How Big of a Deal is Blackrock/Wall Street Buying Homes?

[margaretBartle]

Originally Posted by ocnjgirl

You need to look more closely at the people inhabiting those tent cities.

I live in a part of town that has had tent citiers for years. Everyone I see in those tent cities, and living in the RVs parked adjacent to them speaks like a native-born American, and almost all of them are white.



Go to the subsidized housing in this city (or the county). The residents are almost all immigrants, documented or not. The only white people you will find are speaking Slavic or Balkan languages.



In one of the street clean-ups our neighborhood does, I chatted with the young couple who managed the Salvation Army apartments in my nieghborhood. It has probably close to 100 units - it's four or five stories tall. EVERYONE of their residents were Russian or Chinese. (And of course, none of them were out helping witht the street clean-up)

[margaretBartle]

Originally Posted by ocnjgirl

I’m confused, how does that help the homeless problem? One of the biggest causes of homeless in some cities is due to real estate values that skyrocketed, to the point there is no longer affordable homes in a lot of areas.

What do you mean by "skyrocket"


A low-end studio apartment goes from $800/mo to $1200/month?


Subsidizing poor people the $400/mo would be way cheaper than spending the hundreds of millions, if not billions, they are talking about spending for a few thousand units.


One thing we have to keep in mind is that these homeless people, by-and-large, are fairly useless people who have burned all their bridges, family members and friends.


If I were for some reason not receiving any income, I would have a network of friends and family I could go to trade work for a couch to sleep on.


I think that's true of most people beyond their early 20s.


Kids just geting out of foster care are a big exception, but after five or ten years, they should have learned to make themselves useful.


Rents are really high in much of the world, much higher than here. People just live in more crowded situations. There's no reason each person needs to have their own private toilet, sink, oven, stove. Really, even just requiring each person to have their own private bedroom is a priviledged, first-world whine.



Futons were created in Japan because people not only didn't have their own bedroom, they didn't even have their own bed. There wasn't room enough for beds - they unrolled their mattresses out in the kitchen.


I remember reading an article in the 80s about why American manufacturers could not sell in Japan, because they did not understand Japanese culture. The noisy refrigerator disturbing people sleeping on futons in the kitchen was an example.


Skyrocketing real estate prices is just an excuse. Setting up a tent on a parking strip and pooping on the sidewalk is not the only recourse these people have.

[FindingHomeATL]

Originally Posted by margaretBartle

One thing we have to keep in mind is that these homeless people, by-and-large, are fairly useless people who have burned all their bridges, family members and friends.


If I were for some reason not receiving any income, I would have a network of friends and family I could go to trade work for a couch to sleep on.

Also known as being "down and out." There will always be people who are "useless" to society. We can't all be winners. Unfortunately, the U.S. is currently a "winners take all" society with the attitude that the losers can go rot in hell. A developed country should be doing more to take care of those on the margins, but that's not the path we as a nation have chosen.

[Heidi60]

Originally Posted by ocnjgirl

The same is true of the prison industrial complex, the elder care industrial complex, health care etc, foster system etc. The fact is falling on hard times is profitable for a lot of people. So what’s your solution? Let the homeless survive or die like Calcutta?

Again, a great imagination, I never said anything about elder care, health care, foster system or calcutta.

If you could read the link I provided, it is a roadmap on where to go from here. Give it a try.