Fight against homelessness shall not be charity driven.
Yes but this is still a good idea in the meantime
How good it is depends on the details, of course.
I have nothing against “home first” strategy, however when some random millionaire decide without impact study or methodology how to fix the problem it might look like home shelters outside of zones where homeless get their social, work or food access, without lights, water or any usefull public infrastructure.
That’s a good point. Homeless encampments will be within range of all the services they need. No guarantee these houses are anywhere near those services.
But like someone else said, it all depends on the details.
Really what this is showing me is that the public coffers don’t have nearly enough money in this region if some random is out here addressing critical infrastructure problems.
Hell yeah we’re bringing back shanty towns
If it’s tiny houses that are barely liveable it’s just barely better than nothing
Should’ve built some low rise apartments to maximise the space and allow for bigger liveability space
Even he might not have been able to. Many cities have such restrictive zoning laws. Single family homes might have been hi only option
Here is a video showing some of the inside. Looks very livable to me.
idk, I would live there, it looks about the same as my apartment. Detached dwellings are nice if you get a yard to customize but I think you’re right, it would be more efficient as apartments because you don’t even get a yard with these.
Good start, weird that it’s built like a CPU heat sink. Wouldn’t it be cheaper to build duplexes or quadplexes? Fewer walls, less insulation per person…
These are tiny homes that are built in a shop and just dropped onto the little concrete pad once they’re done. A small crew was able to build them out over time, so I can’t say which option exactly is cheaper. One advantage was they were able to move people in as they were built too.
Edit to add a word
Even lower income people want a places they can call their own. Even lower income people prefer not to deal with other people’s noise or stomping or flooded sink. Even lower income people don’t want to deal with a building manager for repairs. Even lower income people want to be able to make choices in their living accommodations.
Plus these are probably all factory built and I see a simple gravel foundation. Cheap and fast to set up, but it’s still a house. Probably much cheaper than full scale houses
What !? Sharing a wall with someone else because it’s more efficient in terms construction and maintenance costs?! Get outta here you commi!
probably zoning laws. that’s a HUGE part of why we don’t just build more apartments in many places. it’s why people get so passionate about the “white flight” as it’s known and nimbyism. everyone wants to fix homelessness, but in any of the places that one could effectively build community housing it is illegal to make anything that provides housing to more than 1 or 2 families. the people that live there want homelessness to go away, but when it’s proposed to build low income housing nearby they freak out and say “poor people and drug addicts? they do crime. low income housing is cool, but not in my backyard”.
being poor in america has such a stigma that homeowners consistently vote to ban them from living nearby by banning apartments. to be perfectly honest, I’m just waiting for zoning laws to try and make these tiny homes illegal now that people are building them for the poor.
And building codes. The foundation alone can be the reason. A regular full scale building requires a concrete or piered foundation or slab depend8ng on the area, which is fairly expensive and time consuming. These look like simple gravel foundations, which is fine for that size structure
Nooo!!! Anyone with money is inherently evil! The only way to help the world is to ensure that none of us ever rise above the level of a wage-slave drone! Anyone who even approaches a position where they might be able to make an actual difference must be attacked mercilessly!
Show me a single leftist calling to remove the middle class.
I know of a guy who wanted to remove the middle class, but he also wanted to remove the upper and lower class as well so as to create a classless stateless society.
This is a showy display promoted to soften negitive opinion of capitalism. We would need “nice rich people” if we made a ethical wage
There’s a story about how Bill Gates plans to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years (on causes like eradicating polio, decreasing child mortality, etc) and all the Lemmy comments are “he’ll still have a billion dollars” or “he shouldn’t have that money to begin with”. Can’t we appreciate some good in the world?
i hope it works and contains a forever lease and not just a month to month where the land will be improved by these houses then said millionaire sells the land for a profit and the people living there are screwed yet again.
A forever lease dude? If that’s in the deal then imma be honest with you and tell you me and my hommies are declaring homelessness and moving to wherever this meme is from. We can rebuild our lives from a point of never paying rent again.
I mean that homeownership. i pay prop taxes but own my home. Forgive me. i was pooping and reading and forgot my words. 😂
If you have a hatred of hierarchy and a love of nature send me a DM. I’m interviewing people for an intentional community.
The first 5 people that pass the vibe check will get a one dollar, 99 year lease, on .5 acres to call your own. As long as you also partake in fixing/improving central infra.
Oh and one heavy caveat… You gotta be cool with winter. We are in Canada.
I hope the opposite: that these are more transitional, with associated services to help people get back on their feet for an eventual move to more standard housing when they are ready
all are good things imho!
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
What makes you think Trump’s administration will make better use of that money?
If every billionaire did this and ended homelessness perhaps they would have a point about their wealth hoarding. I won’t be holding my breath for this to happen though. Tax the rich!
This statement might be true, but we’re not taxing him. Should he just donate his money to the government?
I don’t even think you can do that.
Sure there are lots of failures to the way we govern ourselves. This shouldn’t be a need. The reality is that it is a need and that person did what he could. Have you?
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
millionares($) wouldn’t be able to afford multiple yachts, or even so large of a yacht. billionares, those who offshoring wealth makes sense for, are the problem.
not the docter nor lawyer, but the whale.
millionares pay about 48%-49%, at least where im from.
Man, Im starting to think I’m tarded. Something about this isn’t letting my brain work, please do more sentences
People are downvoting because “retarded” is increasingly considered a slur or hateful term (just providing context, do with that what you will)
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
No one is saying it’s better for rich people to independently spend money on charity pet projects. Appropriate taxation is better but this was still a good way for him to spend his money, it’s still good for him to help his community (he could have just spent that money on a yacht)
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
This is a variation on the saying “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Which means don’t reject good things just because they aren’t perfect. Perfect is an ideal that doesn’t exist, and good is still worth celebrating.
In this case, the commenter is saying that perfect would be better taxation and government programs that provide this service to the people. But a private citizen helping people with their private wealth still helps people. That’s a good thing even if it’s not the perfect ideal solution
Personally I am a huge advocate of the “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” mentality :) hope this helps and I hope you have a good day!
I probably shouldn’t have said that. I’m gonna double down though a little and say I’m not out here to hurt anyone or make anyone feel hurt, I’m just trying to add voice to my writing. Sort of a tension cutting tool. Some of my favorite people are tarded, like my wife. She’s a pilot now.
Joking aside though, I appreciate the effort of you ELI5ing this to me, and I should have been more direct. I just don’t get why this guy commented this when what he’s commenting on essentially said the same thing. I’m just more surprised that almost the same amount of people upvoted both. They’re both valid in the same way.
If you carefully read the negatives and positives he’s saying kinda the opposite of the first guy :)
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
“I don’t believe letting them just spend their money this way is better than doing it with taxes”
And then even more simplified (obviously loosing nuance)
“I don’t think this is as good as doing this with taxes”
Dude, you are just a gem.
I’ve been drinking a bit tonight, and I’m going to look at this tomorrow. I imagine that it’s all going to flow together nicely, but it’s never going to be as nice as you’ve been.
Thank you, and just be proud of how kind you are. I’m astonished currently. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll get to the bottom of this:)
Lol, I really appreciate that. Drink some water and rest well man!
Absolutely. We don’t need kings making decisions like this. The downside is the difficulty in forcing government the anti-help-anyone segment of our society to spend such taxation correctly to actually help people.
I’m also angry he did a good thing despite the government’s abject failure to tax the rich.
Corruption could make that money go to some people’s 3rd, 4rd or their relatives houses UNFORTUNATELY . The question here is: what about those who pay a rent???
So we’re so scared of corruption that (checks notes) we stop even trying for fairness and instead just let rich fucks make all the decisions and hope for the best?
Corruption already makes most millionaires’ and billionaires’ money go to that anyway. At least if it’s taxed some of it will actually go to toward necessary housing, maybe even frequently enough that it’s not newsworthy when it does, the way it is now.
I did not understand what you said, sorry
You’re worried that if we collect money from the wealthy through taxation, it might not be used to reduce homelessness. However, if we don’t tax the wealthy, they’ll spend the money on their own goals, which definitely won’t be to reduce homelessness. While you’re right that taxes are largely wasted, they do still fund important things such as fire departments, medical research, and yes, government housing. It’s true that we need to implement better tax management systems, but we also need a wealth tax.
I see one: he actually did something instead of a council that blows all of the money on meetings
This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn’t have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn’t get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Especially because his unilateral decision is optional. Someone got lucky with his choice vs someone was guaranteed an outcome.
I’m chill with rich people as long as some of their money goes to helping people
Good 😊 What a kind thing to do 😊 Those with lots of money, helping those who don’t have👌🏻
A lot of people talk about taxing folks like this and then using the money to supply the housing.
The thing is, given the money, few people could pull this off well. The site isn’t just being plopped down; from the sound of the article in the comments it’s being actively developed as a community with other safeguards and support, by someone who sunk a lot of time into finding out what would work to help people rather than just appear to help.
A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives. It also needs a community that will embrace it - for example it would likely work in the town I grew up in, but the town I work in (and am sadly forced to live in) now would likely drive such a project to failure.
It’s a good idea that worked against the odds, and should be celebrated for that alone.
A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives.
Sounds like an opportunity for the local government, and a way to create local jobs.
Mm I don’t think this is the solution to homelessness. It’s not that we don’t have enough housing it’s that the working class gets pushed down so much and can’t work despite wanting to. But I’m not qualified to solve homelessness so who am I to tell them how to spend their money.
It is in the sense that providing houses fixes homelessness. It isn’t in the sense that relying on individual charity won’t fix the problem as a nation.
We don’t really need tiny homes. We need more mid size apartments and more 5 over 1 large apartments. Homelessness wouldn’t happen to a lot of people if we had cheap 600$ apartments.
There are strategies to
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Have individual homes for people to reside in; this gives people privacy, some sense of permanence, and a safe space to simply exist. This reduces the psychological stresses of simply trying to exist. This also has the upside of having a permanent address to have things like a bank account, contact point for Medicaid, etc.
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“Safe” access to drugs. A lot of people would be on some kind of drug. Having a safe place lets them do what they need to and have established residence to get help when they need it, like an ambulance going to an address for ODs
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Have medical support. Professionals can help ween off of hard drugs and/or find appropriate drugs for what ever health issues they have.
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Finally they can take a shower and get themselves presentable to interview for work.
I worked adjacent to some org buying the back lot of a school to convert into this kind of housing for homeless teens; above is what I can recall when reading into the program.
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So this guy shouldn’t be news, this should be the standard, it’s scary that the one good guy with enough money to do something like this is the exception and not the norm.
We all evolved to live in tribes; we have to work together as people.
The problem is that we allow individuals to amass so much wealth, it inevitably leads to the rest of us being at their mercy like that. If we’re lucky, they’ll be sorta benevolent, like this person. Would be much easier if we took out the randomness and just had the funds to do necessary stuff like this collectively.
That’s why we elected people to help the community with our collected funds. To help govern the distribution of the community effort. Well, that was the idea.
How many stories have I seen about billionaires building housing? Zero. Though, to be fair, I’ve only seen a meme about a millionaire doing so. No verification that it happened.
https://themindcircle.com/millionaire-builds-99-homes-to-reduce-homelessness/
Seems to be true :).
There’s someone in Kelowna doing something similar.
You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
“We’ve given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We’ve given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing.”
Who would have thought that the way to reduce crime was to reduce people’s need to commit crimes by giving them homes and a future.
Bruce Wayne but sane
10M over 20 years to help a community of 3000 or $166 per person per year. USA is planning to increase the military budget by 150B this year or over $400 per US citIzen…
You’re saying that as if investment into military was unnecessary these days
It is if you don’t use it when you’re part of a contract that got broken from another Partie of the contract.
So breaking contracts now justifies military intervention?
Yeah I was shocked by the math on that one too. It is ridiculously cheap to lower crime and poverty, while increasing graduation rates and college enrollment. It’s almost like keeping people poor and stupid and criminal is intentional.
This is a terrible idea. We are not helpless children, it’s our society, we have the right to provide the necessities of life: food, health care, a place to live and a decent job. Capitalism is the sickness: get healthy, go woke.
I think it’s easier to make a million dollars and help a fair number of people out than it would be to over throw capitalism.
While helping people out with your millions of dollars you could also advocate for reform. Work with the systems available to make change. Screaming at the walls of Troy won’t get you inside.