Or, you know, we could allow construction of housing that people can actually afford. Portland's Willamette Week free newspaper had a great writeup of the issues last year:

http://www.wweek.com/news/2016/09/28/portland-needs-to-build...

But apparently if we allowed houses that people could afford, then the housing might not all be in sufficiently trendy neighborhoods. And some of it might not be pretty enough. And some of our buddies in the "affordable housing" nonprofits might miss out on the funding. The horrors!

So instead we leave people to live in tents under highway bridges. Good job Portland.

When Willamette Week is calling you out for being too anti-corporate, you know you have a problem.

Was at a city council meeting where I live for a developer to build 380 apartments. It was a very nice deal, the apartments were mid-range in costs, they were going to include a park, and there was going to be shopping on the 1st floor. It would replace a 40 year old legacy strip-shopping mall.

Jesus Christ the people of Austin, Texas fought this thing like it was a toxic waste dump for disposed of Ebola Virus experiments. Also the city council meeting was just dominated by OLD PEOPLE, I truly never had any idea how much politics was generational until that night.

Ultimately the city council isn’t stupid and voted to allow the developer to rezone, so I guess it worked out, but still such a haunting image of selfishness.

I've been an observer an impacted neighboring resident for a development in my neighborhood (fwiw I'm pragmatic about these things and have a cooperative relationship with the developer).

Can attest that the council's and committees are 95% old people. And tbh the workload burden to review a development proposal is pretty heavy, and you'd basically have to be semi retired to want to do this.

Another example of people left behind by a fast-moving, dynamic economy. Along with former steel workers and others in industries that have been sent overseas, they pay the price of the transition from yesterday's economy to today's economy.

Arguably it's good for our economy to be able to adjust to new technologies and geopolitical trends, but the human cost is immense. How could we systematically compensate for the costs incurred by those who were just in the wrong situation at the wrong time? Or how can we help people avoid getting into those wrong situations to begin with?

I understand that we should consider the human cost in this sense, but if you're going to appeal to the empathy I have for the people who lose jobs, you can't ignore the people which benefit from the "industries being sent overseas" by receiving those jobs. Of course I'm sad when I see a homeless person in the US, and yes some of them are homeless because their jobs "moved overseas", but those jobs might have helped a few really poor Chinese farmers attain a higher standard of living as factory workers. How do we account for that?

>How do we account for that?

Don't forget which one gets to vote in your elections.

I don't think it's a coincidence that these are democratically dominated cities who heavily favor regulations. Portland in particular has been trying hard to wave or temporarily relax many of it's regulations in order to deliver more housing, but a more sustainable solution would be to permanently end some of the less useful regulations. The irony of the situation though is that the heavy regulations are part of the reason why these cities are so desirable because certain regulations make it a nicer city. It's hard to strike a balance on regulations.

For CA, they need to get rid of Prop 13 and use that money for infrastructure projects (thus spreading the wealth a bit). Removing prop 13 also has the benefit of reducing house prices a bit since the property tax will cause some downward pressure on prices.

Seattle: Just tax capital gains in the State.

If we give them Chromebooks and free WiFi, they can learn to code in 20 weeks.

Hoping this is stale bait

Does it take more weeks than that?

Eh - 30 weeks, you have to remember these homeless have a handicap factor because of all the hepatitis and crack

So maybe VR headsets and microdoses of LSD and Cocaine?

Sounds like we are working on a script for a remake of Lawn Mower Man [0]

[0] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104692/

Lawnmower man remake by key and peele is something i would pay 15 bucks for at the matinee

This will continue as long as homeless folks are given a one way bus ticket to land up in west coast from the red states.

IIRC, it was Nevada (an eternally blue state) sending it's homeless to SF