The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America’s Richest Cities
I fairly often comment on the topic of homelessness. I am routinely told on HN that the high cost of housing is unrelated to the rise in homelessness. This article states otherwise and I quoted it here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-clear-connection-between-housing.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com&#x2F;2018&#x2F;11&#x2F;the-clear-c...</a><p>Some things I routinely talk about:<p>This country tore down up to 80 percent of SROs over the course of a couple of decades, probably because the Baby Boomers didn&#x27;t need that kind of dirt cheap housing when they came of age. We never rebuilt.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Single_room_occupancy" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Single_room_occupancy</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.citylab.com&#x2F;equity&#x2F;2018&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-rise-and-fall-of-the-american-sro&#x2F;553946&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.citylab.com&#x2F;equity&#x2F;2018&#x2F;02&#x2F;the-rise-and-fall-of-...</a><p>The American concept of &quot;proper housing&quot; is rooted in the housing boom that followed soldiers coming back home from WW2 and most of our current policies, financing mechanisms, etc are rooted in that era. The default expectation was that it was housing for a nuclear family and we are still being haunted by the ghost of those expectations, though they don&#x27;t really serve us well anymore for a variety of reasons.<p>So when people talk about the need for &quot;affordable housing,&quot; most people seem to hear <i>government subsidized housing</i>, <i>The Projects</i>, and <i>poverty housing</i>. I&#x27;m not sure how to get around that. It absolutely isn&#x27;t what I mean.<p>I mean we need to develop demographically appropriate housing, such as SROs that a single person working at Taco Bell could afford. We also need that housing to be viable without a car. The reality that you basically <i>need</i> a car to get around in large parts of the US and the cheapest housing typically requires a car is part of the problem here.<p>For most Americans, housing is their single largest expense and a car is their second largest. This is in the process of changing as Millenials give push back against such expectations, but it is still largely the norm here.<p>I don&#x27;t know of any good terms that already exist for trying to make such distinctions. They might need to be invented.<p>So, first, we need a variety of housing options that effectively and appropriately serve lifestyles other than <i>nuclear family with kids, a full time homemaker and a primary breadwinner</i>. We currently are trying to force-fit people into such housing who don&#x27;t live that way. For example, we assume that the answer for single young people is to rent a place designed for a family and then get enough roommates to fill up all the bedrooms and make the place affordable.<p>And this is a nightmare option for many people. Rooming with total strangers is inherently problematic.<p>Second, we need housing that doesn&#x27;t de facto assume that you own a car and have a driver&#x27;s license and all that. We need housing that serves people who don&#x27;t want to have a car or who can&#x27;t do that for some reason, whether cost or age or disability.<p>I don&#x27;t really know of terms in common usage for either of those concepts. Those are some of the things I have in mind when I talk about a need for &quot;affordable housing,&quot; but it isn&#x27;t what other people <i>hear</i> when I say that. They hear &quot;Craptastic slums that no one wants to live in and no one wants in their neighborhood&quot; or they hear &quot;socialism where we just hand people homes they can&#x27;t afford&quot; or something. And that&#x27;s absolutely not what I am going for.