Here in Los Angeles we have some of the most overvalued real estate in America. a bungalow in the city can go for millions, and is often torn down and replaced by a gleaming white McMansion because renovation is slower and costlier than filing new papers with the city. We cant just build more housing because traditional neighborhoods will fight to the death in courts to prevent multi family housing from devaluing their property or worse, competing for their rental income. The large apartment complexes that do get built are divided between anyone who can affort 10k a month in rent and fees, and "lower income" applicants who pay a fraction of this but are also held to strict terms and conditions. You wind up with millionaires and single moms living in beachfront Santa Monica communities, while anyone with a regular office job often commutes 40-70 miles in from the valley. Its often said you dont quit your job in LA, you quit your commute.
new apartments built are not priced affordably because banks and investors want their interest back quickly and have promised surrounding neighborhoods they will price accordingly to keep out the riff raff. in turn, dilapidated apartment complexes from the 60's go for about the same rates because these property owners know there is no "better offer" in town.
this doesnt even cover the 73,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county we cant seem to find a place for because no beach city wants to house their own unsustainable numbers of homeless, and no desert community is within a radius of health and welfare services required by many transients.
Then there are the haters. people like the Aids Healthcare Foundation who ran a 6 month campaign to defeat city legislation for new affordable housing. Why? Mike Weinstein doesnt want any development to obstruct the view from his penthouse.
>this doesnt even cover the 73,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county we cant seem to find a place for because no beach city wants to house their own unsustainable numbers of homeless, and no desert community is within a radius of health and welfare services required by many transients.
Wasn't there a pledge to spend over $100 million on this issue last year? Not to mention a new tax w/ HHH.
But yeah, LA is bittersweet. Great weather and lots to do but the lack of a true center, unaffordable housing, and the slow, expensive build out of public transit leaves a lot to be desired.
At my age, I don't care so much about housing in my current situation (to be honest, given the schools here, I would go elsewhere), I would just like half my income not to go to rent (this is in a rent stabilized building - my recent bout of unemployment would've seen me joining the other flood of folks leaving since it wouldn't have covered market rate rent).
Wow, didn't know that. A lot of politics, unfortunately, is showing visible progress. Whether it's $300mm or $100mm, some sort of impact should've been visible on the streets or at least touted by our mayors due to the political points they get.
Goes for transit as well. Because the homeowning / wealthy won't pay their fair share of taxes, those of us in the lower brackets who will really benefit from public transit also have to take on that burden at the sales tax level.
One problem with homelessness is that it's in many ways a classic externality. It's often cheaper for localities to provide no services (which cost money and attract more homeless individuals) and instead to encourage homeless people to migrate elsewhere. Hence the controversial practice wherein some cities buy homeless people one way bus tickets to other cities, or plane tickets to other states in the extraordinary case of Hawaii. So even if that $300m got 7500 individuals off the street, another 7500 would move in to replace them right away. Which is why you don't see any visible effects of the spending.
Even when cities do undertake to provide services rather than shifting costs, their capacity to provide those services is only a tiny fraction of the national demand. And it's functionally a national or at least regional market because the homeless tend to be a very mobile population due to lack of fixed housing or employment. So you get cities like Portland, OR, where they provide extensive services, but the downtown areas where the services are located have been inundated with homeless people, which has been extremely detrimental to businesses in the area, has strained public safety resources, and damaged the quality of life of many local residents (eg a couple years ago a homeless man made a tent home on the sidewalk outside my apartment and then would scream at the top of his lungs for hours every night for months, making it impossible to sleep, presumably because of some mental illness).
In some ways, it makes zero sense for San Francisco to spend any money at all on the homeless, because it's one the most expensive places in the nation that we could be housing and providing assistance to the homeless population. But homeless people have rights, including the freedom to travel where they want. So they will continue to be attracted to cities that treat them well, at a disproportionate expense to locals (who ironically tend to be the ones most sympathetic to their need), while NIMBYists contribute nothing and experience no detriment. While also generating homeless people at the same rate as the more welcoming areas.
All of which is to say that we need some national policy here, otherwise a few cities will continue to shoulder the burden while most will skate along as free riders. A functioning mental health system would be incredibly helpful, for example, because then mental health services wouldn't be limited to a few locations.
Its not really relevant how much is spent per homeless person, what you want to know is how many people that money keeps off the streets. If you spent 100M and kept all but one last homeless man off the street by your metric you've spent 100M/homeless, while in reality you've spent 100M to keep all but one off the street.
$275M last year, $305M this year. Absolutely no accountability for the spend and no metrics to figure out if it's actually doing anything. It's a complete waste of money.
Politicians fear that being generous to homeless people will attract more homeless people from other cities, causing a net increase in homeless people in their city.
I mean, if in City A the cops hassle homeless people and the only support offered is bus tickets to other cities, while City B offers good support and humane policing, I'd take the bus ticket from A to B - who wouldn't?
> I'm no where near an expert here, but at that expense, why not just give them the money?
If you give them the money then all the money goes to the people it's supposed to help and there is no cut for the middle men. But the middle men are the ones with the ability to successfully lobby for programs to exist.
It's the same sort of thing as low income housing subsidies. Landlords lobby for them because they pretend to address high rents when their actual result is to keep rents high. Or even increase rents by stimulating demand without increasing supply.
The primary issue is: if you directly give the homeless people $40,000, the people in the lower and lower middle 1/3 economic tier are going to ask why they're not getting that kind of help - cash thrown at them - despite the fact that they're working two jobs and at least paying some taxes.
> The primary issue is: if you directly give the homeless people $40,000, the people in the lower and lower middle 1/3 economic tier are going to ask why they're not getting that kind of help - cash thrown at them - despite the fact that they're working two jobs and at least paying some taxes.
To which the obvious solution is a UBI. Which would then solve the equivalent problem with all the programs aimed at the working poor.
Also, a significant fraction of homeless will probably not be able to effectively use the money without a support structure in place. It's very likely a good sum of that money would wind up in the wrong hands and help no-one.
The last paragraph is interesting. If we get more multi-family homes in LA, that's still not something to own. I guess single family homes could all turn into condominiums, as long as that counts as true ownership.
The American idea of a perfect life is to have a nice house with a huge yard that the kids can frolic/play in. A big house with a big garage. And of course in a nice school district.
Basically its supposed to be an ideal environment for raising kids. Which is weird because me and all my friends grew up in heavily urbanized areas living in apartments (outside the US) and all turned out OK (well almost all).
It probably also has to do with the independence of not having others live across the wall.
"Kids don't need huge yards to play, kids need other kids to play with". I don't recall who said that, but it really rings true to me. In the place we rent now, there's a huge yard, but the kids mostly ignore it. They're always happy to see friends though, and with friends, a yard 1/4 the size would more than suffice.
In Italy, we essentially had no yard at all, and they were mostly ok - often we'd take them to the park where all the other local kids went, and they loved it, because almost always they saw someone they knew.
Agreed, I grew up in Toronto with a small yard but my brother and I rarely used it. We would simply go to the park or the school yard. We did use the pool at my grandmothers but that was pretty extravagant for the 2 months a year you can use it in Toronto.
I am American and own a condo in the dense downtown core of Chicago among a sea of high-rises. I do, though, understand the desire for many other people to want a single family home. That is not my desire, but I get it.
My question was why the above poster doesn’t consider condo ownership “true” ownership? The condos on my block run between $500,000 and $3m, and the single family homes on the same block start at $3m and go to $7m. If I don’t buy one of those single-family homes, why does the poster not consider me a true homeowner? That was my specific concern with their remark.
The idea that single family homes are the ideal environment to raise kids is seriously overrated. Yeah, kids can frolic, but in isolation - as opposed to community playgrounds that are often much better equipped and where they can develop early social skills, and just have more fun. We live in an "apartment village" with lots of community playgrounds and children thrive there.
In a typical American setting (suburban, no useful public transportation) it's a great way to keep kids from going anywhere until they get a driver's license / car.
It’s a natural consequence of living in an absolutely huge country where we can spread out as much as we please. Cities grow but eventually people look around and say “wait a minute, for the same money and a slightly longer drive I could get a bigger house, a yard, less noise, more privacy...”
Americans are really noisy and unruly. I grew up in a city and I hate the suburbs, but I kind of understand not wanting to live next to others in America.
I don't know what other countries are like (and barely know the rules in my own country) but in one Australian state (NSW) and potentially another one soon (Vic) they are putting in some "majority rules" laws where if 8/10 of the people in the block want to sell the place then you have too.
In mine 6/10 are owned by property developers so a combination of law changes and greedy developers could lead to me losing what I thought was a lifelong asset. If I'd bought a house and land instead (not that I can afford it) then nothing short of imminent domain laws could force me out.
Hmmm... If I may ask you: I'm considering moving to LA for a job in Venice/Culver city. Wondering if I can live somewhat closeby for a reasonable rent. I definitely don't want to commute more than 30 min each way :/.
Edit: The offer is "developer salary" so I assumed it would be OK for a rundown but safe rental somewhere closeby.
Even though Venice and Culver City are technically right next to each other the office jobs in Culver City, for the most part, are a few miles from where the Venice office jobs are (see here: https://goo.gl/maps/963isPRWKmL2; short distance, but traffic from/to the 405 can be pretty brutal at rush hour even over short distances).
Getting a 30-minute commute to Venice is going to be materially more expensive, but on a dev salary (assuming $100k-$150k) you should have no trouble affording a place. If you're working in downtown Culver City you'll have way more choices at all price points because you can live almost anywhere between downtown LA and the beach and still get there in under 30.
The housing crunch is real, but on "developer salary" you shouldn't have any problems finding a rental. Mar Vista and Palms are the closest relatively affordable neighborhoods to Culver. You can probably find something in Venice too, but (this is purely personal prejudice) I can't understand why anyone would do that to themselves.
Just a different point of view on Venice (respect to SC and their opinion)... It can be a fantastic place to live and a lot of people love it (and though the streets are not gilded like other West LA neighborhoods it is every bit as expensive and desirable). If you do decide to live there, though, stick to the area between the Santa Monica border and Abbot Kinney and, oddly, steer clear of the blocks right next to the beach (you might find some killer deal on a place close to the beach, but if it seems too good to be true it usually is because of summer crowds, homeless issues, quality of apartments/houses, etc).
30 minutes is definitely doable as long as you don't cross the 405. Most young people I know on developer salary in LA live practically walking distance to work.
new apartments built are not priced affordably because banks and investors want their interest back quickly and have promised surrounding neighborhoods they will price accordingly to keep out the riff raff. in turn, dilapidated apartment complexes from the 60's go for about the same rates because these property owners know there is no "better offer" in town.
this doesnt even cover the 73,000 homeless people in Los Angeles county we cant seem to find a place for because no beach city wants to house their own unsustainable numbers of homeless, and no desert community is within a radius of health and welfare services required by many transients.
Then there are the haters. people like the Aids Healthcare Foundation who ran a 6 month campaign to defeat city legislation for new affordable housing. Why? Mike Weinstein doesnt want any development to obstruct the view from his penthouse.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-aids-foundation-...
My husband and I live in LA and love it. but honestly, its bittersweet. We will never truly own anything more than a latte here.