761
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 15 Nov 2023
761 points (95.9% liked)
News
23296 readers
3193 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
How come the US has such a massive homelessness problem while having pretty much the cheapest real estate in the world (relative to income)? People in other developed countries can't even dream about such low prices. The US government also has the world's biggest budget - just house people for free for fucks sake! It's literally pennies for the state.
P.S. Property to income ratio source - https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp
Much of the homelessness problem in America is really untreated mental health problems. A lot comes from not having universal healthcare.
Also, most jobs are in cities where housing is more expensive. We also have a shitty minimum wage, and a minimum wage job can’t buy a studio apartment and food in most areas where there are jobs.
Also, average and even median income is not a great measure of the wealth of the poor. The US Gino coefficient (a measure of income inequality) is poor compared to most other developed countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
And we can thank Regan for that.
Ok, I see.
If that's true, considering young people in the U.S. can't afford to buy houses and end up living with their parents for 15 years after they turn 18, I'd hate to know what it's like in other countries.
also, i'm sure a lot of cheap real estate amounts to random plots in the desert without actual infrastructure to support most people.
There was a bill that was passed by the Clinton administration in the 90s that limits the amount of residential property the federal government is allowed to own. They also passed some concessions that make it so that a reduction in unpopular government spending cannot equate to an increase of spending on social programs.
What was the name of it?
I'm sorry I don't remember. Also I think those were two different bills
Succs to be poor Act
Don't use California as a metric for American homelessness. California has made itself a veritable Mecca for homeless people by passing laws that allow them to set up camp virtually anywhere. Those laws, combined with its naturally temperate climate have resulted in 30% of America's homeless population living in California. No other state in the U.S. has such a hard-on for homeless people and we have much more sensible laws that reflect that.
Well, property values around where the homeless are are also way higher than just about anywhere else in the world. California also has 12% of the US population.
It's not just the laws allowing homeless people to live that have created this. It's also the laws that allow rent to be extremely high and allow landlords to have empty living spaces without being taxed to hell for it.
All fair points. I just meant to point out that California has created a perfect storm of homelessness for itself, which is not true for the rest of the country.
Here in Colorado rent keeps going up with no end in sight and our local government is trying to provide help rather than limit it. Tax dollars down the drain.
Yeah, we really need some laws to punish landlords hording living space. If it isn't being used to house someone, it should be taxed at an extremely high rate. You shouldn't be able to get a tax write-off for not utilizing property just because you want to charge too much. Reduce prices until it's filled or pay the consequences.
I am not sure about that but the hard limit should be set based on the amount of rooms. A 3 bd should be over 1600 dollars and a 1 bd shouldn't be over 800 dollars.
Ok. I don't know much about America.
Yeah, but why would we do that when we could just tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Look, I'm all for telling people to pull themselves up, but the US could rake some serious political prestige points worldwide for doing that. And also flex over China and other commies - look how great capitalism is! If I was Trump during his dumb economic war with China, I'd house all homeless in an instant just to show China who's a real daddy here.
The real answer is that people feel entitled to live in major cities so they don't go to the areas where there is cheap real estate.
They think supply and demand doesn't apply to them, and they have plenty of other entitled city-dwellers to support them.
Unfortunately, reality is just different than what they want. They don't want to admit that though, so they just sit around and wait for other people to solve their problems.
They're still waiting.
yes, i'm sure i should quit my job in a big city, give up health insurance (which i have gotten for the first time in my adult life), uproot my kids and move to ?, to do ???, so i can live in a depressed backwater for cheap rent.
i'm so fucking entitled.
edit - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City,_California
I never said it was easy, but it is doable.
If you can't afford to live there, why should someone else foot the bill? Because you're entitled? You think supply and demand doesn't apply to you? You think you're "too good" to live outside of a major city, even though many others do?
Yeah. Thanks for proving my point.
nobody is paying my bills but me. i'm just getting tired of the argument i have been seeing around lemmy lately that wanting to stay in the city (where many of us have JOBS) is "entitled." i think real estate and rental markets are fucking bonkers when they are pricing out most americans. i have a middle class professional job and i can barely afford it - what about those who work in the service industry who make even less? rent is even harder to cover, and small towns don't have job markets that can accommodate many.
guess what? people go where the jobs are. this isn't about being "too good" to live somewhere, it's about being in a catch-22 of choosing between employment/healthcare/family and rent.
quit putting your words in my mouth ("too good," where the fuck did i say that?) and try talking to actual people.
yes, i noticed. bleh, i probably shouldn't even bother, but i find the idiocy of this argument absolutely infuriating.
many of the folks i work with are functionally homeless and i wish i could do more. i'm glad you made it out alright!
This has to be the most divorced from reality hot take I've seen on Lemmy in awhile.
You need to brush up on your reading comprehension.
People feel entitled to live in major cities. They think life outside of one doesn't matter and they'd rather be homeless in LA than living in a house in Bald Knob.
Those who try to spend taxpayer money to house people in major cities think they're above supply and demand and entitled to live in major cities even if they can't afford it. They're important though, because they funnel taxpayer money to landlords.
Probably because you ignore facts you don't like.
What in the hell are you on about. There is no one choosing to be homeless in LA who can afford a house in bumblefuck.
Per your other point there is nothing about the US housing market that is subject to natural supply and demand. It's a perverted tapestry of incumbents doing whatever they can to keep as many people priced out as possible.
You're absolutely right and I'm baffled that you and some others are getting down voted so heavily with only one critical response. Either there are a lot of dim bulbs in this comment section or someone is manipulating votes. Interceptor there has an unusual distribution of vote frequency, making all of his comments outliers. Looks like someone is cheating at Lemmy. What a weirdo.
You say the homeless in cities pay more to sleep on the street than the rural homeless, but you fail to provide sidewalk sleeping cost comparables. If you’re going to be so ridiculous it’s important to be very over the top, or people may really believe this is somehow your view.
Oh boy, we got one.
You're right, but you're not right about why you're right.