One of the traps that the nation has gotten into is seeing your house as your principle form of investment, This incentivizes keeping housing scarce so housing prices go up. Thus there is always a lot of pushback to the idea of building low-cost housing. Such housing reduces the pressure on home prices, destroying the value in the houses that the already housed enjoys.
I actually cringe when values go up, because then my taxes go up as well. I have a house because I need a place to live and it was cheaper to buy a house than it was to rent. I don't think I'm alone in having a house for shelter rather than an investment.
I read somewhere once that most cities could not have developed they way they did under current zoning laws in that current laws actively opposed densification of housing. Elsewhere I read that there were lots of housing possibilities a century ago, which have since been banned or gone out of fashion. Things like tenements, boarding houses, people renting out a room in their house and SRO -- single room occupancy. Considering that IKEA has design ideas for rooms of 360 sq. ft. (12' x 30') it ought to be easy to build a 12 unit tiny apt. building on a standard city lot. 4 units wide and 3 stories tall. Dot the city with a bunch of those and now you have affordable housing.
Thank you for this story, Dok. Missouri is such a clusterfuck of wealth inequality, with men in business suits passing laws to criminalize poverty. My all-time favorite article is this one from the Salem newspaper, describing what homelessness is actually like for folks in the rural Ozarks. No warming shelters or soup kitchens here.
"Struggling with poverty: In Dent County and the Ozarks, another world exists"
Utah (of all places) got good results in the early 2000s just providing housing with no strings attached, e.g., piss tests, etc. A large percentage cleaned up, got jobs, and were soon paying into the system.
In the small Oregon city where I live, homelessness is pretty visible in some parts of town. They camp in the bicycle underpasses (camp fires and at one juncture a whole living-room couch), which at times has made my bicycle commute difficult. I see them walking the bikepaths raving and screaming, and at those moments I think, maybe drastic measures of some kind makes sense.
But that is an emotional reaction, arising from my own injured sense of convenience, a real thing, but maybe it pales next to living in an underpass. Such measures would not solve the issues these folk have, and not all those issues are addiction-related. We need to deal with those issues as the people suffering under them cannot do it themselves, or maybe better put, we need to help them to the point where thy can deal with their own issues in a way which is positive for them and positive for society as well.
I can never keep this straight: Would it be the regular illegal form of terrorism to suggest the beneficence of targeted bad consequences to the people who lead or advocate these Christian Cruelty programs or would that be the constitutionally protected freeze peach form of stochastic terrorism?
It does not seem all that counterintuitive, but I guess the GOP would have to have intuition in the first place for that anyway.
Housing first sounds good, but cannot stop there. I am a special ed guy and a big fan of wrap-around services. When we get a kid at our school who is homeless, whether on their own or with family, my high school acts as a conduit for a variety of services, including connecting the kid and family with housing, we have a well stocked food pantry, and we help them get employment.
A problem with this is we are a school, and while our mission is adjacent, we are not set up as a social service organization. That means that, while our compassion is in the right place, we are not perhaps the most efficient delivery system for such services. I have no problem with my district standing in the gap, but it should be noted, there is a big ol' gap.
I agree 100 percent. Wrap around services are almost always needed for the household to attain sustainability in their housing (which is increasingly difficult for everyone of course!).
We always stress that it's Housing First but not Housing ONLY. Different levels of service for different levels of needs - but wrap around services at the level that's needed are absolutely critical.
We work a lot with our school district with kids whose households are eligible for our services. It's awesome that your school is looking out for your homeless and at risk students.
Super appreciate, for a lot of reasons, you working with special ed kids!
Absolutely evil, and/or amoral (the result is the same), but I wouldn’t call them stupid. They don’t actually care if their alternatives work or not; that’s irrelevant. They know exactly what buttons to push with their ignorant base to get and stay in power, which is the be-all and end-all of their existence.
Agree that they don't care and are just pandering to their ignorant base...
I was thinking of stupid in the sense of seeing this problem and supporting things that will only make it worse.
My local businesses, overwhelmed by our homeless situation, count many who are likely supportive of these punitive policies that only create more homelessness rather than policies that help the unhoused contribute to the local economy.
Here, Dok, an op-ed from this morning on asking AIs to solve San Francisco's drug problem. I see it checking at least two of your boxes--plus it also has answers the Cicero Foundation would hate.
"... Jesus said, the hungry and thirsty must be taught a lesson about personal responsibility, the naked must be jailed for indecent exposure, and the stranger must be put on a bus for a liberal city on the coast..."
May their kas ride an overflowing bus for millions of years.
One of the traps that the nation has gotten into is seeing your house as your principle form of investment, This incentivizes keeping housing scarce so housing prices go up. Thus there is always a lot of pushback to the idea of building low-cost housing. Such housing reduces the pressure on home prices, destroying the value in the houses that the already housed enjoys.
I actually cringe when values go up, because then my taxes go up as well. I have a house because I need a place to live and it was cheaper to buy a house than it was to rent. I don't think I'm alone in having a house for shelter rather than an investment.
I read somewhere once that most cities could not have developed they way they did under current zoning laws in that current laws actively opposed densification of housing. Elsewhere I read that there were lots of housing possibilities a century ago, which have since been banned or gone out of fashion. Things like tenements, boarding houses, people renting out a room in their house and SRO -- single room occupancy. Considering that IKEA has design ideas for rooms of 360 sq. ft. (12' x 30') it ought to be easy to build a 12 unit tiny apt. building on a standard city lot. 4 units wide and 3 stories tall. Dot the city with a bunch of those and now you have affordable housing.
Thank you for this story, Dok. Missouri is such a clusterfuck of wealth inequality, with men in business suits passing laws to criminalize poverty. My all-time favorite article is this one from the Salem newspaper, describing what homelessness is actually like for folks in the rural Ozarks. No warming shelters or soup kitchens here.
"Struggling with poverty: In Dent County and the Ozarks, another world exists"
https://www.thesalemnewsonline.com/news/article_f023a66e-b130-11e4-89a6-e730be7ec6de.html
Utah (of all places) got good results in the early 2000s just providing housing with no strings attached, e.g., piss tests, etc. A large percentage cleaned up, got jobs, and were soon paying into the system.
The Republicans shut it down.
In the small Oregon city where I live, homelessness is pretty visible in some parts of town. They camp in the bicycle underpasses (camp fires and at one juncture a whole living-room couch), which at times has made my bicycle commute difficult. I see them walking the bikepaths raving and screaming, and at those moments I think, maybe drastic measures of some kind makes sense.
But that is an emotional reaction, arising from my own injured sense of convenience, a real thing, but maybe it pales next to living in an underpass. Such measures would not solve the issues these folk have, and not all those issues are addiction-related. We need to deal with those issues as the people suffering under them cannot do it themselves, or maybe better put, we need to help them to the point where thy can deal with their own issues in a way which is positive for them and positive for society as well.
I can never keep this straight: Would it be the regular illegal form of terrorism to suggest the beneficence of targeted bad consequences to the people who lead or advocate these Christian Cruelty programs or would that be the constitutionally protected freeze peach form of stochastic terrorism?
Law is hard.
I've been running a housing first program for over a decade, and it fucking works!
The folks opposed to this are just evil...and really, really stupid.
It does not seem all that counterintuitive, but I guess the GOP would have to have intuition in the first place for that anyway.
Housing first sounds good, but cannot stop there. I am a special ed guy and a big fan of wrap-around services. When we get a kid at our school who is homeless, whether on their own or with family, my high school acts as a conduit for a variety of services, including connecting the kid and family with housing, we have a well stocked food pantry, and we help them get employment.
A problem with this is we are a school, and while our mission is adjacent, we are not set up as a social service organization. That means that, while our compassion is in the right place, we are not perhaps the most efficient delivery system for such services. I have no problem with my district standing in the gap, but it should be noted, there is a big ol' gap.
I agree 100 percent. Wrap around services are almost always needed for the household to attain sustainability in their housing (which is increasingly difficult for everyone of course!).
We always stress that it's Housing First but not Housing ONLY. Different levels of service for different levels of needs - but wrap around services at the level that's needed are absolutely critical.
We work a lot with our school district with kids whose households are eligible for our services. It's awesome that your school is looking out for your homeless and at risk students.
Super appreciate, for a lot of reasons, you working with special ed kids!
Absolutely evil, and/or amoral (the result is the same), but I wouldn’t call them stupid. They don’t actually care if their alternatives work or not; that’s irrelevant. They know exactly what buttons to push with their ignorant base to get and stay in power, which is the be-all and end-all of their existence.
Agree that they don't care and are just pandering to their ignorant base...
I was thinking of stupid in the sense of seeing this problem and supporting things that will only make it worse.
My local businesses, overwhelmed by our homeless situation, count many who are likely supportive of these punitive policies that only create more homelessness rather than policies that help the unhoused contribute to the local economy.
Thank you.
Good for you, we need more like you to deal with the problem humanely.
Cruelty is always the point. It's why PAB is leading in the GOP race.
I'm surprised no one has just said what they all think (about the homeless): JUST DIE ALREADY.
I say that every day about PAB.
As always with these fascist motherfuckers, the cruelty is the point.
Ta, Dok. FFS, the cruelty really is the point.
If only they were christians.
We could send them all far away on a murderous crusade?
It’s just like Republican Jesus said in the Bible, “Oh, you’re hungry and have no place to sleep at night? We’ll go fucketh thyself”.
Then he invented the "Fish Slapping Dance."
Here, Dok, an op-ed from this morning on asking AIs to solve San Francisco's drug problem. I see it checking at least two of your boxes--plus it also has answers the Cicero Foundation would hate.
https://www.pressreader.com/usa/san-francisco-chronicle-late-edition/20240102/281762749082129
Do you suppose they call it that because they are pro-slavery? Do you think that someone will stick hairpins in their tongues? So many questions...
Working on making the Bell riots a reality, I see.
"... Jesus said, the hungry and thirsty must be taught a lesson about personal responsibility, the naked must be jailed for indecent exposure, and the stranger must be put on a bus for a liberal city on the coast..."
May their kas ride an overflowing bus for millions of years.
Heh, I read "kas" as "karass,"* that would have worked too.
*Kurt Vonnegut, "Cat's Cradle"
https://i.imgflip.com/2qx3mn.jpg