Comment by card_zero | Hacker News Reader

Comment by card_zero | Hacker News Reader

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Some lines that stand out:

> The city is waiting for the provincial government to ramp up affordable housing construction. Nova Scotia has not built any new public housing units since 1995.

> “One of the largest groups of homelessness we see growing is simply people who don't have enough money to pay rent, and that’s new,” [the director of housing and homelessness in Halifax] said, adding that includes seniors, students, and entire families.

> They note that multiple high-rise condominiums are under development in Halifax - none of which, they say, are affordable. “We would like to be treated like people,” said Samantha Nickerson, who lived with her fiance, Trent Smith, at the same encampment [...] “Some of us really are trying hard to get our lives back together and work.”

So, have we seen exactly this time and again? In this instance, if property values drop, would the encampment really move somewhere else - why? - or would it move into the now affordable properties?

Property values don't need to drop for there to be more affordable housing. And even if they were to drop, is that _really_ a bad thing in the medium to long term (e.g. should residential or other land be an investment in and of itself)?

> And even if they were to drop, is that _really_ a bad thing in the medium to long term (e.g. should residential or other land be an investment in and of itself)?

Given that for many people owning their house is the only way to preserve some sort of inheritance for their children...

sucks to suck.

don't put 200% of your net worth into a depreciating asset.

It's not depreciating at the moment and hasn't been (aside from some brief dips) for many years. If you want to change the status quo, it has to be gradual.

True that, and in isolation that is indeed the case. Yet, even more people than that across the world cannot even do that.

What I am (partly rhetorically) asking is: Is it really a workable long-term solution to guard this global land owning minority (which I am part of) if it means continued homelessness, inequality, societal and monetary costs associated with it will continue to plague everyone. To me it seems like yet another question of externalities whereby we externalise the effect and cost of guarding what we have while everyone pays, and those that pays the most are the ones with the least.

For a society as a whole it is better if people own their homes, for multiple reasons:

- when people have to rent their homes, all too often it is some investment vehicle for the uber rich that gets the rent. US pension funds are the worst vultures here in Europe - all the wealth generated here disappears to the US instead of staying where it belongs: in our economies.

- when people own their home, it removes a lot of stress, especially in times of economic crisis. Not being afraid to make rent each month is a lifechanger (at least once it's paid off - but even falling behind with payments to the bank doesn't get you yeeted out all but immediately).

- when people own their homes, they don't need as much money in pensions and wages. That's how Eastern Europe can get away with CoL (except for housing) on Western European levels - they have ownership rates >> 90%, so their economies are far more competitive.

> when people have to rent their homes, all too often it is some investment vehicle for the uber rich that gets the rent.

This is solvable with a greater mix of affordable housing. It is also solvable by increasing the portion of community-owned (e.g. county-owned/operated housing) which is already at about 20% here. It is also solvable by legislating that a certain amount of rent paid has to be used for upkeep, upgrades, and such. (Where I live already have laws to that effect for other near-monopolies such as water and communications, where the state effectively dictates a maximum reasonable revenue).

> when people own their home, it removes a lot of stress, especially in times of economic crisis.

Lots of crises over the past decades has seen a significant degree of stress among home-owners over the interest they have to pay. Over the past two years I have not been able to go more than a few days between hearing on national news about homeowners being stressed about interest payments on their homes. Among renters there is significantly less so as there already is a safety net available. So in my world it is the other way around from the picture you paint. (Let me also add a side note about the 2008 mortgage crisis if fewer people had less loans and less risky loans here).

> Not being afraid to make rent each month is a lifechanger.

Not being able to pay interest each moth is almost all I ever hear about the economy over the past year or so. Cost of interest has been one of the major factors in why the inflation has been so high. See above again. Never about rent.

> when people own their homes, they don't need as much money in pensions and wages.

This is again a question of social safety net more than anything else. If you have affordable housing you also don't need as much money in pensions and wages to live somewhere good.

While its true its still only worth a house. If more housing drives home prices down, its still worth one house. If prices go up, its still one house. When your kids need a home of their own in the area they need one house per kid. One house does not become multiple houses in any market unless you buy worse houses, throw in a loan, or move away where homes and job opportunities are less. In either case, whatever housing policy happens doesn’t change much about how this form of inheritance works. And if these kids never buy a house and merely rent and throw money in the stock market, their kids might inherit more than any equity gain would have given them I expect and doesn’t require lucking out being born early in a hot housing market either.

> Given that for many people owning their house is the only way to preserve some sort of inheritance for their children...

It shouldn't be, it sucks up valuable investment from productive business and (imo) condemned Canada to the economic malaise happening right now. The only way to beat inflation in a risk-adjusted manner should be to invest in some kind of productive business, and not land-squatting.

Not sure if you're in Canada, but all our national governments, and the current one explicitly, has made it far less attractive to try to build capital outside your home. The only thing protecting homes is the instant political death that would result from those who vote in volume. You could make real estate a far less attractive financial investment if you don't tax the stuffing out of every other type of wealth accumulation. It's just so much easier and more politically lucrative to increase the captial gains tax on those "fat-cat doctors" and give everyone else a "tax holiday" with their own money, suspending one of the fairest and most effective taxes.

> Not sure if you're in Canada

canadian passport, did K->BSc. in canada, live in nyc now

> You could make real estate a far less attractive financial investment if you don't tax the stuffing out of every other type of wealth accumulation

we could've also bit the bullet and let housing collapse in '08 like the US, I think that was the moment when we chose to hitch our wagon to real estate going up indefinitely propped up by the government. somebody has to pay taxes though, because CAD is not a reserve currency and we can't print our way like the USD can; I would prefer landsquatters pay the most, but still more equitable for capital gains to be taxed than income.

> give everyone else a "tax holiday" with their own money, suspending one of the fairest and most effective taxes.

this was short sighted populism, i agree

It's doomed anyway because when their grandchildren get their turn of needing money, the population won't be growing and the value of land will be decreasing.

That is what then, this is now.

Why have now problems when you can have then problems? /s

> Given that for many people owning their house is the only way to preserve some sort of inheritance for their children...

This is why the housing crisis will never be solved. Homeowners vote. Homeowners don't want to solve the housing shortage as it will hurt their values. No democratically elected government will ever work to actually fix the housing shortage. Of course there will be token actions and platitudes, but nothing of consequence will be done.

Well there are no inheritance taxes in Canada so think of this as an indirect one.

Turning this into a discussion about "affordable housing" is missing the point altogether.

Most of these people have debilitating mental illnesses and/or drug addictions.

To assume all they need is a shiny subsidized apartment over a Starbucks and they'll put on a suit and go to work tomorrow is preposterous. In the HN utopia, they'll work remotely.

These people are chronically unemployable for a reason. Until you fix the reason, you won't solve this problem.

Instead of focusing on getting them the help they need, cities focus on things like how many tents can we allow in the public tennis courts or how many sheds can we build in the car park before we declare success.

You're absolutely right. And the reason isn't because you have to be that bad to be homeless, but that if you're not that ill-equipped, you're usually in the category of the invisible homeless, couchsurfing or living in your car, etc.

> These people are chronically unemployable for a reason. Until you fix the reason, you won't solve this problem.

That might make you feel better about not caring or doing anything to fix the problem, but you have the causation flipped around. Once you are homeless, employers will no longer employ you.

This is a problem with our economy and is a societal problem. You can keep your head in the sand, but that means you are not helping to solve it and are helping to perpetuate it by remaining ignorant of the cause.

Completely disagree. You're right that a lot of homeless people have mental health or drug addictions, but that's often caused by not having housing.

People start out well-meaning and lose their homes for financial reasons, then get unwell from years on the streets. Block off the top of that pipeline by building more homes for people.

Studies have shown this to be true.

> Studies have shown this to be true.

Please cite them.

Literally no one has become schizophrenic because they lost their apartment.

People become homeless because of their schizophrenia. Many such cases.

Use the tragic story of HN's very own Terry Davis as an example. Terry lost his home, and ultimately his life, because of untreated mental illness.

You’ve put the schitzophrenia thing into GP’s mouth. They didn’t say that.

Losing one’s housing can certainly cause major depression and anxiety which can manifest into other problems, though.

> Most of these people have debilitating mental illnesses and/or drug addictions.

Do they, or don't they? If that's true, the article was misleading.

I mean that's the standard trope, sure, and it makes homelessness into an intractable problem about needing hordes of social workers and clinics, but there's a lot of implication here that these particular homeless are mostly people who can't afford the available rents.

That used to be the case. However, the current government jacked the immigration numbers exponentially over the last few years. This seriously exacerbated an already growing problem with housing affordability. Also, the huge immigration (via temporary workers and student visas) has suppressed wages. These combined we now have a housing crisis that contends for worst in the developed world.

It isn't just mentally ill people who are homeless.

A cynical observer might suspect that the reason there is a high regulatory burden leading to only unaffordable-for-poor-people buildings is that the voters no more want a really affordable apartment building next door than they want a homeless encampment

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