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Comment by rsync | Hacker News Reader

"To me, this is absurd. This is a human rights issue (homelessness is growing by a large amount)."

Homelessness is a mental health issue. Nobody is homeless because of foreign speculators.

Yes, people are indeed incentivized to relocate to housing markets that Chinese people have never heard of like, for instance, Tacoma.

If those people spent half their time working and saving (like their parents did) as they spent bitching about their basic human right to live in a walkable neighborhood with artisanal foodstuffs they would then have a nice down payment when the inevitable crash comes to the hot housing market in question.

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Mental health is one reason why people are homeless but it's not the only one.

The reasons you're bringing up are strawmen at best. The people who are homeless or on the brink of homelessness are not complaining about artisanal food stuffs.

In Oakland, a family of 4 has been living in a single family home for 15 years. This year, after new owners purchased the property, the rent went up 100% in one year. Needless to say, they are facing a housing crisis where they will be homeless.

If you want to understand the severity of the situation, I suggest just literally googling "homelessness housing crisis bay area" and read all the both qualitative and quantitive reporting done on the issue.

Here's a brief stat overview to refute your claim that it's a "mental issue" primarily: http://www.socialsolutions.com/blog/2016-homelessness-statis...

"If you want to understand the severity of the situation, I suggest just literally googling "homelessness housing crisis bay area" and read all the both qualitative and quantitive reporting done on the issue."

As a resident of the bay area I assure you that I read about this topic every single day - and consume a wide range of reporting and editorial.[1]

"... the rent went up 100% in one year. Needless to say, they are facing a housing crisis where they will be homeless."

That's not obvious at all. Certainly that's a very difficult situation and I suppose it is technically true that they will indeed be homeless as they physically move their bodies to their new home ... but there is nothing at all new or noteworthy about people making rational economic decisions about what they can and cannot afford - and voting with their feet for new locales.

The only thing that's new (and this is something I encounter more and more frequently, especially in the bay area) is the idea that not only is housing a basic human right but housing in an arbitrary location without any consideration of ones actual economic status is a basic human right. This is, I am afraid, absurd.

I am open-minded about the notion of housing as a human right. I completely reject the notion of housing wherever one most prefers[2] as a basic human right (or any kind of right whatsoever).

[1] 48 Hills, for example.

[2] Where you grew up, where you raised your kids, where the cool restaurants are, where the artists are at ... etc.

It's not "housing where one most prefers" in this instance, it's "housing where you're already lived for years, and where your children go to school".

Honestly, counting on being able to rent a single family home for an extended period of time is insane. That they were able to live there for over a decade makes them an outlier. Most single family homes are owned by individuals. Individuals and/or their heirs often need liquidity, so rental houses are way more likely to change hands than apartment buildings.

Who said they were counting on it? The point is that this is a problem that could be ameliorated by simple regulations. In NYC, for example, it would not be possible to increase someone's rent by 100%.

The notion of "a fundamental right to housing" isn't about "where cool restaurants are." It's a starting point and a framework for how you solve the problem. There are complications that we definitely have to figure out (including where etc) but the conversation always comes back to the strawman of "well it's just not fair to buyers, and those people need to make better economic decisions."

If a person is paying $1000 a month, and sees a 2% increase every year and can afford it, but then can't afford a 100% increase in one year, are you saying they made bad economic decisions? OR that they should have anticipated the housing market to shift so drastically?

Of course not, because, as you said, it is absurd to not consider ones actual economic status.

Wrt to the newly homeless who have been evicted - i think it is convenient to chalk this up to market economics, but the truth is that zoning, housing, and rental laws have created an environment where you are seeing mass displacement of people. You may say "well that's the market" but you might feel different if it was you and yours. It also trivializes the value those people bring to their communities, and the lag effect in economic production their displacement will invariably produce. Longer commutes = less productivity (http://www.cityam.com/265145/heres-just-much-impact-long-com...).

I don't disagree that you need to consider economic status, but in that vein, it's worth considering that housing laws help us define the values we want in a community and sometimes those are not always economic.

At the end of the day, there is pretty conclusive evidence that building more affordable housing is good for cities.

> I am open-minded about the notion of housing as a human right. I completely reject the notion of housing wherever one most prefers[2] as a basic human right (or any kind of right whatsoever).

I won't make the overly broad claim that nobody ever demands housing in popular districts, but I don't think this reflects the reality of many housing decisions; usually it's about convenience; convenient commute to work, convenient access to schools and hospitals, convenient shopping for necessities (food, etc), convenient utilities. I know that some people get a thrill out of living in hip areas (my brother lived in a popular section of Chicago for years and paid outrageous prices for a hole in the wall), but more often than naught people just want a convenient location with the ability to perform their daily tasks without undue stress.

Living abroad, it's possible for me to have an hour commute because the public transportation is reliable and cheap and there are ample options for shopping at virtually every transit stop. This was not the case when I was in the US and my car was destroyed by a drunk driver; having lived in Tacoma, I enjoyed their transit system, but it was not convenient, as missing your bus even slightly after peak hours meant a 45 minute wait in the rain just for an hour commute and then another 15-30 minutes walking.

The cost of living in the US isn't just reflected in the rental price on the apartment or the cost of the house/condo; it's also with how livable the area actually is and what you need to live well in an area.

My experience is that typically this is what people are frustrated with and concerned about, not so much having fantastic apartment or homes at the coolest place. Bringing up such a concern just seems like focusing on an edge case and diluting the main concerns when it comes to difficulties with housing. I was lucky enough that the worst rent increases I had were to the tune of $30 every other year - that was as simple as deciding not to get takeout once or twice a month when I may otherwise had done so. This was in Tacoma in a relatively stable part of the city; but as Tacoma continues to try and shake off it's former reputation, many of the neighborhoods at the time were being bought up and rebuilt, and I had friends who lived near such areas whose rent shot up much more, and what was a place where they could live rapidly became beyond their means and they had to seek new housing. It's easy (relatively) to move when you have even a small amount of financial freedom, but when you are restricted financially, adjusting to rapidly increasing rental prices is very difficult. It has long reaching effects and leaves an already trouble part of the population without options as they are forced to move further and further away from the things they depend on into situations which aren't good for their situation.

When the crash comes they are probably too busy using those savings to stay afloat after losing jobs.

You'd be an idiot to invest unless your in a super stable job or confident you can find another quick in a recession.

I've been in a similar situation and thank god for Airbnb.

If homelessness goes up 10% in a year, are you saying that means the incidence of mental illness somehow went up 10% in that year?

It probably was the case 5 years ago that most homeless people in the US has some kind of mental problem. These people were almost all men and you would see them sleeping on the sidewalks or parks with almost nothing in the way of possessions. Now, at least in Oakland, there are tents everywhere. From single ones trying not to get noticed to tent cities with 10-50 tents all in one area. Many of these people have a piles of possessions and some still have jobs. Maybe not quite on the scale of Hoovervilles in the Great Depression, but getting there.

I'm confused... Are you saying homelessness can't be a mental health issue because they now have tents? Or because they have possessions?

Not at all. I even stated directly that in the recent past most homeless people had mental health issues. Now added to this first group are people that just can't afford the rent and have been evicted or pushed onto the street.

I truly have no idea what the situation actually is, but here is an, IMO, plausible explanation: policing practices around homelessness have changed as a result of changing attitudes toward the homeless (toward increasing acceptance) and this has created an environment in which the homeless are now able to accumulate possessions and erect semi-permanent shelters. Another, plausible scenario (again, IMO): if certain liberal cities have a reputation for being relatively accepting toward the homeless, there may be a simultaneous net migration of homeless from less accepting parts of the country to these cities.

What about people who have lived in neighborhoods for decades, but were since evicted (i.e. their SRO was converted to luxury whatever)? Sure they may be near the economic fringe, but the poor will always be with us. How can we enable the poor to participate in the rich economy that cities create? Or should cities become only playgrounds for the upper middle class and wealthy?

Yup. Totally because people aren't hard workers. Nothing at all to do with the fact that wages have been stagnant at best over the last 30 years, and housing prices have ballooned.

>basic human right to live in a walkable neighborhood

Somehow we have a societal consensus that it's your basic human right to live in a quiet neighborhood free of traffic, shadows, or other humans. It's good to see some push in the opposite direction.

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