Study: Homelessness Rate Correlated With Median Rent, not Rates of Poverty or Mental Illness

[civilwarbuff]

Its funny how we all have our arenas where we love and benefit from anti free market regulations.

Remember that comment if your neighbor starts a junk yard in his backyard.

 

[civilwarbuff]

I doubt, even if we made it a priority in the places where it is necessary, that we could build housing fast enough to 'crash the housing market'.

Raise interest rates......which is happening even as we speak.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Raise interest rates......which is happening even as we speak.

This has nothing to do with building more homes.

 

[civilwarbuff]

This has nothing to do with building more homes.

Of course it does. Why do you think housing starts drop dramatically during years of higher than normal mortgage interest rates?

 

[Aryeh Jay]

It takes 2 hours to leave the sprawling LA metro area going East. More urban sprawl is not the answer IMO.

I remember back in the 1970s when San Bernadino was in the sticks.

 

[essentialsaltes]

Of course it does. Why do you think housing starts drop dramatically during years of higher than normal mortgage interest rates?

You're putting the cart before the horse. Landon and my solution has not been put into effect, so the recent rise in interest rates has not been caused by our solution.

I guess Landon's and my solution is needed even more. If the invisible hand is going to slow down home building, then we the people need to act to increase home building.

 

[durangodawood]

Remember that comment if your neighbor starts a junk yard in his backyard.

I'm all for various regulations of the free market to protect this or that value. I mean I'm a liberal elite and we love regulation, right?

But preserving investor value is a job for the market, not for govt, and definitely not by inducing artificial scarcity of a commodity as essential to human well being as housing.

 

[civilwarbuff]

You're putting the cart before the horse. Landon and my solution has not been put into effect, so the recent rise in interest rates has not been caused by our solution.

Who claimed that?

I guess Landon's and my solution is needed even more. If the invisible hand is going to slow down home building, then we the people need to act to increase home building.

Which will drive interest rates even higher......quite likely precipitating a recession because of the high interest rates......law of supply and demand......

 

[civilwarbuff]

I'm all for various regulations of the free market to protect this or that value. I mean I'm a liberal elite and we love regulation, right?

But preserving investor value is a job for the market, not for govt, and definitely not by inducing artificial scarcity of a commodity as essential to human well being as housing.

You and I will simply have to agree to disagree.......

 

[essentialsaltes]

Which will drive interest rates even higher....

How do you figure that? Lack of housing supply is what is driving rents up, which drives inflation, which causes the Fed to raise interest rates.

law of supply and demand......

Right, so if you increase the supply of houses...

What happens?

 

[civilwarbuff]

How do you figure that? Lack of housing supply is what is driving rents up, which drives inflation, which causes the Fed to raise interest rates.

The COST of building/maintenance of homes/taxes/insurance is what drives rents up.....that cost is driven, in large part, by gov over regulation. Case in point: My city, Columbus Oh, requires all houses that have roofing make from individual boards be re-sheathed in plywood or OSB. My house is one of those. It is almost 100 years old made from solid oak including the roofing but when the roof gets replaced next time guess what happens? A few (several?) thousand dollars goes to re-sheathing the roof. Who benefits? The contractors and the politicians who pushed this asinine regulation. So now the landlord has to raise the rent to pay for that re-sheathing.

Right, so if you increase the supply of houses...

What happens?

Not much if you keep increasing the price of housing except fewer people can afford it.......

 

[essentialsaltes]

You should go on the road with that tapdancing routine.

 

[miamited]

I'd like to see California begin it by breaking ground in Southern California's High Desert, a barren landscape, hundreds of miles wide, only an hour or two from LA. Why this land all lays undeveloped while home prices an hour away are some of the highest in the country is beyond me.

Hi @Landon Caeli

Can you get water there? What about jobs? Is there work there? Or is your plan just to leave them out in the barren desert without food or water or jobs? Just build them a structure and throw them in it and leave them on their own, right?

If you ever want them to become productive people, then you really are forced to build their housing within the city. Close to public transportation. Again, we need to differentiate between the 'chronic' homeless and the 'temporary' homeless. They are a different set of people with different needs. The temporary homeless are usually people who still have hopes and dreams and are just out of their homes due to some financial crisis that can be remedied with just some small amount of financial assistance to get them back to where they recently were. The chronic homeless are a much more difficult issue to deal with.

God bless,
Ted

 

[miamited]

Hi @civilwarbuff

The COST of building/maintenance of homes/taxes/insurance is what drives rents up.....that cost is driven, in large part, by gov over regulation. Case in point: My city, Columbus Oh, requires all houses that have roofing make from individual boards be re-sheathed in plywood or OSB. My house is one of those. It is almost 100 years old made from solid oak including the roofing but when the roof gets replaced next time guess what happens? A few (several?) thousand dollars goes to re-sheathing the roof. Who benefits? The contractors and the politicians who pushed this asinine regulation. So now the landlord has to raise the rent to pay for that re-sheathing.

Not much if you keep increasing the price of housing except fewer people can afford it.......

I would agree that some regulation that requires a perfectly good roof substrate to be replaced just because it is individual boards, and they are usually tongue and groove, is stupid. I've lived in homes in south florida that were older and built with 1x6x10 or 12 pine tongue and groove and it's a whole lot more durable than OSB, which just goes to crap if it ever gets wet. Personally, I'd rather have plywood or board roof over OSB any day. The plywood is better for a nailing surface for the shingles because there aren't as many joints that you might hit with the nail gun. But for overall durability, I like the tongue and groove board roof surface.

God bless,
Ted

 

[civilwarbuff]

You should go on the road with that tapdancing routine.

I think I turned on a light bulb.....LOL......

 

[Trogdor the Burninator]

The COST of building/maintenance of homes/taxes/insurance is what drives rents up.....that cost is driven, in large part, by gov over regulation.

I will partially agree with you. government regulation definitely is a factor in house prices, but (roofing issues aside) much of that regulation is desirable.

For example - if you're renting out a property in my state - it's a requirement to have working smoke alarms installed, with battery backup, that must be tested once per year and replaced every 10 years. That adds expense (albeit, not much expense), but it's a good thing because we don't want people dying in house fires.

When it comes to multistory blocks of flats, those fire safety requirements become exponentially more expensive, but again, we don't want people dying in house fires.

There are other requirements as well - around things like water efficiency, pool fencing, window safety in high rise, etc.

On the raw level, any regulation makes housing less affordable, but it's better to have some regulations that to let safety suffer, or allow random development in inappropriate areas. They key is balance.

 

[iluvatar5150]

The COST of building/maintenance of homes/taxes/insurance is what drives rents up.....that cost is driven, in large part, by gov over regulation. Case in point: My city, Columbus Oh, requires all houses that have roofing make from individual boards be re-sheathed in plywood or OSB. My house is one of those. It is almost 100 years old made from solid oak including the roofing but when the roof gets replaced next time guess what happens? A few (several?) thousand dollars goes to re-sheathing the roof. Who benefits? The contractors and the politicians who pushed this asinine regulation. So now the landlord has to raise the rent to pay for that re-sheathing.

Not much if you keep increasing the price of housing except fewer people can afford it.......

lol no. There’s nothing so much more expensive about maintaining an apartment in NYC or SF that causes average rents there to be over $3k/mo. My BIL pays $5k/mo for a 3br in Hoboken. His brother was paying over $4k/mo for a 2br in SF, and just dropped $2.1m on a 2000 sq ft ranch a half hour outside the city.

Yes, the taxes are high. But the taxes are high because the property values are very high. And the property values are high because demand is high and the supply is constrained. If it were truly operating costs that were driving high rent, and not a confluence of high demand and low supply, then we’d see vacancy rates being higher than they are.

 

[rjs330]

Hmm... after reading that I'm not convinced. Yes housing is a problem.

And there are many people who have had a period of homelessness due to job loss, loss of a house, a disability etc.

What I'm mostly focused on is chronic or nearly life long homelessness. And that's an issue that isn't an affordability question.

The majority of chronic homeless people are either mentally ill, addicted to drugs or alcohol, have some sort of disability, want to be homeless and/or a combination of any of them. Most chronic homeless are not hard working poor who just can't find a place to live.

The OP makes it seem like if we just had cheaper housing we wouldn't have any homeless. Yes the working poor might find easier access to housing. But the chronic homeless still wouldn't be able to keep a house. Just take a look at what has been done in some locations that tried to put the homeless into motels and such. They just wrecked the place and it became a hotbed of crime.

This article minimizes the true problems of chronic homelessness. We as a society did the mentally ill and addicted no favors by letting them run in the streets. They are constant victimea or crime and abuse with each other and they have little to no resources or help with the addictions and illnesses that put them there.

 

[rjs330]

I'd like to see California begin it by breaking ground in Southern California's High Desert, a barren landscape, hundreds of miles wide, only an hour or two from LA. Why this land all lays undeveloped while home prices an hour away are some of the highest in the country is beyond me.

Cause no one wants to live there? People in LA want to live in LA or close to it. They don't want to live in the high desert.

 

[rjs330]

We should be building new cities where no cities currently exist, and refurbishing old areas at the same time.

...That would be the sign of a healthy society anyway.

How do you build new cities? We can't find enough workers for the cities we have. What kind of jobs would there be to sustain a new city? Who's going to live there? What are we going to build a bunch of empty skyscrapers, housing, strip.malls, grocery stores.etc and then people will come? Cities are not just built.

They started small, had reasons for people.to come there and over the last 200 years developed into what they are now.