I don’t understand who commissions and who reads pieces like this. Here is a person with no expertise in housing policy, no expertise in homelessness, and no expertise in tech. The only thing he’s bringing to the table is an opinion, which, as the saying goes, are like assholes. Blame inequality and tech and libertarians all you want, but it won’t do a damn thing to solve the homelessness crisis, which is fundamentally a housing supply issue. But I suppose that doesn’t lend itself to the kind of uninformed moralizing that apparently brings such delight to the hearts of lithub readers.
hooo•29m ago
Also, why does it get upvotes so quickly?
bigyabai•20m ago
> which is fundamentally a housing supply issue
There are plenty of houses. The issue is demand; people are paying $4,000/month to live in a shithole because nobody knows what things are worth. Rich executives, H1Bs and digital nomads all flock there to displace working-class families that support the basic service economy. If you built 400 condos, 1600 more rich people move in. Supply is not the issue as far as I can see it.
wahnfrieden•16m ago
Makes no sense. You can build until demand goes down. Demand is high in part because supply’s low. But that doesn’t happen because of NIMBYism
Maybe you’re used to seeing half measures. Be careful with that because half measures are sometimes used as justification to throw out the whole idea of progress instead of doing it properly (“well we tried that and things were still bad so now we have to do it my way”)
We dont build high density housing. We killed off the boarding house. There's like one left in DC when there used to be dozens... They were common enough that even in the 80's you could make a tv show about it, now if you said boring house someone would look at you like you had 9 heads.
We dont have SRO's any more... In 1940 the YMCA of New York had 100k rooms for rent...
> If you built 400 condos, 1600 more rich people move in. Supply is not the issue as far as I can see it.
Do you know what the largest predictor of voting is? Home ownership. DO you know what drives home owners to the polls more than anything else? Protecting the value of their home.
The state has, and continues to sue towns for the fuckery that they have been doing to block housing development to prop up property prices. 60 percent of people who are the most likely to vote will turn up to the polls to make sure the costs do NOT go down. It is the tyranny of majority...
SO yes there are plenty of HOUSES, and not enough of everything else that we need for people to live.
skavi•19m ago
Well it's a fairly entertaining read as someone with no current ambitions of solving any of these crises.
etangent•11m ago
Okay, I disagree with a lot of views expressed in this piece, but still found it worth reading. In particular a lot of people here may agree with what he wrote on housing.
blindriver•2m ago
Homelessness is NOT a housing supply issue. The left love to imagine that homeless people are just down-on-their-luck people who just missed out on a mortgage payment or a rent payment.
No. They are 98% drug addicts or mentally ill people. And the "Homeless Activists" are simply people who make their careers over spending the billions of dollars given out by the various governments to "address" the homeless crisis.
It's well known that the money that gets given out attract more homeless people. People will go back and forth between LA and SF and collect money and use it to buy drugs from drug dealers. And the fact nothing is being done to stop this is why homelessness has gotten worse despite the billions upon billions of dollars that get spent every year. Gavin Newsom admitted that California spent $24 billion on homelessness and there was no accountability, and homelessness went up. The same goes for SF with their homeless business tax that amounts to over $600 million per year.
It's insane that left-wing governments think that spending MORE money will solve the problem when in fact it is the cause of the problem. If they stop spending so much money then all the homeless activist grifters will leave and so will the "homeless" that are here only to get a payout and buy their drugs.
hrbsoscbfo•17m ago
Didn’t make it past the first sentence.
wahnfrieden•13m ago
Is it because you thought it’s the author’s bitterness on a topic where you prefer optimism? The author didn’t say “Fuckers”. He’s quoting his client. Maybe you expected it to be the author’s sour grapes for what the rich have done to their environment. That sort of inversion of expectations is what makes writing fun and interesting (if you were to read on).
parpfish•12m ago
just take your time and sound things out. use context clues.
you can do this. i believe in you.
zer00eyz•4m ago
Go back to the 1990's, Gibson publishes Virtual Light that predicts that the bay bridge would be one massive homeless encampment.
It was clear 30 ish years ago to him how it would turn out.
It might be appalling but it should not be shocking.
Gimpei•32m ago
hooo•29m ago
bigyabai•20m ago
There are plenty of houses. The issue is demand; people are paying $4,000/month to live in a shithole because nobody knows what things are worth. Rich executives, H1Bs and digital nomads all flock there to displace working-class families that support the basic service economy. If you built 400 condos, 1600 more rich people move in. Supply is not the issue as far as I can see it.
wahnfrieden•16m ago
Maybe you’re used to seeing half measures. Be careful with that because half measures are sometimes used as justification to throw out the whole idea of progress instead of doing it properly (“well we tried that and things were still bad so now we have to do it my way”)
zer00eyz•7m ago
Are there?
Home ownership is a functional unmovable number in the USA: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S
The problem is that we only have plenty of houses... that are under occupied.
https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/06/more-than-a-q...
We dont build high density housing. We killed off the boarding house. There's like one left in DC when there used to be dozens... They were common enough that even in the 80's you could make a tv show about it, now if you said boring house someone would look at you like you had 9 heads.
We dont have SRO's any more... In 1940 the YMCA of New York had 100k rooms for rent...
https://ishc.com/wp-content/uploads/YMCAs2.pdf
> If you built 400 condos, 1600 more rich people move in. Supply is not the issue as far as I can see it.
Do you know what the largest predictor of voting is? Home ownership. DO you know what drives home owners to the polls more than anything else? Protecting the value of their home.
https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/wealthy-bay-area-town-a...
The state has, and continues to sue towns for the fuckery that they have been doing to block housing development to prop up property prices. 60 percent of people who are the most likely to vote will turn up to the polls to make sure the costs do NOT go down. It is the tyranny of majority...
SO yes there are plenty of HOUSES, and not enough of everything else that we need for people to live.
skavi•19m ago
etangent•11m ago
blindriver•2m ago
No. They are 98% drug addicts or mentally ill people. And the "Homeless Activists" are simply people who make their careers over spending the billions of dollars given out by the various governments to "address" the homeless crisis.
It's well known that the money that gets given out attract more homeless people. People will go back and forth between LA and SF and collect money and use it to buy drugs from drug dealers. And the fact nothing is being done to stop this is why homelessness has gotten worse despite the billions upon billions of dollars that get spent every year. Gavin Newsom admitted that California spent $24 billion on homelessness and there was no accountability, and homelessness went up. The same goes for SF with their homeless business tax that amounts to over $600 million per year.
It's insane that left-wing governments think that spending MORE money will solve the problem when in fact it is the cause of the problem. If they stop spending so much money then all the homeless activist grifters will leave and so will the "homeless" that are here only to get a payout and buy their drugs.