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I'm assuming that we are both talking about the same "Sun Valley trailer park" in Nevada. When I lived in Reno there were a lot of mobile homes in the "Sun Valley" area north of Reno, but they weren't cheap...I thought maybe they might be selling for less but the site I found has 25 trailers for sale with the cheapest priced at $180,000 and the most expensive $409,000. There is one rental available for $1250 and the highest is $2700 (data from RealEstate.com) I'm not sure how a homeless elderly person could afford that.
We are indeed talking about the same trailer park, but I was talking about the size of it, while you were talking about the price of trailers in it. A trailer park of that size doesn't have to contain trailers of that price. I was making a point that it is possible to construct trailer villages of that size. A new single-wide trailer costs $51k on average in the US. To give such a trailer to each of the 40,000 homeless seniors in the US, it would cost about $2 billion. FYI, that is only a little over twice the amount which the City of San Francisco collects from taxpayers and allegedly applies to homeless and affordable housing services in ONE YEAR, every year, year after year.
We are indeed talking about the same trailer park, but I was talking about the size of it, while you were talking about the price of trailers in it. A trailer park of that size doesn't have to contain trailers of that price. I was making a point that it is possible to construct trailer villages of that size. A new single-wide trailer costs $51k on average in the US. To give such a trailer to each of the 40,000 homeless seniors in the US, it would cost about $2 billion. FYI, that is only a little over twice the amount which the City of San Francisco collects from taxpayers and allegedly applies to homeless and affordable housing services in ONE YEAR, every year, year after year.
The people with 300k trailers are not going to welcome low income people into their park and I think you must know that. By the way I think there are more than 40k homeless elderly,
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From 2017 to 2021, clients of state services for unhoused people aged 55+ increased 84% from 30,462 to 56,056, compared to a 43% increase for all ages. California's overall 55+ population increased 7.4% over the same period
We are indeed talking about the same trailer park, but I was talking about the size of it, while you were talking about the price of trailers in it. A trailer park of that size doesn't have to contain trailers of that price. I was making a point that it is possible to construct trailer villages of that size. A new single-wide trailer costs $51k on average in the US. To give such a trailer to each of the 40,000 homeless seniors in the US, it would cost about $2 billion. FYI, that is only a little over twice the amount which the City of San Francisco collects from taxpayers and allegedly applies to homeless and affordable housing services in ONE YEAR, every year, year after year.
Have you followed on how homeless housing often gets treated by the homeless? Where in SF would you put a trailer park? Where in most metros would you put trailer parks? How is the no/low income senior supposed to keep trailer and lot up? Considering depreciation is not a question yet.
Have you followed on how homeless housing often gets treated by the homeless? Where in SF would you put a trailer park? Where in most metros would you put trailer parks? How is the no/low income senior supposed to keep trailer and lot up? Considering depreciation is not a question yet.
Yes, the homeless housing is generally demolished by the homeless. But my opponents here keep saying that the elderly homeless are homeless mainly because the housing is too expensive for them, so if that is the case, then let's give them inexpensive housing, ie, trailer park villages on inexpensive land. When did I ever advocate putting up trailer parks in San Francisco or in most metros? Of course not there, but on inexpensive land. About 95% of land in California is rural open space, and almost half of the land in California is federal land:
There is no such thing as a "no-income senior" in the US, since every such senior over 65 qualifies for $914 per month SSI. If the trailer is free, why would the senior be unable to keep the trailer and lot up on $914 per month? What depreciation? The trailer would be owned by the government; there is no appreciation or depreciation in value there, since the formerly homeless senior wouldn't be buying or selling the trailer, but just living there.
But let's go back to the fact that homeless housing often gets demolished by the homeless - since a lot of that population lives in the streets NOT because housing is unaffordable, but because a lot of that population is very mentally ill. It does not follow from it that the taxpayers should be providing a new housing to such a person every time he/she demolishes the previous one. I am all for reopening of large mental institutions for such people, if you can get that past the ACLU (which degenerated from a honorable agency that used to defend individual freedoms to a bizarreness that defends freedom of violently insane people to terrorize everyone else). If you try to even put a mental patient into a short involuntary hold, you'll have an ACLU lawyer after you, let alone if you try to reopen mental hospitals. So, what do you do then? If a formerly homeless person demolishes a trailer gifted to him/her, the only place for such person, in the absence of mental hospital, seems to be prison. I don't know what else you want me to say about that.
Over 25% of seniors rent. Of course, they are mortgage free.
The data do not include rentals in the denominator.
At the same time, as seniors who own their own home become elderly, they tend to downsize... and some end up in assisted living where they rent by choice.
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Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould
But others have cognitive issues or mental health issues that limit their employment options.
Absolutely. Take my 70-year-old somewhat high functioning autistic brother, for example. He had a job in 1977 for a few months before being let go. Since then - nada. I've always supported him and my now 96 year old mother (likely autistic). I bought a home in a 55+ community near me where I could keep an eye on them and where my brother increasingly became a caretaker. I recently put mom into Assisted Living so my brother could have open heart surgery this past summer. I'm trying to have him live independently - but it has its ups and downs.
That's one reason I financially support more than one charitable organization that provides services to families with autistic individuals and to adults with autism
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Originally Posted by GotHereQuickAsICould
Just because you are on top of the world with paid for home and everything coming up rosy ...
"On top of the world... everything coming up rosy..." isn't the story of my life.
Last edited by moguldreamer; 12-03-2023 at 05:33 PM..
The people with 300k trailers are not going to welcome low income people into their park and I think you must know that. By the way I think there are more than 40k homeless elderly, (Cal Matters Feb 2023)
Of course people with $300k trailers are not going to welcome low income people into their park. So you think the solution is to force people with $5M mansions to welcome low income people on their street? :-) No, low income trailer villages provided by the government should be separate trailer villages (I mean separate from trailer villages where people live in trailers that they buy or rent out of their own funds).
No, I don't think that there are more than 40k homeless elderly, but that you changed the definition of elderly :-). Your link pertains to homeless people aged 55 and above. Since when is a 55 year old elderly? You want to include the 35 year old homeless in the count of the elderly homeless as well?
<snip> If you try to even put a mental patient into a short involuntary hold, you'll have an ACLU lawyer after you, let alone if you try to reopen mental hospitals. So, what do you do then? If a formerly homeless person demolishes a trailer gifted to him/her, the only place for such person, in the absence of mental hospital, seems to be prison. I don't know what else you want me to say about that.
That is an absurd statement. How do you come up with this stuff? I have represented institutionalized patients, both old and young, for reasons other than their involuntary admission. Off the top of my head, one was involuntarily committed for anorexia nervosa, another was an old lady who disrupted a town hall meeting for refusing to be quiet, and another old codger decided to outrun the police, etc. The ACLU did not swoop in to save them.
Yes, the homeless housing is generally demolished by the homeless. But my opponents here keep saying that the elderly homeless are homeless mainly because the housing is too expensive for them, so if that is the case, then let's give them inexpensive housing, ie, trailer park villages on inexpensive land. When did I ever advocate putting up trailer parks in San Francisco or in most metros? Of course not there, but on inexpensive land. About 95% of land in California is rural open space, and almost half of the land in California is federal land:
There is no such thing as a "no-income senior" in the US, since every such senior over 65 qualifies for $914 per month SSI. If the trailer is free, why would the senior be unable to keep the trailer and lot up on $914 per month? What depreciation? The trailer would be owned by the government; there is no appreciation or depreciation in value there, since the formerly homeless senior wouldn't be buying or selling the trailer, but just living there.
But let's go back to the fact that homeless housing often gets demolished by the homeless - since a lot of that population lives in the streets NOT because housing is unaffordable, but because a lot of that population is very mentally ill. It does not follow from it that the taxpayers should be providing a new housing to such a person every time he/she demolishes the previous one. I am all for reopening of large mental institutions for such people, if you can get that past the ACLU (which degenerated from a honorable agency that used to defend individual freedoms to a bizarreness that defends freedom of violently insane people to terrorize everyone else). If you try to even put a mental patient into a short involuntary hold, you'll have an ACLU lawyer after you, let alone if you try to reopen mental hospitals. So, what do you do then? If a formerly homeless person demolishes a trailer gifted to him/her, the only place for such person, in the absence of mental hospital, seems to be prison. I don't know what else you want me to say about that.
Where is this homeless housing that gets demolished by the homeless? And this thing about the ACLU, where did you hear that? The ACLU rarely represents individuals most of their cases involve large numbers of people. By the way, you might consider that someone who is homeless in the bay area probably lived there when they were housed and they are very unlikely to agree to go to some trailer park in Nevada, they aren't like a herd of cattle that you can move around anywhere you like. How did you ever come to have so much animosity toward people who never did a thing to you?
I had been a tenant for 17 years, and had roommates for about 9 of those years. In the first 3.5 years, I was living on $560 per month, which woild be about $1,500 per month in today's money (ie, $18k per year). During those 3.5 years I managed to save almost $4k (which would be about $12k in today's money), of which I spent $3k on a third-hand used car with 100,000 miles on it (I needed it because I was moving to a semi-rural area for the next training, where there was no public transportation - the only 5 years in my life when I did not live in a large city, and had to own a car).
Those reqirements you are mentioning must not have existed in the 1980s and 1990s, because I don't recall the landlords ever asking what my income was. They knew I didn't have much money, but also that I was pursuing training, and that I was a foreigner who didn't want to cause/get into any trouble, which appeared to be a sufficient guarantee of reliability. Many years later, I was for a while a small-scope landlord myself (I had, at different times, a total of 3 small rental apartments). I never asked that the income should be 3x the rent, and when I rented to graduate students, I didn't even ask what their income was (I knew from prior personal experience how low it was :-) - I just wanted the first month rent and security deposit, and made it very clear that I would start eviction as soon as one monthly rent is not paid. I don't see why the rent shouldn't exceed 1/3 of income. If you are very low income, obviously the rent would very likely be 1/2 or more of your income.
The requirements for having 3x rent and having a perfect credit score for renting are things that have only happened in the last 10 to 15 years, same as needing a perfect credit score to apply for many jobs. I remember in 2001 when I moved to Washington state, I was able to do that simply by calling the rental office and sending them a MO for first, last, and security. They never even saw me until I arrived up there with a U-Haul. I'm not sure you could do that today.
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Originally Posted by moguldreamer
There is no law of nature that says that minimum wage worker must live alone rather than share an apartment. I went on www.apartments.com and found a 4 bedroom apartment for $1355/month near major sources of employment in Las Vegas. That's $338 per bedroom.
If you want to live with roommates all your life, go for it. Some people don't mind it, for others it's pure hell. Part of the problem is the age of the roommates and if they have a stable job. But there's so many things that can happen when you have roommates.
You might have roommates who invite their friends over to stay indefinitely. Or roommates that eat your food, go through your things, use drugs, have pets and then neglect them, not pay their portion of rent and utilites when they need to, and on and on and on. Four roommates sound like a disaster waiting to happen. Personally, after sharing a bathroom with another woman, I'd live in my car again before I'd have a roommate. In fact, I could have stayed where I was once my disability was approved, but I chose to live out on the land I bought in a trailer with no heat, no electricity, and no running water specifically so I wouldn't have to put up with that woman any longer. If you want details, I'll give them to you, but they're pretty gross. Her not telling anyone about the bedbugs she would regularly bring in and the people she picked up on the street and let use our shower was the least of it.
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That is a misinterpretation, of course. There is nothing "supposed" to happen at all.
There is no law of nature that says a minimum wage employee cannot invest in their own human capital - they could become a tax accountant, for example, becoming a partner at a Big 4 accounting company, with annual earnings in the 7 figures.
OK, let's run with this. Someone wants to get out of a minimum wage job and be a tax accountant. First, they need training or college. Fine, now how do they support themselves while they go to college. They need a job that will be flexible and work around their classes. That is usually going to be a part-time, minimum wage job, maybe a couple of them. They could do what I did and live in their vehicle to save money, or try to share housing. But the big question is how will they pay for college? Scholarships are generally geared to students graduating high school. Grants aren't available for everyone. So now our person takes out a loan. And it takes a long time to get a certificate or a degree because this person can only take so many classes a quarter - maybe only 2 or 3 instead of the 4 most full time college students can take. So our person now owes more for college because he's paying by the quarter and there's a lot more quarters to pay for when it takes you 10 years instead of just 4 to graduate. And after all that, is it really worth it to have all that student debt?
When I said I never made more than $12 an hour in my life, it was because I chose not to go into hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt for college. It's made life very difficult for me, but when I see people who are in their 40s and 50s and still have $60,000 or more to pay off, I feel a lot better about my decision.
It's like roommates. If that's what you want to do, go for it. Some of us would rather not go that route.
By the way:
What is the 30% rule for rent?
A popular standard for budgeting rent is to follow the 30% rule, where you spend a maximum of 30% of your monthly income before taxes (your gross income) on your rent. This has been a rule of thumb since 1981, when the government found that people who spent over 30% of their income on housing were "cost-burdened."
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Originally Posted by TaxPhd
Of course it’s possible. Low income people rent all the time, in spite of less than stellar credit ratings.
People live with roommates all across the country. In spite of your silly assertion that it’s just not possible.
You're missing the point. When did it become normal to settle for just a minimum wage? Why are we happy just subsisting? Remember when living beyond your wage wasn't paying the rent, buying groceries and paying your utilities? So when DID "if you work full time, you should be able to comfortably afford shelter, food, and utilities" become an extreme leftist belief? (Thank you, pickwick).
Real wages are lower today than they were in 1973.
Five years before signing into law the first minimum wage in a 1933 statement regarding the National Industrial Recovery Act, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said, "No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country." And, "By living wages, I mean more than a bare subsistence level - I mean the wages of a decent living."
"If you want a living wage, get a better job" is a fascinating way to spin "I acknowledge that your current job needs to be done, but I think whomever does that job deserves to be in poverty." (Thank you, Vivian)
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Originally Posted by dcfas
In many nations, cultures, households have multiple generations under one roof. I’m not a historian, but I would guess that our culture also practiced this norm conventionally many years ago. There may be numerous and profound benefits for all involved. I think our culture has changed to the point that we collectively no longer value this practice.
It is also not always possible, of course, as some have explained above. I think, however, that an attached in-law or grandparent apartment seems like a great option, again, if possible.
I have a 93 year old aunt who has 3 kids of her own and lives 3000 miles away. I also have one brother who lives on the opposite coast who has a wife and 6 kids to take care of. I have another brother who lives 1200 miles from me and refuses to talk to me because he's now a Tea Party person and I'm the horrible person who gets $23 a month in food stamps. I have no kids. That's it for me for family. So much for living with multiple generations.
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Originally Posted by moguldreamer
And Welfare fraud was - and is - rampant, despite your incorrect memory.
Linda Taylor was among the most famous of Welfare Queens; she committed extensive welfare fraud. She was a crook, fleecing taxpayers at every turn, receiving welfare payments under many pseudonyms, buying expensive jewelry and furs, committing insurance fraud, etc. Black Americans of that era and of subsequent eras took offense at the term "Welfare Queen" as being racially insensitive and being a racial slur. The funny thing is that Linda Taylor was a lilly-white Caucasian.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), for fiscal year 2022, 18 federal agencies reported an estimated $247 billion in fraudulent payments across 82 separate welfare programs. We see it documented all the time - people purchasing food with SNAP EBT cards (food stamps), then loading their groceries into their Escalades with 22" spinner rims. Every. Single. Day.
OOOPS -- there I go again using actual data. While data won't help your feelings of frustration, the rest of us find it useful to see.
You want to talk about fraud? Let's talk about banks that do no risk management and need a 50 billion dollar bailout from the government to not blow up the economy. Let's talk about Enron. Let's talk about when billionaires in the agribusiness sector become $382 billion richer during the pandemic by jacking up food prices 33.6% while 263 million people are pushed into extreme poverty and 62 people in the food industry became billionaires over the past two years. Let's talk about how the Pentagon failed a fifth audit in a row, as they were unable to account for 61% of their 3.5 trillion in assets.
Wild that a billionaire's companies committed fraud for 15 years, found guilty on all counts, and faced a maximum fine of 1.61 million for their crimes. No jail time, no criminal charges. Just a payment processing fee for them.
Oh, there was one CEO, Paul R. Allen, who was sentenced to prison for a 3 billion dollar fraud. He was CEO of one of the nation's largest privately held mortgage lenders who was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a 3 billion dollar scheme that officials called one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.
Maybe we should talk about Walmart, which has 78 subsidiaries and 76 billion in assets in tax havens where there are zero stores. Maybe if Walmart, who has the most workers on welfare than anyone in America, and other businesses actually paid a living wage to their workers, those workers wouldn't be drawing welfare and there wouldn't be any welfare fraud. Ya think?
Last edited by rodentraiser; 12-03-2023 at 11:55 PM..
The requirements for having 3x rent and having a perfect credit score for renting are things that have only happened in the last 10 to 15 years, same as needing a perfect credit score to apply for many jobs. I remember in 2001 when I moved to Washington state, I was able to do that simply by calling the rental office and sending them a MO for first, last, and security. They never even saw me until I arrived up there with a U-Haul. I'm not sure you could do that today.
You want to talk about fraud? Let's talk about banks that do no risk management and need a 50 billion dollar bailout from the government to not blow up the economy. Let's talk about Enron. Let's talk about when billionaires in the agribusiness sector become $382 billion richer during the pandemic by jacking up food prices 33.6% while 263 million people are pushed into extreme poverty and 62 people in the food industry became billionaires over the past two years. Let's talk about how the Pentagon failed a fifth audit in a row, as they were unable to account for 61% of their 3.5 trillion in assets.
Wild that a billionaire's companies committed fraud for 15 years, found guilty on all counts, and faced a maximum fine of 1.61 million for their crimes. No jail time, no criminal charges. Just a payment processing fee for them.
Oh, there was one CEO, Paul R. Allen, who was sentenced to prison for a 3 billion dollar fraud. He was CEO of one of the nation's largest privately held mortgage lenders who was sentenced to three years in prison for his role in a 3 billion dollar scheme that officials called one of the biggest corporate frauds in U.S. history.
Maybe we should talk about Walmart, which has 78 subsidiaries and 76 billion in assets in tax havens where there are zero stores. Maybe if Walmart, who has the most workers on welfare than anyone in America, and other businesses actually paid a living wage to their workers, those workers wouldn't be drawing welfare and there wouldn't be any welfare fraud. Ya think?
I'll comment only about the stuff directed at me. I rented out first one of my little apartments between end 2001 and 2004, the second one 2003 to 2015, and the third one 2008 to 2019. I never required 3x rent income for my tenants, never looked at their credit score (maybe I should have, since I ended up eventually with a bad tenant at all 3 of the places? :-). Since I worked on time-limited contracts, I typically applied for that kind of work at least once a year, more typically several times a year. My credit had been frozen for years (due to ID theft, so nobody could have been able to access it; in fact, I no longer even have a credit score). It never presented a problem with getting a job, nobody asked about it.
Regarding the corporate crime you want to talk about, it's I think called "whataboutism", ie, I'm not sure how it is related to homelessness, and particularly to homelessness among the 65+ year olds who are presumably retired and no longer work either for crooked companies or for any other companies. How many of about 0.008% boomers who are homeless in the US have become homeless due to the confirmed or alleged widespread corporate crime that you are talking about? How were they affected by Paul Allen, and if they were, don't they have a legal claim on repayment of damages?
People who don't like the pay at Walmart (or at other businesses that pay below a certain limit) don't have to work for Walmart or those other businesses. Nobody is forced to work for any specific employer.
Last edited by elnrgby; 12-04-2023 at 07:40 AM..
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