The United States saw an 18.1% increase in homelessness this year, a dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in several parts of the country, federal officials said Friday.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      I am really sick and tired of “Affordable Housing” being neoliberal jargon for “subsidized housing.” It’s an extremely biased framing of the debate that makes it hard to give fair consideration to other means of achieving actual affordability, such as – just for example – fixing the motherfucking zoning code so that developers aren’t forced to include expensive amenities like parking spaces and are allowed to build stuff that’s cheap enough for people to afford at market rate.

      • Serinus@lemmy.world
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        I mean, to effectively have affordable housing without parking lots and screwing traffic, you need real mass transit. Which should really be our focus over the next 15-20 years anyway, besides green energy, of course.

        Speaking of which, we need a moderator for !fuckcars. The previous mod has been afk for 2 months. It’s like, your normal browsing plus maybe a five minute commitment per month. Are you interested? Message me.

        • grue@lemmy.world
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          I mean, to effectively have affordable housing without parking lots and screwing traffic, you need real mass transit.

          No, you don’t – that’s another assumption I’m sick and tired of hearing. You change the zoning rules to allow day-to-day amenities (housing/jobs/shopping/etc.) to exist within walking distance first, then once a bunch of people with that kind of lifestyle move in, they will drive demand for good transit after.

          If you try to do it backwards, by maintaining policies that cater to driving until the transit magically appears, you end up building a car-dependent Hellhole that is infeasible to retrofit while never actually getting the damn transit because you can’t show any demand for it (fucking obviously, because everybody who lives there is forced to drive!). Or if you do somehow force through transit anyway, over the kicking and screaming of the racists and reactionaries, you’ll end up with nobody using it and them screeching “we told you so” because it’ll still be worse than driving.

          You HAVE to quit subsidizing the entitled driver class FIRST.

          • Serinus@lemmy.world
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            I think transit tends to create commercial and residential demand. That demand can, should, and usually does drive zoning for the area.

            At least for me, my nimbyism about high density housing is all about not having the transit to support it. Our roads are already past max capacity, and adding just another lane isn’t going to last long. Even if the new communities are the 4 over 1 mix housing and commercial.

    • thefartographer@lemm.ee
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      1 day ago

      Probottom: why do we include migrants in our homelessness statistics if we’re not offering them social welfare?

      Propowerbottom: tax brackets should also be influenced by the number of properties a person owns. Unless a real estate agent and actively trying to sell or reno the property, get penalized for hoarding.

      Edit: @metaStatic@kbin.earth I’m disappointed in your correction. Now I just look like a fool! I thought we were ride or die!!