California homelessness? (San Francisco: insurance, loans, unemployment rate)

[citizensadvocate]

If you see my post a number of Asian cities have even larger affordability gap between incomes and real estate than major California cities. But their homeless numbers are very low.

I am not sure about SF Bay Area but in places I been to including San Jose and SoCal they keep building million-dollar condos and houses when our road infrastructure is overwhelmed and there is no viable transit for people who need to run errands in such spread out cities, now they want to reduce parking and road budgets despite adding more cars. People would need jumbo loans to afford these and thus they become house poor and may be dangerous if they become financially insecure in the future.

[2sleepy]

Originally Posted by citizensadvocate

If you see my post a number of Asian cities have even larger affordability gap between incomes and real estate than major California cities. But their homeless numbers are very low.

I am not sure about SF Bay Area but in places I been to including San Jose and SoCal they keep building million-dollar condos and houses when our road infrastructure is overwhelmed and there is no viable transit for people who need to run errands in such spread out cities, now they want to reduce parking and road budgets despite adding more cars. People would need jumbo loans to afford these and thus they become house poor and may be dangerous if they become financially insecure in the future.

How would you go about stopping developers from building expensive housing? That's really pushing the idea of government control. How would you like it if you were a builder and the government told you you can only build cheap apartments?

[Thekdog]

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

How would you go about stopping developers from building expensive housing? That's really pushing the idea of government control. How would you like it if you were a builder and the government told you you can only build cheap apartments?

Developers build as cheaply as possible. They're expensive because of California rules.

[artillery77]

Originally Posted by CA4Now

That was pretty much the case everywhere then.

A few years ago, a team of economists at Zillow found that once cities cross a threshold where the typical resident must spend more than a third of their income on housing, homelessness begins to spike rapidly. When incomes don't keep pace with the cost of rent, a cascade effect ripples through the housing market: High-income folks start renting places that middle-income folks used to rent, middle-income people start renting places that low-income folks used to rent, and low-income folks are left scrambling.

"It's sort of a game of musical chairs," Roman says. "And people who have a strike against them — because they have mental illness or a substance abuse disorder or a disability — are the least likely to get the chair."

Homelessness wasn't always this bad. "In the 1970s, there was an adequate supply of affordable units for every low-income household that needed one — and we really didn't have homelessness," says Nan Roman, president of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

By the 1980s, homelessness emerged as a chronic issue. There were many factors, including the federal government deciding to slash the budget for affordable housing. By then the California state government had significantly cut taxes and gutted social programs, including for state-funded mental institutions, resulting in thousands of people with mental illnesses and other difficulties struggling to make it on their own.

Yet the core reason for the crisis boils down to supply and demand for housing.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...essness-crisis

At one point in time, the country was enthralled with the idea of building large scale development project homes so everyone could have a place to live. The dirty little secret if you talk to the oldest generations is that at first....it worked.



Certainly what happened can be debated on, but you had a big enough mix of people. Old people, young people, all origins that needed a cheap place to stay that they weren't poor places, they were simply with the present poor. However, as the ones that were simply new or young moved up in life, they had (and maybe wanted) to leave. The expectation was that these projects would be there when you were down and out, you'd live there while you got your life together, and then you'd move on.


I still remember being a little surprised the first time I heard a respectable teacher tell me he had lived in what became the notorious Cabrini Green when it opened, and he said it was a nice, if spartan, place to live.



When you talk about families going homeless, this is what they need. But they need to be separated from the criminals.



If new projects were started, and at the end of say 4 or 5 years people haven't moved on, that's what would warrant a closer look. Are there medical issues going unaddressed. Is this a criminal element that threatens the entire area. But who wants to do that?


By the time I became of age, the City was begging our firm to go through Cabrini and audit repair bills. Nobody would go there. Not our firm nor any others. It had gone too far to the criminal element and eventually it had to be torn down. This is why there's legitimate opposition in NIMBYism on these matters....let the government start something on a small scale and show it will stick around and effectively maintain it and you won't have the problems. While working through medical clients in Chicago I was stunned by how well some State institutions perfectly blended in with their neighborhoods to no ill effect. People didn't even know.



I think the housing costs certainly exacerbate this problem. With income inequality so stark in the area, there's a very good chance the first tenants in any housing set aside would be for the social workers themselves. Accepting the situation at hand, the only real solution is going to be some form of a move to a lower COL area for some, while the City/County tries various scatter site projects to find a winning proposal otherwise. My guess is there will not be a works in all cases blueprint, and will instead be a temporary solution for small numbers. However, if those blueprints are made available, there may be much greater success in having the government organize resources available in the community to help get people up and out successfully in the high COL areas, and have more permanent and supervised forever solutions for those that will never actually be able to be independent in lower COL areas.

[Thekdog]

The rent is too high because government botched it. Now Los Angeles has over 14,000 people living in their cars

[JGC97]

Originally Posted by Thekdog

The rent is too high because government botched it. Now Los Angeles has over 14,000 people living in their cars

True and these are the people who are still working at jobs. They just can't afford the rent. I believe it's going to get worse, too. How long has this been going on and they still haven't come up with answers.

[citizensadvocate]

Still no one can or care to answer why Asian countries despite an even more serious housing cost vs income gap have very low homeless and keep repeating the same thing over and over. Unlike in the US where people have more choices where they can move to or seek employment those in that part of the world are truly stuck unless they emigrate. I.e if you are in densely populated Japan, Korea, or Singapore where can you go? Even for those in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan while they have more choices there are more policy limits on where one can go as well. But I heard they do have good government housing and in some cultures a very strong family bond who don't let fellow members fall into such a bad state. Whereas in the US people are much more individualistic.

Originally Posted by 2sleepy

How would you go about stopping developers from building expensive housing? That's really pushing the idea of government control. How would you like it if you were a builder and the government told you you can only build cheap apartments?

Originally Posted by Thekdog

Developers build as cheaply as possible. They're expensive because of California rules.

Thats a weak argument, developers can only can build whats permitted by the government both state and local they need approval, permits, and EIRs to do so.**
And NIMBYistts often block project or low income government housing for years. Now the state, realizing NIMBYism and all those environmental rules on development were driving costs up, is now going for a panic build-your-way-out-of-crisis mode coercing cities to mass approve residential developments of all types regardless of whether our infrastructure ie road, parking, water, power, etc can take it. And of course developers given the green light to build are going to build housing that generates the most profit for them at very low actual quality though just look fancy. Low income housing would be a money pit for developers and governments don't like them either as they don't generate*much*tax revenue. Hence also why they all come with expensive HOAs and mandatory to have an HOA with them as well as the city governments don't want to deal with extra maintenance costs associated with new development. The HOA monthly fees themselves of such homes are already beyond affordability for many low income people and in some communities almost as high as paying rent. Their rules are often very unfriendly towards people in the position to struggle to make a living, as they want their community to cater better to retirees and higher-class salarymen. This approach by the state is kind of like building one more lane to alleviate traffic while there are bottlenecks a few miles down the road that remains narrow which is exactly whats happening to our infrastructure.*
There is nothing more infuriating than seeing boutique towers built next to homeless encampments downtown and that would add severe traffic and parking congestion as transit is pretty much useless for many residents who practically cannot replace driving for many errands that are spread out.*
But the real question is what keeps driving people to move into CA of any social*economic status or ethnicity. The caravan could reach Texas sooner than CA why not enter from there? I hear is CA has better immigration lawyers which make it easier to be granted aslyum?

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by artillery77

I still remember being a little surprised the first time I heard a respectable teacher tell me he had lived in what became the notorious Cabrini Green when it opened, and he said it was a nice, if spartan, place to live.

When you talk about families going homeless, this is what they need. But they need to be separated from the criminals...

I had to look this up; didn't realize it was in Chicago. Interesting. https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news...green-history/

[CA4Now]

Originally Posted by citizensadvocate

And of course developers given the green light to build are going to build housing that generates the most profit for them at very low actual quality though just look fancy. Low income housing would be a money pit for developers and governments don't like them either as they don't generate*much*tax revenue.

There is nothing more infuriating than seeing boutique towers built next to homeless encampments downtown and that would add severe traffic and parking congestion as transit is pretty much useless for many residents...

I agree that it's infuriating.

[eastcoastbias]

I think it’s easier to provide housing options to individuals and families that are of sound mind and not strung out on drugs. There is no reason why we can’t or shouldn’t help these folks immediately. Problem we have…a growing number of homeless are not of sound mind and thus it is not easy herding these folks into any sustainable housing option. We think housing but we also need an abundance of mental health care professionals before we think about housing and jobs. That’s showing some compassion for the scenarios but we need a firm approach to getting these folks the help they need