San Francisco homeless sweep was cheered on by the right. It was also illegal
Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.
The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.
The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”
How come the US has such a massive homelessness problem while having pretty much the cheapest real estate in the world (relative to income)? People in other developed countries can't even dream about such low prices. The US government also has the world's biggest budget - just house people for free for fucks sake! It's literally pennies for the state.
P.S. Property to income ratio source - https://www.numbeo.com/property-investment/rankings_by_country.jsp
Much of the homelessness problem in America is really untreated mental health problems. A lot comes from not having universal healthcare.
Also, most jobs are in cities where housing is more expensive. We also have a shitty minimum wage, and a minimum wage job can’t buy a studio apartment and food in most areas where there are jobs.
Also, average and even median income is not a great measure of the wealth of the poor. The US Gino coefficient (a measure of income inequality) is poor compared to most other developed countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient
And we can thank Regan for that.
Ok, I see.
If that's true, considering young people in the U.S. can't afford to buy houses and end up living with their parents for 15 years after they turn 18, I'd hate to know what it's like in other countries.
also, i'm sure a lot of cheap real estate amounts to random plots in the desert without actual infrastructure to support most people.
Yeah, but why would we do that when we could just tell them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps?
Look, I'm all for telling people to pull themselves up, but the US could rake some serious political prestige points worldwide for doing that. And also flex over China and other commies - look how great capitalism is! If I was Trump during his dumb economic war with China, I'd house all homeless in an instant just to show China who's a real daddy here.
There was a bill that was passed by the Clinton administration in the 90s that limits the amount of residential property the federal government is allowed to own. They also passed some concessions that make it so that a reduction in unpopular government spending cannot equate to an increase of spending on social programs.
What was the name of it?
Succs to be poor Act
I'm sorry I don't remember. Also I think those were two different bills
Don't use California as a metric for American homelessness. California has made itself a veritable Mecca for homeless people by passing laws that allow them to set up camp virtually anywhere. Those laws, combined with its naturally temperate climate have resulted in 30% of America's homeless population living in California. No other state in the U.S. has such a hard-on for homeless people and we have much more sensible laws that reflect that.
Well, property values around where the homeless are are also way higher than just about anywhere else in the world. California also has 12% of the US population.
It's not just the laws allowing homeless people to live that have created this. It's also the laws that allow rent to be extremely high and allow landlords to have empty living spaces without being taxed to hell for it.
All fair points. I just meant to point out that California has created a perfect storm of homelessness for itself, which is not true for the rest of the country.
Here in Colorado rent keeps going up with no end in sight and our local government is trying to provide help rather than limit it. Tax dollars down the drain.
Yeah, we really need some laws to punish landlords hording living space. If it isn't being used to house someone, it should be taxed at an extremely high rate. You shouldn't be able to get a tax write-off for not utilizing property just because you want to charge too much. Reduce prices until it's filled or pay the consequences.
I am not sure about that but the hard limit should be set based on the amount of rooms. A 3 bd should be over 1600 dollars and a 1 bd shouldn't be over 800 dollars.
Ok. I don't know much about America.
The real answer is that people feel entitled to live in major cities so they don't go to the areas where there is cheap real estate.
They think supply and demand doesn't apply to them, and they have plenty of other entitled city-dwellers to support them.
Unfortunately, reality is just different than what they want. They don't want to admit that though, so they just sit around and wait for other people to solve their problems.
They're still waiting.
yes, i'm sure i should quit my job in a big city, give up health insurance (which i have gotten for the first time in my adult life), uproot my kids and move to ?, to do ???, so i can live in a depressed backwater for cheap rent.
i'm so fucking entitled.
edit - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slab_City,_California
I never said it was easy, but it is doable.
If you can't afford to live there, why should someone else foot the bill? Because you're entitled? You think supply and demand doesn't apply to you? You think you're "too good" to live outside of a major city, even though many others do?
Yeah. Thanks for proving my point.
nobody is paying my bills but me. i'm just getting tired of the argument i have been seeing around lemmy lately that wanting to stay in the city (where many of us have JOBS) is "entitled." i think real estate and rental markets are fucking bonkers when they are pricing out most americans. i have a middle class professional job and i can barely afford it - what about those who work in the service industry who make even less? rent is even harder to cover, and small towns don't have job markets that can accommodate many.
guess what? people go where the jobs are. this isn't about being "too good" to live somewhere, it's about being in a catch-22 of choosing between employment/healthcare/family and rent.
quit putting your words in my mouth ("too good," where the fuck did i say that?) and try talking to actual people.
This has to be the most divorced from reality hot take I've seen on Lemmy in awhile.
You say the homeless in cities pay more to sleep on the street than the rural homeless, but you fail to provide sidewalk sleeping cost comparables. If you’re going to be so ridiculous it’s important to be very over the top, or people may really believe this is somehow your view.
Oh boy, we got one.
You're right, but you're not right about why you're right.