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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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 Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:02 pm Post subject: |
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| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| Homelessness, the vast majority of it, could, in theory at least, be gotten rid of by expanding the supply of housing. It really is as simple as that. |
I'm not sure how true this is, Sergio. Maybe things are different in Britain, but in America, there's plenty of housing availible, plenty of rental housing availible, and plenty of land upon which houses can be built availible. The supply of housing exceeds the population. No amount of additional housing can help people who have insufficient income to purchase it, though, so in any capitalist system, there will be homeless. You might argue that more housing would reduce the price, but there are all ready bargain basement rental options availible that reflect the lowest reasonable price one could expect, and yet homelessness persists. The people who are homeless are the ones who can't even manage a $350 a month efficiency flat with heating and water included in the price.
Building more houses won't help anything. It will just result in a lot of empty, useless houses. We don't need more houses, at least here in America. Maybe Britain does, I don't know. |
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bucheon bum
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:20 pm Post subject: |
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| Fox wrote: |
| Sergio Stefanuto wrote: |
| Homelessness, the vast majority of it, could, in theory at least, be gotten rid of by expanding the supply of housing. It really is as simple as that. |
I'm not sure how true this is, Sergio. Maybe things are different in Britain, but in America, there's plenty of housing availible, plenty of rental housing availible, and plenty of land upon which houses can be built availible. The supply of housing exceeds the population. No amount of additional housing can help people who have insufficient income to purchase it, though, so in any capitalist system, there will be homeless. You might argue that more housing would reduce the price, but there are all ready bargain basement rental options availible that reflect the lowest reasonable price one could expect, and yet homelessness persists. The people who are homeless are the ones who can't even manage a $350 a month efficiency flat with heating and water included in the price.
Building more houses won't help anything. It will just result in a lot of empty, useless houses. We don't need more houses, at least here in America. Maybe Britain does, I don't know. |
Fox, the problem is the housing is where no one wants to be. For instance, hardly any housing has gone up in San Francisco in the past 10 years or so, except for high priced condos. Meanwhile the exburbs of SF have tons of empty houses.
That being said, I agree that the housing supply is not the reason for homelessness. I think high unemployment is a much bigger factor. Those exburbs would be more attractive for a person if s/he had an actual job that could pay for that house and commute to a place that s/he could work. |
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Fox
Joined: 04 Mar 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 4:33 pm Post subject: |
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| bucheon bum wrote: |
| Fox, the problem is the housing is where no one wants to be. For instance, hardly any housing has gone up in San Francisco in the past 10 years or so, except for high priced condos. Meanwhile the exburbs of SF have tons of empty houses. |
Right, but housing "where people want to be" will always be expensive, because the people selling it or renting it out recognize its desirability and thus demand a higher price. In fact, if you were to ever build enough housing there that anyone who wanted to live there easily could, it would probably quickly become one of those places people didn't want to be anymore.
I do think some decent city planning could help with the issue you describe, but I don't think it's related to homelessness in particular.
| bucheon bum wrote: |
| That being said, I agree that the housing supply is not the reason for homelessness. I think high unemployment is a much bigger factor. Those exburbs would be more attractive for a person if s/he had an actual job that could pay for that house and commute to a place that s/he could work. |
Just so, it ultimately comes down to unemployment, which in the case of homeless people is often -- but not always -- driven by factors totally unrelated to the actual availibility of jobs. People with mental or physical problems can end up perpetually unemployed, which in a capitalistic system means either charity cases, or homeless. |
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young_clinton
Joined: 09 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sun Mar 28, 2010 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Veterans already get preferential hiring by the government and most ofther employers. It all boils down to everybody has to make thier own way in life, make themselves available to employers as good employees and hope to get a job. Of course the recent downturn in the economy is making things difficult for everyone including them, but i can't see what more can be done for them that every other homeless person isn't also entitled to. |
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lithium
Joined: 18 Jun 2008
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| Posted: Tue Mar 30, 2010 11:57 am Post subject: Re: 100,000 homeless veterans |
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| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
This is a disgrace and an embarrassment. Where has the free market laissez-faire types been? Obviously not very evident. And what is the 'free market/gov't is the problem' party doing about it?
Shutting down the government so the situation cannot be addressed.
Using Senate rules, the GOP has taken the tack of shutting down committee hearing on all sorts of issues, just because they can.
I'm surprised the GOP has the guts to hold its head up in public after this report. |
1. You are a liberal.
2. Liberals hate the military, so why do you care. (If you really do)
3. Expect more in Obama's America. |
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Reggie
Joined: 21 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 8:18 am Post subject: |
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Part of the problem might be the breakdown of families. One of my relatives who died before I was ever born had fought the Japanese during WWII, was captured, and spent some amount of time as a POW. According to my dad, for the rest of his life when he was in America, the WWII veteran's relatives would have to constantly monitor him. If there was a loaf of bread, he would've eaten it all. Even when he saw a roach on the floor, he would try to eat it too, which is probably what he had to do in the POW camp just to stay alive. It sounds like he had severe mental health issues from nearly starving to death as a POW and it sounds like he could've never really held down a job. But he had his relatives to take care of him.
These days, families aren't as close-knit as they were back then. And these people with their yellow "I Support Our Troops" ribbons on their SUVs obviously don't care.
It's like America is a kid who wants a big dog and all of the fun that comes with it, but is too irresponsible to clean up its poop, pee, or vomit. We want to "Support Our Troops" when it comes to kicking the ass of whatever people wherever, but when it comes to taking care of the messes and problems associated with the effects of these wars, we show our true colors of how we're too irresponsible of a society to handle the effects of these wars. We just discard these soldiers onto the park benches and sidewalks the same way people drop off a dog onto the side of the road somewhere after they figure out the pet is just too much reponsibility for an irresponsible person. |
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visitorq
Joined: 11 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 8:49 am Post subject: |
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| Reggie wrote: |
Part of the problem might be the breakdown of families. One of my relatives who died before I was ever born had fought the Japanese during WWII, was captured, and spent some amount of time as a POW. According to my dad, for the rest of his life when he was in America, the WWII veteran's relatives would have to constantly monitor him. If there was a loaf of bread, he would've eaten it all. Even when he saw a roach on the floor, he would try to eat it too, which is probably what he had to do in the POW camp just to stay alive. It sounds like he had severe mental health issues from nearly starving to death as a POW and it sounds like he could've never really held down a job. But he had his relatives to take care of him.
These days, families aren't as close-knit as they were back then. And these people with their yellow "I Support Our Troops" ribbons on their SUVs obviously don't care.
It's like America is a kid who wants a big dog and all of the fun that comes with it, but is too irresponsible to clean up its poop, pee, or vomit. We want to "Support Our Troops" when it comes to kicking the ass of whatever people wherever, but when it comes to taking care of the messes and problems associated with the effects of these wars, we show our true colors of how we're too irresponsible of a society to handle the effects of these wars. We just discard these soldiers onto the park benches and sidewalks the same way people drop off a dog onto the side of the road somewhere after they figure out the pet is just too much reponsibility for an irresponsible person. |
Yes, but to be fair, most Americans are actually very much against war. Let's not forget that our government outright lied to us about our reasons for invading Iraq (and I won't even get into 9/11).
Almost nobody supports Bush anymore, now that we know he lied about everything, and the same will probably be the case for Obama after he's continued the wars for his full term and bankrupted our country. The biggest problem is that the American people keeps believing all the lies the government tells us. |
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bacasper
Joined: 26 Mar 2007
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| Posted: Wed Mar 31, 2010 11:15 pm Post subject: |
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| visitorq wrote: |
| Yes, but to be fair, most Americans are actually very much against war. Let's not forget that our government outright lied to us about our reasons for invading Iraq (and I won't even get into 9/11). |
Most Americans have generally been against all wars. The only way they have been convinced to support them is by the staging of a false flag operation designed to scare them into submission, from the explosion aboard the Maine before the Spanish-American War up through the Gulf of Tonkin incident to get us into VietNam (and all the wars in between), and 9/11 to get us into Afghanistan and Iraq, as PNAC had previously predicted ("We need a new Pearl Harbor."). |
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