I'll start by saying that I agree that being able to build cheap housing goes a long way to help homelessness. However I think that half your article isn't about homelessness and is instead a critique of government and non-profit waste. I think if you tightened your focus it would be a more compelling read.
One thing I'll note is that the Soviet Union would just throw their homeless into detention centers run by their Ministry of Internal Affairs. So we could also "solve" the homeless issue by jailing them all and using them as slave labor. Not that I think that's a good solution just a solution.
I'm less convinced on the government being the more costly option to build housing, seeing as all that housing would be farmed out to private entities. It seems more a case that crony-capitalism is the issue. If it were government employees building the housing, sure, but that's not the case. It's the market saying that regulatory capture by construction companies is ok.
I'm also not sure that loosening restrictions would create enough incentive to house more people. Were I a real-estate developer, I'd rather build property that gives me high margins. Luxury housing does that better than catering to a population that might just decide to squat and be a pain to remove.
Thanks for the comment! The essay is about a disconnect: a massive government-NGO complex to address homelessness... and an unwillingness (ignorance) to make a very basic change which would help.
As I said, I'm sure there are economists who don't believe that CA regulations and taxes are having a negative effect on their low-end real estate sale and rental market but I don't know of any. Incentives matter and just as loose shoplifting penalties seem to increase shoplifting, which drives stores out of poor neighborhoods, making it harder and more expensive to build cheap housing will contribute to homelessness. In both cases there seem to be: 1.) a general unwillingness to examine the incentives and 2.) a pivot to an expensive or ineffective (in the case of the new trend of trying to get petitions or publicly scold pharmacies so they stay in poor and high-crime neighborhoods) 'fixes'.
Even if the media regularly acknowledged the POSSIBILITY that these disincentives were having effects I would be satisfied. Instead, we seem to have one truth in the media, another among the economists studying the issue, and still a third within the ranks of the homeless 'advocates' and non-profit workers.
This is a complicated issue and I know things like drug decriminalizing and treatment are relevant. I'm sure many of these people wouldn't be good renters... but I suspect that taking people in active addiction and allowing them to live in huge tent favelas on downtown sidewalks without any businesses or police or enforced social norms for blocks doesn't bring out the best in folks. I've been homeless in two states and I'm in recovery and I can tell you with absolute certainty that we probably have as much addiction per capita here in Southern Florida as anywhere else in the US... but no tent cities. Also, the collection of homelessness into such large and concentrated chunks introduces novel challenges for law enforcement and medical care, etc... but I think that's enough for now.
I'll start by saying that I agree that being able to build cheap housing goes a long way to help homelessness. However I think that half your article isn't about homelessness and is instead a critique of government and non-profit waste. I think if you tightened your focus it would be a more compelling read.
One thing I'll note is that the Soviet Union would just throw their homeless into detention centers run by their Ministry of Internal Affairs. So we could also "solve" the homeless issue by jailing them all and using them as slave labor. Not that I think that's a good solution just a solution.
I'm less convinced on the government being the more costly option to build housing, seeing as all that housing would be farmed out to private entities. It seems more a case that crony-capitalism is the issue. If it were government employees building the housing, sure, but that's not the case. It's the market saying that regulatory capture by construction companies is ok.
I'm also not sure that loosening restrictions would create enough incentive to house more people. Were I a real-estate developer, I'd rather build property that gives me high margins. Luxury housing does that better than catering to a population that might just decide to squat and be a pain to remove.
Thanks for the comment! The essay is about a disconnect: a massive government-NGO complex to address homelessness... and an unwillingness (ignorance) to make a very basic change which would help.
As I said, I'm sure there are economists who don't believe that CA regulations and taxes are having a negative effect on their low-end real estate sale and rental market but I don't know of any. Incentives matter and just as loose shoplifting penalties seem to increase shoplifting, which drives stores out of poor neighborhoods, making it harder and more expensive to build cheap housing will contribute to homelessness. In both cases there seem to be: 1.) a general unwillingness to examine the incentives and 2.) a pivot to an expensive or ineffective (in the case of the new trend of trying to get petitions or publicly scold pharmacies so they stay in poor and high-crime neighborhoods) 'fixes'.
Even if the media regularly acknowledged the POSSIBILITY that these disincentives were having effects I would be satisfied. Instead, we seem to have one truth in the media, another among the economists studying the issue, and still a third within the ranks of the homeless 'advocates' and non-profit workers.
This is a complicated issue and I know things like drug decriminalizing and treatment are relevant. I'm sure many of these people wouldn't be good renters... but I suspect that taking people in active addiction and allowing them to live in huge tent favelas on downtown sidewalks without any businesses or police or enforced social norms for blocks doesn't bring out the best in folks. I've been homeless in two states and I'm in recovery and I can tell you with absolute certainty that we probably have as much addiction per capita here in Southern Florida as anywhere else in the US... but no tent cities. Also, the collection of homelessness into such large and concentrated chunks introduces novel challenges for law enforcement and medical care, etc... but I think that's enough for now.
Thanks again for your suggestions.