I'm much more to the left than the right. But I would still say that "charitable housing" and "affordable housing" are terrible solutions to the housing crisis.
It's better to just allow anyone to build housing that's safe and healthy. Especially, housing for drug addicts or the abused sounds great except it puts people in a weird situation - what happens if they stop being in that category? What happens when the only housing available is for drug addicts and you just happen to be poor?
> what happens if they stop being in that category? What happens when the only housing available is for drug addicts and you just happen to be poor?
I agree with your general sentiment that we should build more, but having housing dedicated to those who are having issues (drugs, mental issues, etc) can help break a cycle that may not be broken with simply having more affordable housing. There have been several initiatives that have shown that we can save money on homeless people by simply giving them a place to live for free, and a lot of the benefit comes down to the fact that being homeless exacerbates their issues, the costs of which fall on tax payers anyway.
In some sense, I actually agree with you. But I would like to see the US set a national goal of finding some way to foster the creation of enough low cost, market based housing to house 2 percent of the population.
I don't want it to be poverty housing or The Projects or a Ghetto. I think there are big problems with that. But cost matters and I think we need to find an elegant solution that does this as a market based solution.
It's a hard problem to solve. I am still thinking on it, so I feel this comment is kind of half baked. But, yeah, there are inherent problems with providing people benefits based on having X problem. It tends to entrench that problem and penalize people who are poor for other reasons.
Here in the UK a few years ago, it was popular to increase housing supply through "cutting red tape" [1] i.e. deregulating.
Then there was a tower block fire where 71 people died [2] - most of them poor, where it's widely believed the death toll would have been much lower were regulations stricter and better enforced.
As you can imagine, deregulating building safety is no longer an idea politicians are eager to put their name to.
Presumably fire safety (I believe it was specifically combustible cladding?) would be one of the "core" regulations not relaxed. Along with similar immediate public health.
I'm not sure how to ask this, but can you give some specifics? Zoning codes vary from place to place. Do you have some sources for how to actually do this?
That's a rather broad suggestion and I feel like it gives me nothing to latch onto. Pretend I'm your mayor. What, specifically, do I need to keep and what, specifically, can I relax?
I am not an architect, although that was a portion of my university work. So I'll give you an unfulfilling answer.
Because codes are arbitrary, and vary from administrative area to area, I'd suggest working by pilot.
Caveat: I'm talking about building codes here. In many places, FAR (floor area ratio) / density / zero lot line zoning codes may be a larger obstacle to generating good, cheap housing.
Design a project that attempts to provide low-cost, safe, bare minimum housing. Then start the approval process. Empower a panel to take notes on what happens and make recommendations on waivers for each issue. And optimize for cost -- including approval time!
Then bring those back to your (the mayor's) desk, and if needed, back to the local populace.
It seems a fair bargain to me: in exchange for quality, cheaper housing (a social good), government agrees to relax less important codes which drive up costs (allowing the developer / builder to make a profit on such housing).
[Soapbox] Part of the issue with deregulation is that it's often done in a top-down, political way (by necessity).
When in reality, the deregulation that matters is infinitely nuanced (e.g. "The local water board wrote a requirement for not more than 20° bends in drainage systems, but by upsizing pipes or using catch basins, the same flow could run up to 70° bends.")
And the only way these things are recognized is through actual projects (e.g. Mr. Steve's).
I think the biggest trick is to actually get the "safe and healthy" regulations right, particularly when it comes to ongoing enforcement. There are cities where known unsafe apartment buildings just decay for years because there's no political will to hold the landlords accountable (unsurprisingly, tenants of these buildings tend to be poor and socially marginalized people).
There's also an issue (perhaps encompassing the above) of attracting real estate developers without selling out local government to them. As far as I can tell, they will fight tooth-and-nail for every regulatory concession, tax incentive and taxpayer infrastructure dollar they can possibly get, to the point of funding their buddies' campaigns for mayor/council. I doubt that there's any regulatory regime that's favorable enough to avoid this fight; it's not a matter of giving them enough, it's a matter of what they think they can extract.
Part of that is often rent control, which as a price ceiling directly causes quality drops beyond what people are generally willing to tolerate in exchange for a discount.
Even if rent control raises the risk, it's far from a requirement. These things also happen in cities whose state governments have banned rent control.
That latter case has been an issue. Poor people mixed in with people who have drugs and other issues should not be mixed together, specially poor families -ie kids exposed to all that comes with substance abuse.
An interesting thing I noticed while traveling in Central America is that in the poorest of the poor places on earth, there is no such thing as homelessness really. Anybody can just build a shack anywhere and have some amount of shelter and a place to call home. It’s not what you would call a ‘home’ in the us, but it’s more dignified that sleeping on a street corner in LA.
In lots of places, the poor have a right to exchange comfort, safety, dignity, etc. for other things they value more. In USA, they don't have that right. The artificial constraints that we all face to some extent, hit the poor the hardest.
> what happens if they stop being in that category
Simple: help them to find better, long term housing. Or, other forms of specialized housing.
Let's take the drug addiction example: homeless persons with drug problems can be best helped by first providing them with no-strings-attached, no-conditions housing to get them off the street and into the access of the care system, then once they're back on their feet again get them to addiction treatment and then into ordinary streetworker care. The point is, people in different conditions need different environments - and different care.
I have had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy through SFSU. As shocking as it seems to be to many people, lack of affordable housing* actually promotes homelessness.
* For clarity's sake, I mean that as literally as possible: lack of housing with a low enough cost, not lack of government sponsored etc housing. Adding this because it has come up on HN in the past as an issue.
I like what Rick Steves is doing. His initial approach targeted a specific demographic serviced by a specific charity and it seems like this model is working. That specific demographic -- single moms going through the YWCA most likely is also targeting local people needing help.
Having lived in Santa Cruz for 27+ years, it's a compassionate community on the coast and is very expensive to live in. It also has exacerbated levels of homelessness, crime, and drug issues not experienced by other cities in the county (to the same degree) -- it doesn't know when to say "no". It has become a destination for the homeless, those wanting to live by their own rules, and those seeking to getaway -- some even claim people are put on a bus in other communities to get out of town and go to Santa Cruz.
Highlighted are someone homeless for 20+ years not from Santa Cruz but living there and one recently from Ohio. The city recently set up a "camp" near the river in town. The first OD death in the camp (there have been two) was someone recently from out of the area.
My point? Homelessness and mental illness and drug issues are problems. However, tolerant attitudes like those in Santa Cruz attract people from out of area that make it next to impossible to actually deal with the shear numbers. Yet, local compassionate policies refuse to try and handle the obvious problem -- you can't help everyone. A city of 60k can only do so much.
This is an issue that needs to be solved regionally. While people are free to move about, every community should not be obligated to put the needs of the newly arrived ahead of those who have been facing challenges locally.
However, tolerant attitudes like those in Santa Cruz attract people from out of area that make it next to impossible to actually deal with the shear numbers.
There are no cities "tolerant of homelessness" though there may be cities less tolerant than others.
If you think that tolerance is a source of the problem, do you imagine an intolerance race as the solution? I mean, as far as I can tell, the intolerance race is already happening and it's only making America more awful all around. Constant police harassment is the norm as a means of dealing with homelessness nearly everywhere - given that it's essentially illegal to live without a home in the US.
And even with an intolerance race, cities with nice weather are going to be at a disadvantage. If no cities offer services, it's still nicer to be rousted from the side of the road at 3:00 am from a place with nice weather and pleasant views.
So, instead of viscous, mean-spirit carping, perhaps we could think about how to actually solve this problem.
Tolerance:
- camping ban lifted
- “petty” crimes often not even given a citation — most property crimes
- bike theft not even investigated — police need to witness
- drug crimes not cited
- parking violations not cited if vehicle known to be a homeless person
- city sanctioned Camp was supposed to have rules, instead people shoot up and other things with no ramifications
In a sense the city has set up a two tier system of enforcement - cite those that can pay, don’t for those that can’t unless the crime is violent. This includes bail levels for the same crime, most drugged out tweakers are caught and released where a working stiff will have a hefty bail amount to deal with.
The problem can be more easily solved by helping those who are local and sending those who aren’t back to where they are from (or a system to charge the originating towns).
The problem can be more easily solved by helping those who are local and sending those who aren’t back to where they are from (or a system to charge the originating towns).
Really? How would sending them back work? Establish an "internal passport" system for the US so immigration from Iowa to California would perhaps require someone to provide address to the proper authorities? They have a system like that in China.
And yeah, there is a reason people don't want to be homeless in Iowa in the winter.
Edit: and yeah, what you describe is so much "tolerance" as what happens when the legal system can't afford to jail every single homeless person. So really, you sort of need to actually solve the problem which indeed can't be just put on local governments.
My point? Homelessness and mental illness and drug issues are problems. However, tolerant attitudes like those in Santa Cruz attract people from out of area that make it next to impossible to actually deal with the shear numbers. Yet, local compassionate policies refuse to try and handle the obvious problem -- you can't help everyone. A city of 60k can only do so much.
Hawaii is another place that has exploding homeless problem. Another place with compassionate policies and warm weather.
"During this time, they'll charge a small rent to its clients who stay in Trinity Place in order to have a budget covering taxes, insurance, utilities, and general maintenance."
Its basically the charity version of Section 8 Housing where people pay the minimum needed to maintain the property.
It's better to just allow anyone to build housing that's safe and healthy. Especially, housing for drug addicts or the abused sounds great except it puts people in a weird situation - what happens if they stop being in that category? What happens when the only housing available is for drug addicts and you just happen to be poor?