there’s an awful feature of the problem of homelessness is that it’s massively cheaper to make it someone else’s burden. so as soon as a municipality tries to provide anything along the lines of services, they become a hub for an inflow of homeless. it’s worse when a council figures out a way to accelerate putting people on greyhound buses headed for sanctuary cities, because it speeds up their own redevelopment of poor neighborhoods.
quite frankly, this is an area that needs massive federal investment and oversight. by massive, we should be talking in terms of hundreds of billion, although in reality something like 600k otherwise homeless people can be provided shelter for under $50m by just buying rent-debt. yet another shameful chapter.
This is exactly my city’s (pop. 51,000) problem. We’re the only city in a 3 county radius that has any legit homeless services, so we get all of the homeless from the 3 counties. Which makes our homeless problem that much worse, while the shitty cities in those 3 counties can claim how much better it is because they don’t have homeless. Yeah, no fucking duh, since they’re all in my city.
I’ve been telling people that a city my size can’t solve the problem. The problem is a direct result of capitalism and requires a federal sized response. Municipalities do not have the resources to solve it.
Best thing for the houseless in the last few years came for the federal government, the Supreme Court. They shot down laws making it illegal to live in a vehicle unless a city provides adequate housing.
Where does this come from? Trump was way more hawkish on Cuba than Obama, who eased diplomatic and trade relations with them from basically Cold War status quo. Trump largely returned to that status quo with sanctions to prevent American money from reaching the island.
Biden has pledged to return to Obama era relations, and reverse the Trump policies, but he has yet to do so. That’s bad on Biden, but the standard R line including by Donald Trump after the recent protests in Cuba is that Biden is a big pussy and/or commie sympathizer for not imposing even more sanctions.
McTurtle is just screaming “WE ARE RUNNING OUT THE CLOCK” from the rooftops, and everyone is looking around wondering why the Dems aren’t being more civil and cooperative.
I’ve only read that Biden put redundant sanctions on Cuban military officials (who were already under sanction by US) basically just to appear as if doing something in response to the protests. If you know of additional sanctions that affect Cuban people, please post.
The claim being argued was that Biden was “certainly worse” for Cubans than Trump, which is objectively false, since Trump and Rs are saying that Biden is not being harsh enough on Cuba in response to the protests.
There are a lot of parking restrictions, a lot, but there are a lot of people in vans and RVs who would otherwise be in tents and get chased around at that.
No one wants to end homelessness (well no one with any power to do so). Seeing desperate people every day and knowing that possible fate awaits you if you fall off the ever accelerating capitalist treadmill is an amazing deterrent against workers getting too uppity. Applebee’s is the carrot but the guy outside Applebee’s asking for change is the stick. You get both at once.
On one hand this makes sense, on the other CA has made this their #1 issue and have invested a ton of money and they’re still coming up really short. Homelessness is a complex issue because it isn’t just people without a home, a large percentage of them also abuse drugs heavily, and a decent percentage are also mentally ill.
You need massive federally funded programs like drug rehabs, free mental health care etc.
I do think plenty of capitalists think of it as a plus scaring the poors, but it’s also a complex and tough problem that needs federal money to fix.
During the 2018 election cycle, I attended a fundraiser for a Dem political candidate that was held at this ridiculously nice house. I went with a couple friends and at some point while milling about we ran into the owner of the house who was a guy in probably his mid 60s, so we were making polite conversation complimenting him on the house or whatever, and my buddy says, “so I’ve got to ask, how did you make your money?” The guy pauses, kind of smirks, and says, “affordable housing.”
There is huge money in low income housing tax credits. It is, surprise, a highly political process, but I personally know two guys with 9 figure net worths from doing these projects. The developer sells the tax credits before a shovel ever hits the ground, effectively funding over 100% of their project costs. They then skim all kinds of money via developer fees, construction management, property management, etc. And once the restricted rent period ends, bam, they own a market rate project.
I’m increasingly of the opinion that the only thing that will make a dent is just doing away with almost all zoning. This will never happen.
And apparently at no point did anyone even consider the “do it and make them sue you” move. Pathetic. Also I don’t believe this for a second, they got shamed into doing the right thing.
Notwithstanding these programs (which are usually state funded), one (primary?) problem with affordable housing is that it is a collective action problem that cannot be solved with the current system of allowing cities and counties to dictate planning and zoning.
We know that collectively we need policies to develop affordable housing, but people do not want it near them. There’s an asymmetry of interest where the groups that oppose the development are vocal and involved citizens who can make sure the commissioner or mayor doesn’t get reelected. On the other side are the diffuse and unfocused interests of broader society.
