It cuts both ways. What about the homeless person dying in the cold because he can't afford shelter due to sky high building requirements - is that included in the building code enforcement rules?
A recent affordable building in SF cost over $1 million per unit. That's completely unsustainable.
And you want and need precisely that in a house with fluctuating occupants of which a high percentage will have some sort of mental health issue.
Cutting corners on boarding houses will lead to fire catastrophes.
Nobody denies this. The question is whether said fire catastrophes really claim more lives than homelessness and wintering on the street. (Obviously fire catastrophes are a bigger PR problem and get more media attention, but is that really the appropriate metric for human suffering?)
https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/160882533241258393...
The problem is not just zoning. A boarding house simply doesn't generate noticeable income compared to standard residential housing, and with exploding land prices it simply makes no sense financially to cater to poor people.
Well, ok, since you started it - how much do you, personally, donate to homeless shelters and food banks? You have a lot of discretionary income to do so since your taxes are lower than you appear that you would like them to be.
Spoiler alert: Unfortunately, no matter how much money or time you give to this organization, or similar, the ills of capitalism inflicted on the poorest residents in the area won't be solved.
I still donate anyway though.
Am I really supposed to believe that we could build an entire cargo ship every 3 days out of 18 shipyards in 1942, but we somehow can't build a million simple and dirt cheap homes?
That's ridiculous. There's a hundred different issues causing a homeless person to die on the street. Building code regulations are way down that fucking list of somewhat barely related causes.