this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023

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A Boring Dystopia

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Rising rents, not mental-health issues or addiction, are driving homelessness, advocates say (www.msn.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I agree. Governments just don’t care (in the actionable sense) about homelessness except when it gives rise to disruptive or ‘criminal’ behavior, so they tend to associate it with those things.

TBH I think the gist of the “mental health” claim stems from the massive amount of Vietnam vets the Fed unceremoniously abandoned to the streets. To claim these people were homeless due to mental health wouldn’t be totally inaccurate, but it definitely buries the lead. More than 1 in 10 homeless people are vets in the US.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s probably also a holdover from closing down asylums, with the added implication that mental health issues are both permanent and disruptive enough that attempts to house people is a losing battle so we need not try.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Why would they care?

The homeless don't donate to their legalized bribery PACS, and
The oligarchs who own both parties and captured our government decades ago want significant homelessness. Sticks, like capitalism scarecrows on street corners scaring the shit out of you to keep showing up to your meaningless job to be exploited for the owner's profit, are free.

Why pay for carrots (wages, benefits, careers, basic respect) when the the threat of sticks, ie visible homelessness, is free?

There is no incentive for our nation's owners to tell their middle managers in Washington to address homelessness, and every incentive to make it worse.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You grossly misunderstand how many of these individuals are hopelessly addicted to drugs.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Ok?

So give them a small apartment to do their hopeless drugs in until they pass away. They're human beings mostly interested in harming themselves, which is more benevolent than the fortune 500s motivation to take as much as they can at society's expense.

You act as if insatiable greed isn't an addiction, a drug with far more potential for harm to others than something like heroin. Greed lets peope hurt others and call it "just business."

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Not quite sure how the two relate. You completely hijacked what I said because "slamming" corporate entities is the in thing right now.

Buy some stocks and play the game. You've gotta be smarter. Otherwise quit your whining.

Also who's buying and paying rent for these drug condos? Not me. Not my taxes. I don't work hard so others can fuck up their lives. I'd like to live wontonly too but I don't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I hope you one day get to live "wontonly" as you'd like to. Then maybe you too can die in the street, addicted to drugs. Either way, maybe you'll spell wantonly right the next time you try to use a semi-large word while trying to sound like a blowhard intellectual.

[+] [email protected] -84 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I live in an area that is well known for low cost of living. And you're wrong. Rent is still egregiously high compared to wages. The problem doesn't just magically disappear when you're not looking. Sheesh

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When I lived in Houston, rent for a studio apartment was $700 a month and $900 a month for a really nice one. Minimum wage was (and still is) $7.25 and you'd be hard pressed to find a job that paid $8 an hour or more. Making just $12 an hour was considered a life changing amount of money.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It isn't that we don't like your answer, it is that it is fundamentally wrong. I do live an hour commute from Seattle, maybe more, and if you had two people making minimum wage full time with no other debt obligations, you can't even afford a vacant lot, let alone somewhere with a house, even with one that looks like the fight club house.

[+] [email protected] -32 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

A major problem with moving to these cities is the availability of comparable income and capable infrastructure for the incoming population. Any exodus from one high density area to another will have noticeable impact on the local economy. One that is inescapable is rising rent. Suggesting that renters relocating from California to Ohio will solve the rent crisis doesn’t account for those already living in these areas. It also doesn’t account for the population that a community was built to support and the systems put into stress to accommodate for them.

Above you replied to someone that mentioned living near Seattle. The impact of commuters leaving the Seattle area to the neighboring cities reaches as far north as Burlington, Bellingham, Blaine, and Ferndale. These are at times more than 2 hour commutes. Well above the parameters your solution describes. Within the past decade rents in these areas have steadily risen to meet demand. Pricing out many of the locals who were there before. Now, many who moved to these smaller towns are finding themselves in the same situation as the persons they originally displaced.

Sure if you were to search for affordable rents in these cities, there are some that come up from time to time. Though not nearly enough to support the growth these areas are experiencing.

I suppose what I mean to say is: This problem, like homelessness, cannot be solved by simply moving those affected elsewhere.

Source: In my last job I assisted with background checks for renters. One unit can receive hundreds of applicants. There simply is not enough housing for all that seek it.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

What happens when everyone moves to these affordable places? The same thing that happens in all places, not enough housing and not enough jobs. So saying move somewhere cheap and problem solved doesn't solve anything. Also, I grew up in my town, i have lived here my entire life and you think I should just go start over? This town is my home and I love it, and the solution is stopping multiple home ownership and stopping air bnbs not just leaving my life behind to move to Cleveland.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago

The problem is that it's expensive everywhere. There is no "Plan (or city) B" anymore.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

National median rent is something like ~$1,500-$1,900 depending on what source you use. Every place I've rented required 3 times rent to qualify. That means you need to earn $4,500-$5,700/month gross or $54,000-$68,400/year gross or ~$26-$33/hour if working 40 hours/week. Federal minimum wage is still $7.25. I believe the median income is around $66,388/year, so while some can afford it, yes, many can't, 2/3rds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck right now.

Yes, percentage wise there's not a lot of people on minimum wage compared to those who aren't, but this doesn't account for people who make more than minimum wage but still don't make enough to afford rent. People shouldn't have to live with family, friends, or random roommates to afford housing.

That's not how society is supposed to function. We make individuality a big thing in this country yet we refuse to let a portion of society be individuals by pricing them out of things like having their own place. Society is supposed to make things better for everyone, not a select in group and then fuck everyone else.

Also artificial scarcity is a thing. Those who can provide more goods or services choosing not to to drive up prices.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago

Ok, let's assume we do this, scatter the poor across the land.

How do those people, who typically are in greater need of healthcare, education, daily living assistance, transport assistance etc. due to not being able to afford preventative care going to access the services they need the most? I already hear about people in the US travelling many hours one way to see an insurance-authorised specialist for a chronic condition.

Doctors and social workers and teachers aren't exactly lining up to work in the Appalachian mountains. We are also more frequently hearing about industrial rural towns having their water contaminated through companies spilling and dumping waste. Scattering people across the land without sufficient infrastructure is an 'out of sight, out of mind' solution. Cities are the only places which have the resources to support people at larger scales for a variety of different issues, when people are also expected to work 40+ hours a week during standard business hours.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago (2 children)

there ARE locations you can rent and have a decent living on a nothing salary.

Don’t have any insights as to where this places are? Or are you just saying things?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It’s usually small/rural towns.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Those areas aren’t cheap to rent either. If they are, available units are scarce and often only available by word of mouth.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

2600 SQ ft house, detached 30*60 garage with a couple shop rooms and loft storage, normal town size corner lot with 150 yards of ponderosa pines out the back door between us and the lake. House was built in 1915, but it's level, has drywall, Romex, mostly pex, vinyl siding (it's not fucked up in any way at all, and is way more solid than a typical suburb house).

Mortgage, warranty, insurance, and taxes total out to less than $1k a month (bought it just prior to pandemic, so I beat the bubble, but I'm not talking about some shit I financed in the 90's or something, it's a 4 year old loan...).

Catch is, it's 63 miles one way to the closest Walmart (and most of the nearest jobs...), best internet plan available is 80mb (and I use some of that for a femtocell, because cell phones are iffy out here), and the the entire county is a whopping 3k people. The place is dying, and when a business goes under, it's generally for good (and COVID fucked most of them). Can't have no $500 craigslist hoopty out here, and your nice car ain't gonna stay that way forever. Lots of mileage if you're running 100mi to get to work and back...

Fast food in town is paying $16/hr though, so it's pretty damned easy to make ends meet :) Get on Zillow and look in the big ass open rural areas if you're willing to give up easy access to Starbucks and McDonald's, and you'll find these sorts of places. They aren't uncommon at all, they just aren't something people are generally amenable to, and you don't wanna show up in such a place homeless unless you wanna do the whole Rambo deal... Can't say I agree with that sort of intolerance, but I'd be lying if I said you'd find anything but.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Go look at housing prices in Julian right now.

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