Probably build a lot of public housing. Plus fix zoning to not make high density housing impractical.
Would also need to invest in trains, density can be much higher if you don’t have big roads and garages for everyone.
Are we starting from scratch here or working with what capitalism has given us?
I’m interested in actual approaches. Not saying I want to perpetuate capitalism, but asking how you would tackle the problem, and could be from the viewpoint of any of those entities.
The only way you can give everyone shelter is with that which capitalism has given us. If we were starting from scratch there’d be no way to even keep everyone safe from lions let alone sheltered.
If you had a bunch of people and the knowledge, you could rebuild modern civilisation from scratch within 64 years.
Giant roof over the whole thing
Lol are you inspired by Buckminster Fuller? Dome over Manhattan
See also: The Simpsons Movie
“I was elected to lead, not to read.”
No dome, just one of those sheet metal roofs that are stupid loud when it rains.
I would start with immediate solutions - setting designated areas for camping and providing tents + basic amenities. I’d look into what the most effective policies that exist around the world are and why they work and select the one most applicable to our situation. Finally I’d try and solve the core issue(s) regarding why the majority of those individuals couldn’t provide housing for themselves
This is a good answer imo, but that last point is truly the long-term key. Regarding other discussion in this thread, late-stage capitalism largely prevents housing and utilities from being separated from profits. Not to take personal responsibility out of the equation, but social mobility is quite low when the system is rigged for continual profits and ever-increasing ROIs.
Public housing. What I am would really make the difference as to what I could do.
If I was a community I would try to acquire property and build the highest density property that made sense and make sure it has a park or land close to it.
Could build a farm next to it to provide jobs and healthy food to the community as well as potential vocational training.
Would focus on getting sane public transit to and from the area. Hopefully after a time private sector would start building up the area and we could locate another area to bring the model to.
Focusing on supply, start encouraging the building of higher density housing, including cheap studio apartments that poor people can afford. This includes changing zoning policies, getting rid of parking minimums, and taxing more of the undeveloped value of land instead of the developed value.
Id kick the speculative investors out of housing. No more leveraging billion dollar hedge fund resources to outbid home buyers driving the price of housing to the moon. No more nimby regulations that prohibit building above a certain number of stories, building certain types of homes or the number of unrelated people living in a house. The only regulations left on the books would directly tackle legitimate safety concerns and thats it. Id make it as easy as possible to upgrade or build new housing while enforcing the regulations necessary for housing to be safe to live in. Id encourage the formation of cooperative housing i.e the people living in a complex are part owners and so the management of that building is incentivized not to screw them over. Id dump money into public housing and bolster the occupants’ ability to take care of themselves with job training, education and support they need to dig their way out of poverty.
In my own city, with an unlimited budget?
Take 1/3 the office buildings and make them housing. That gives us the density we need inside the city. Keep going, we do have enough space here. Keep going until rent and housing cost drops to be more in line with wages. Restore transit so that transportation cost is not such an enormous expense (where I am, 2 cars can easily cost $1k a month, say one car payment, insurance x2, and gas and maintenance) so people in this more tightly defined space didn’t need cars so desperately.
(ETA: I would also buy back the electric company from the out-of-country conglomerate that bought it & create a cheap city fiber optic internet service. Do the things that cost up front then reduce everyone’s cost over time. We already have city run water & garbage)
Then would need to tackle the actual homeless - are you saying we’d need to house even people who do not want an indoor space? People who will never have a job and don’t want to be part of the system? This is a small but non-zero number. For those I think more widely distributed facilities at every single park in the city, well maintained and clean, so it would not be so terrible trying to just get a shower. And lots of outreach to get those who do want a place, into a place, and the help they need to have a good enough life.
Deport everyone without a house? Very obviously?
(obviously a /s)
Make house scalping illegal. Aka no rented homes.
- Individuals can own a maximum of two properties.
- Corporations can own a maximum of X rental properties (enough to allow a dedicated team to find a career servicing them, maintaining them, etc but not many past that point - I’d like wager in the low single digits).
This discourages using housing as a financial asset past owning where you live. This alone should reduce the cost of housing significantly. Housing gets cheaper, more people have housing.
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Create programs where people or cities can get stable, low cost loans from the government to construct housing ranging from detached single family homes to high density apartment complexes.
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If you live somewhere with restrictive zoning laws, revise them for the modern age.
This should allow communities to solve their own housing issues via lowering the financial burden of various solutions.
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Continue to offer free shelter for homeless who want it and need a place to get back on their feet, provide amenities that make that transition easier.
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Create a research task force to determine any other causes of homelessness and propose solutions. I’d wager: legalizing most drugs, forced mental rehabilitation, and sunset laws for criminal records would get rid of the rest.
For point 2 does one location with 3 buildings count as 1 or 3
Are you asking about the difference between land and buildings? If that’s the distinction you’re attempting to clarify I mean rental properties. I didn’t clarify land rights in my original comment but they’d follow the same concept. A single entity can only own so much, with harsher restrictions towards renting. Land and what’s on it should be owned by those who use it.
If you mean the distinction between like a mall and it’s shops, I think additional barriers can be created around classifications of said properties. 4 homes, 2 apartment complexes, 1 massive shopping center. That sorta thing.
Do you mean apartment complexes should all be owned by the people there like condos?
What I meant was usually the apartment buildings will build 2 or 3 buildings in one lot. Would that count as one rental property for a company or multiple.
Ideally everyone owned the space they lived in, transferring ownership was as simple as finding someone else to move in, and the community invested into their own infrastructure at a more impactful rate than today.
I’d say each building counts, with rules that discourage things like “connecting” three buildings to make it classify as 1. An apartment complex with X number of flats is a lot to manage on its own, multiple more so. With that reasoning we want rules to limit the amount they own.
I generally support not actually owning land in general.
As a side note my house growing up was classed as a duplex which as I understand it is basically one big house where it’s just split with interior walls into 2 houses.
However what I lived in was 2 completely separate houses with a wall built in between the garages out of bricks. Maybe 6 feet deep or something. Literally 2 separate houses with a pile of bricks between them and they classified it as a duplex for taxes and shit. Always thought that made no sense.
Ya, that’s odd. I don’t know the specific regulations but wherever we draw a line it’s going to create edge cases that feel weird.
Land ownership is odd in my opinion as well.
What I really care about is the system we have now incentivizes increasing the cost of housing and that’s not how any society should be designed.
Yes the problem is we view housing as an investment and people use their primary residence as a means of funding their retirement. Even if we individually set housing prices and people “lost” 3/4 of their home value they would still be able to buy another home with the value remaining because it would also be lowered. It would only affect using your equity to pay for life services. And even then, if we controlled rent prices and retirement home prices none of that would matter at all.
The thing with homes and the stock market going up is that it doesn’t create value. All it does is take money from people working and trade it to people who “own” things.
Build very basic shelters wherever land is cheap. They will have tiny private rooms with locking doors, and if people want to use drugs in there, fine. Tax land values severely enough that speculation is no longer a good source of income. Allow people to build more housing.
Campground with three-walled shelters with twin bunk beds around the perimeter. It should also have potable water, electrical outlets, flush toilets, hot showers, laundry, and trash service. The showers and laundry could be funded by dollar coins. Any resident or camper can earn dollar coins (no paperwork required), by doing work (litter collection, landscaping, cleaning bathrooms, roll call, etc). There should also be lockers to secure belongings. It should be near transit and with plenty of secure bicycle parking.
Tree houses for all!
Housing with 1 to 3 doors meant for renting can be owned by regular people only, 4 to 8 doors for rent must be owned by a corporation (with the financial implications), any more then that is owned by a non profit crown corporation. That doesn’t prevent condos from existing.
All properties come with a 50km radius in which people can’t own a second property. That means you can’t buy a house and have a rental property in the same city, it also means if you own a multi units building you must live in it.
Have the previously mentioned crown corporation buy/seize lots (especially unused lots) to build more high density buildings with cheap rent.
Increase taxes on single family housing based on the size of the lot it’s built on. Want to own a single family house on a lot big enough for two houses? Pay the taxes for two houses.
And all the normal stuff, public transport, parks, homeless shelters, social services…
