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They are actually posting no trespassing signs on bridges around here. I assume that means there are regular police checks. It sucks enough to be homeless in the Midwest in the winter, but it’s becoming both illegal to be homeless and unaffordable to have a place to live. I have no idea what people end up having to do, but I do notice a lot of people walking way down a highway where it will take them a good hour to get to the edge of town early in the morning, presumably to get to some shitty job that pays them minimum wage.
They finally put out the no sleep benches in my city. For a long time it looked like they weren’t going to, and I had some respect for who ever was saying no to them.
Thankfully, there’s way too many low concrete walls in this city for them to be able to do that, but the library (my wife is a library administrator) also lets them stay there all day and even sleep in a chair or sleep outside the library as long as they don’t set up camp. They’re also opening up a new branch in another part of town where they will have a sign-up sheet and one person at a time will have access to a room with a washer, a dryer and a shower. All free. Libraries are amazing in what they do for the poor, let alone the community as a whole… so at least someone is trying to help the desperate people in this town, but it’s not nearly enough and there’s so much fighting against it, even against the library. People came to the board meeting where this got approved from the neighborhood talking about how they had homeless people camping in their backyards (what have they tried actually doing about it if that’s even true) and it would bring even more to the area. And fuck those NIMBY assholes.
That’s really cool of the libraries to do. We have a huge faculty that offers a place to sleep, but it’s more like a gym room with beds and floor space. Lots of fights of course. We also have a bunch of resource companies that will shelter people in halfway homes and all that.
It’s just such a hard thing to battle. Both administrationly and personally.
Luckily I landed in my parents’ home when they passed on, so I had a place to go, but without that I’d be out on the street. In Utah housing and rent prices are unaffordable to almost everyone.
If I were homeless though, one thing for sure, I’d start heading South from here no matter what. Whether I had to hitchhike, ride a train, or steal a bike, I’d head South to Arizona or California or even to Southern Utah because winter here in Salt Lake City is brutal and they don’t even open warming shelters until it falls below 18 degrees (which if has several times already this year).
I would do the same thing. Obviously, some of the homeless here are mentally ill or addicts and they probably aren’t competent enough to follow such a plan, but I seriously doubt all the homeless people I see here fit that category. They stay anyway. Maybe they’re worried if they move, they won’t find another job, as bad as the job they have now is? I really don’t know.
I don’t understand the endgame here. Are we just supposed to die at some point after maxing out debts to purchase a place to sleep? Am I to be ground up into a fine paste with all my neighbors and poured down into an apartment through the ceiling to maximize human per cubic inch? Isn’t this an extremely pressing crisis that must be addressed aggressively and immediately?
I don’t think there is an end game. Just short term thinking without forethought of the consequences.
Yeah people think someone is at the wheel… when in reality it’s a few narcissistic children taking turns nudging the bus controls.
Endgame is a serious housing crash, I think. Or maybe some pretty draconian legislation on who is allowed to own residential property, how much, and for what purpose, i.e. serious regulations on landlords. Hopefully the latter.
I’m Canadian. When I was a teenager, 25 years ago or so, my parents bought a house in the suburbs for $130k, they sold it 15 years later for half a million. Now it’s worth $1.1 million.
My generation and those going forward are so utterly fucked. My boomer dad even had to admit it, and says that there’s no way anyone can afford this shit anymore.
Burn down the rental offices.
Small time landlords aren’t any better. They love that rental prices are increasing and generally increase their tenants rents because they can. They get their mortgage payed for and extra income on top.
I know this because I work with people who do it and they like to fucking brag about it. Fuck all landlords.
My rent has increased 60% in the last 5 years
And housing prices have double in many cases. And interest rates have soared.
If you were to take out a traditional loan with 20% down today vs 5 years ago on the same property, you’d be very lucky if your monthly mortgage was only 60% more.
Why burn them down when they can be turned into subsidized housing for the homeless?
Not just that, but burn down anything that is being bought from international companies to rent out to Americans.
The domestic rental companies aren’t any better
In Utah (where I am) renters are unable to rent at all anymore. Housing and rent prices are higher here than they are in Hawaii. I was in a single bedroom apartment (admittedly a nicer one with lots of space and a great view) but I paid through the nose, almost twice as much as I made in a month at my job. It was ridiculous, and that was back in 2018.
Now the prices are so high, even people with six figure incomes are out in the street. There is no affordable housing here in Utah anymore. The small one-bedroom brick home my grandparents lived in (which I think they bought fro about $45,000 back in the day) is now going for 6 million dollars.
And that’s in a very LOW rent neighbhorhood. Houses here are only being bought by people in other states with mega amounts of money, who then turn around and use them as rental properties for people visiting from other rich states.
Isn’t Utah a large state? Why is their no development?
There’s actually development going on everywhere. Where I grew up in Utah it was all fields and very open, now it’s all developed into high rise high price condos. And everywhere you go here, is under some kind of new housing development. They can’t make them fast enough to keep up with the demand.
Now I have no idea why people want to move here and why housing demand is so high here. Of all places to live! Of course I’m probably just sick of Utah having lived here for so long. There are tons of jobs here, but they are all low wage unless you’re a lawyer or a surgeon.
If I had my choice I sure as hell wouldn’t be here, they can have my spot.
The idea of “renting” needs to die in a fire. Kill it, kill it dead.
There is a solution. Basically, we need to create an owner occupant property tax credit for owners of low-density housing (single family, duplex, triplex, or quadplex housing). If you hold the deed on your residence of record, or you are under contract to purchase it, you will get a 5% credit on your taxes. Renting? Your landlord pays the full tax rate.
Next, we hike property taxes on low density housing. We hike them a lot. But, every time we increase the property taxes, we also have a commensurate increase in the owner-occupant credit, such that an owner occupant never sees a significant tax increase.
We will still have people using property as investments, but the kind of investment we will see will be private mortgages and land contracts, where the occupant is either the owner or under contract to buy, and thus gaining equity.
Landlords will still be able to rent out the unused unit(s) in duplexes, triplexes, and quadplexes, while retaining the owner occupant credit, so long as they live in one of the units.
The awesome part is that this can be implemented locally, at the county or city level. As it benefits both homeowners and renters, it would probably pass by referendum in the areas that need it most.
NIMBYS: Hold my sparkling white wine
“Please don’t give me a tax break, because those pesky poors will get it too.”
I already paid more than a paycheck for my modest house’s taxes.
People who own their own house are not at fault for this situation.
You didn’t read or understand what I wrote.
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If you live in the house, you pay less tax.
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If you’re a wall street investor hiring a property manager to rent out a house you own but have never seen, you pay more tax.
You paid more than a paycheck in taxes? That sucks. Let’s knock a little off of that tax bill for you.
The investment firm that leases to your neighbor? Yeah, we’re gonna send their taxes through the roof.
Please tell me you understand that part first, and then we can discuss how land contracts and private mortgages convert “tenants” into “homeowners”.
Seems I misread your comment. I apologize.
Nothing to apologize for; you’re good.
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time to bring back the projects?
I have unironically seen this as the solution in dozens of housing threads.
It always follows the same path.
“We need to build high density housing everywhere”
Every new high rise that has been built hasn’t lowered the cost of existing buildings. The new buildings are always “luxury” condos and sell at outrageousprices. Also, the infrastructure (roads / utilities) needs to be vastly expanded to handle higher density.
“That’s because they’re being built too slowly. If a bunch came out at once, that would low prices”
Yes, and that’s why builders would never build a ton of units all at once. They would stagger them on the market to get the highest possible prices.
“OK, then the government should build high density low income housing”
… like projects? Do you know any history at all?
“Also infrastructure doesn’t need upgrading if everyone rides bikes”
/exit thread
I love it. Perfectly captures the naivety and inexperience shown in so many threads on all platforms around this topic.
Ideal solutions are great. But reality tends to get in the way.
So whats then, we do nothing at all?
like projects? Do you know any history at all?
What, like the low cost medium and high density construction that many European and Eastern block countries used to house their populations. It helps if you don’t intend to stuff them with the poor and disenfranchised and then ignore them from the outset.
Same everywhere.
In Canada we also have no housing, some places have 0% availability, not even 0.2% or 0.1%, literally 0% apartment for rent.
To top this, our PM has no problem with 500’000 to 1 million new immigrants per year. Schools are overwhelmed by kids (classes go from 20 kids per classroom to 30) who sometimes does not speak English or French, healthcare/hospitals/ER are at 200%, people die in corridor, forgotten. And there is 0 renting available to house people.
Canada is going 200mph into a brick wall.
Do the immigrants pay taxes for schools and healthcare? How is an increase in population from immigration different than a possible increase due to births?
Sounds like you are blaming basic social problems caused by conservatives limiting social services on immigration.
Unfortunately a lot of refugees or immigrants do not work, either because they have no diploma, do not speak english, or their diploma are not recognized. If they work it is part time at low wages, for too many of them, it is sad I know. Of course some come with $$$ or whatever and are engineer etc, but it is harder for refugees. I have nothing against them I am one myself!
And births compared to immigration is minimal. For instance we have 227 births per day, 198 dead per day, and 800 new immigrant per day. Just in Québec, a small province.
how the fuck do they survive then?
tell me the magic formula to emigrate to north america, somehow rent all the available property, and not work at all! i want in on that easy life!
What happened to the points system that Canada has? I’d have thought the immigrants without a degree or knowledge of English or French would have too few points to qualify.
Refugees (from warzone like Ukraine, Syria, etc) do not need points, they are welcome to Canada and this is the right thing to do
I was asking about the immigrants specifically, but that’s a good point in that I don’t know the breakdown between immigrants and refugees.
It’s almost like the poster above is a racist fear monger who blames immigrants and liberals for everything wrong in society. Ask him if we should increase taxes to improve healthcare, education, or public housing? If these really are the problems we can fix them through a progressive tax that gives the middle and lower classes a lot of bang for the buck.
Yes this is what we need, public housing, but contractors prefer to build “rent condo” at $2000/month instead, and we, the working class, have nothing to rent
Public housing is publicly funded through taxes and recovered through reasonable rent. What contractors want is irrelevant for public housing. Support paying more taxes, support the Liberals and NDP and you’ll get public housing. Keep up the “Trudeau is letting in immigrants who are messing Canada up” rhetoric the conservatives are pushing and you’ll find rich condo developers getting more rich and the working class getting played for fools.
I never did and will never vote conservatives. And we have Liberals/NDP for 8 years now and it’s worst than before, I don’t know the solution :-/
THIS is what’s going to get Trump elected.
