Reply to Why is San Francisco's homeless problem so atrocious?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nimbies make housing unaffordable by preventing new units from coming online to meet demand = no affordable housing [/quote]

If you can't afford housing, you need to get out of that city. You can't just demand that you have the right to live in arguably the most expensive city in the country, to hell with the consequences. You can't just refuse to leave, and instead turn the public streets into your own personal sewer. The rest of us shouldn't be affected by someone's sense of entitlement.

And I say that as someone who otherwise loves the bay area, used to live there, but simply can't afford it. [/quote]

I don't think you understand how it happens.  Firstly, the SRO's are all taken by the Chinese. Three or four generations of Chinese families will share a room (maybe two if they're "well off") in an SRO.  The kids go to school while the parents work their low-paying job if they're lucky enough to have one and the grandparents walk around with tongs taking recycling out of garbage pails. When the kids get out of school they walk around helping with that. Secondly, a lot of the rent-controlled places are frustrating to landlords - they don't want to get $600 a month. They want the $2600 a month they COULD be getting if the person who's lived there since the 80's gets out. That's why we've had so MANY fires in the last several years. So you're getting along okay paying $600 a month and then your apartment goes up in flames and the Red Cross finds you housing for a week or a month and then you're on your own. So you look for another rent-controlled place but each time a tenant moves out the landlord can raise the rent to market rate. So that person no longer can afford anything. They just paid the little money they had to buy some clothes since theirs went up in flames, and they have to pay for forms they lost, and now they have nowhere to live and no money. They have their low-paying job or disability and that's it. So they become homeless.

I can not imagine the sheer terror and hopelessness these people feel the first night they spend on the streets. And I can not imagine the deep and unrelenting psyche some of you must have to possess zero compassion. May the universe have mercy on your souls. [/quote]

I'm one of those with no sympathy for these cases. Living somewhere for 50 years and not buying in when the costs are so low that three of those adults cramped into that apartment could get a home together if they had some foresight pulls no sympathy from me.

This happened all over - in D.C. too. You can see it in Baltimore now where you can get a f**king 6-bedroom home for $40,000 but people insist on renting and spending their money on other things. Fine, but you don't get to complain in 2040 when you still want to pay 2015 prices.

What kind of mess is that? $800 for an apartment is criminal - for the LANDLORDS. I buy my places for appreciation, not so you can sit in it as your personal flophouse. [/quote]

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