Comment by fghjjjjhg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by fghjjjjhg | Hacker News Reader

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I am sympathetic but I suppose I am one of the person's you describe here. I do not want homeless in my street. I actually don't mind someone sleeping but unfortuantely if you are homeless, lying down isn't the only thing you do on the street. And if it's allowed, how many homeless people are you ok with on your street. I suppose with homeless people on the street, you can anything from just a person keeping to himself to mental health issues to drug use to crime. Now would I want that where my kids play/walk etc. I'll be honest, I do not. Now let me talk about property values too. I worked hard and saved up for x years and bought a house in a good neighborhood (location, location, location as they say), took up a 30 year loan. Now, if the property values drop because there's a homeless camp in the street, then I am under water for a long time, potentially even losing my house. My home, which was also me building wealth for myself when I get old, will also loose value now. If you suddenly take away value from my biggest and long term investment that took years of work, yes, I would not want that either.

I understand the problem and I will support solutions, but just saying let people live on the street in front of my house is simply not one of them.

Imo you bought a house, not the exclusive right to call the streets "yours." If someone has only a street as their home, their claim to calling it theirs is at least as strong as yours.

This attitude is pervasive and subtle but important to challenge in ourselves. Homeless people are citizens, they are the public, they are residents of your city and your neighborhood. They aren't some other, external element that is transiently present. They are your neighbors.

If there's any mention of your/my street, it definitely isn't in the sense of owning the street or owning rights to use it. Public property belongs to the public, no one stops anyone from using the streets, the distinction is using the street and living on it. Allowing camping on the streets without any real plans for sanitation, safety etc and making moral judgements against people who don't think that's a realistic solution isn't helpful. Homelessness is the result of multiple different problems ranging from insufficient jobs/wages, property costs, cost of living, health care, crime, addiction etc etc. Simply allowing camping on the sidewalk or converting al single family homes to 1bedroom studio apartments In an expensive neighborhood won't magically make the homelessness problem disappear.

I'm not making a moral judgement against your policy positions, as I can't really see what they are. I am challenging your apparent belief that you have purchased the right to not be affected by the policies that are in place now.

And I am making a moral judgement against your prioritization of property values over the comfort of your living neighbors, which frankly I find obscene.

Respectfully, I disagree. Yes, you can make it sound as if the homeowner is tone deaf to suffering and doesn't want to take on mild inconvience of property value decreasing. But let me give you a scenario, elderly people who spend decades paying off a house, the value of the house being a big part of their retirement (as is the case with most people, where a home is a big part of their net worth). Say, if the property value falls by half, so does their retirement runway and a real risk of making them candidates to be homeless too as they get older.

I am not saying that a home owner purchased a right to not be affected by current policies. I am saying it never was a policy to make the street or sidewalk a residence and we shouldn't make it a policy now.

Homes should not be an investment vessel. We have policies that make them reasonable investments, which leads to price increases, scarcity, NIMBYism, etc.

it never was a policy to make the street or sidewalk a residence

That's literally the end-result of NIMBYism run rampant. If you don't want lower income housing (or homeless shelters, or drug treatment centers, or mental health case facilities) anywhere near your home, then you have to accept that there will be a population of people that need any of those things who now must go without, which then leads to homelessness, crime, etc.

The extreme outcome is walling off neighborhoods and hiring armed guards as they do in many parts of South Africa.

You disagree with my moral judgement about your stated view? You don't get a vote in that lol.

"Property value" is strongly correlated with the quality of life. Blaming people for wanting better (or, at least, not worsening) life for themselves and family will not get you far. Even if the current ideology encouraged that, in the long term it's not going to survive as the people's nature is not going to change.

So perhaps you shouldn't have bought a house? You are now a slave to some materialistic object.

I owned houses for a long time. Wouldn't say a homeless person sleeping on my street would be a problem.

I eventually sold the houses, btw and sleep much better now. But I understand the Bay Area is built on status unfortunately.

With an entire system built with incentives to use home ownership as a way to build personal wealth, just saying do not buy a house isn't really an option.

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