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I don't buy the argument SROs were removed to get rid of Slums.

In fact, my first apartment, ironically in LA was a very small step up from an SRO. It had a private bathroom, but not much else.

Now the city has effectively made this housing illegal to build.

These units for the homeless are basically luxury condos. It's never been about helping people, Garcerti and the boys just ripped off the people of Los Angeles.

A more realistic plan would be to offer relocation assistance or at the very least relax building requirements.

None of that will happen, my first, my beautiful 600$ apartment is now 1300$. I miss the city LA used to be.

I had the privilege of living in a neighborhood with 3$ bottles of Soju and 4$ Tortas. It was absolutely amazing.

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> I don't buy the argument SROs were removed to get rid of Slums.

"Criticizing hotel life was one thing; effectively controlling it was another. By 1910, reformers had established the idea that hotel housing was a public nuisance. From 1900 through the 1940s, interlocking groups of reformers and landowners transformed objections about hotel life into practices to control living in hotels. For the goals of the culturally and socially reorganized new city to succeed, aberrant forms of housing had to be prevented and removed—slum and hotel alike. Yet gaining control was neither automatic nor preordained. Hotel housing was entrenched in some areas and in others, still expanding (fig. 8.1). A few handfuls of reformers had to do more than galvanize public opinion against the notion of living in hotels; they also had to establish whole new governmental organizations and procedures to give cities and states the necessary legal and bureaucratic power." https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...

"As with the SFRA's applications of blight and nonbuilding, the actions of other hotel-closing agencies were not (in their own minds) aiming the wrecking ball at the homes of the poor but "eliminating dead tissue," "applying the scalpel," "clearing away the mistakes of the past," and building "an attractive new city." About a Norfolk, Virginia, hotel district, one planning journal editor reported in 1961 that "progress had reached the demolition stage." Local agents crowed that they had "reduced to rubble . . . scores of flophouses not renowned for adding luster to their city's good name."

https://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6j49...

> These units for the homeless are basically luxury condos.

What is luxurious about them? Or are you referring to the price?

My grandparent's first apartment in SF didn't have it's own kitchen or bathroom. They thought it was a nice enough place, but you literally couldn't legally rent it out today.

> My grandparent's first apartment in SF didn't have it's own kitchen or bathroom. They thought it was a nice enough place, but you literally couldn't legally rent it out today.

Are you defining a unit with a kitchen and bathroom as a 'luxury apartment'? Would you live without them?

If the other option is living on the street, why not?

The problem is that not everyone has a well-paid IT job, and some people barely make ends meet. These people need a place to live, too, a cheap, non-advanced place, with many corners cut for the sake of it being cheap to build and maintain. It's still much better than living in a tent as your primary residence!

The question was, is it luxury?

> If the other option is living on the street, why not?

Those aren't our only choices.

> some people barely make ends meet. These people need a place to live, too, a cheap, non-advanced place, with many corners cut for the sake of it being cheap to build and maintain.

And they also, like other humans, need kitchens and bathrooms. Also, kitchens save a lot of money - cooking is by far the least expensive way to eat.

I agree.

But it's better to have one kitchen for several units ("single rooms"), than none at all, and not even a single room.

Back to the beginning: I don't think that decrepit SRO buildings had to be perpetuated. But I suppose that moving people out of them should have included an offer of some other affordable housing, back in the time they were being removed, I need to find out what has been done.

> But it's better to have one kitchen for several units ("single rooms"), than none at all, and not even a single room.

I guess, but I wonder if kitchen construction is really holding back affordable housing.

> I suppose that moving people out of them should have included an offer of some other affordable housing, back in the time they were being removed, I need to find out what has been done.

I know that in the mid-20th century, in at least some cities, when the governments cleared African-American neighborhoods for freeways, white developments, etc., there were some promises but mostly people were left high and dry. Also, remember that black people couldn't get loans- direct policy of the Federal government and New Deal - or even decent-paying jobs (or an education to get jobs ...), so they didn't own the properties where they lived (they rented) and wouldn't have received that compensation.

> If the other option is living on the street, why not?

That's a big "if." Surely not a significant portion of this $800k or the cost of any "luxury" apartment is due to it having a kitchen and bathroom.

building codes make a "luxury" apartment and an "affordable" apartment approximately the same. the main difference is how much rent can be charged.

I think the question is would you rather have a shared floor bathroom with no kitchen or live on the street. If the room is free, sure I'll take the room, but if the room has a price and I have no income, I might take the street and save the money. I think this comes down to the privileged arguing about what's best for the less fortunate. Our worlds are so different from theirs, even basic communication and understanding is difficult.

My first apartment didn't have a kitchen. And it was fine, we are talking about a homeless shelter. You do not need to have stainless steel appliances, it should be a short-term stopgap until you find a better solution. Historically lower income people had to share common amenities like a shower. Just because it would be nice for every single person to have a big apartment with brand new appliances doesn't make it feasible .

I don't know about you, but given the choice between sleeping on the streets or having to share a shower with a reasonable number of other people, I'd share that shower.

Instead LA built a bunch of vanity projects which provide no real help to the vast majority of homeless people. The only thing you can really do is move your feet, which is what I did .

Anyone struggling to find affordable housing in LA should get out. You can move to Vegas and drive in every other week to see your friends.

No, we are not talking about a homeless shelter or a temporary stopgap, these kinds of units are the "something better" that people in homeless shelters and other temporary stopgaps are in a holding pattern waiting for.

Shipping the homeless elsewhere than California's most expensive cities is way outside the Overton window.

> Shipping the homeless elsewhere than California's most expensive cities is way outside the Overton window.

Why? Unless you can show proof that most of the homeless in SF and LA are locals who fell on hard times rather than junkies who moved in for better weather and benefits, shipping them out seems completely reasonable.

Ask the Democrats and judges if they think that's reasonable.

And where will you ship them to? Smaller cities don't want them and they'll be inhospitable enough they won't want to be there either - they'd rather ship themselves back where they can stay close to their drug sources and still rotate with their panhandling around enough that the locals don't get too familiar with them.

So if you want to do something about the vagrant encampments being in the city you live in, the most effective thing that you can do is move to where they aren't, which is what everyone else who cared that much about it already did long ago.

Ship them where? Can other cities ship to LA/SF? How does this work?

I assume the model would be to build the same kinds of supportive housing facilities but to do so in markets where the same budget buys more units.

> Why?

Morality and optics of forced relocations aside, because it leads to cycles of retaliation by the places they are shipped to.

> Unless you can show proof that most of the homeless in SF and LA are locals who fell on hard times

I don't know about LA, but this has been studied for SF, repeatedly, and they are.

That is preposterous. I believe all homeless should be provided some sort of shelter, but I absolutely don’t feel they have any entitlement to that shelter being in one of the most expensive zip codes in the country.

My friends who couldn’t afford Santa Monica moved east. Riverside, San Bernardino, etc. They bear horrible commutes but did what they needed to do to afford housing for their families.

Why do we just assume that homeless have some god given right to be housed precisely where they happen to be sleeping. Regular people migrate all the time to accommodate their own economics. Let’s build homeless some cheap housing. And let’s do it somewhere in the middle of no where where land is cheap and building costs are low.

I fail to see how this is controversial if it isn’t controversial for my friends who voluntarily do the same.

I lived for 3 years in a college dorm with no kitchen or bathroom. I even had to have a roommate.

Some of the best times in my life.

For my senior year I moved into an apartment with my own bathroom and kitchen. It turned out to be a step down.

I’m sure if we offered folks without homes the opportunity attend university and live on campus instead, then some would definitely accept the offer!

The army doesn't offer private baths and kitchens, either, for their troops.

This is shameless.

My apartment in Lausanne had a bathroom and a kitchen, except the kitchen was one stovetop and a sink in a small cabinet next to the door. It was small, still cost me 900 CHF/month (in 2006!), but Lausanne is expensive.

I don't think those would be allowed in most (American) cities either, I don't think 20 sqm is rentable.

My first place in London in 2003 was £520 a month, about £875 today. It was a 10 square metre room with a shower in one corner, bed in one corner, small kitchen sink in one corner, and a door in the fourth corner. There was a shared toilet.

Ideally I'd have had a slightly smaller room, but with a private toilet (there was certainly enough space in the footprint for a 2m*1m toilet/sink/shower), but apart form that it was great (given the cost - about half my net income), far better than sharing a house. As a young person needing to be close to a London office but without the luxury of having parents giving me a free room.

> What is luxurious about them?

I'm reminded of a previous thread where I asserted that America's poor have a higher standard of living than medieval kings :-/

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