It's bad here and I'm 30 minutes out from the city. The amount of homeless in my area increased dramatically. We're lucky we have been able to help a friend get her stuff together and took in my wife's cousin who is basically a nephew. Just to make sure he's not sleeping in the streets. Shit is unreasonable out here and they still give people minimum wage.
this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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Homelessness is a housing affordability issue. Build more housing, fix ya zoning, make unemployment and Medicaid easier to get.
There's a population with long term homelessness due to mental health issues and we should be trying to help them too, but to the extent the issue is increasing it's due to marginal situations like someone losing their job or having a medical emergency.
There are faster and more affordable solutions than "build more housing" or trying to convert commercially zoned property into residential and all the retrofitting that entails. Also, unemployment is at historic lows right now. You are right, though, homelessness is an affordability issue, and housing prices going up over 50% in the last 5 years (and 100% in the last 15) has more to do with it than anything else. Housing is being bought up by massive investment firms like Blackrock, creating scarcity in the market and thus driving up housing costs. These firms have long term aspirations to create a culture of renters, adding to our subscription-based economy and eliminating home ownership which has historically been the pathway to wealth for normal people. Governments could easily step in to address the issue by raising taxes on any entity's 5th, 6th, 200th, etc residential property and make hoarding homes a bad investment. Those properties would be dumped like any other losing stock on a spreadsheet, and you could use the windfall from those taxes to create affordable financing for normal people's first or even second homes. Unfortunately, at least in the US, the government officials in charge of making such a decision are financed by the very institutions profiting from the status quo.
I’d just critique:
Which definition of “unemployment” are you referring to though?
Im asumming youre referring to the one the whitehouse likes to use, where they count minimum wage part time work as employed, and dont count people who gave up looking for work as unemployed.
Labor participation rates are improved but still relatively low lttps://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000
Yeah that's the one I was referring to in response to OP, but measure it by whichever indicator you want (federal unemployment numbers, jobs growth, help wanted listing, increasing pay rates, union contract negotiation outcomes). 'Unemployment' (nor underemployment, nor labor participation) is not currently indicative as the causation for the housing affordability problem.
Or relatively high, depending on which period you're comparing it to (high compared to 50's, low compared to 90's).
Build more housing does nothing when companies and those outside the country buy them up...
Urbanization and multi-use buildings, change office buildings to residential buildings and enact working from home more.
High speed rail.
Meanwhile the rich have been posting RECORD profits!
I really don't get how the US can afford billions of dollars to help Ukraine and Israel in their wars but can't help their citizens. (I know war is profitable)
Don't get me wrong I'm glad the US is one of the countries aiding Ukraine but shouldn't they help their own first?
It's not "can't", it's "won't".
No CEO is getting a big paycheck for helping homeless people, so no one cares.
This is what endgame capitalism looks like. The endless search for ever-increasing profits isn't sustainable and it ends up with the rich cannibalizing the system that they exploited to get rich.
Genuinely. If you take going into poverty or homelessness in the abstract - as violence - capitalism is enforced by violence. Work or suffer the consequences.
If you don't participate you get evicted and your record is fucked. If you're homeless the cops come and destroy your housing and you're left with even less than before.
There isn't an option to not participate that does not end in violence from our lovely government.
They can easily do both and have money to spare to resurface every road probably.
Idk could be false
The problem is the military cut in their budget is more important than infrastructure, education, health care, etc.
The US being a country that prints its own currency and isnt tied to any trading partners the way the European Union is, our government can basically create infinite debt and it sorta doesnt matter. Very abstract concept that I don't grasp. But yeah we can afford it, we just print money or whatever. Also billions is not a lot of money, and that money was already being allocated to the military budget, and that money was earmarked to help our military industrial complex which it is absolutely doing.
Most of the money "spent" on military aid is "selling" materiel US military would have to write off and recycle. Recycling would be more expensive than giving it away. The rest of the cost is shipping, training and accounting costs. Most of that money stays in the US anyway, as salaries and payments for stuff.
How about before the military gets their hands on the money? The military gets a huge bulk of the budget compared to education and health care. I believe a trillion or two have gone missing and the Pentagon can't find it.
I would see Ukraine funding as an investment. Better supplied Ukraine means weaker Russia. Weaker Russia means lower need for defense spending in the future.
I am all for Americans getting better education and healthcare, but if you have to reduce defense spending, I would build less tanks and aircraft carriers, the ones you have would be enough for a while.
Yeah we really shouldn't be wasting our money, like on the salaries of people that care more about whining in Congress and on FOX News than creating laws to actually help our country.
Gee I wonder why.
I’m not big into watching videos, can someone tldw?
Here's the article that coincides with the video
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/homeless-record-america-12-percent-jump-high-rents/
Yeah I know my 60 year old FIL was almost homeless this year.
Our oligarchs want large homeless populations.
They're capitalism scarecrows. If you won't make money for them directly, you will serve them as a warning to the capital battery livestock to keep showing up to be exploited at their jobs in exchange for not dying in the streets of exposure and police brutality.