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Comment by pascalxus | Hacker News Reader

I know this will be downvoted because people aren't really interested in solving the real problem.

We could fix the whole SF homeless population problem in the space of one parking lot. Just build micro apartments of 10'x10' feet. Make it 150' wide at the base: 15x15 = 225 x 40 stories = 9000 inhabitants. 100' feet might not be much, but it's a hella of a lot more space to live in than hong kong, where people barely get one bed.

And, with SF's enormous homeless budget of over 300 million, combined almost over 500m? there'd be more then enough funds to build as many of these buildings as we need.

The thing that stops these types of solution is rules, rules and more rules. We choose not to solve the homeless situation: it's a political choice.

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Your proposal is ridiculous but it illustrates the political source of housing shortages: The landed class has the right to say no, and the landless class has no right to say yes.

You mean well but I don't think this solution is robust.

-many of your pods will become filthy without the gov also agreeing to cleaning services.

-people will find ways to own multiple so that gov will have to continuously moderate ownership.

-the residents won't pay i presume, so this cost will never recoup itself for the gov.

-requirements for applicants will want to prove homelessness and what else? citizenship? they may quickly become to stringent, unable to qualify most of the homeless population.

The alternative is the status quo which is living on the sidewalk with no plumbing nor cleaning nor services. I'd take the tower and make the rooms easy to power wash.

You've just described a 560 foot tall prison cube. No cooking, toilets, corridors or walls apparently. Perhaps the inhabitants whose true crime was poverty, will be happy to inhabit your force walled thought experiment. Some would be reticent. But I foresee great things coming from this most lateral solution.

This is the largest building in Croatia, housing around 5000 people: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamutica

It's a normal building with normal apartments, not a ghetto or a prison.

Actually it currently houses less than 3000 people, and is serviced by enormous green space. That's not remotely comparable to a 9000 seat cube in an urban setting. I can't speak to Croatia, but having travelled in the former Soviet Union often what makes such places livable are the enormous (by Western standards) amount of amenities which survive from Soviet times - skating rinks, public parks, ice skating rinks, bowling alleys etc. Added to which is a grey economy of apartment run stores selling fresh and preserved produce.

Also - and I have no idea how you'd quantify this, lack of negative comparators may play a part. When most people in your city, be it Mariupol or Tallin, also live in enormous modernist silos, it's not a source of resentment.

Finally it's important to note that by comparison to any US city, Croatia has a tiny crime rate, especially in terms of violent offences. It's a safe, relatively ethnically homogeneous, socially integrated country. This is not similar to the lack of social cohesion in play in the American context.

https://cafebabel.com/en/article/life-in-mamutica-the-bigges...

> Actually it currently houses less than 3000 people, and is serviced by enormous green space

That's just normal green space, at least for that part of city :) I lived a few blocks away when I was at university.

> amount of amenities which survive from Soviet times - skating rinks, public parks, ice skating rinks, bowling alleys etc. Added to which is a grey economy of apartment run stores selling fresh and preserved produce.

I would not say that is true of Croatia. Stores are mostly large chains (and it's for the better, in my opinion). Parks are there, sure, but other amenities didn't seem any more prevalent than what I saw in Los Angeles.

Anyway, my general point is that large density housing can be pretty nice and does not need to be ghetto-like.

They could just be efficency apartments or have a shared community kitchen or something. No need to dive into semantics, the argument is sound imo. High rise public housing works in other countries, in some cases they are architectural marvels and not prison cubes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edif%C3%ADcio_Copan

I'm certainly not arguing against public housing. It can be an incredible good, and in almost all Western countries is considered a right.

However, we've been down this road before. Cramming people - especially homeless people, frequently with mental health concerns, polydrug use, and severe behavioral issues; into a giant cube isn't how you solve homelessness.

These people need their own homes, in neighborhoods with services that support them, integrated into the community.

Disastrous efforts to ghettoise the poor in small under-serviced apartments in the 1960s lead to social problems that persist to this day in both Europe and the US. I believe the're generally termed 'the projects' in America.

My comment was a sarcastic reaction to the ahistorical and ludicrously reductive lack of insight or thought in the original proposal.

You can add toilets, corridors, walls, common ammenitities and make it nice. Those are less than 30% of the total area. I was just making an example.

People would rather leave those on the streets to do whatever they want, including settling down on the street, even if it means more suffering for them from the weather and danger from criminals outside.

Instead of seeing laws that keep people from the street as empathetic (because you force them to shelter), they are seen as cruel. Of course lack of enforcement sends a message and further discourages people from trying to find an alternative. Year by year this gets reinforced and it will be that much harder to fix the problem.

I'm not sure building a ghetto is the right answer. Whats stopping anyone from claiming a 10x10? Can I claim one?

You're grossly oversimplifying the issue.

How is this a ghetto? This is housing that is more spacious than my dorm room. The current situation is accepting a ghetto to exist on the sidewalks where there is no plumbing or services or shelter or a lock or any semblance of safety.

If you put 10k impoverished persons in a small area then that meets the definition of a ghetto, which is a minority group living in one part of a city. It will gain a stigma, it will become under served by the commercial sector, and those with an address in that area will be treated differently.

It would be better if we could have decentralized housing for the homeless such that they are welcomed into more affluent communities and their financial status can be kept private. This is obviously more expensive.

Its not an easy problem to solve.

You already have these areas, in fact the opposite happens. Skid row in LA has been a rough part of town for probably a century. As a result, that's where the vast majority of services are located. On top of that, impovershed people live all over town in CA. Across any arbitrary 500 feet in a CA city you might see one family living in a million dollar+ home, a single family crammed in a tiny apartment, and encampments and RVs spanning the in between. Rich and poor already live on top of each other, this would at least mean the impoverished who are already living in a given neighborhood are housed instead of the status quo which is living in the same neighborhood but in a tarp with no plumbing.

The first 10K or so units would be for the homeless. But, after that you can rent them out for some small amount to anyone that needs it.

Just imagine, if you're homeless and it's raining. What would you prefer? live in the streets or live in a small micro apartment? Sure, not everyone wants one, but why not give people more choices? Right now, your only choices are this: 2 million dollar condo or 20$ tent under a bridge. Let's give people more options?

You're hand waiving a lot here. Means testing is complex and a 10x10 in SF is valuable enough to bring a lot of bad actors. I'm pointing out that its not as simple as building a 10k occupant building.

You want to build fifteen 10' x 10' rooms, in a 150' building?

People aren't big on walls, so it might work.

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