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“I won the parent lottery, the education lottery, the country lottery,” LeBrun told Macleans. “It would be arrogant to say every piece of my ‘success’ was earned, when so much of it was received.”
Looks like he did this because he’s actually a decent reasonable person.
This is how fucking easy it is. This is a millionaire. Imagine what someone with hundreds of billions of dollars could do.
You can have a soul, or you can have billions of dollars; not both.
Imagine what WE could do if we taxed millionaires and billionaires.
We could build these in every city in the country.
I accept millionaires.
I've yet to see moral billionaires.
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars. Although the millionaires have to stop clutching their pearls, step up and realize that they're a lot closer in class to the homeless than the billionaires.
Yep, I've seen friends reach the seven figure area through steady seven day weeks and some luck picking their trade and finding industrial clients over a period of fifteen to twenty years. I have seen how little they slept and how kids were basically only possible because they were pretty self reliant from age 12 or 13 and helped a lot around the house. I have no idea how a human could possibly create a thousand times that value in their lifetime.
They can't. Billionaires can only exist by taking value generated by others. Absolutely nothing Jeff Bezos could do within 60 seconds is worth continuously "earning" over 18.000$.
Well you sure as hell can't have generally high moral standards and earn a billion from scratch. You have to either screw the environment on a very large scale and/or screw lots and lots of people.
And if you are in a context where you inherit a billion and think there is no problem with an individual having billions, odds are you are also not in a great position moral-wise.
Most millionaires probably don't even know it and certainly don't feel it. It's old people who've been living in the same house for 50 years, who still worry about the price of beans.
Dude's getting 20k/mo rent and helping the poor. That's fucking awesome.
Considering utilities are included, I doubt he gets much of that
These units may be basically sheds, but I've seen people pay half a million to have the same thing three floors up in central London.
If I was homeless I'd take solid four walls the size of a medium-sized tent if it meant warmth, utility services, your own toilet and anything else I'd need to even be able to focus on caring for myself or even others more than merely survive. Those tiny buildings might be the minimum, but they ARE something you can call a safe home.
I'm wondering though, how was this more cost-effective to build than a long apartment complex...? Do those tiny things not need any concrete foundation, perhaps regulatory stuff…?
Looking at the video, they're basically trailers. How much does it take to set up a trailer park? Fill a base with concrete, slap in some plumbing and electrical points. Probably quite economical to do it all in one go.
I suspect the most expensive part is the land in most places. Looks like this town has plenty of room around it. Probably costs a bit to heat them though, being where it is.
And I got to be honest, a small separate home looks a lot nicer to live in than an apartment building. Especially if it's built from wood like these are. Being able to hear constant noise from 10 other people around you just walking about is not for me.
There are ways to build apartment complexes rather sound-proof, however probably not as economically. Just hope the long-term costs of these tiny houses won't eat up any savings; at least in terms of energy everyone got solar panels, that should offset the probably rather weak insulation.
This is really great to see. So glad there are people like this out there willing to extend empathy to people who are struggling. I love that this project also respects their clients' autonomy as well. The fact that you don't have to stay sober to be there, I think it's great. Just give someone a stable roof over their head, a small support network, and I believe they can turn around their addictions and their lives.
Damn, $200 sounds low, on the other hand 30% is a crazy share. I'm targeting 10-15% at most.
German here, 30% of income after taxes was the rule since a few decades, but in reality many people are closer to 50% now. How do you manage 15%?
EDIT: Oh, right, just saw the 8k income. That's C-Level money here.
I am C-level and also German.
Wait what? Your rent is 10-15% of your income? What's that like in absolute numbers?
30% is a good target for keeping things balanced because theoretically youd spend 30% on housing, 30% on food and necessities and 15% for savings and 15% for fun stuff. But reality is for most people the required costs are much higher so you end up with most income going to housing and transportation
In France the law does not allow rent (or mortgage) payments higher than 1/3 of net monthly income.
It is pretty effective at keeping the housing market vaguely in check.
Fell apart after COVID when a bunch of Parisians sold their little apartments and arrived in the provinces with a million in their pocket. The law has kept it level after that big jump though I think.
Based
Rent pricing is what the people should target first. Hard to fight the nutjobs when rent is so expensive
Simply approving more housing helps too https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/
Building more housing helps, but building new housing will remain expensive for as long as land is expensive, so it's vital that we avoid wasting land. Which means density.
Some people read "density" and think "ah, taller buildings!", but that's only half the picture - you can save tremendous amounts of space by improving horizontal density - look at how dense OP's one storey housing is, by shrinking the houses, and by ditching the front yard and dedicated sidewalks.
Except, most of the space is still empty! Those streets are oversized (take a look at traditional cities, most streets are under 20ft wide (6m wide) wall-to-wall), and the houses all have gaps next to them which look big enough to fit (or almost fit) another house. So you could easily more-than-double the density without even going up, assuming the housing isn't car-centric (I'm guessing those empty spots might be car parks, and the streets are overly wide because they're for cars).
If this sounds nitpicky, it's not: building one-storey houses is dirt cheap; imagine trying to make a portable two-storey tent. It even makes it realistically possible to remove developers from the equation, without too much going horribly wrong. It just needs to be efficient with the land it uses.
240sqft = 22.3sqm
look at how dense OP’s one storey housing is, by shrinking the houses, and by ditching the front yard and dedicated sidewalks.
What the actual fuck are these suggestions. This sounds a lot like the conservative members of my area that argue homeless people don't deserve anything. They want to cram the all into one building with no privacy, get rid of sidewalks and green spaces because people loiter, and generally make life as uncomfortable as possible for the destitute instead of treating them like normal human beings.
For reference, your standard wheelchair accessible hotel room will not be less than 20sqm.
Honestly when I see "tech millionaire" and "altruism" in the same article, I expect to seese seriously ghoulish shit.
I still have concerns around the long-term outcome - the land is ostensibly still privately held, and I assume the homes are as well. I'd like to
Imagine if the public sector did this and didn't limit it to a single development.
We could even build bigger-than-tiny sized units. Maybe include additional amenities like schools and health clinics and food malls in the immediate vicinity. Throw in a rail stop so people can get to the metro center easily. You know... actual urban development.
No idea where we could get money for that, though. Maybe if Canada didn't exempt 50% of capital gains income from taxation for some reason... But no, that would never work.