the title rather than lift the veil on her various unearned grudges. At any rate, you can continue try to insult me but it will not persuade me. You might not think that matters but here we are.
- freeone3000 1y agoMarijuana usage is now in the mainstream. You might as well ask how to prevent your property from smelling like cigarette smoke.
- xnx 1y ago(2018)
- amai 1y agoWonderful article. We need more of this.
- jleyank 1y agoUntil WFH is common, areas are condemned to affordable housing shortages or commuting nightmares. Yeah, some areas pony up for dedicated path public transit but that’s rare. There’s lots of land over there but the jobs are over here. And people don’t want houses like the 50’s and don’t seem to like high density housing with kids. And nobody wants to see their real estate property decline in value…
- whoisthemachine 1y agoIt already was common.
- throwaway984393 1y ago[dead]
- donatj 1y agoI live just outside Minneapolis. There's an absolute glut right now of largely unoccupied apartments that have sprung up in the last couple years anywhere there was an open lot and many places there wasn't - tearing down a number of historic buildings in the name of cheaply built wooden framed apartments. Well over 100 new buildings in the last five years within a 10 mile radius. Most of them cost more per month to live in than my monthly home payment. I frankly don't understand why someone who could afford to live in them would. The homelessness problem is also visibly the worst it's been in my lifetime. I'm genuinely doubtful the problem is lack of housing alone. The person curled up under the bridge, the person screaming on the corner, they need more than another apartment they still can't afford added to the world. That doesn't help them. No matter how many of these luxury apartment buildings you build, these people can't afford the rent. The owners of the buildings would seemingly rather see them sit at quarter occupancy than lower rents, and it's kind of understandable. We're drowning in unaffordable housing and people are still homeless.
- diet_jerome 1y agoI feel you there with only luxury housing being the only kind of housing being built in many areas. Honestly, a lot of it is damn ugly too. Allowing developers to construct non-luxury housing would help much more than only allowing them to build luxury housing.
- donatj 1y agoI'm not even sure it's entirely a matter of being blocked from doing so as much as the incentives merely not being there. What is the incentive for a developer to build affordable housing? The margins are surely much lower. The city could set rent restrictions on new development and all that, but that removes the incentive for developers to actually build in that area at all, especially when they can just find an unrestricted space to develop a couple miles away in the next town. It's a tough problem.
- hydrogen7800 1y ago>What is the incentive for a developer to build affordable housing? The margins are surely much lower. This makes sense to me, and I hear it all the time, but when was it ever in a builder's interest to make affordable housing? Why does this perverse incentive seem like a recent thing?
- edude03 1y agoI think anyone who has actually been hands on trying to improve the lives of the unhomed know that 1) it’s a gradient between “I get kicked out of x everyday and go back at night” and “I’m sleeping under a bridge” and 2) rarely is it the actual cost of the home that’s the problem. Often it’s mental health / substance abuse / lack of a support system. Heck I think there is enough movies/shows about how people fall through the cracks that if you really cared you could learn about the problems in a fun night at home watching Netflix. So no hate to the author but this feels like pointless political posturing
- thrance 1y agoI very much agree. This is how I feel too in regards to this "abundance liberalism": some people think they can fix the whole country by deregulating zoning laws and tweaking a few numbers. It seems foolish to me. Whatever the solution is, I am convinced it requires (re)building actual social nets and welfare.
- gugagore 1y agoThe post is from 2018, but it's very topical because of "abundance", as you point out. You might be interested in this podcast Bad Faith: Episode 478 - The Abundance Conspiracy (w/ Sandeep Vaheesan, Isabella Weber, & Aaron Regunberg) Episode webpage: https://www.patreon.com/posts/130189560 https://www.patreon.com/posts/130189560
- thrance 1y agoThanks, I'll take a look!
- anon291 1y agoAnd yet milei did basically exactly that in Argentina. Sometimes the need to overcomplicate is itself irrational. Why must the solution involve more than that?
- thrance 1y ago
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- teekert 1y agoMy country has enough homes (in principle, and there is pressure on the system), but we still have homeless people. Maybe in the US it is about building houses, but at some point it isn't anymore. I once wrote this here: [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903859 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25903859
- naasking 1y agoThere should always be a surplus of homes, the point is to get a sufficient surplus in the places that are in demand that this places downward pressure on prices, aka competition.
- sokoloff 1y agoOne question would be how could we create any incentive for someone to build a home in an area that's currently in equilibrium? Starting a new home construction in a location with falling housing prices isn't an obviously winning business strategy.
- naasking 1y agoHouse prices don't fall forever, and as long as selling prices don't fall below cost of construction + margin, there's still incentive to build. There are numerous examples around the US where this is taking place, like Austin.
- ben-schaaf 1y agoYou don't need an incentive, you can just build it. Not everything that's good needs to make money.
- sokoloff 1y agoIndeed. Only if you’re unhappy with the current pace of that does it make sense to examine whether the incentives are correct. Habitat for Humanity is doing great work.
- diet_jerome 1y agoI'd like to advertise deregulating housing construction as a very clear way to help solve desperate housing problems in many countries (such as in the USA). You can check out more about it here https://www.econlib.org/build-baby-build-now-under-construction/ https://www.econlib.org/build-baby-build-now-under-construct...
- johnea 1y agoI'm not sure where you live, maybe that could help in your area. But here in California every state law deregulating real estate development has been abused by developers to build more $2M-$3M houses. This does NOTHING to help homelessness...
- scoofy 1y agoYes it does. Every new home adds supply and lowers the price of homes along the demand curve. Not to mention increasing the tax base to fund public housing.
- sillyfluke 1y agoIs this the real estate version of the "trickle down" theory? You take half the land left in the county for construction and build 5 mil mansions with ridiculous garden acrage instead of more affordable houses. You've now constrained yourself in the number of affordable homes you can build in your county in the future, as land is finite. Maybe you took a few k's off the 10 mil mansions for a short while. Congratulations.
- scoofy 1y agoI don't think building high-end housing will completely solve homelessness, no, but it is a non-trivial improvement especially when it comes to tax revenues that can be used to build public housing. We only build high-end housing in CA because it's wildly expensive to build housing at all. It's especially expensive exactly because the cost of the "affordable" (subsidized) housing that is required for most of these developments has to be passed to the home buyers, not the general public (who should be funding subsidized housing), which means the housing will be wildly expensive regardless. Again, the idea that building "high end" (market rate) housing does nothing is just wrong. It's part of an approach that honestly deals with the problem of public housing funding, as will as market rates. The if we want the market to start producing housing for the middle class (and we should want that), we'll need to make it inexpensive and accessible to build so that normal people can redevelop their homes, we take the delta in property values, and use that money to fund public housing for those people most in need.
- lifestyleguru 1y agoIt's universal problem everywhere where you pay with dollars and euros. The jobs are not where the housing is. Where the jobs exist the housing immediately becomes a turbo investment vehicle. Where there are no jobs the housing is not particularly cheap either. The solution usually is to inherit a real estate or two in desirable location. So we continue ignoring it or everyone are like "I have mine, fuck you"?
- fragmede 1y agoHow about in Singaporean Dollars? The Signapore housing market is centrally organized by the government, so the problem is not universal, it just takes a government not bought by capitalist interests against housing policy for their citizens.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- rich_sasha 1y agoUK has a chronic shortage of houses, as in, if you count the people in the country and how many houses you need, that's a bigger number than what you've got. Building in the UK is also hard. England, which is like 90% of the population, is very densely inhabited. Cities are sprawling, their road and transit infrastructure barely support their current size, never mind bigger population. Plus, with the housing bubble, people who barely could afford their homes in the first place feel understandably terrified of anything that drops these prices down. What the UK did post-WWII and is proposing to do now feels quite bold, but also smart: build new cities. Milton Keynes, for example, was built from scratch. In fact Bletchley, of Bletchley Park fame and now a small suburb, used to be the train stop. It was built from scratch with adequate infrastructure, parks, high and low density zones, schools and fire stations, on land which I can only imagine was much cheaper than the equivalent in London zone 7. It hugged an existing train line so was connected to the rest of the country "for free". Is that a way forward? Bootstrapping whole towns, instead of trying to keep fighting market forces to squeeze more people into existing towns. I'm not saying you force people to live there, or displace the homeless there. No, simply provide a cheaper decent place to live, and people will come.
- papa0101 1y agoThat, and reduce the immigration ffs. Importing a city-sized population (500k+) every year? - Sorry mate, you just won't be able to build a new city every year.
- nikanj 1y agoIn the 1950s the UK was adding about 260k babies per year with a population of about 50 million, or about 0.52% per year Net migration (immigrants - emigrants) in 2024 was about 0.63%. I would hope the productivity advances in the last 75(!) years would allow the Uk to build enough homes for 0.63% growth, when our 1950s tools and technology allowed them to accommodate a 0.52% growth
- yesfitz 1y agoHousing demand caused by births and immigration are different. A baby generally calls for an additional bedroom (easier away from the city), an adult migrant generally calls for their own residence near other migrants (easier in the city). In the past, the population was growing even while net migration was negative. This means people were having babies. This trend reversed in the '80s and migration has made up somewhere between 37% and 128% of annual population growth since then.[1] There'd have to be some incredible innovation to overcome increased regulation around zoning and dwelling construction generally, NIMBYism, financialization of everything, and a preference shift towards living in land-scarce cities (urban population up ~145% since 1950). 1: https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/uk-population...
- throwawaymaths 1y agohow much does san francisco spend per homeless person per year om homeless services?
- delichon 1y agoExcept build more homes ... or limit immigration. 10M British residents, 17% of the population, were born elsewhere. Up 4 million since 2018 when this was written. Whether you think that's good or not they need somewhere to live.
- porridgeraisin 1y agoFor n decades now (the value of n depends on who you ask) most of the money circulating in the system is money made on money, or in general volatile money. In these setups, scarce resources become useful as a "safety net" in various pockets of the economy. Natural resources come under this category. Land too, comes under this category. Ideally you want the only competition for housing land to be multiple humans wishing to live there. The homogenity of human wants and needs will ensure you don't get ridiculously unpredictable outcomes. You will also benefit from network effects. However, BlackRocks use for land is completely different. So many things stop mattering when the land is being pieced up and the risk distributed to a million retirement accounts. Over-financialisation hurts the intended use of scarce resources. Today, no human has the ability to consider it important owning independent personal access to scarce resources such as farmland and water bodies. Similarly, I predict, people will be forced to stop wanting personal housing land. When, is the question.
- sokoloff 1y agoSix generations ago, over 80% of Americans worked in farming. Owning your family's farmland made sense as a means to even out the land you farmed versus the land you owned. As farming industrialized, became more efficient, and food became readily available with less than 2% of Americans working in farming. In that world, the amount of farmland you needed to personally own to offset the amount you personally farmed was zero. Will the same happen for housing? Everyone starts out naturally "short" one unit of housing. To gain housing, you can rent or buy it. Buying it puts you "even" in the same way as above: your ownership and your usage is in balance. I don't see the factor that would cause people to stop wanting personal housing land.
- grugagag 1y agoThere’s a disturbing trend of people living im their car who have a job or more and who aren’t doing drugs or have a serious mental ilness aside from the anxiety from the lifestyle of living in their cars. Youtube is full of interviews of these people.
- paulnpace 1y agoCame here to say exactly this. People living in their cars is a kind of shadow population that is almost impossible to count. I lived in a small-ish town with literally a handful of the type of homelessness we normally think of, yet at least once per month I would see someone getting gas that was clearly living in their car, and this was at a really cheap gas station nowhere near the interstate, so it was locals who knew where to get gas.
- Tangurena2 1y agoLast year, in my state, the legislature outlawed being homeless by defining it as the crime of "unlawful camping" [0]. It allows for sleeping in your car if and only if the registration and insurance are current AND you move the car every 12 hours. You can also use violence to defend your property against "unlawful campers" and/or squatters and/or people whose lease/rental period has expired. 0 - https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/24rs/hb5.html https://apps.legislature.ky.gov/record/24rs/hb5.html the 2024 "crime bill".
- grugagag 1y agoI wonder if that unlawful camping legislature can be fought back as it can’t be considered camping if you have no other residence. And camping is by definition outside urban areas… I understand not wanting junkies around but criminalising some poor folks who fell on hard life is just senseless.
- meansob 1y ago[flagged]
- bitlax 1y agoI don't live in a slum, smokie.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- absurdo 1y ago> https://www.mcsweeneys.net/authors/homa-mojtabai https://www.mcsweeneys.net/authors/homa-mojtabai Sweetheart, I don’t expect you to pick up a hammer and some nails nevermind build a home.
- datavirtue 1y agoThis is like a 4chan post.
- meansob 1y ago[dead]
- meansob 1y agoIt's insane. I'm seeing this even I'm straight up ghettos. No evictions/perfect credit/income 3X rent/first+last+deposit All to live in a place I'd need to buy a gun for a security. This is in a small Midwestern city. Someone ran down, but overall maybe only a little worse than other small cities I've lived. I've been trying to find a place for over a year now. I don't have the credit, but have the income. My gf has the credit but not the income. We're basically pariahs.
- casey2 1y agoI never understood these posts as if the average homeowner has any power at all over zoning laws. You are just scapegoating the people who show up to townhalls and the hypothetical voter that will vote out politicians who lower property values. In reality it's always the fault of the politician who refuses to make necessary change because it will hurt their personal career. This entire article reeks of christian self flagellation.
- tacticalturtle 1y agoIn Massachusetts it’s the voters themselves to blame. Massachusetts passed a law mandating upzoning in communities well served by public transit: https://www.mass.gov/info-details/multi-family-zoning-requirement-for-mbta-communities https://www.mass.gov/info-details/multi-family-zoning-requir... And town voters in certain communities have instead consistently voted down plans to move into compliance, and instead choose to endlessly sue the state to delay it: https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/03/27/timeline-these-mass-towns-sued-the-state-over-mbta-communities-act/ https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/03/27/timeline-t... These voters aren’t hypothetical scapegoats - they’re real.
- anovikov 1y agoIn a democratic society, it is natural that building new houses becomes incredibly hard once a bit more than 50% of voters are happy with their housing situation. In a way, it may be a sign of democratic backslide when housing is still built in large quantities then: capitalism (developers' profits) trumps democracy (people wishing to keep and increase value of their homes).
- Kon5ole 1y agoI think the article is satirizing a strawman. Most of the people being ridiculed are not homeowners looking down their nose at the homeless, they are basically renting from the banks and chained to mortgages. They will become homeless themselves if the value of housing drops too far from what they borrowed. It will also have ripple effects in the form of banks going under, retirement funds being depleted, and the economy as a whole tanking. If homes become cheaper too quickly the result will be a lot more homeless, not fewer. In short, there are very valid non-selfish reasons why people, corporations and politicians don't want to make homes lose value too quickly. It's not malice against the homeless. This is a systematic problem in many western nations and it doesn't have a simple solution.
- PicassoCTs 1y agoThis is one of the reasons, why climate-change risks can not be priced into home prices. Take europe- after several instances, homes in mountanous regions and near small rivers/springs are to be expected to be regularly destroyed or damaged with high statistically likelihood. Examples abound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_European_floods Now, if the risk was assessed reasonable, the risk would be priced into the housing in those regions and industrial activities in these regions. Austria, germany and some other regions would see significant drops in value. Same goes for florida and california, with forrest fires and hurricanes. The market can not be rational, if your lifelihood and pension depends on it.
- vondur 1y agoThe homeless in the US that you see living in tents and underpasses etc. are the mentally ill, and the chronically drug addicted or a combination of both. Those people aren't going to be helped by building new housing. They need treatment and probably will need to be forced into assisted living accommodations. We definitely need to build more housing in most cities, but most of the governments in these areas make it difficult to do so. Once the baby boomers start dying off, we should see more housing hitting the market...
- johnea 1y agoCity of San Diego added over 9000 units last year, homelessness increased 8-/ When a shiny new 2 bedroom apartment is priced at $4200/month, it isn't going to do ANYTHING to resolve homelessness. Outlaw AirBnB! Outlaw empty "investment" properties. There are a lot of things that could actually help. Empowering the California real estate mafia won't do anything for anyone here except the developers.
- scoofy 1y agoI mean vacancy taxes will help, but the only reason why “investment properties” even exist is because of the intentional, artificial housing shortage. Houses are deteriorating assets that only gain their wealth because of the land value appreciation. If you can just build new housing, there is no reason to hoard the existing housing, because your neighbors might try and capture that value before you can.