Comment by conductr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by conductr | Hacker News Reader

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I like this trend for Dallas and think it is long overdue. Covid made it very obvious. The city has grown a ton in recent history but has had a hard time bringing people to downtown for anything other than work. It's usually dead in evenings and on weekends. Restaurants struggle unless they cater to the lunch crowd, etc. While it's improved in the past ~5 years or so versus the previous ~10; I've seen recent numbers that say there are only about 10000-12000 residents in the Downtown area. Anyways, I've been reading a lot on the local happenings and am interesting into how this trend will reshape the area culturally/economically. For example, Texan's don't tend to put up with homeless issues like they exist and the city really needs to figure that out or this could be a wasted opportunity. These are all new "luxury apartments" and those folks aren't going to tolerate the homeless issues but even that's hard to say since we've gotten such an influx of more liberal minded folks that are more compassionate on those issues.

Every new apartment calls itself a luxury apartment. Don’t get hung up on the marketing buzz words. Each new apartment that is constructed lowers the rent, particularly on old apartments. Dallas, compared to other cities, has done a fantastic job building more apartments. Rent keeps going up in Dallas because people move in faster than apartments can be built and inflation. The solution isn’t to require non-luxury apartments but to keep allowing apartments of any kind to be built. A luxury apartment today is affordable housing tomorrow

> A luxury apartment today is affordable housing tomorrow

I'm not sure I understand. You probably don't mean that literally unless "tomorrow" is 50 years from now. How does it lower rent to make some housing affordable, simply by increasing supply?

Luxury apartment from 50 years ago is an affordable housing right now is another way to look at it.

Same principle behind targeting the high end market first for new products. Affordable iPhones are the used ones or the older models… not the latest models. Outside of government subsidies, the private market doesn’t target the poor for new stuff because it doesn’t make economic sense.

Yes it lowers rent by increasing supply. Same principle behind old iPhone models going on sale when the new model comes out. The rich people buy the new phones and flood the market with old models.

If you also look at the iPhone mini experiment it had abysmal sales… the phone was a new model that targeted the lower end. People Penny pinching tend to also look at used phones or actual old models.

I mostly agree with what you said in regards to housing, but the iPhone mini is a bad analogy. It wasn’t a low end model, it was a mid/high end model with a small screen, and apparently there’s a vocal but not nearly large enough minority that likes small devices. The iPhone SE is the low end model, and it appears to be selling quite well.

Ok mid level maybe but definitely not high end. The mini did not have any of the high end features like improved camera, lidar, etc. SE is more or less rebranded old model.

But I think it still fits with my point that the new stuff doesn’t sell well with the poorer market.

Luxury apartments are often more affordable and attractive than the alternatives, which are: low density homes nearby, low density homes really far away, old as hell medium density homes nearby since nobody has been able to build anything new for decades.

I haven't been interested in buying any of the available houses in my city for 10 years now, but recently they've been developing medium density townhouses and apartments in locations that aren't the CBD, but also not suburbia. That's a fair middle ground for the middle class that we have today.

If supply is restricted you'll be competing with rich people over shitbox apartments from the sixties. Guess who'll win the bidding war?

Even building straight luxury soaks up the rich folks you'd otherwise have to compete with, by removing them from the equation.

Also the more luxury you make it means the rich people have to buy smaller places, freeing up more space for more housing in general.

It is as simple as more units = more choices and assuming the number of people chasing those units isn't infinite, more units on the market means they now have to compete for the renters.

Build more housing is a part of the solution. Not an ideal solution but better than doing nothing.

Housing price or rent is completely uncorrelated with what kind of building it is or how old it is in most cities. Labelling something luxury and putting a shiny facade on it does very little to alter how much the building costs and rent will be inversely proportional to supply. Even large apartments are still better than detached homes as it will reduce competition for spots.

Homelessness persists for reasons outside of local attitudes. The weather can kill you in Dallas. Political opinion does not care.

Maybe, but the weather in Austin is similar to Dallas.

Austin might get freezes periodically, but they do not get the same ice storms that Dallas gets, certainly not as frequently. The blizzards that Oklahoma and Kansas deal with, Dallas gets a taste of that for 2-3 days a year, but that 200 mile north-south buffer between Dallas and Austin is a significant one.

You know we have homeless people in Canada, right? Like there's a lot of them in Montreal which gets a fair bit colder than Dallas.

I'm not sure how that is relevant to the weather of Dallas and Austin

> more liberal minded folks that are more compassionate on those issues.

Shouldn’t everyone have compassion for the poor and needy?

Unfortunately many people subscribe to the concept that we’re living in a meritocracy and thus if someone is poor it’s due to their own fault.

The sadistic belief that the dumber you are, the more in shit you should live. If I'm going to live in a meritocracy, let it at least be one that judges merit based on ethics, rather than by intelligence or who your parents are.

Homelessness is a complex subject. No one in good faith thinks a homeless addict needs to just bootstrap harder.

At the same time, barring a major felony, and sometimes not even then, nobody is exactly forcing them into a successful engagement with a recovery program either. If someone is unable to make a rational decision on the subject, who's fault is it if they continue to be untreated?

You’re showing your own biases by assuming that all homeless people are addicts. There are tons of people living in their cars and barely scraping by. It’s the price of housing, we need more housing units full stop.

I didn't say all homeless people were addicts. I was illustrating my first sentence -- homelessness is a complex subject.

I agree we need more housing. I also think we'll have "homelessness problems" even if we built enough housing to go around. There are a lot of intersecting problems.

Who/where are these many people and are you sure you are representing their points accurately?

one of them is right below you

100%. Feel free to ask any clarifying questions. However, please note that although I do believe your situation in life is due to your own choices, that does not mean I have no compassion for people and the choices they’ve made.

I have absolutely no shame in saying that I am one of those people.

Most people want homelessness solved in their city.

But if the number of visible rough sleepers falls, most people won't look too closely into whether the city provided treatment+housing+employment; or whether the city gave them a bus ticket to another city and send the cops to hassle them.

Or whether they're warehoused in a prison for $40K a year, fed back into middle-class paychecks and upper-class stock returns.

Should.

Fuck compassion what kind of idiot wants to have to wave through homeless guys every rush hour? My country is rich I want it to look the part.

"wave"? Your country needs a decent grammer check, and punctuation.

(....aaaaand in 5, 4, 3.....:-)

Even us "evil" libertarians and free-market folk have compassion for the poor, suffering and needy. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Compassion is of little value without policy and actions to back it up.

On the contrary, it's much easier to justify institutional harshness if you assume individual compassion in the population.

Then you get policies like "we don't need a social safety net (institutional compassion) because we have tax-deductible donations (institutional, discretional compassion)". Or similarly "we don't need progressive taxation because wealthy individuals employ more people" (i.e. the trickle-down fallacy).

tax-deductible donations (institutional, discretional compassion)"

Argh, very bad typo. This should be individual compassion of course.

Ah yes donations I have my doubts libertarians will donate as much money to the needy as they pay in taxes to the government.

Turns out people are assholes and you need to take their money by force- ie government.

Maybe a nice in-between stepping stone: let people choose what portion of their taxes goes where.

Maybe we find out that good portions of government spending like education, social welfare, etc all get a huge boost in funding whilst leaving military and other policies with less funding. Maybe it makes everyone happy that they are doing their part for the things they believe are important, like charity. Instead of fighting for crumbs for their cause after most of the tax revenue has been allocated to wasteful projects.

We don't even get to pick this basic thing right now. I don't know about you but it spoils the taste of this supposed democracy to me. And then to be told I'm an asshole for wanting such basic autonomy is the cream on the top. This is not noble and just at all, democracy doesn't deserve such descriptors.

Perhaps they donate less because that disposable income is taken via taxation by the government? Seems equally plausible to me.

Bucketing people so simply is a mistake. Often libertarians (similar to communists or any other political ideology) genuinely want to make things better and have genuine complaints about how things are run that would stand up to analysis.

I lean libertarian myself in many ways. I don’t care who you marry or if you dye your hair blue. I don’t care if you get an abortion (your right to choose - I’m a strong supporter of abortion rights), etc. I support exploring universal healthcare as well because it’s clear that solutions we’ve tried in the past are suboptimal and we are being outcompeted here. Environmental concerns are something that libertarians strongly support. You polluting the air harms me and others. Destroying the rainforest harms me and others. But I also think market mechanics tend to solve problems better and we can see that with environmental concerns where public policy isn’t enough - you need a 1-2 punch of policy and market mechanics like a carbon credit or coin or something. The public schools are a problem for example because Conservatives believe that Liberals have taken them over (untrue IMO) and are dictating teaching political ideology. This is a problem because if you lose power (as liberals have done in many states) then you are now subject to what the other party wants taught. There’s room here to explore - and universities (which need reform) show how choosing where you go to school instead of basing it on regressive property tax systems which require housing by-in could work. There’s a lot we can figure out.

I think for libertarians they should look at government less so as a thief and more of a platform. One thing you’ll note though is that libertarianism can accommodate communism, while the reverse isn’t true. That’s a key problem with certain ideologies like fascism or communism. People have been starting communes and worker collectives in America for a long time. There were never free markets or entrepreneurs starting new businesses in a meaningful way in Soviet Russia or Maoist China.

It also works the other way around: high taxation absolves me of moral obligations towards charitable causes, because through government we have institutionalized our compassion. The government's moral failures in that area are not mine to bear personally.

(not that I don't give to charities, but I tend to view my charities as political acts rather than moral acts).

Yea good point

But ineffective policies and wasteful actions are also a funny way to express compassion.

> For example, Texan's don't tend to put up with homeless issues like they exist and the city really needs to figure that out or this could be a wasted opportunity. These are all new "luxury apartments" and those folks aren't going to tolerate the homeless issues but even that's hard to say since we've gotten such an influx of more liberal minded folks that are more compassionate on those issues.

This observation is pretzeled enough that I do not understand what you are trying to say. But I take exception at the suggestion that there is some political group that is more compassionate when dealing with homeless people - everyone of every stripe has compassion for homeless people. Charity is a near universal value. The political debate is 100% about:

- What is effective.

- What help should be compelled, and from whom (there are issues of fairness here).

- What is the root cause of any given case of homelessness.

And besides, in this case I note relaxed regulation that lets offices convert to apartments (without tripping up some zoning permit problem) is more effective at getting people into homes than compassion.

There are plenty of people, today and in the past, who do not have compassion for the homeless.

I think that’s true but those numbers are inflated, falsely IMO, by those who disagree on what’s effective/who should be compelled/what’s the root cause.

For instance, if you say that we should both give twenty quid to a homeless bloke we see, and I disagree because I genuinely don’t think it’s a good way to help, you (if you were so inclined) might call me uncaring but that wouldn’t be true. Then you argue that I should be compelled to give the money and I’ll fight you on that, for several reasons, and before you know it you’re casting me as evil.

This is literally a strawman argument.

If we're keeping score on fallacies, roenxi is pointing out an association fallacy.

Do go into detail.

Compassion is worthless unless it results in a roof overhead and food on the table, and/or mental health care. We've seen plenty of "compassion" from behind locked gates however, and it is worth every penny. i.e. none.

My experience with the homeless is limited, but I feel this isn't true.

I've heard from friends that work with the homeless, as well as from reading online, that many of the homeless feel invisible. People don't stop to talk to them, they don't make eye contact, they don't say "hello" while passing on the street.

From this I feel that treating the homeless as people -- even if it isn't something that tangibly benefits them -- is beneficial. Making small talk, or even just making eye contact and saying "good morning" while walking by would make them feel a little more human.

Obviously this doesn't solve the problem, and I expect that most homeless would prefer food and shelter over chit-chat, but when we're talking about "compassion for the homeless", I think that this fits perfectly in that hole.

> The political debate is 100% about

Not sure your list is equaling 100%. As a life long Texan, the red and blue lines are far and wide here and purple is thriving in certain areas; largely based on transplants. The purple, and especially the blue part that is changing the gradient; is to be feared by the MAGA republicans. Even people I consider non-extreme GOP Texas standard politics over past ~50 years type people do not want to tolerate the reality of modern day homelessness. Our culture in Texas is very NIMBY on this topic. Zero tolerance as in "I will pull out my shotgun if you step on my property." Nearly every pre-Y2K teenage boy has a story to tell about that if they grew up in Texas.

I suppose I consider this part of the cultural phenomenon that comes with growth. Although, fused within politics. Also, economics because the reason this is even happening is the city of Dallas has been losing to it's suburbs in the economic department. That's why so much office space is vacant. The pandemic ruined it for sure but it has been bad for a long time.

> Even people I consider non-extreme GOP Texas standard politics over past ~50 years type people do not want to tolerate the reality of modern day homelessness.

Can we blame them? Who should tolerate homelessness and poverty issues? Aren't people in deep blue urban areas getting their own anecdotes about homelessness right now? Aren't we seeing people avoiding situations and neighborhoods there as a result?

Personally, and I can definitely be wrong here, I expect that relevant mental health issues aren't going to be simple enough to just throw earmarked housing, destigmatizing, etc. at. Local government is going to have to take some responsibility for the behavior of the mentally ill one way or another.

> pre-Y2K teenage boy

I'm not sure what you mean by that. It's been 22 years since the year 2000, so it sounds like you're describing a temporal impossibility.

It sounds like the ambiguity should be resolved the other way around, as "person who was a teenage boy before Y2K", rather than "person from before Y2K who is a teenage boy".

Ah, thanks

Almost everyone would give lip service, at the right time and place, to values like charity and compassion for the homeless.

But there are many, many people who would never for a second even consider the welfare of homeless people as a factor in any decision they ever make, personal or political.

So for all practical purposes charity is definitely not a universal value.

Wow yeah I guess those people might exist but we'll never know. They might just not tell you that they care.

Right. Out of billions of people, you can always find an opinion. Even truly absurd opinions.

It's also easy to call experts until one agrees with you.

> everyone of every stripe has compassion for homeless people

The conservatives in my hometown of Seattle are fairly vocal about not giving a fuck. It's sort of their defining feature. As in, they differ not at all from the liberals except on homeless issues.

Conservatives tend to be transparent when they don't care about things. But that doesn't mean they care less - because that is a relative thing.

I gather homelessness in Seattle has been getting worse for years [0] and that the city is something of a liberal stronghold. So the question is open - are the liberals more compassionate, or are they merely identifying ineffective policies as compassion? Because I would expect real compassion would cause homelessness to decrease. More compassion -> less homelessness is the link I'd like to see if I were out there being compassionate. Or at least growth in line with population rather than exceeding it. Compassion implies that people are about to do something useful.

In short, what you observe is consistent with conservatives being less compassionate, but also consistent with conservatives being equally compassionate but more realistic about policy effectiveness.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Seattle#Measur...

Try to put up a shelter and watch the true colors of so-called liberals emerge. Happened here. Nimbys too when someone tries to build an apartment. Looks like one side is better at hiding human nature.

Seems like these days it's hard to police "small" crime as well. Guess who's most affected by theft, misdemeanor violence, etc.?

The poor and potentially soon to be homeless.

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