What do you think about rent control/mandated affordable apartments?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

On basic fire/sanitation safety I wouldn't negotiate, but everything else damn right! Shared facilities, tiny units, etc., should be the bridge between "normal" housing and shelters.

As for those 700-1100 sf units Jtown, I agree. Even townhouses in my city tend to be multiples of that.

I have trouble believing Seattle is so different from SF but in SF 900-1100 sf is a common size for a 2BR/2 bath unit (incl "townhouses"). I live in a 2BR/2 bath "townhouse" that is roughly 950 sf (though it depends how you measure it--that's the low end). Prices currently running just under $1000/sf in an "older" and not especially distinguished (but well-maintained) midrise (15 floors) building like mine.

[mhays]

Seattle townhouses tend to be new construction in multifamily zones that can go 45' tall. They're typically three or four stories. They make them skinny because they can avoid condo liability issues by doing individual properties, yet they want to maximize the units on the property. They use most of the 45' because the cost/risk/reward because plenty of people will pay for that square footage.

[jtown,man]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ You mean like this?

Here’s a tiny one:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-65104747.html

Or if you actually want a kitchen:
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-67400047.html


Gotta love London real estate. But there are lots and lots of houses in the 900-1,300 square foot range (and some quite a bit smaller as evidenced above).

That second one is almost exactly what I am talking about!

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by mhays

Seattle townhouses tend to be new construction in multifamily zones that can go 45' tall. They're typically three or four stories. They make them skinny because they can avoid condo liability issues by doing individual properties, yet they want to maximize the units on the property. They use most of the 45' because the cost/risk/reward because plenty of people will pay for that square footage.

"Townhouses" here are usually multifloor units (mine has 2 floors) in large multifamily buildings where most units are regular single floor apartments. It is common to put the regular apartments in towers and connect the towers with banks of such "townhouses", often stacked (again, in my building we have two stacks over 2 commercial floors so my "townhouse" is the 5th and 6th floors of a 6-floor wing connecting 2 15-floor towers.

[10023]

Originally Posted by sopas ej

I do see homeless people, and I figured you didn't. And I've seen a lot of the same homeless people in various stages of their length of homelessness. They start out clean, with clean luggage, and some personal belongings like vacuum cleaners and whatnot. And then a month or two later, driving underneath the same underpass somewhere in LA, I'll recognize that same homeless person, except they look a little more weathered, and some of the luggage might be gone.

I don’t care who you “see”. I see homeless people too. You don’t know or interact with these people.

No one is living under a fucking bridge because the rent is too high. They are doing so because something is wrong with them mentally. Take your things and move to somewhere cheaper than a particular part of LA. These people should usually be institutionalized.

Most importantly, for someone in this position, there is no reasonable rent reduction in prime areas that will make that housing something that they can afford. People should not be living in an apartment that normally costs $2500/mo for $500/mo. Who gets to win that lottery?

For someone with no money to spend on rent, what’s needed is shelters (if they’re of sound mind) or mental hospitals (if they are not).

Originally Posted by sopas ej

However you slice it, homelessness is homelessness.

No, it isn’t. Some people are actually homeless, others are mooching off friends to save money or avoid moving, and not actually homeless.

During the financial crisis, a friend that was laid off from one of the banks crashed on my sofa in NY for a couple of months. He wasn’t “homeless”. He had lots of options to find a place to live, but staying with a friend near to where his interviews would be was a better option. Living under a bridge was not a better option, which is why mentally sound people don’t do that.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

"Townhouses" here are usually multifloor units (mine has 2 floors) in large multifamily buildings where most units are regular single floor apartments. It is common to put the regular apartments in towers and connect the towers with banks of such "townhouses", often stacked (again, in my building we have two stacks over 2 commercial floors so my "townhouse" is the 5th and 6th floors of a 6-floor wing connecting 2 15-floor towers.

That’s an extremely odd definition of “townhouse”.

A townhouse is a house in town, which is usually taller than it is wide and connected to the ones next door.

What you’re describing are duplexes or, in the UK, “maisonettes”.

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by 10023

That’s an extremely odd definition of “townhouse”.

Odd or not, this is what gets sold in new developments as "townhouses" in SF (the portion on the corner and between the towers which in this case, as with mine, are, I believe, stacked):


https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=...jC64SR9LndAhUCUa0KHaKUBoIQoiowCnoECAoQCQ

There is almost no new single family construction in San Francisco, attached or not, such as what you might call a "townhouse".

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by 10023

I don’t care who you “see”. I see homeless people too. You don’t know or interact with these people.

No one is living under a fucking bridge because the rent is too high. They are doing so because something is wrong with them mentally. Take your things and move to somewhere cheaper than a particular part of LA. These people should usually be institutionalized.

Most importantly, for someone in this position, there is no reasonable rent reduction in prime areas that will make that housing something that they can afford. People should not be living in an apartment that normally costs $2500/mo for $500/mo. Who gets to win that lottery?

For someone with no money to spend on rent, what’s needed is shelters (if they’re of sound mind) or mental hospitals (if they are not).

There was a case a few years back here in Pittsburgh where a homeless guy was actually gifted a house by some well-meaning idiot. He of course had no money to pay utilities, so the house was exposed to the elements. He ended up living in the basement, insulating it by stacking garbage against the foundation on all sides. This attracted hordes of rats, which the neighbors began to complain about. I dunno how it was resolved - it's hard to get a homeowner out of a house in the state unless they don't pay property taxes for several years, at which point the city can seize it for sheriff's sale.

Regardless, it shows why just giving homeless people homes often doesn't work. They need more support than that.

[10023]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

Odd or not, this is what gets sold in new developments as "townhouses" in SF (the portion on the corner and between the towers which in this case, as with mine, are, I believe, stacked):


https://www.google.com/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=...jC64SR9LndAhUCUa0KHaKUBoIQoiowCnoECAoQCQ

There is almost no new single family construction in San Francisco, attached or not, such as what you might call a "townhouse".

That doesn’t mean they should start calling something else a townhouse. San Francisco has lots of Victorian townhouses.

[10023]

Originally Posted by eschaton

There was a case a few years back here in Pittsburgh where a homeless guy was actually gifted a house by some well-meaning idiot. He of course had no money to pay utilities, so the house was exposed to the elements. He ended up living in the basement, insulating it by stacking garbage against the foundation on all sides. This attracted hordes of rats, which the neighbors began to complain about. I dunno how it was resolved - it's hard to get a homeowner out of a house in the state unless they don't pay property taxes for several years, at which point the city can seize it for sheriff's sale.

Regardless, it shows why just giving homeless people homes often doesn't work. They need more support than that.

This is not surprising.

Homeless people are not just people who couldn’t afford to pay rent, and homelessness as a personal or societal issue actually has nothing at all to do with the topic of this thread. There is another thread about homelessness.

[mhays]

There are clearly people who live on the streets because they can't afford rent.

But the majority of street people apparently aren't in that category.

[10023]

Originally Posted by mhays

There are clearly people who live on the streets because they can't afford rent.

But the majority of street people apparently aren't in that category.

That doesn’t make any sense. No one of sound mind would live on the street before, you know, moving somewhere else.

And it still has nothing to do with rent control. Even rent controlled apartments in New York are more expensive than market rate housing in most of the country.

Rent control is not about keeping people off the street, it’s about sparing them longer commutes or the hassle of moving. And that’s why it’s controversial, because everyone has to move or compromise on their commute. If a professional whose $5000/mo Manhattan apartment isn’t large enough for a family has to move to the suburbs and commute an hour each way, why should anyone else be protected from having to do this by regulation? And speaking as a renter myself, no renter has a claim to staying in an apartment that they don’t own indefinitely. My landlord could decide to sell the building or de-convert it back to a single family house at the end of my lease, and I’d have to move. A friend just had to move in NYC because the owner of the co-op they were renting wanted to do some renovations. That’s the breaks.

And before anyone brings it up - if a landlord asks for a massive increase in rent that forces someone to move, it’s only because that person has been paying below market rents for years. So that person is lucky, not unfortunate.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by mhays

There are clearly people who live on the streets because they can't afford rent.

But the majority of street people apparently aren't in that category.

Most homeless people are not street people though. The majority of the homeless population couch-surfs between friends and families or sleeps in their car. Many of those people are fairly well adjusted and have jobs.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by 10023

That doesn’t make any sense. No one of sound mind would live on the street before, you know, moving somewhere else.

Yes, why can't they just eat cake!?

Sorry, you're flat wrong here. I'm amazed that this is even debatable.

People are in a million situations. Maybe they've pissed their friends off or don't have any. Maybe they're justifying living on the street for a short time (which becomes longer) because a solution is just around the corner. Maybe they actually like living on the street. Maybe they stay in town so they can see their kid occasionally.

Whether you get this stuff or not, there are in fact a lot of sane people on the streets, and they're reportedly full of stories like this.

[Jonesy55]

Originally Posted by 10023

. My landlord could decide to sell the building or de-convert it back to a single family house at the end of my lease, and I’d have to move.

I don't necessarily disagree with that, but there probably should be regulation in place to ensure that landlords and rental agents are not actively encouraged to move people on after 12 months or whatever, like prohibiting one off fees for moving in, non-refundable (or dubiously withheld) deposits and so on. Those kind of regulations are fair enough imo to prevent unnecessary churn within the rental market just to give more profits to owners at the expense of stability for tenants.

If anything the regulations should encourage landlords to keep good tenants for the long term while giving them some flexibility to move people on if there is a genuinely good reason for doing so.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by mhays

Yes, why can't they just eat cake!?

Sorry, you're flat wrong here. I'm amazed that this is even debatable.

People are in a million situations. Maybe they've pissed their friends off or don't have any. Maybe they're justifying living on the street for a short time (which becomes longer) because a solution is just around the corner. Maybe they actually like living on the street. Maybe they stay in town so they can see their kid occasionally.

Whether you get this stuff or not, there are in fact a lot of sane people on the streets, and they're reportedly full of stories like this.

It's somewhere in between. People are in a million situations, however 10023 is correct in that: If I or you or him were on the verge of not being able to afford our apartment, we would be proactive and look for a cheaper place to live even if that meant uprooting ourselves and moving to another city [we see this in migration patterns of working/middle class people leaving New York, Calif for Texas and Florida].

I doubt any of us would continue to live in an apartment that exceeded our income levels and continue to live there, burning through our savings, ultimately get evicted and live on the streets. Instead we would bite the bullet and move.

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by mhays

Yes, why can't they just eat cake!?

Sorry, you're flat wrong here. I'm amazed that this is even debatable.

People are in a million situations. Maybe they've pissed their friends off or don't have any. Maybe they're justifying living on the street for a short time (which becomes longer) because a solution is just around the corner. Maybe they actually like living on the street. Maybe they stay in town so they can see their kid occasionally.

Whether you get this stuff or not, there are in fact a lot of sane people on the streets, and they're reportedly full of stories like this.

My older brother had a friend who, in the 1990s, decided he wanted to be a homeless street punk for awhile after graduating high school. So he traveled out to Berkeley, CA and took up residence in a squat.

He only lasted for a few months. One of his "housemates" went crazy and killed his girlfriend, then asked the rest of the squat to help him bury the body in the morning. He called his dad to pick him up that night.

He's a car salesmen now.

[mhays]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

It's somewhere in between. People are in a million situations, however 10023 is correct in that: If I or you or him were on the verge of not being able to afford our apartment, we would be proactive and look for a cheaper place to live even if that meant uprooting ourselves and moving to another city [we see this in migration patterns of working/middle class people leaving New York, Calif for Texas and Florida].

I doubt any of us would continue to live in an apartment that exceeded our income levels and continue to live there, burning through our savings, ultimately get evicted and live on the streets. Instead we would bite the bullet and move.

What does "any of us" have to do with?

A subset of the population has a combination of the sanity, money problems, and willingness to live on the streets in a pinch or unwillingness/inability to do the alternatives.

[jd3189]

Originally Posted by Sun Belt

It's somewhere in between. People are in a million situations, however 10023 is correct in that: If I or you or him were on the verge of not being able to afford our apartment, we would be proactive and look for a cheaper place to live even if that meant uprooting ourselves and moving to another city [we see this in migration patterns of working/middle class people leaving New York, Calif for Texas and Florida].

I doubt any of us would continue to live in an apartment that exceeded our income levels and continue to live there, burning through our savings, ultimately get evicted and live on the streets. Instead we would bite the bullet and move.

And this is the funny thing about this, especially in this thread and forum. This move to cheaper areas pretty much ensures more people will continue moving to the suburbs at the expense of more urban growth for cities. If people like 10023 say touch luck for those who can’t afford to live in the city ( which seems to be increasing in places like SF, LA, NYC, etc), those places are just going to be third world towns with super rich folks only surrounded by extreme poverty. In fact, it’s already that way to a certain extent.


I understand apartment landlords have rights and power, but there should be some middle ground. It’s very counterproductive to mock the suburbs when they are doing a good job of taking people away from the cities, limiting their growth.

[Sun Belt]

Originally Posted by mhays

What does "any of us" have to do with?

A subset of the population has a combination of the sanity, money problems, and willingness to live on the streets in a pinch or unwillingness/inability to do the alternatives.

"any of us" probably refers to normal people without a mental disorder. Normal people would probably relocate themselves and their family before they are shitting on a street corner in San Francisco in front of conventioneers trying to get from the Marriott to the Moscone Center.