More Americans Are Ending Up Homeless—at a Record Rate

Sorry but the only way to fix homelessness is to provide enough low cost housing like socialist countries do, we really have no excuse because we have plenty of means to do it. Every time you see a homeless person on the street, that's a societal choice, its people worried about their home value, taxes, crime, the general hostility to poverty here, etc. And we tell stories about how its their fault and they actually want to live like that so we dont have to do anything difficult and just keep thing the way they are. Most homelessness is actually temporary, so most of the problem is people needing a place to live for a few weeks/months to get back on their feet.

 

Providing help for housing to the people is not exclusive to socialism... not a socialist only tenet.

 

Agreed, but those countries do it, we let the market do its thing, and we see the results. That is an ideological call.

 

Priced Out of Jax: 25% of all single-family homes in Duval County owned by investment companies

 

We don't really have a definition for our brand of capitalism... unless you want to call it free market with help for the needy. However, there is more about our form of governance that is Capitalist than not.

 

I was hopeful if our society switched to virtual work it would open up space for more housing. ie I use to have a small area of ‘real estate’ dedicated to my office. Working from home should have opened that space up, along with many others in the building. But the trend seems to be reversing (right or wrong) back to employees maintaining office space in addition to their home office space.

 

To an extent I agree. I think a huge part of the equation is also that the younger generation actually prefers to rent instead of buy. Yes, some Millennials are drowning in debt, but a lot of others simply don't want the expense of a house and are more mobile (move more often) as a generation. Drill down even further and it's likely because companies and employees have a less "symbiotic" relationship (fewer benefits, heavier turnover, etc). Couple that with a lot of the GenXers moving into "empty nest" status and downsizing their houses outright and you can see the result pretty clearly.

 

This is what annoys me, I dont think they'd prefer to rent vs buy or be mobile, they are just adapting to circumstances, dont mistake that for a preference. Just another way we rationalize the outcomes of deliberate policy choices.

 

Fine help the people that need low cost housing out, but that in and of itself does NOT make our nation socialist country.

 

You know as well as I do that anything like this will get called "communism" or "socialism" by the people against it lol, shit you will probably be one of the ones saying it.

 

There is a LOT of available commercial real estate/office buildings in Jax. I've always assumed they would make cool studio Apts and such, but nobody has really done it. Got to be a reason.

 

Nope, I find it interesting that you would think that of me and other pubs. I am not heartless... I understand that sometimes we need to lend a hand to those people with less, and if it means low cost housing, then so be it.

 

I think most people in the abstract would be agreeable to things we are discussing here, and while that is somewhat encouraging, when someone puts a concrete policy on the table that could become law, and lets face it, the only party remotely likely to do that would be the Democratic one, then it becomes partisan, and once the media gets to work, you have your talking points about how bad it will be, and some of those talking points will be "socialism." Just like healthcare, just like anything really.

 

Lot of great points! I think part of the rent v buy is based in the shift from the Family Unit. While there is no exact on how to make it perfect. There is little doubt that millennials view of the Family Unit is completely different. And that is not taking a shot at millennials. That is the environment they were raised. And the environment was changing before them. Those with means are taking full advantage for sure.

I could have leveraged and went real estate but went with the dividend plays. I may have missed on some things but the waterfront we bought or our family has paid for itself beyond and extra dollar we could make on it. We do not VRBO it but could make a fortune doing that. The memories are priceless. I take a quasi Dave Ramsey approach. And when we bought I knew we could pay it off in 2-3 years (took just under two). But I am not one to leverage a lot of debt. There are wrong ways to do it and I certainly could have made more money by leveraging and moving on properties. But I am more comfortable with liquidity.

 

And I went the other direction (maybe I should say the "conventional" direction). I bought as much house as I could afford as early as possible and have leveraged that into a much larger share of equity as my paycheck grew into my mortgage moving several times to push that growth. Now at 50, the kiddo is leaving for college in a few years and I've got the savings to accommodate her education and the ability to turn that equity into a sizable chunk for my own retirement at an earlier age. It cost me a lot of things I wanted to do in my 30s, but that was the tradeoff. There is no right or wrong answer, just different paths.

 

Well, I think that some people might be upset... it all depends on all the other riders on such a bill.

 

Yeah, don't let unlimited numbers of people to cross our borders in the first place.
Immigrants are costing $10,000 per head and we can't take care of our own.

 

The devil is always in the details, but when there is a concrete proposal, the people who represent the "losers" in said legislation (in this case vultures of all kinds - landlords, hedge funds, lenders/banks, etc) have their lobbyists and PR people get to work scaring the public (your property values!) and buying politicians.

 

OMG... Lol... I was just thinking about the Lobbyist and why that is even legal in the first place. Great minds? Lol...

My answer to that is... I wonder if these politicians use that as an income supplement, IOW they must have to file that as income to make all the Lobbyists gifts legal? Right?

Tell me how that works.

 

The only thing that is basically illegal at this point is direct payments for favors - "pay for play." Thanks to the courts interpretation of "political speech" meaning money, you basically have to hand someone a sack of cash with an explicit promise of a favor in return to be guilty of corruption, legally speaking.