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Comment by sixdimensional | Hacker News Reader

I'm super impressed by what Pallet[1] is doing in this space.

I think LA is talking with Pallet to implement their temporary housing, which would be amazing.

I don't want to diminish the link above and it's efforts but how a first world society has to resort to stuff like this is just mind-boggling.

I'm an expat in a developing country and even for the poorest people a roof over their heads is affordable.

Everytime I go back to Australia or visit Europe I'm always shocked at the level of homelessness, it's just not right.

Why are dirt-poor countries able to house their citizens and the richest countries aren't? When will people see housing price appreciation far beyond wage inflation as a serious detriment to society?

Partly because of the rise in legally mandated standards - in california there are laws stating the minimum area of housing for a family of a given size which is way higher than the minimum that people would settle for if the price was correspondingly lower - most poorer people including me earlier in life would prefer to pay half or 1/3 the amount for half or 1/3 the space. The aim of the minimum is sometimes stated as “we don’t want people to live in slums”…and the result is that people either commute up to 2 hours each way, break the law, or end up on the street

>> I'm an expat in a developing country and even for the poorest people a roof over their heads is affordable.

It's affordable here, too. Just not in one of the wealthiest and thus most expensive cities in the United States.

That's a fair call, there's certainly places in the states that treat it as yet another utility rather than an investment.

From my experience in Asia the attitude is so wildly different, they build more houses than is ever needed, people can run stores and sell basic goods out of their spare front room for a few hours a day as side income.

I'm not familiar with local laws in the US but in Australia you'd get fined a few thousand dollars trying to sell groceries from a house in suburbia, many have to get in their cars and travel a few km to the designated "commercial" area simply to buy some bread. There's a lot the West could learn from the East yet we are far too stubborn to actually do it.

>> I'm not familiar with local laws in the US but in Australia you'd get fined a few thousand dollars trying to sell groceries from a house in suburbia, many have to get in their cars and travel a few km to the designated "commercial" area simply to buy some bread.

This would definitely play out the exact same way in America.

Low-cost urban housing is illegal to construct in the US due to building safety codes, rules on minimum size, etc. The US federal government (and some state/city governments) has a tendency to always increase safety standards just enough that the bottom X% of people are priced out. They do it with cars as well. New cars start dipping to the low-mid $10K range? Time to make infotainment systems mandatory and add more mandatory airbags. This doesn’t affect 90% of consumers but the bottom 10% get squeezed out again.

It's not mind boggling, homeless shelters in repurposed halls are mind boggling.

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