My ex-husband and I have a B.A. and M.A., specialized teaching certifications, and multiple trainings. He is a master tile setter and can build just about anything. He was in the trades for decades. But we owned a business and 2008 hit. By 2012, we were on the edge of homelessness. I kid you not, we lived on $43 a week for groceries: that meant for years we ate rice and beans 3x a day with the occasional cheese and canned chicken or eggs (back when they were cheap). We did NOT eat out, see a movie, or have health insurance for years. We lost electricity and couldn't do laundry a couple of times - all sorts of crazy things. It was scary as hell. I'm convinced it took years off my life. Luckily, I had family that could help a bit. It's the only reason we got passed it. It opened my eyes to how people can end up homeless. If we didn't have the safety net of my family, we would be there. Many have no safety net. It's not just people with addiction problems or a lack of education/skills.
I think people aren't against helping those who are trying to work and get by. even the examples given in this video regarding helping people get ID and an address. I don't think people are against that. people are against giving a free apartment to someone who's debilitatingly addicted and supplementing or sponsoring their spiral to death.
Opoid problem was blown up by the very employers you hope would give jobs. You are complicit. You don't offer real solutions just complaints. Your the type that only helps people you think are on trend to help. Not everyone became addicts because they went to drug parties. Many were hooked by their own private insurance approved doctors.
@@sweetsendaedreamr it doesn't matter how a person became an addict, the solution isn't to enable their addiction. people point at Portugal and say it's a success. they don't allow people to live on the streets and do drugs in public. that's not a solution. they force families to take their loved ones to rehab. they don't allow trafficking of drugs at all. it's not all decriminalization and other headline words. Finland has universal health care and much of their solution is contingent on that. they have social workers chasing around these homeless people on hard times everyday. without that source of care, the United States has to have a different solution. but again, that can't just be giving people money to do drugs or giving people housing without some way for them to get off drugs.
The following contribute to the scarcity of affordable housing in many cities 1) Fewer landlords accepting Section 8 vouchers 2) The gentrification of older neighborhoods 3) The "don't build affordable housing in my backyard" attitude 4) Private equity firms becoming landlords & 5) Cumbersome & convoluted bureaucracies which prevent the development of multi-unit housing.
How many landlords have you talked to whose homes were trashed by section 8 voucher renters? I’ve seen what they do & I know what’s required. As far as the others, bullseye.
@@Missy-Missy1111 there's probably a lot more than a few because I've lived in neighborhoods with Section 8 tenats for the last 20 years. They were all bad.
Thanks to wall street casinos, hedge funds, Blackstone, vanguard, black rock, etc etc. Chinese oligarchs and Russian oligarchs laundering money by buying as much real estate. New homes , new and old apts. It's about finance and sitting on property to wait for the value to go up and sell. It's not about providing housing at all. Ponzi scheme end stage predatory capitalism. Enjoy
Uh, it counts their temporary bump of moving everyone into motels during that thing that happened during 2020 -- because they got _boucoup_ Federal bucks to do so. But basically, before and after, they just involuntarily bus people to California. (Houston is just the only major city that counts temporary motel stays as "solving homelessness" and then busses recidivists out when their vouchers expire.)
It’s sad to see only 190+ comments in this video. I think it’s a sign of how uncomfortable America is with the homeless and NFA conversation. Corporations masquerading as rental agencies are making all of this much worse.
Didn't know Dallas and Houston were Blue cities, but that fits with their agenda to house the homeless. I congratulate Texans for this progress with such a heartbreaking problem now in America. Thank you for this report.
@@royharper2003 I’m sure you didn’t mean to sound that judgmental…. Family imo cannot always do for family, we can’t know or understand all the complexities, financial or otherwise. The fact that this person has three family members currently living life with / in such insecurity. .. that is the take away. It is freaking hard when you are living on that edge and once you fall you are screwed. I watched a family member with a record struggle and bc they are discriminated against, they end up having to pay more bc of low credit, unsteady employment, police / criminal record and mental illness , etc. It creates a vicious cycle. Personally, I feel the boarding house approach is fertile territory….done in a respectful way …with services, and serving as a bridge to fully independent living.
A version of the old poor farms with careful oversight could be one option to start stability and direction help for people. Many options need to be researched to help with this complicated issue.
$200,000 for a one bedroom home! That’s cheap! OMG, that’s extremely high. What kind of job would these individuals have to have to afford this? This doesn’t make sense. In Louisiana, minimum wage is less than $8/ hr.
I'm from NZ and $200K US is cheap for social housing. What Houston has done is a lesson for all Municipal governments everywhere. That's fantastic 😊. Now if only some Texas common sense could be exported, I think you could start a whole new business 😅😅
My kid is an engineer living in the Midwest (I would say our cost of housing is average). He cannot afford $200K for his first home. My husband and I entered the workforce in the early 1990s. Our first home was $65,000 with a starting salary in the 30ks. Starting salary hasn't tripled since then!
@@MNP208 yeah mate, it's the same all over. Australia, Canada, UK, NZ, EU. I started work 73, brought first home 81 for $26K. Now starting price for first home is $460K. Crazy huh?
It makes perfect sense to have boarding houses again. So many are single with little to no family and could afford a room if it were an option. With boarding houses people don't have to come up with a huge deposit, qualify for a one year lease or have a credit checks.
Was prevalent in WWII era, and it was implemented in no time flat. Washington DC, especially needed homes for workers. Any city with a Navy yard or production plants. Imagine with social media connections. Problem solved.
Thank you for sharing something people in Texas are doing right. We have huge issues politically, and are often viewed as uncaring when it comes to social issues, yet we provide education, medical care, and housing to more poor people and immigrants than anywhere else in the nation. We are trying…
I'm baffled. I still don't know what Houston's program is to house people. I understand Houston involves a database of needs & involves nonprofits in outreach. What else does Houston do???
This entire report is little more than a bunch of bullshit. I don't believe a single thing he is asserting. If there's a "model" what is it? And it's not "a database non profits can access." Either Houston played with the numbers or it changed the definition of what "homeless" means so 60% percent of people dropped out of the definition.
I live in Dallas. Homelessness has gotten so much better in the last year! The city encourages citizens to use one app to connect homeless people with nonprofits that can fit their needs. Single family zoning = homelessness problems
Yeah they moved to California because in Los Angeles Is OK to be homeless and the city will offer food stamps and cash for toiletries oh and also help finding jobs
Stop making sense. Idiots find this fact stuff very annoying. Follow the money. Americans voted themselves out of existence beginning with saint Ronny and.
The way to improve homelessness is to provide affordable housing. For the single, possibly mentally ill person, or those with addiction problems, the boarding rooms, ymca rooms what have are a viable option. For the family with children affordable apartments with sliding scales. All of this takes top notch organization and collaboration of many organizations. Then affordable housing has to be built. Legislate banks and corporations out of real estate, restrict the amount and types of real estate they can own. They are the culprits in the rise of rents and mortgages.
I live in a small Eastern city with a huge homeless problem. There is another small city nearby with a similar problem. That other city turned down federal money for housing a few years ago, so that they could continue putting their homeless people on buses and sending them to my city! This should be illegal! I’ve seen this happen in winter when our shelters were full. I spoke with one homeless man who said he just got off the bus and had no where to go. It was 4:00PM in winter when temperatures were dropping into the 20’s and he had already been turned away from the shelter. He was lying on the ground in a park with a small backpack. Let me be clear. This was not a panhandler. We approached him. Not the reverse.
Busing people out of the area instead of making effort to actually address a problem is lame. The same thing is happening in California. Affluent neighborhoods with homelessness issues bus their long-time, local residents priced out of their own home town to other neighborhoods to deal with.
I'm in California I was hoping that you really had some reality based tried and true means of ppl getting out of homelessness. But no such luck. I have been homeless within the last 5 years. My SSI disability finally came through, after a year of homelessness. But, I worry about becoming homeless again; four years ago my rent was $795 currenly it is $1175 with yearly rent increases. I know it doesn't sound like a fortune but is about 60% of my total income without utilities. I worry a lot, maybe not next year but soon.
You’re exactly right and hit on one of the main root causes of homelessness-uncontrolled rent increases. There’s no reason on earth why any rent should be able to be increased beyond what the cost of living is or to keep up with inflation. For at least 20 YEARS, pre-COVID, inflation was barely 2-3% but yet rents were increasing 10, 20, 30%! I remember moving back from San Fran to Pasadena in 2009 and looking for an apt and a new building was charging $2695 rent in 2009! How can they get away with setting any rent they want? And the worst thing is, they set that rent and immediately the following year it rises 20%. It’s the lack of political will by our legislators to put widespread rent controls in place and stricter rules regarding who can own housing units (i.e., private equity ownership should be limited) the way many European countries have done, that has gotten us into this mess. Sadly, without immediate and far-reaching legislation. I see this problem only getting worse and worse.
He has clear answers for the future: return to the boarding house SRO model of decades past, and increase national taxes to fund them. But for an immediate solution, the answer is to move to Houston or Dallas. That is what immigration (and America) is all about: being brave and moving to improve your life and the lives of your children.
We live in a world where the politicians pretend to care but don't. I received an email from my Governor about the money poured into the situation on my streets but the situation continues to get worse. I really wonder where all that money goes... It's so sad.
I read this article at the Times when it first came out. I feel better just knowing that Nicholas Kristof is out there on the job. I sleep a little easier.
Here is the new “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) law going into effect on January first in the Golden State: "Churches and nonprofit education institutions will be allowed to build affordable housing on their land without having to go through an expensive, laborious rezoning process or review under California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). SB 4, dubbed the “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) law, will allow for development of an estimated 171, 000 acres across the state, according to the UC Berkeley Terner Center."
I think HUD housing places people in locations around cities, not in one place. Why can’t we house people by increasing HUD funding? I’d like to see more halfway houses (closed by Reagan). I’d like to see more places like apartment buildings but with social services and food services. A higher minimum wage could help people save money. I think that if corporations paid their share of taxes we could solve the problem. I don’t think families should have to take in someone with an addiction. They don’t know how to help. People say it’s expensive to solve social problems, but we spend trillions on the military and let children suffer.
If this country doesn't fix the housing issues there will be more homeless Americans. Home affordability should not be out of reach for Americans. People working full-time should be able to pay rent or mortgage payments and have a life too.
I was the licensing rep over SRO single room, occupancy housing in the City of Chicago for the department of revenue. From 1993 to 1997. They were over 200 SRO’s licensed in the City of Chicago. they became a great help and Housing our Homeless Veterans in the 2000 the SRO’s here in Chicago some of them were amazing. They had kitchenette and their own private bathrooms.
The way Houston reduced their homelessness was by denying them basic resources such as food stamps or money for toiletries or Health insurance despite of their situation, in order to have access to those resources the Homeless people are required to be working a part-time job Regardless of their situation or condition . As a result many homeless people from Houston moved to California which is where most of the homeless people from the US end up because California provides them with assistance and support in the form of food stamps, cash aid, shelters, healthcare, Job and career training skills, housing, etc. So the notion that Houston has cut homelessness by 60% may be true but but only because the homeless people have left to other cities that can offer more humane services.
@@michellelester243 exactly that's why there's so many homeless people in Los Angeles a lot of the people living in the streets are people who come from Red States like Florida and Texas
I found myself disgusted with the system and unwilling to participate while being dismantled and unable to keep the vultures away. And purchased an old rv and renovated it myself. It took a year and then it burned completely down. So im finishing up my second camper renovation. Im not allowed to be anywhere without getting hassled, but at least im not homeless
I was the licensing rep over SRO single room, occupancy housing in the City of Chicago for the department of revenue. From 1993 to 1997. They were over 200 SRO’s licensed in the City of Chicago. they became a great help and Housing our Homeless Veterans in the 2000
Coordinated effort among agencies, lower barriers to construction, program oversight and most importantly some common sense. That said, this report focuses on affordable housing as the solution. But it’s only part of the solution. Many people, especially on the West Coast, who are homeless have serious drug and alcohol addictions and mental illnesses. Those folks have a need for intensive addiction and mental health treatment before they can ever hope to live on their own.
good interview but can we get housing people to denominate their housing costs in hours of minimum wage? $600 in Houston is 40 hours at the minimum wage of $15/hr. This is $620 in Los Angeles or $723 in San Francisco. So the unit of currency is on hour of minimum wage labor. Sure, housing stock at the 40 hour level is probably lower in SF than Houston but it's fewer moving parts than having to convert wages and rent combined.
Which minimum wage? In Georgia, there are two. Most are $7.25/hour, but Tipped employees are $2.13/hour. 40 hours at $2.13/hour is $85.20. At the fed min wage of $7.25/hour, it's $290. And this applies in Atlanta, not just smaller towns in this state.
Funny you'd say that; California has been promoting them since the eighties. All you have to do is search 'are ADUs allowed in _____' to find out the rules in the area you're interested in.
Bring back SROs, yes! And basement apartments and mixed neighborhoods with single family, duplexes, triplexes. The barriers to housing are way out of line, and we need to back off and enable choices. When I was younger, I knew a few men who lived in SROs at least some of the time and they weren't bad people, just people dealt a bad hand and coping however they could, including alcohol and drugs for some.
Knowing construction costs, I am baffled at the powers that be say how much it costs to build or remodel, inflating the actual cost. Where is all that extra money going? Oregon is a good example of agencies taking millions of dollars to build housing, and then putting it into their own pockets. As long as thieves run these programs the poor, disabled, and destitute will keep suffering. Dept of Human Services is denying care to millions who are dying in the streets, alleys, and back woods.
Here in San Francisco we have a lot of SROs. The better ones are owned and run by The City. I live in the Tenderloin and have an SRO next door. Very good neighbors! We have a mayoral race next year. The heir to Levi Strauss is running against Mayor Breed. I feel the topic of Homelessness is the Number One issue for the voters here. The challenger in the election runs a nonprofit that helps The Homeless. These facts combined with the assumption that Gavin Newsom will be running for POTUS in 2028leads me to believe this is the perfect time to do as Houston does and coordinate. If you can solve this issue here, you can solve it anywhere. As an aside the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is here. There are homeless who congregate on their premises. Even they deal with this issue
Every little thing one can do helps. Don’t forget about your family members. Try not to judge what you might interpret as bad life choices and just do what you can to help people.
Having dealt with the homeless population in multiple cities where our family business owned and operated motels, my observation is that a good 90 percent of the issue is addiction-related. Mental illness is also a major issue, but generally speaking the mentally ill are also abusing or have abused drugs. Another big issue is people fleeing abusive situations, but in how many of those cases are they fleeing alcoholics/drug addicts? I can attest to the havoc the homeless population creates at a place of business: They move everything they own into a guest room, tear things up, get into fights, fail to dispose of food waste properly, refuse to leave when they can’t pay so that you end up having to call the police, and in many cases do so much damage that you have to take the room out of service for days or weeks to repair and clean it. I speak from experience, not theory. We had several situations where churches paid for rooms for homeless people; all too often the homeless people did things like smear feces on walls, tear up/steal linens, and otherwise abuse their benefactors and the business.
I am a retired RN/MSW who had to retire early for health reasons. I now find myself living in a New Mexico shelter. My grow daughters somehow believe "homeless people Want to ne homeless!!??😮 I keep wondering what happened to the 1990's Carter housing program? I volunteered to help build those, and now that I need something like that, it seems to have vanished. Oh, I'm 72😮😢😮
I live in San Diego and the homeless situation here is deplorable and keeps growing. Mayors of many cities buy bus or plane tickets for homeless to California! A friend of mine was in Blythe Calif recently and spoke to a guy working at a gas station. He said he used to live in San Clement but 5 years ago he moved to Blythe where he can AFFORD to live.
2:31 butte county in California allegedly does that - honestly my experience is that use it as a lever of power and a funnel to misappropriate funds or punish you in a passive aggressive way because they don’t like your perspective. I have written correspondence over a 6 year period if anyone needs proof.
This ought to be a top story in every national paper, starting with the New York Times. And every candidate for President need to be asked how they have handled homelessness in their geographic area, how successful they were, and what they would do for homelessness in the country overall.
3:24 the homeless are a broad demographic- they are only the same when it comes to a solution and for me it was helpful short term but now I have to ride on the short yellow bus forever. It’s just the way the financial and economic system is structured,
So well spoken and knowledgeable of this complex topic. I appreciated Nicholas Kristof's honest, frank discussion of this issue. I am not a landlord, but in seeing friends of mine follow that route, it can be hard to find a well-paying, well-meaning tenant, let alone providing for someone who has been homeless with limited resources, who may have various other complex family, physical and mental health issues. It seems like we should be able to come up with some more comprehensive solutions in addition to just housing, but that is a good first start.
In Austin, TX we have reduced homelessness as well. I feel proud we have less homeless now than four years ago. I hope more apartments can be built for low income families.
It is really easy in a state like Texas to have cheaper land compared to San Francisco and Seattle. Both SF and Seattle have literally run out of land, squished firmly up against the Pacific Ocean.
San Francisco and Seattle both spent the past 30 plus years being nimby's. And if Texas cities dont change their ways in less than 20 years they'll be like California.
There is definitely a lot of nimbyism involved as well. Everyone wants to reduce homelessness, but not by creating low-income housing in their own neighborhood.
This is false. I am from Seattle. Most of the city is not very dense at all. Geographic limitations just mean you have to build up and not out, which there is plenty of room to do. Seattle has actually done a pretty good job of building housing finally. Prices are coming down but slowly.
Strong mayor leadership to focus all non profits towards homelessness. Cheap building of new housing. Relentless continued follow up with placed and needs. A big 👏👏👏. CA needs to replicate.
There is (good?) data to show Finland handles homelessness the best of any country. I believe their model accepts that most homeless have drug or other personality problems that keep them little employed, and inept money handlers. So Finland puts most money into new or repurposed-for-homeless housing down town where public transportation, health services, job opportunities and shopping is naturally most available, and neighbors are most tolerant of high density housing. A typical for-homeless building has small apartments on floors above the first, with the first floor given over for homeless-service-providing 24 hour staff. Apparently most residents that respond well to the help porvided end up moving out of this housing into traditional housing in time.
Where's the teeth to this discussion?? Very little discourse on any kind of housing price controls or demands for living wages. Homelessness is caused by how very sick our economy in the USA has become. Municipalities need to become places that REQUIRE their employers to pay a stable living-wage. That NEEDS to be partnered with housing prices set to where those who live and work in the same municipality can decently afford housing there. Bringing up drug addiction is a fundamental distraction from the housing affordability crisis that has plagued the USA.
Solutions were offered. Change zoning laws and restrictions on what can be built and where. Unfortunately, in America's highly individualized society, most homeowners aren't willingly going to risk their property value going down or change how they live and most politicians aren't going to risk being voted out. In very populated areas, we'd need to update suburbs to include more than single family homes with huge yards and to also reduce the size of yards to accommodate more housing. ETA: forgot the word "than"
So we need to...um..."set" wages and housing prices? So, third parties, not the buyer or the seller, not the employer or the worker, but third parties - should "set" prices. That's a great idea. Why didn't someone think of that already? What could possibly go wrong?
The problem w/ renting out a room in your house is landlord affairs. If an owner has a problem w/ a tenant it's impossible to get them to leave, the law is against you and you have to file for an eviction.
Investors also had pet fees that are pricing us poor out of the rental markets. I’m a senior with 3 small dogs, I can’t afford the all the fees! Application fees, administrative fees, pet fees and on and on. We need help!
We have a moral responsibility to provide medical insurance, living arrangements, food clothing. But some states have so much bureaucratic red tape to get help to these people, they get discouraged easily. Staff to coach these people is lacking. Case managers from community mental health are given too many cases to be consistently there for their clients. When someone is depressed they can't focus on paperwork. They need someone to help them walk through it. Some communities do a good job with their homeless people other communities could care less.
Why build homeless apartments in the most expensive housing markets in the world? Why not build affordable housing in those cities for the workers of the cities that get priced out? And build homeless shelters where it's actually affordable to build them...In Europe they build beautiful apartments for middle class families that are spacious with storages for bicycles. Here apartments are cramped and cheap but still pricey!!!
Stop corperare greed and working yhe system. Its not the peoples problem or failt they cant keep up s these master market manipulators. The greed has to stop!!
i do wish we could get organized and do something about the homelessness in Portland. it's not good! we need better leaders who can stop making promises and actually get something done.
It is easy to eliminate homelessness. You treat the homeless as poorly as possible and it will drive them to be homeless elsewhere. The reason California has such a homeless problem is simply because it is better to be homeless in California than anywhere else. Texas doesn't have as much of a problem because it really sucks being homeless in Texas.
100,000s of migrants pouring into Canada, said a Canadian, and no housing. And says a builder, not enough carpenters, or other trades, so no apts or houses for them.
Vehicles can be used as temporary homes, safe, low-cost parking besides transportation, can be financially beneficial by twofold, and less stress on all systems, natural, or man-made, physical, mental or spiritual. Do no harm. ❤
well if anyone had live in houston can tell you it's the bad weather that cut homelessness bc they simply move to la for good weather , nothing else they did, polution and bad weather, in the winter it's get down to 15 degree, in the summer it's 110 degree with humidity it's really 140 degree,
Republicans don't care. Point 1. Point 2: mental health care in this country is appalling and until that is taken care of the homeless population will not get housed. Point 3: I live in SLC and the homeless population is very large for a city of our size. They are mostly in downtown (where i live); meanwhile there are numerous condos and apartments going up that most people cannot afford. Unless you're in the small percentage of people from (usually) California that can pay these prices, you will not be able to afford these apartments and condos. It's not about providing cheap housing, it's about providing affordable housing. Why provide housing that is pricy (downtown, we will pay for being in downtown), when you can provide the same housing but gouge those that might buy? In a way i can enjoy it because people are stupid enough to pay a lot of money for a simpe place, but they're also ruining our city. Marie Antoinette also comes to mind.
Yep. Republicans won't go for it cause they don't like to help people. Not just that, there are numerous reports of organizations where fraud is continuously happening. Their top executives are taking their cut first and leaving the rest to the homeless.
Seems like some innovative entrepreneurs could find a way to solve this efficiently. Formula 1 hotels in Europe, pod hotels in Japan - there are many types of SROs that could be run with modern technology much better than those of old. A safe place to sleep, hot showers, survival food coverage, a place to lock up stuff in the daytime. 24/7 security. Like tiny home communities but more density.
Lack of living wage,mates abuse.famuly trifling and greed,illness,a new manager,or a cruel manager,and theres a horrible greed of corporate rental landlords,and you got rid of ymca & ywca sro, boarding housing out of government snobbery. ITS NOT JUST THE ADDICTED NEEDING HOUSING!
Cities that have become dependent on the huge revenue streams that the homeless crisis provides (SF: $700M annually, LA: $1.3 Billion). In those cities the crisis keeps getting worse and the homeless budgets keep going up. Those cities are loathe to do anything that would jeopardize all the power, influence, and opportunities for graft and corruption afforded by homelessness - such as solve the problem!
WITH so many shopping malls closing, they need to be converted to small apto buildings They are going to waste and would be a great resource As would be converting empty office buildings If these govts would ever give a damn, they would do it
My ex-husband and I have a B.A. and M.A., specialized teaching certifications, and multiple trainings. He is a master tile setter and can build just about anything. He was in the trades for decades. But we owned a business and 2008 hit. By 2012, we were on the edge of homelessness. I kid you not, we lived on $43 a week for groceries: that meant for years we ate rice and beans 3x a day with the occasional cheese and canned chicken or eggs (back when they were cheap). We did NOT eat out, see a movie, or have health insurance for years. We lost electricity and couldn't do laundry a couple of times - all sorts of crazy things. It was scary as hell. I'm convinced it took years off my life. Luckily, I had family that could help a bit. It's the only reason we got passed it. It opened my eyes to how people can end up homeless. If we didn't have the safety net of my family, we would be there. Many have no safety net. It's not just people with addiction problems or a lack of education/skills.
I think people aren't against helping those who are trying to work and get by.
even the examples given in this video regarding helping people get ID and an address. I don't think people are against that.
people are against giving a free apartment to someone who's debilitatingly addicted and supplementing or sponsoring their spiral to death.
Opoid problem was blown up by the very employers you hope would give jobs. You are complicit. You don't offer real solutions just complaints. Your the type that only helps people you think are on trend to help. Not everyone became addicts because they went to drug parties. Many were hooked by their own private insurance approved doctors.
@@sweetsendaedreamr it doesn't matter how a person became an addict, the solution isn't to enable their addiction.
people point at Portugal and say it's a success. they don't allow people to live on the streets and do drugs in public. that's not a solution. they force families to take their loved ones to rehab. they don't allow trafficking of drugs at all. it's not all decriminalization and other headline words.
Finland has universal health care and much of their solution is contingent on that. they have social workers chasing around these homeless people on hard times everyday.
without that source of care, the United States has to have a different solution. but again, that can't just be giving people money to do drugs or giving people housing without some way for them to get off drugs.
The following contribute to the scarcity of affordable housing in many cities 1) Fewer landlords accepting Section 8 vouchers 2) The gentrification of older neighborhoods 3) The "don't build affordable housing in my backyard" attitude 4) Private equity firms becoming landlords & 5) Cumbersome & convoluted bureaucracies which prevent the development of multi-unit housing.
How many landlords have you talked to whose homes were trashed by section 8 voucher renters? I’ve seen what they do & I know what’s required.
As far as the others, bullseye.
@vallee7966 For the few bad ones, there are good ones like me.
Landlords are leeches
@@joshuaphillips755 landlords are not. If you’d like to buy your own house to live in, go for it.
@@Missy-Missy1111 there's probably a lot more than a few because I've lived in neighborhoods with Section 8 tenats for the last 20 years. They were all bad.
This country has a huge problem. We don’t have enough housing for low income in middle-class seniors, let alone homeless people.
No one wants to give them a chance either.
What...COMPATION! in American TODAY?
A lot of street junkies could work. Many would rather wander through life addled by drugs with their hands out.
Thanks to wall street casinos, hedge funds, Blackstone, vanguard, black rock, etc etc. Chinese oligarchs and Russian oligarchs laundering money by buying as much real estate. New homes , new and old apts. It's about finance and sitting on property to wait for the value to go up and sell. It's not about providing housing at all. Ponzi scheme end stage predatory capitalism. Enjoy
Tiny homes. Simple solution.
It's crazy how "be organizationally competent, and reduce to cost of housing" is such an impossible task for most cities except Houston.
HOUSTON is socialist!
Yes. We need to be careful who we vote for. Also it’s a matter of will. Does the mayor care more about politics or solving a problem?
Uh, it counts their temporary bump of moving everyone into motels during that thing that happened during 2020 -- because they got _boucoup_ Federal bucks to do so. But basically, before and after, they just involuntarily bus people to California.
(Houston is just the only major city that counts temporary motel stays as "solving homelessness" and then busses recidivists out when their vouchers expire.)
@@TristanMorrow soon..they will define homeless as someone living in a tent for 40yrs. And stop counting them if they are homeless more than a week.
@@lillianbarker4292 stats can be manipulated easily!
It’s sad to see only 190+ comments in this video. I think it’s a sign of how uncomfortable America is with the homeless and NFA conversation. Corporations masquerading as rental agencies are making all of this much worse.
Didn't know Dallas and Houston were Blue cities, but that fits with their agenda to house the homeless. I congratulate Texans for this progress with such a heartbreaking problem now in America. Thank you for this report.
Most big cities are blue even in red states.
Excellent interview! Thank you both for the focus on this topic.
There are so many old unused motels, buildings, schools that can be made into studio apartments and family apts.
Abandoned malls and megastores too.
Many of the homeless could work besides contractors S extra hands. Some could pick up skills to help themselves.
He is one of the best US columnists. That was a great article in the Times and he has a great holiday charity program
Yep, Kristof is great at what he does.
I wish he could have run for governor in oregon last election. He got blocked on some technicality, like hadnt lived here long enough or something.
3 members of my family are homeless. One has been homeless for 10 plus years. It is a catastrophic epidemic in America.
do they work? why don't you let them live with you?
@@royharper2003 I’m sure you didn’t mean to sound that judgmental…. Family imo cannot always do for family, we can’t know or understand all the complexities, financial or otherwise.
The fact that this person has three family members currently living life with / in such insecurity. .. that is the take away. It is freaking hard when you are living on that edge and once you fall you are screwed. I watched a family member with a record struggle and bc they are discriminated against, they end up having to pay more bc of low credit, unsteady employment, police / criminal record and mental illness , etc. It creates a vicious cycle. Personally, I feel the boarding house approach is fertile territory….done in a respectful way …with services, and serving as a bridge to fully independent living.
A version of the old poor farms with careful oversight could be one option to start stability and direction help for people. Many options need to be researched to help with this complicated issue.
Why dont YOU take them in ?
$200,000 for a one bedroom home! That’s cheap! OMG, that’s extremely high. What kind of job would these individuals have to have to afford this? This doesn’t make sense. In Louisiana, minimum wage is less than $8/ hr.
$200K is cheap compared to other large cities. There are housing assistance vouchers available if it's landlord owned.
I'm from NZ and $200K US is cheap for social housing. What Houston has done is a lesson for all Municipal governments everywhere. That's fantastic 😊. Now if only some Texas common sense could be exported, I think you could start a whole new business 😅😅
My kid is an engineer living in the Midwest (I would say our cost of housing is average). He cannot afford $200K for his first home. My husband and I entered the workforce in the early 1990s. Our first home was $65,000 with a starting salary in the 30ks. Starting salary hasn't tripled since then!
@@MNP208 yeah mate, it's the same all over. Australia, Canada, UK, NZ, EU. I started work 73, brought first home 81 for $26K. Now starting price for first home is $460K. Crazy huh?
I'm in texas and housing is affordable more than the rest of the states, but even then... I think that's high.
It makes perfect sense to have boarding houses again. So many are single with little to no family and could afford a room if it were an option. With boarding houses people don't have to come up with a huge deposit, qualify for a one year lease or have a credit checks.
Was prevalent in WWII era, and it was implemented in no time flat. Washington DC, especially needed homes for workers. Any city with a Navy yard or production plants.
Imagine with social media connections. Problem solved.
Thank you for such thoughtful conversation, really grateful to you both
Thank you for sharing something people in Texas are doing right. We have huge issues politically, and are often viewed as uncaring when it comes to social issues, yet we provide education, medical care, and housing to more poor people and immigrants than anywhere else in the nation.
We are trying…
I'm baffled. I still don't know what Houston's program is to house people. I understand Houston involves a database of needs & involves nonprofits in outreach. What else does Houston do???
Yeah, his answer was certainly was lacking in details.
This entire report is little more than a bunch of bullshit. I don't believe a single thing he is asserting. If there's a "model" what is it? And it's not "a database non profits can access." Either Houston played with the numbers or it changed the definition of what "homeless" means so 60% percent of people dropped out of the definition.
Sounds like Houston has used COVID funds to get people off the streets and PAY for their monthly rental costs.
When someone shows up at any of the homeless organizations in Houston, they are evaluated for short term and long term needs and placed accordingly.
They don't want to use the term "housing first" because it is proven not to work.
I live in Dallas. Homelessness has gotten so much better in the last year! The city encourages citizens to use one app to connect homeless people with nonprofits that can fit their needs. Single family zoning = homelessness problems
Yeah they moved to California because in Los Angeles Is OK to be homeless and the city will offer food stamps and cash for toiletries oh and also help finding jobs
@@celebratelife8436I'm pretty sure every city offers food stamps to homeless people.
I live in austin and having this information is really encouraging and I’ll be looking into it more. Thanks for this reporting!
The one thing I do not hear is getting proper mental health care. Savannah,
GA is full of these needs. Huge homeless problem.
Maybe we could consider giving people affordable housing and keeping people out of poverty lol
Unfortunately, "Poverty is a policy choice."
Stop making sense. Idiots find this fact stuff very annoying. Follow the money. Americans voted themselves out of existence beginning with saint Ronny and.
The way to improve homelessness is to provide affordable housing. For the single, possibly mentally ill person, or those with addiction problems, the boarding rooms, ymca rooms what have are a viable option. For the family with children affordable apartments with sliding scales. All of this takes top notch organization and collaboration of many organizations. Then affordable housing has to be built. Legislate banks and corporations out of real estate, restrict the amount and types of real estate they can own. They are the culprits in the rise of rents and mortgages.
I live in a small Eastern city with a huge homeless problem. There is another small city nearby with a similar problem. That other city turned down federal money for housing a few years ago, so that they could continue putting their homeless people on buses and sending them to my city!
This should be illegal!
I’ve seen this happen in winter when our shelters were full. I spoke with one homeless man who said he just got off the bus and had no where to go. It was 4:00PM in winter when temperatures were dropping into the 20’s and he had already been turned away from the shelter. He was lying on the ground in a park with a small backpack.
Let me be clear. This was not a panhandler. We approached him. Not the reverse.
Busing people out of the area instead of making effort to actually address a problem is lame. The same thing is happening in California. Affluent neighborhoods with homelessness issues bus their long-time, local residents priced out of their own home town to other neighborhoods to deal with.
I'm in California I was hoping that you really had some reality based tried and true means of ppl getting out of homelessness. But no such luck.
I have been homeless within the last 5 years. My SSI disability finally came through, after a year of homelessness. But, I worry about becoming homeless again; four years ago my rent was $795 currenly it is $1175 with yearly rent increases. I know it doesn't sound like a fortune but is about 60% of my total income without utilities. I worry a lot, maybe not next year but soon.
You’re exactly right and hit on one of the main root causes of homelessness-uncontrolled rent increases. There’s no reason on earth why any rent should be able to be increased beyond what the cost of living is or to keep up with inflation. For at least 20 YEARS, pre-COVID, inflation was barely 2-3% but yet rents were increasing 10, 20, 30%! I remember moving back from San Fran to Pasadena in 2009 and looking for an apt and a new building was charging $2695 rent in 2009! How can they get away with setting any rent they want? And the worst thing is, they set that rent and immediately the following year it rises 20%. It’s the lack of political will by our legislators to put widespread rent controls in place and stricter rules regarding who can own housing units (i.e., private equity ownership should be limited) the way many European countries have done, that has gotten us into this mess. Sadly, without immediate and far-reaching legislation. I see this problem only getting worse and worse.
He has clear answers for the future: return to the boarding house SRO model of decades past, and increase national taxes to fund them. But for an immediate solution, the answer is to move to Houston or Dallas. That is what immigration (and America) is all about: being brave and moving to improve your life and the lives of your children.
@@WhyTheHorseface could never live in Texas.
@@dorothypettijohn1037why?
Greedy landlords and corporations have tripled rents in the last 15 years and wage increases can't keep up with that, we can all thank greed
Salute to the whole Company for this outstanding weekly program.
We live in a world where the politicians pretend to care but don't. I received an email from my Governor about the money poured into the situation on my streets but the situation continues to get worse. I really wonder where all that money goes... It's so sad.
I read this article at the Times when it first came out.
I feel better just knowing that Nicholas Kristof is out there on the job.
I sleep a little easier.
Here is the new “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) law going into effect on January first in the Golden State:
"Churches and nonprofit education institutions will be allowed to build affordable housing on their land without having to go through an expensive, laborious rezoning process or review under California’s Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).
SB 4, dubbed the “Yes In God’s Backyard” (YIGBY) law, will allow for development of an estimated 171, 000 acres across the state, according to the UC Berkeley Terner Center."
Meanwhile, I wonder if homeless people from other faiths as well as atheists, will be welcome in "god's backyard"...
I'm assuming they just shipped the homeless people by air to some enclave in NY state.
Your assumptions are wrong.
@@Patrick_RossGov Abbott has shipped many to NYC and to LA.
I think HUD housing places people in locations around cities, not in one place. Why can’t we house people by increasing HUD funding? I’d like to see more halfway houses (closed by Reagan). I’d like to see more places like apartment buildings but with social services and food services. A higher minimum wage could help people save money. I think that if corporations paid their share of taxes we could solve the problem. I don’t think families should have to take in someone with an addiction. They don’t know how to help. People say it’s expensive to solve social problems, but we spend trillions on the military and let children suffer.
If this country doesn't fix the housing issues there will be more homeless Americans. Home affordability should not be out of reach for Americans. People working full-time should be able to pay rent or mortgage payments and have a life too.
I was the licensing rep over SRO single room, occupancy housing in the City of Chicago for the department of revenue. From 1993 to 1997. They were over 200 SRO’s licensed in the City of Chicago. they became a great help and Housing our Homeless Veterans in the 2000 the SRO’s here in Chicago some of them were amazing. They had kitchenette and their own private bathrooms.
The way Houston reduced their homelessness was by denying them basic resources such as food stamps or money for toiletries or Health insurance despite of their situation, in order to have access to those resources the Homeless people are required to be working a part-time job Regardless of their situation or condition . As a result many homeless people from Houston moved to California which is where most of the homeless people from the US end up because California provides them with assistance and support in the form of food stamps, cash aid, shelters, healthcare, Job and career training skills, housing, etc. So the notion that Houston has cut homelessness by 60% may be true but but only because the homeless people have left to other cities that can offer more humane services.
Typical red state.
Holy 💩 thank you for the real report this poor journalist has no idea
My first thought was Houston's solution was proving free bus tickets to Dallas but California makes more sense.
@@michellelester243 exactly that's why there's so many homeless people in Los Angeles a lot of the people living in the streets are people who come from Red States like Florida and Texas
Really how did they find the means to leave the state.
Thank you for this excellent expose’ interview.
I found myself disgusted with the system and unwilling to participate while being dismantled and unable to keep the vultures away. And purchased an old rv and renovated it myself. It took a year and then it burned completely down. So im finishing up my second camper renovation. Im not allowed to be anywhere without getting hassled, but at least im not homeless
I was the licensing rep over SRO single room, occupancy housing in the City of Chicago for the department of revenue. From 1993 to 1997. They were over 200 SRO’s licensed in the City of Chicago. they became a great help and Housing our Homeless Veterans in the 2000
Coordinated effort among agencies, lower barriers to construction, program oversight and most importantly some common sense. That said, this report focuses on affordable housing as the solution. But it’s only part of the solution. Many people, especially on the West Coast, who are homeless have serious drug and alcohol addictions and mental illnesses. Those folks have a need for intensive addiction and mental health treatment before they can ever hope to live on their own.
Such an interesting interview! Thank you!
Great interview. Kristof’s genuine warmth and concern around the issue shone through.
Appreciate his honesty about being a little smug when comparing Houston to Oregon, this was a great talk.
good interview but can we get housing people to denominate their housing costs in hours of minimum wage? $600 in Houston is 40 hours at the minimum wage of $15/hr. This is $620 in Los Angeles or $723 in San Francisco. So the unit of currency is on hour of minimum wage labor. Sure, housing stock at the 40 hour level is probably lower in SF than Houston but it's fewer moving parts than having to convert wages and rent combined.
Which minimum wage? In Georgia, there are two. Most are $7.25/hour, but Tipped employees are $2.13/hour.
40 hours at $2.13/hour is $85.20. At the fed min wage of $7.25/hour, it's $290. And this applies in Atlanta, not just smaller towns in this state.
It's about NIMBY, mostly in upper middle class neighborhoods. Try building a granny flat in most liberal cities.
Funny you'd say that; California has been promoting them since the eighties. All you have to do is search 'are ADUs allowed in _____' to find out the rules in the area you're interested in.
th-cam.com/video/hNDgcjVGHIw/w-d-xo.htmlsi=a80jY1YVdIGhXwaZ
love this conversation
Amen. What homeless people need most of all after foodi is housing. Prayers.
Bring back SROs, yes! And basement apartments and mixed neighborhoods with single family, duplexes, triplexes. The barriers to housing are way out of line, and we need to back off and enable choices. When I was younger, I knew a few men who lived in SROs at least some of the time and they weren't bad people, just people dealt a bad hand and coping however they could, including alcohol and drugs for some.
Knowing construction costs, I am baffled at the powers that be say how much it costs to build or remodel, inflating the actual cost. Where is all that extra money going? Oregon is a good example of agencies taking millions of dollars to build housing, and then putting it into their own pockets. As long as thieves run these programs the poor, disabled, and destitute will keep suffering. Dept of Human Services is denying care to millions who are dying in the streets, alleys, and back woods.
There wasn't much said here 😢
Here in San Francisco we have a lot of SROs. The better ones are owned and run by The City. I live in the Tenderloin and have an SRO next door. Very good neighbors!
We have a mayoral race next year. The heir to Levi Strauss is running against Mayor Breed. I feel the topic of Homelessness is the Number One issue for the voters here. The challenger in the election runs a nonprofit that helps The Homeless. These facts combined with the assumption that Gavin Newsom will be running for POTUS in 2028leads me to believe this is the perfect time to do as Houston does and coordinate. If you can solve this issue here, you can solve it anywhere. As an aside the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is here. There are homeless who congregate on their premises. Even they deal with this issue
completely well thought out and explained .
Every little thing one can do helps. Don’t forget about your family members. Try not to judge what you might interpret as bad life choices and just do what you can to help people.
Ok, my friends and i are all homeless. We're making our way to Houston! Thanks.
This is awesome
Having dealt with the homeless population in multiple cities where our family business owned and operated motels, my observation is that a good 90 percent of the issue is addiction-related. Mental illness is also a major issue, but generally speaking the mentally ill are also abusing or have abused drugs. Another big issue is people fleeing abusive situations, but in how many of those cases are they fleeing alcoholics/drug addicts? I can attest to the havoc the homeless population creates at a place of business: They move everything they own into a guest room, tear things up, get into fights, fail to dispose of food waste properly, refuse to leave when they can’t pay so that you end up having to call the police, and in many cases do so much damage that you have to take the room out of service for days or weeks to repair and clean it. I speak from experience, not theory. We had several situations where churches paid for rooms for homeless people; all too often the homeless people did things like smear feces on walls, tear up/steal linens, and otherwise abuse their benefactors and the business.
I am a retired RN/MSW who had to retire early for health reasons. I now find myself living in a New Mexico shelter. My grow daughters somehow believe "homeless people Want to ne homeless!!??😮
I keep wondering what happened to the 1990's Carter housing program? I volunteered to help build those, and now that I need something like that, it seems to have vanished. Oh, I'm 72😮😢😮
Are you sure they didn’t just ship their homeless to California?! Texas has as shady history of addressing their problems with “undesirable” people.
I live in San Diego and the homeless situation here is deplorable and keeps growing. Mayors of many cities buy bus or plane tickets for homeless to California!
A friend of mine was in Blythe Calif recently and spoke to a guy working at a gas station. He said he used to live in San Clement but 5 years ago he moved to Blythe where he can AFFORD to live.
2:31 butte county in California allegedly does that - honestly my experience is that use it as a lever of power and a funnel to misappropriate funds or punish you in a passive aggressive way because they don’t like your perspective. I have written correspondence over a 6 year period if anyone needs proof.
This ought to be a top story in every national paper, starting with the New York Times. And every candidate for President need to be asked how they have handled homelessness in their geographic area, how successful they were, and what they would do for homelessness in the country overall.
3:24 the homeless are a broad demographic- they are only the same when it comes to a solution and for me it was helpful short term but now I have to ride on the short yellow bus forever. It’s just the way the financial and economic system is structured,
Good quality outreach and/or therapy is suffocated by qualifications licensure & politics. Thanks
So well spoken and knowledgeable of this complex topic. I appreciated Nicholas Kristof's honest, frank discussion of this issue. I am not a landlord, but in seeing friends of mine follow that route, it can be hard to find a well-paying, well-meaning tenant, let alone providing for someone who has been homeless with limited resources, who may have various other complex family, physical and mental health issues. It seems like we should be able to come up with some more comprehensive solutions in addition to just housing, but that is a good first start.
In Austin, TX we have reduced homelessness as well. I feel proud we have less homeless now than four years ago. I hope more apartments can be built for low income families.
It is really easy in a state like Texas to have cheaper land compared to San Francisco and Seattle. Both SF and Seattle have literally run out of land, squished firmly up against the Pacific Ocean.
San Francisco and Seattle both spent the past 30 plus years being nimby's. And if Texas cities dont change their ways in less than 20 years they'll be like California.
There is definitely a lot of nimbyism involved as well. Everyone wants to reduce homelessness, but not by creating low-income housing in their own neighborhood.
This is false. I am from Seattle. Most of the city is not very dense at all. Geographic limitations just mean you have to build up and not out, which there is plenty of room to do. Seattle has actually done a pretty good job of building housing finally. Prices are coming down but slowly.
Strong mayor leadership to focus all non profits towards homelessness.
Cheap building of new housing.
Relentless continued follow up with placed and needs.
A big 👏👏👏. CA needs to replicate.
State run processing center is needed. Send every homeless to the center for processing.
Yo, he’s in Yamhill, Oregon, at the moment? I hope the government in Portland, where I live, is listening!
There is (good?) data to show Finland handles homelessness the best of any country. I believe their model accepts that most homeless have drug or other personality problems that keep them little employed, and inept money handlers. So Finland puts most money into new or repurposed-for-homeless housing down town where public transportation, health services, job opportunities and shopping is naturally most available, and neighbors are most tolerant of high density housing. A typical for-homeless building has small apartments on floors above the first, with the first floor given over for homeless-service-providing 24 hour staff. Apparently most residents that respond well to the help porvided end up moving out of this housing into traditional housing in time.
Where's the teeth to this discussion?? Very little discourse on any kind of housing price controls or demands for living wages. Homelessness is caused by how very sick our economy in the USA has become. Municipalities need to become places that REQUIRE their employers to pay a stable living-wage. That NEEDS to be partnered with housing prices set to where those who live and work in the same municipality can decently afford housing there. Bringing up drug addiction is a fundamental distraction from the housing affordability crisis that has plagued the USA.
The fundamental problem is two few houses. Price controls on housing will not help this at all.
Solutions were offered. Change zoning laws and restrictions on what can be built and where. Unfortunately, in America's highly individualized society, most homeowners aren't willingly going to risk their property value going down or change how they live and most politicians aren't going to risk being voted out. In very populated areas, we'd need to update suburbs to include more than single family homes with huge yards and to also reduce the size of yards to accommodate more housing. ETA: forgot the word "than"
So we need to...um..."set" wages and housing prices?
So, third parties, not the buyer or the seller, not the employer or the worker, but third parties - should "set" prices.
That's a great idea. Why didn't someone think of that already? What could possibly go wrong?
set housing prices according to what people earn instead of what it costs to build houses, that should work out well
Truth!
This was very interesting. As a fellow Oregonian, I hope he brings this information to the governor and mayors here.
The problem w/ renting out a room in your house is landlord affairs. If an owner has a problem w/ a tenant it's impossible to get them to leave, the law is against you and you have to file for an eviction.
Investors also had pet fees that are pricing us poor out of the rental markets. I’m a senior with 3 small dogs, I can’t afford the all the fees! Application fees, administrative fees, pet fees and on and on. We need help!
We have a moral responsibility to provide medical insurance, living arrangements, food clothing. But some states have so much bureaucratic red tape to get help to these people, they get discouraged easily. Staff to coach these people is lacking. Case managers from community mental health are given too many cases to be consistently there for their clients. When someone is depressed they can't focus on paperwork. They need someone to help them walk through it. Some communities do a good job with their homeless people other communities could care less.
Red tape= a middle man getting paid. It's easier to get rid of bedbugs.
Excellence
I think that there have to be multiple strategies. Tiny house villages work well in high rent areas.
Why build homeless apartments in the most expensive housing markets in the world? Why not build affordable housing in those cities for the workers of the cities that get priced out? And build homeless shelters where it's actually affordable to build them...In Europe they build beautiful apartments for middle class families that are spacious with storages for bicycles. Here apartments are cramped and cheap but still pricey!!!
Stop corperare greed and working yhe system. Its not the peoples problem or failt they cant keep up s these master market manipulators. The greed has to stop!!
True. Follow the money people.
i do wish we could get organized and do something about the homelessness in Portland. it's not good! we need better leaders who can stop making promises and actually get something done.
Move 30-40,000 to Pine Bluff, AR, the US's fastest shrinking city.
It is easy to eliminate homelessness. You treat the homeless as poorly as possible and it will drive them to be homeless elsewhere. The reason California has such a homeless problem is simply because it is better to be homeless in California than anywhere else. Texas doesn't have as much of a problem because it really sucks being homeless in Texas.
They ought to explore Canada's solution in one city....seemed to work there.
100,000s of migrants pouring into Canada, said a Canadian, and no housing. And says a builder, not enough carpenters, or other trades, so no apts or houses for them.
They shipped them to Portland.
L.A's homelessness went up by 60 % at the same time 😅😅
My guess is they put their put homeless on a one-way bus trip to LA and San Francisco.
It should be way cheaper to LOWER THE RENT on vacant units than to build new ones!
Vehicles can be used as temporary homes, safe, low-cost parking besides transportation, can be financially beneficial by twofold, and less stress on all systems, natural, or man-made, physical, mental or spiritual. Do no harm. ❤
Did Abbott ship them to Washington?
well if anyone had live in houston can tell you it's the bad weather that cut homelessness bc they simply move to la for good weather , nothing else they did, polution and bad weather, in the winter it's get down to 15 degree, in the summer it's 110 degree with humidity it's really 140 degree,
So 60% of the homeless population suddenly figured out that Southern California has nice weather?
Republicans don't care. Point 1.
Point 2: mental health care in this country is appalling and until that is taken care of the homeless population will not get housed.
Point 3: I live in SLC and the homeless population is very large for a city of our size. They are mostly in downtown (where i live); meanwhile there are numerous condos and apartments going up that most people cannot afford. Unless you're in the small percentage of people from (usually) California that can pay these prices, you will not be able to afford these apartments and condos.
It's not about providing cheap housing, it's about providing affordable housing. Why provide housing that is pricy (downtown, we will pay for being in downtown), when you can provide the same housing but gouge those that might buy?
In a way i can enjoy it because people are stupid enough to pay a lot of money for a simpe place, but they're also ruining our city. Marie Antoinette also comes to mind.
Yep. Republicans won't go for it cause they don't like to help people. Not just that, there are numerous reports of organizations where fraud is continuously happening. Their top executives are taking their cut first and leaving the rest to the homeless.
Unfortunately, "Poverty is a policy choice."
I thought SLC had a “housing first” program for a number of years by now. What’s happened with that?
Every county in US MUST be required to provide a certain amount of single occupancy dwellings. So they dont ship the problem elsewhere.
Seems like some innovative entrepreneurs could find a way to solve this efficiently. Formula 1 hotels in Europe, pod hotels in Japan - there are many types of SROs that could be run with modern technology much better than those of old. A safe place to sleep, hot showers, survival food coverage, a place to lock up stuff in the daytime. 24/7 security. Like tiny home communities but more density.
Lack of living wage,mates abuse.famuly trifling and greed,illness,a new manager,or a cruel manager,and theres a horrible greed of corporate rental landlords,and you got rid of ymca & ywca sro, boarding housing out of government snobbery. ITS NOT JUST THE ADDICTED NEEDING HOUSING!
San Diego has a huge homeless population.
Senior Citizens & Disabled should not have to pay Property Taxes !
Cities that have become dependent on the huge revenue streams that the homeless crisis provides (SF: $700M annually, LA: $1.3 Billion). In those cities the crisis keeps getting worse and the homeless budgets keep going up. Those cities are loathe to do anything that would jeopardize all the power, influence, and opportunities for graft and corruption afforded by homelessness - such as solve the problem!
Yea, they issued bus tickets to California….
Most of the homeless end up moving to California because the weather is more livable outside year round
If this is true, great job Houston.
WITH so many shopping malls closing, they need to be converted to small apto buildings
They are going to waste and would be a great resource
As would be converting empty office buildings
If these govts would ever give a damn, they would do it
I missed it what is the Houston plan?
Wheren't they one of the states that gave homeless people one way airplane tickets to Oahu, Hawaii?
I've heard there are more empty homes than homeless people. Is that true?
Reward lower cost housing. Builders head for the higher end.