I’ll just raise the subpoint here that among these homeless adults there are of course also homeless children.
I don’t mean to make an emotional appeal here, I’m thinking of old family stories from the Depression. Those kids had at least some community support bec almost everyone in the community was in the same boat, but that’s not the case here.
The sky is brown and the water is brown. The cabs don’t stop, they don’t even slow down. Credit to The Critic.
I like how some people look at this situation and are like, “meh, it’s not so bad” like a net loss of 100,000 people a year is a sign things are going great. Psst.…the people leaving are only a symptom. They’re the slight cough at the start of terminal TB.
Sounds like we need a federal law that mandates what the Austrians have been doing since the 1920s in Vienna, all land is owned by their respective city or metro govts and then are leased out to build housing by non-profit and limited profit companies. Apparently, in Vienna the rent can be as low as 400 USD a month for a one bedroom apartment. And these aren’t slumlord holdings either, they’re pretty nice digs from what I’ve seen. Seriously, we need to do something like this day one of a Sanders or Warren administration.
It’s not to the extreme of the cities mentioned but my city has a homelessness problem too, and where I live encampments of homeless people in tents accumulate around the city library and parks.
Rather than actually getting people housing and stopping the constant construction of more luxury apartment buildings no one can afford, all that seems to happen is the police roll in and force the homeless to scatter occasionally.
It’s frustrating. They shouldn’t be seen as a nuisance like a pigeon problem they are human beings suffering because of the whims of the powerful and we should be fighting for their needs.
That’s in New Jersey. Creates some beautiful sunsets.
I recently lived in NYC while going to college. The city is on its death bed and each day it’s worse. Every sidewalk (except in the UES, Park Avenue, etc) is covered with a permanent film of dog crap, the streets smell like old garbage, the streets also have potholes and other damage that never gets fixed (I broke the suspension on my car after hitting one pothole I couldn’t avoid) , the noise at night makes it difficult to get a good night’s sleep, the subways are overcrowded and the trains are older than I am, etc, etc.
You can have it, I pass.
Housing is overpriced when 80,000 people can’t afford any housing at all but the empty housing isn’t even up for sale because of speculators. Macro economics be damned.
That’s in New Jersey. Creates some beautiful sunsets.
Exactly. I think it is hilarious that NJ residents (I am a former one) love their fade-to-yellow license plate as it sort of represents a Jersey sunset seen from Manhattan, but nobody seems to realize it looks that way because of the Jersey City smokestack pollution.
That’s not a free market system.
Ohhhhhh.
You mean we shouldn’t apply free market principles to the essentials of living? The invisible hand of the free market shouldn’t be performing surgery?
I think the solution is simple, but controversial. Charge every the property ownrt a tax for each unoccupied unit. Even if it’s not occupied for a month. Let’s encourage good behavior where they retain residents, as well as motive them to keep units filled even if they have to accept a slightly lower rent.
A better solution would require a complete restructuring of our society, where we don’t have a landowner class extracting money from an economically weaker renter class.
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