Forcing folks to move can easily mean forcing folks to leave behind what family and friends they have, and seems cruel. Some of the folks will have jobs that don't pay enough to live in the city they work in, and I don't think we should punish people by making them have hours of commuting either.
"You are too poor to live here" is also "you are too poor to afford to take this basic job" as well as "you are too poor to stay around anyone you know".
That is only true if someone has roots: a job and/or family. If you are single and don’t have many possessions, let alone a job or anyone to look after or be looked after, you are incredibly mobile. Prisons on egress will even ay for your bus ticket to go wherever, if you are without any roots to return to (because they never existed or were long burned away), that literally can be anywhere.
Finally, if you need help to survive and live in a place like Great Falls MT, you aren’t going to get anything there unless you family or some other roots to rely on. You’ll probably wind up in Spokane and then Seattle. If you weren’t mobile, you probably did get help or weren’t helpless in the first place.
I guess there is some confusion between poor and homeless. I totally agree that poor people should be given help to keep living in their own communities, but not necessarily to move into a higher priced community. People without any housing at all are a different story all together. There is no reason why they should be housed in higher priced cities if they don’t have jobs to commute to in the first place.
Why should people who have lost a job and are about to be homeless not be required to move to a lower cost area in order to get free housing?
If need be transportation can be provided.
I've had to turn down jobs because I couldn't afford the startup costs. One was just red shirts, and I couldn't afford one.
A time or two, the reason I was able to move was because I could stay with family.
Transportation isn't enough. People should be able to live near work: Being poor shouldn't mean spending 4 hours a day on commutes. Being poor shouldn't mean moving away from people you know just to have shelter, a basic need. And so on.
How does
> free housing
> transportation
NOT solve any issues with deposits or rents?
> People should be able to live near work
Sure, there are lots of things that should be, but aren't.
Not everybody can live near work, especially not in the nation's most expensive areas. Being able to live near work is not a basic right, nor should it be.
> Being poor shouldn't mean spending 4 hours a day on commutes.
Ideally not, but if that's all you can get then at least it should be an option.
That being said, the best way to level the field is to have the aforementioned subsidized means of leaving for a low cost of living area.
> Being poor shouldn't mean moving away from people you know just to have shelter
Why not?
If you cannot afford to live in a high cost area, why should somebody else pay for your right to live there?
If you cannot pay your way, what right do you have to occupy a space that somebody else needs and can pay for it? Merely being there first should not confer any special privilege.
Having shelter is a basic need. Living near people you know is not.
What’s your point?
For goodness sakes, a shack on a lake north of Toronto goes for millions of dollars these days [0].
A few years ago a conservative government in Alberta tried to solve their homeless problem by giving free one-way tickets to Vancouver to the homeless instead of welfare cheques. Dumping your problem on someone else converts a cost into an economic externality but is sure to get you hated.
[0] http://muskokacottagesforsale.net/real-estate-properties/
This is some of the worlds most desirable real estate here. This isn't even a case of bad government policy, which I would usually arc up about. The article is homeless people taking over public land for private use without doing anything to justify that privilege. That isn't fair, if it is up for grabs I want it and I'd be behind a long queue of other people who want it. The right to use that land is worth a fortune. Being homeless, while sad, is not actually something that should be rewarded with free space in the centre of a metropolis. If we are going to support them, we can support them to live somewhere less desirable.
This is a marginal case of private use of public lands. These are shelters, rather than homes. The size (2' by 6') and construction offers little more than physical security while sleeping.
There are reasons why some homeless people prefer parks. For example: parks tend to be closer to social services and other means of support. There are also homeless people who find other places to squat.
> If we are going to support them, we can support them to live somewhere less desirable.
Unfortunately, there are also people who believe that type of support means forced relocation. There are many reasons to oppose force relocation. In the mildest of terms, it is never intended to solve the root problem of poverty.
* It is totally reasonable that people sit in them and enjoy the sun.
* It is totally unreasonable for a billionaire to wall a section off and build a mansion in it.
Now we can debate where that line is drawn, but a professionally built plywood structure with door locks and smoke detectors is a lot closer to the unacceptable end than the alternative. That is starting to build up a permanent dwelling in a public space.
I don't know how to solve homelessness, and I'll admit to not trying very hard. But if we can just hive off public spaces for people to live on, then there is no way the homeless are getting first pick. I know people who had to leave a major city due to housing costs and move to the country. If the topic of debate is repurposing public land for longer-term dwellings, they should get priority access to it over these homeless people.
And consider that cities are where support services are.
And consider that if you can’t afford a home you probably can’t afford a car.
I just don’t think anybody is homeless in Toronto or London or any other city for the same reasons that rich people make them expensive cities.
I’m pretty sure many homeless, if offered a home in the countryside, would happily oblige.
That’s simply untrue. Owning a car is vastly less expensive than renting a dwelling in most cities. I’ve known people that went homeless, and it’s pretty common for them to...live in their car.
There's always fallow private lands, easements, empty parking lots, abandoned warehouses, etc.
My open question wrt to squatting is the potential to incentivize keeping real estate in active use. If "use it or lose it" is official policy, it might help mitigate hoarding.
A bit like some cities are now penalizing unoccupied condos, where investors buy up condos and then don't even rent them out.
You're probably thinking of this Anatole France[0] quote:
“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
Sorry, no I wasn't, my fault for not being clearer. I gave an example of London but my experience is beyond that city, that's just where I happened to talk directly with a lot of homeless people about why they were on the streets.
My observations generalise to the rest of my experience, for sure, including in very poor towns with low rents in the UK.
[0]: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/07/04/7362403...
Most people would regard that as pretty inhumane.
So while I don't disagree that that far tail of people probably do need some welfare to get a house, I do want to state that if someone is going to get welfare so that they can live in a house, it should not be a house in London. It should be a house somewhere somewhat cheaper than London.
If someone honest to goodness can't keep a roof over their heads, they deserve help but really shouldn't be trying to make it work in one of the worlds most expensive cities.
[0] https://www.insider.com/most-expensive-cities-to-live-in-202...