860 square feet for a three bedroom place is even small compared to the sizes of the tiny new apartment we have in Vancouver.
Bigger challenge though is NIMBYism. The following comment from the article at the link is priceless:
** “We are not opposed to the development — we are opposed to the location of this development.”**
Those type of projects almost always fail if the final say is at council level. Wealthy councils often rely on low-income workers to do work around the neighborhood but are not prepared to allow for reasonable housing for those same workers.
I like what California is decreeing at state level, especially in neighborhoods that are near good transportation. It’s called the United States of America not the United Councils of America.
Same problem in the UK.
At the local level they always try to torpedo the plans. If they can’t at first, they stall as much as they can (which makes it very expensive for the developers).
Thats why you have to overrule them for this to work. A national (or state) building plan would be the way to go about this.
And that is largely what Canada is finally doing. The Feds are making deals with the municipalities: housing funds in return for more liberal local zoning.
Good article on the “15 minute city.”
I’m guesing the automobile lobby is stronger in UK (as well as having a right-wing government). Plus taking on any idea from Europe would make Brexit look like a bad idea.
I’m unclear on why these apartments with sweeping views of the Eiffel Tower are so cheap and how / why they’re going to stay cheap.
I’ve seen these “planned neighborhoods” where there’s a mix of higher end & affordable housing. But if the schools are good then once the market is able to set the price, even the “affordable” housing becomes very expensive.
If you don’t have adequate affordable housing and have homeless / unhoused people, what rights do they have? Can a town decide to essentially make it illegal to be homeless?
That’s an interesting situation. Grants Pass looks like a fine place to live. 40,000 people surrounded by mountains and national forests. In southern Oregon, right on Interstate 5. Four hours to Portland and seven hours to San Francisco.
Great for healthy retirees and urban refugees who can work from home. Housing costs may have shot up, and there isn’t much room to sprawl.
I can see that people who grew up there don’t want to leave, especially if they have family. (Of course, if they get along well with the family, they wouldn’t be camping on the street.)
It seems that mentally healthy people who can work would be looking to move someplace where housing is cheaper.
I wonder if some of the homeless haven’t moved to Grants Pass figuring the would “make it work somehow”.
If the court rules against the city, they are effectively saying the local gov’t is responsible for providing housing for anyone who chooses to live there.
I just spent 60 days in the jailhouse
For the crime of having no dough
Now here I back on the street
For the crime of having no where to go
It’s the SC. So we can change “live there” to “live in the US”. Which takes away the undue burden on this town, but the core philosophy remains.
And for context, a studio apartment is going for $1000/mo. Population up 40% since 1975, way too few housing units built. So it’s not just old timers trying to preserve their home town.
I can believe that the problem is people moving into town and not enough new construction. One reason there isn’t enough new construction is that the town is surrounded by mountains and they don’t have land that is easy to build on.
If the SC wants to force “all of us” to provide housing, how would they do that? Can you imagine them ruling that the federal gov’t has to provide housing, but not necessarily in Grants Pass?
If they decide against the city, they wouldn’t be saying that the city has to provide housing, but rather that people are allowed to use blankets or tents to sleep on public property.
I’m not seeing where the case implies that? It seems to me the case is just “can you fine people for living in a tent on public property”. It’s obvious that the monetary fine is a cudgel to, as explicitly stated in the article, get the homeless people to move on.
It’s an unfortunate problem that some cities will accumulate more homeless than others. My city is one of those places - we have one especially large homeless encampment in the woods that is plagued with drugs and violence, not to cast aspersions on each homeless person there. However, it’s not a solution to criminalize homelessness. It potentially alleviates the problem for the city while making it overall worse.
I don’t have a great solution to the lack of affordable housing nation wide. Within 2 blocks of me are 6 construction projects where a ~ 1500 sq ft home is being replaced with a ~ 4,000-5,000 sq ft home. Some of the old homes were owner occupied, I suspect that all of the new ones are either second homes or short term rentals (I live in a seasonal town, 1/4 mile from the beach). So housing supply at least in my neighborhood is simultaneously being both reduced and made more expensive. Maybe curbs on the rental market would help, but I am skeptical of that.
I suppose you are correct. If the court rules against the city, people can pitch tents on public property. I was thinking of some other ruling where they had a middle ground of “You can ban tents on public property, but you need to provide adequate free housing before you enforce that ban.”
I think the amount of public property in Grants Pass which is not streets and sidewalks is limited. The people who live there are going to be very unhappy to fine a homeless encampment in their pretty parks.
Is “the woods” in your case inside city limits?
Yes. It’s perhaps 6 acres located inside the city, not in the center but not quite the outskirts. They’ve been caught more than once running extension cables to nearby homes for power. There is a “nicer” homeless encampment with less drugs and you’re less likely to be assaulted, but the encampment I’m talking about is mostly for the chronically homeless. People pull garbage out pretty much daily but the accumulation never slows.
Just looking at the satellite photos of Grants Pass, I’m not sure that they have an area within city limits that would work for that. Like I said, the couple parks don’t look like unkept woods.
However, that was my first thought when I read the story. “Just find a piece of land that’s not heavily used, provide some basic toilet facilities and adequate police presence, maybe require free registration so you at least have names.”
The article says “600 people experiencing homelessness”. I’ll guess that sleeping on a friend’s couch is “homeless” for that count. I don’t have any sense for how many are actually living outdoors.
I don’t think that an encampment “that is plagued with drugs and violence” is a solution to homelessness, either.
No, our encampment is definitely a local crisis. It’s just that there’s no perfect solution for it, and of the adequate solutions nobody wants to fund it.
Of course, the local Republicans want to bulldoze the entire area or generally let them die by not responding to fires, murders, etc. Definitely no Narcan or food or water.
Ultimately it feels like homelessness is a problem comparable to immigration. Localities can’t fix it. They can punish the homeless with fines and hope they leave, and for those who don’t but can’t pay the fines they will use taxpayer money to house and feed the homeless in prison. But all localities will do is push the problem elsewhere.
It’s understandable why a town would do something like this, and also is quite shitty of them. In their best-case scenario, the next town over now has a homelessness crisis.
The immigration one has a straightforward solution in that if you give everyone work permits it makes it easier for them to find jobs to support themselves which then reduces their reliance on social programs. That would have to be done at the federal level though.