Losing out on a house bid as an American citizen to an undocumented migrant thanks to this policy, truly the type of stuff only a CA politician could come up with.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/california-democrats...
We shouldn't have to decide between which of two humans gets housing. House all my neighbors.
But I cannot house the thousands of unhoused people in my city alone. I can provide housing for 2-5 of them at any given time.
That said, do you know what offering housing for a couple hundred bucks a month does for a struggling family? It fundamentally changes their ability to establish themselves. Build savings, escape poverty.
Edit: I'm not trying to signal or whatever by posting this. I have ethical beliefs about supporting one's local community and try not to be hypocritical about it. When people challenge me, suggesting I might be hypocritical ("why don't you spend your own money on it!") I try to respond with, "I do. And I see the changes it makes in real human lives."
But always as a response to someone trying to call me out, never unprompted.
Any equity the trust holds is from me or others putting in funds that are held solely for the purposes of providing housing for the community at cost.
My personal mortgage I do pay for, and I will be ceding whatever land I hold to that trust upon my death so that it can provide housing in perpetuity.
The only reason the land is not currently in the trust's hands is because I need the ability to move freely. I could arrange to sell the house to the trust, and lease it from the trust, but because there's a bank involved with my mortgage that gets more complex.
I assure you, I am not profiting from housing.
I read about someone who paid all his tenant's rent back to them after he became an anarchist or whatever. I crunched the numbers, and found out that for like 15k I could pay back every penny I had collected over maintenance, plus the appreciation of the principal. I sent out checks with amounts between $1500 and $4500, along with a note saying I didn't believe in rent any more.
I saw someone else do it, so I did it. Maybe someone on Hacker News will see my posts and do it too. Odds are small, but non zero.
I can tell you it made a material positive change in the lives of those people. That's a much better legacy than, "I died $15k richer" or "I went on vacation at a resort an extra time".
Alternatively, search for a "community land trust" in your area and discuss with them how you can manage your property upon your death.
This drops about fifty tiers down the stack of things I can manage to get myself seriously worked up over by actually reading the article.
I’m finding it pretty hard to find a lot of outrage over “taxpayers now eligible for government services”.
More importantly, how exactly is an undocumented immigrant paying taxes? Do they somehow have a tax ID or SSN without documentation? Or are you just referring to things like sales and fuel taxes?
So the immigrants are paying into the SS/medicare system, but they don't receive any of the benefits.
I think the solution to the housing problem is to increase supply. Not to try to prevent a whole group of people from being able to buy homes.
That seems totally reasonable if there's demand for more houses and the ability to build more.
Phrasing it as though people who already can't to buy a home are being prevented simply by not providing government assistance is a big disingenuous though. Preventing them implies that they could otherwise buy the home, and if that were the case a government program wouldn't be needed.
Also have you talked to any Gen Z or millennial? Most cannot afford housing, why in the world would you introduce even more demand for scarce housing?
And supporting migrants isn't introducing new demand, it's just exposing the demand that's there. Like, the migrants are there and they need housing.
The us vs them attitude is an artificial division. We can, and should build housing for all.