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Aspiegaming
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25 Jun 2021, 10:47 am



This issue affects my family personally. We've been trying to find my youngest brother and his girlfriend a new house better and cheaper than their current one and we've had no such luck. They have until the start of July to move out and we've been scrambling and working to turn a part of the basement area into a fourth bedroom so they can move in with us.

I'm going to get called a communist for saying that housing should be a human right and every job should pay a living wage.


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25 Jun 2021, 10:57 am

Not a communist, but I agree with you.


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Fireblossom
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26 Jun 2021, 12:50 am

While I agree that everyone should have housing regardless of the situation, it makes me wonder if I'm on the same page with others on what kind of housing. For example, if someone can't pay for it at all, would you think it was okay that the housing given to them would be just a room in a dorm? Personally, I think that yes, it would be.* It would also motivate people to find a job so they could get a better place. I also think that addicts and criminals shouldn't be allowed in the same dorms as people who've done no crimes and such but have simply done poorly in life financially.

*With people too disabled to work, perhaps exceptions could be made if the country's financial situation allowed it.



funeralxempire
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26 Jun 2021, 12:55 am

Fireblossom wrote:
While I agree that everyone should have housing regardless of the situation, it makes me wonder if I'm on the same page with others on what kind of housing. For example, if someone can't pay for it at all, would you think it was okay that the housing given to them would be just a room in a dorm? Personally, I think that yes, it would be.* It would also motivate people to find a job so they could get a better place. I also think that addicts and criminals shouldn't be allowed in the same dorms as people who've done no crimes and such but have simply done poorly in life financially.

*With people too disabled to work, perhaps exceptions could be made if the country's financial situation allowed it.


Is it fair to discriminate in housing against addicts who don't have criminal records?


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26 Jun 2021, 1:08 am

funeralxempire wrote:
Fireblossom wrote:
While I agree that everyone should have housing regardless of the situation, it makes me wonder if I'm on the same page with others on what kind of housing. For example, if someone can't pay for it at all, would you think it was okay that the housing given to them would be just a room in a dorm? Personally, I think that yes, it would be.* It would also motivate people to find a job so they could get a better place. I also think that addicts and criminals shouldn't be allowed in the same dorms as people who've done no crimes and such but have simply done poorly in life financially.

*With people too disabled to work, perhaps exceptions could be made if the country's financial situation allowed it.


Is it fair to discriminate in housing against addicts who don't have criminal records?


Well, if they're addicted to something legal then no, but if they take something illegal then that is a crime in itself, making them criminals. And I'm not saying addicts should go homeless, just that they should be in other places. While not every addict is dangerous, many are, so I think it wouldn't be fair to put others in such a risk.



shlaifu
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26 Jun 2021, 11:35 am

the dorm rooms you're describing are called homeless shelters, and at least over here in central Europe, they're sort of semi-successful - they are being used in winter, because apparently they're preferrable to freezing to death, but it seems in summer, homeless people prefer to be, well, homeless over these "dorm rooms".
Now there's plenty of possible reasons for that, but they also don't get at the root of the problem. Living in a homeless shelter doesn't give you the control over your living conditions, i.e. it's not *your* private place, it's just *a* semi-public space. Neither you nor your belongings are remotely safe because you're surrounded by people who also own next to nothing amd could easily vanish from one day to the next.

abd secondly, they remove nothing of the stigma attached to being homeless, and in a tight low-wage labour market, that's enough for you to net get a job.

The Danish government rolled out a program in which they gave small apartments to homeless people. And I mean: the apartments then belonged to the people. It was up to them to get their life back together, given this opportunity, and lo and behold, the program was much more successful than the "dorm room"-style shelters in place already.
But alas, its success was as much a siccess as drug decriminalization projects: they work, but they run so against the ingrained narratives of personal responsibility etc. that the dominant centrist politicians don't dare touch them.


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26 Jun 2021, 12:08 pm

shlaifu wrote:
the dorm rooms you're describing are called homeless shelters, and at least over here in central Europe, they're sort of semi-successful - they are being used in winter, because apparently they're preferrable to freezing to death, but it seems in summer, homeless people prefer to be, well, homeless over these "dorm rooms".
Now there's plenty of possible reasons for that, but they also don't get at the root of the problem. Living in a homeless shelter doesn't give you the control over your living conditions, i.e. it's not *your* private place, it's just *a* semi-public space. Neither you nor your belongings are remotely safe because you're surrounded by people who also own next to nothing amd could easily vanish from one day to the next.

abd secondly, they remove nothing of the stigma attached to being homeless, and in a tight low-wage labour market, that's enough for you to net get a job.


From what I know of homeless shelters, it's not quite the same as what I had in mind. In the thing I had in mind, people would have their own homes that could be locked, and as long as they didn't break any serious community rules (do drugs, steal, whatever rules were put in place) they'd get to stay in their room until they decide to leave. It would be their own place, though small.

But if the dorm was kind of like an apartment complex, just with shared kitchens and that, wouldn't it at least have a smaller stigma than being homeless? Kinda like student dorms, you know. Also, best way to remove stigma as a whole is not to stop being a target of the stigma, it is to change people's attitudes.

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The Danish government rolled out a program in which they gave small apartments to homeless people. And I mean: the apartments then belonged to the people. It was up to them to get their life back together, given this opportunity, and lo and behold, the program was much more successful than the "dorm room"-style shelters in place already.
But alas, its success was as much a siccess as drug decriminalization projects: they work, but they run so against the ingrained narratives of personal responsibility etc. that the dominant centrist politicians don't dare touch them.


Great for those homeless people who got a roof over their head, but as a small income person who has worked really hard to keep a roof over my head and finally got one that I own last year, I'd feel it to be really unfair if the government started giving those things for free to others, especially if those others had crime records. As in, what's the point of working hard and being a decent citizen if you can get things for free from the government without being one? This is why I think that things you can get with your own money should always be at least somewhat better than the necessary things given to those who didn't work for them.



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26 Jun 2021, 12:51 pm

Major institutions buying up the houses, becoming the biggest land lords, and hoping to drive up evictions to make more money, maybe even create more K-shaped recovery opportunities? Heck yeah!

It got clear to me several years back that the optimal position is to make sure that everyone who can possibly be forced to live paycheck to paycheck and be electrified into having no free-agency based on financial concerns is the best way not only for the system to have near-complete control over us but maximize market efficiency by preventing savers from existing. Make it impossible to get any different result by being responsible and you can get the whole country to agree that 1 + 1 = 3 when no one has 'f u' money!


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zacb
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13 Jul 2021, 9:53 pm

1971.



Tim_Tex
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13 Jul 2021, 10:46 pm

An American version of Sweden’s Million Program would be the best solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

However, the “older stock” would be renovated rather than demolished.

Also, investment firms would be prohibited from buying residential units, but would still be allowed to finance their construction.


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The_Walrus
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15 Jul 2021, 3:07 pm

Tim_Tex wrote:
An American version of Sweden’s Million Program would be the best solution.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

However, the “older stock” would be renovated rather than demolished.

Also, investment firms would be prohibited from buying residential units, but would still be allowed to finance their construction.

Demolition will often be more efficient than renovation. Knock down an oversized house and replace it with an apartment building - that way you can house more people on the same amount of land (which is fixed and limited). This is particularly important in desirable urban areas where people actually want to live. In rural areas it is different.



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15 Jul 2021, 3:34 pm

The_Walrus wrote:
that way you can house more people on the same amount of land (which is fixed and limited)


I can't remember where I heard about it, but this was found to be ironically untrue in some cases, at least for quite a few ugly tower complexes built in the 60s in the UK. Because you had to keep a fair amount of distance between tower blocks (in case of lateral collapse), the space used up per capita housed wasn't any better and was sometimes worse than the traditional terraced housing they replaced. I'm not sure what the situation is today with housing codes and all that but that would definitely be worth double checking by any council before they green stamp new developments along those lines.


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15 Jul 2021, 5:08 pm

We need more of these.
https://edenvillageusa.org/springfield-mo/about/


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