Rising rents, not mental-health issues or addiction, are driving homelessness, advocates say
Rising rents, not mental-health issues or addiction, are driving homelessness, advocates say
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.
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.
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Why would they care?
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The homeless don't donate to their legalized bribery PACS, and
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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.
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You grossly misunderstand how many of these individuals are hopelessly addicted to drugs.
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."
The solution to rising rents is to spread out people more. If you're in California and you think it's too expensive... move! Looking at housing in San Diego vs Julian, Julian is far more affordable. "Well I don't want to have to commute and hour." Well then you're paying more. Simple as that. But better yet, maybe it's time to move out of the most desirable places in the country.
The problem is people flock to California so there continues to be an influx of people. Housing is growing but not proportionally and the more people who stay in California and then demand a "Right" to a single bedroom/family home, only increases the demand, so people charge more for housing.
The solution is if people who can't afford homes in area A, move to Area B, and I get it's hard to move to a new location, but there ARE locations you can rent and have a decent living on a nothing salary.
This actually fixes a lot of the other issues too. Too many people who need to work for a home, means companies can pay as low as possible, because someone will take it. Less workers available? Companies have to compete more and wages will go up.
I know moving is expensive, I know "I want to live X" or "I want to be close to my parents" (then live with them), but the thing is until something changes, rent and housing prices will continue to rise, and more people coming to live in the same area is going to do nothing but increase the problem.
Edit: People hate this post, but it's a hard fact, this is a simple supply and demand problem. This isn't saying everyone has to leave, but until people move from higher cost of living locations to lower ones... it's only going to continue to get worse, because we keep increasing demands, even when we build more houses, more people come wanting to live in them.
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
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.
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.
Let's start over and give you all another chance to downvote me.
If you can't afford to live where you are you should look elsewhere that there is a better cost of living.
Your choosing to live and work in Seattle what's next? Telling me you can't make ends meet in LA?
Yes those places are expensive because the demand is more than the supply. There's hundreds of big cities out there. Go look up some that have low cost of living. I'll start you off.
Edit: what a surprise. I guess we will just be the victim with out attempting to do anything to change the situation.
The problem is that it's expensive everywhere. There is no "Plan (or city) B" anymore.
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.
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?
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.
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.
Go look at housing prices in Julian right now.
Ah, okay, I just did. I see 4 mobile homes priced under 260k in high risk fire country. I don't see how suggesting I look into this validated your point because it certainly proved mine.