I don’t think anybody thinks that.
Not explicitly, maybe, but implicitly, absolutely, and in multiple ways:
- Supporting the system that creates one over the other
- Having ‘bootstrap’ attitudes about the poor
- Worrying about property value over utilization
- Complaining about the homeless rather than the lack of action on housing
- Voting against people who run on public housing
In so, so many ways, people say they prefer the latter over the former. Usually just with the caveat that the homeless people also be invisible.
Maybe we should institute a tax on underutilized land in metro areas.
Land Value Tax 👀
I think a simple law that if there is a building, it must be in a repaired state.
In St. Louis a person opened large portions of the city where they’ve let the holes decay.
He should have to keep them in a proper upkeep or tear them down.
Fuck anyone that uses money to buy things and let them rot. That’s a purposefully broad statement.
I agree. I wish I could find an article on this guy but he is just hoarding and letting it rot. Has something to do with taxes.
Based Geoism.
I wonder who is doing this voting? Oh, it’s people who live in the areas we can’t afford to live in. And capitalists add lobbying power to those voters selfish interests.
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In the United States at least, your local government’s public hearings for new housing developments kinda begs to differ.
People will demand the homeless be eliminated from their area while simultaneously opposing development of housing or shelters for the homeless in their area.
So maybe you’re right though: they don’t hate the apartments more, they simply can’t make up their mind on which they hate more.
I agree but want to say everyone jumps to homeless. There are a ton of normal people that are suffering from high rent, lack of options, etc. We need to think about way more than homeless.
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Most people think homeless as jobless, etc. But when we have people with entirely ok jobs that can’t afford rent (see people living in their cars), addressing basic normal housing addresses both for a startling amount.
So it sounds like zoning laws are the problem?
In some cases. But even proposed changes to zoning laws can get this kind of opposition.
Aside from zoning laws, there’s the lack of a unified federal intervention. This prevents any one area from addressing the local homeless issue because any area that takes steps to address it will consequently absorb more homeless individuals from other places in the country. For example, if a city in California develops a program to house any homeless individuals, then homeless individuals from other cities and states will be more likely to go to said city to get housed. Even worse, there are states that would actually pay for their transportation. What would happen is that either the city would have to solve a much larger homeless problem as new homeless move into town, or the initial wave of homeless people will be house while the new arrivals and homeless will stay homeless, leaving a continued homeless problem.
Succinctly put.
So conservative NIMBYs are the problem?
There’s definitely an “I got mine, fuck you.” component, yes.
I think it’s more so that people don’t want an apartment complex built in their backyard, not that they are opposed to them being built in an area where there is proper infrastructure
NIMBY!!
Where do you place the proper infrastructure then? It’s always going to be in someone’s “back yard” as you put it.
Well there’s considerable difference between an apartment complex in a suburb not designed for heavy traffic and less developed areas where there’s room for expansion for infrastructure.
We can’t expand roads in my area, either for an extra lane (which I know is a sin) or for buses because it would be right up on houses at that point.
However, just a few miles down the road on the main drag, there’s undeveloped land that would be perfect. Build it there.
When I say “backyard” I mean literally in your backyard. Instead of name calling and downvoting, have a fucking conversation and ask in a respectful manner what somebody means. Stop being a douche because you automatically assume somebody who thinks slightly differently than you is wrong.
Well articulated. I’m not from the US, but I’ve seen housing developments go sideways when they built four 10-story blocks (not in somebody’s back yard, but in an area without proper infrastructure) and after 1000ish people had moved in there were 1 hour long queues just to get out of the complex because there was only one road with one lane per direction. And the only bus stop was not really reliable.
This was not built in the middle of the city because of land availability (and huge prices even if there was land available - you’re near the metro and tram and a bus stop? pay 50% more. oh, you’re near a park too? pay 50% more on top of that). Should we just tear down old buildings in low density areas in the city to make room for big blocks? Some might be worth tearing down because of age and overall condition, but good luck getting people to move out.
lmao make up your mind
do you want to have a conversation without name calling? Then leave out the name calling or kindly get fucked
Yeah, “in stead of name calling, stop being a douche” is not the MOST consistent argument ever 😂
Tired of being nice. I do it all the time and it’s never returned in kind.
Lemmy users act like this is a different place, that it’s a more wholesome internet, what a joke. It’s as bad as anywhere else.
I wasn’t being mean spirited with my original comment, it was a legitimate question. Whenever I hear people say something like “I don’t want that!” I like to find out why. It’s just curiosity. Sorry if it came across mean.
It’s not far off what many think. Many think apartments are, oh so many adjectives, dirty, poor, unsanitary, inhumane, cruel, unusual, etc.
Who is “many”? Do you have surveys and data to support this?
Go to/watch any planning or proposal meeting and watch the pearl clutching and nimbyism. I think you know this but you want to demand “studies” instead of engaging in good faith.
you want to demand “studies” instead of engaging in good faith.
Said the ocean gate sub captain.
jiggles keys Who wants to go see a shipwreck??
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Second reply from user nutandcross for posterity;
I went to a planning meeting in my neighborhood and it wasn’t like that at all. Why did you lie about that?
Also, why don’t you value scientific research and evidence? Because they don’t corroborate your perverted worldview?
I think this is one of those communists who can’t be bothered to actually read or live by anything. The meeting was full of shouting communists, whose side I’m on, regarding a city golf course and it’s removal. You were way off. Why did you act like you knew what was going to happen? I’m not mad I’m just confused like, did you really think it was going to be like how you prejudged it or are you towing the disinformation line?
This is why it’s never good to engage with adolescents as someone with an intellectual conscience, and not just some wishful-idea-drunk autist that can’t tell human faces apart.
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Third reply from user nutandcross for posterity:
Answer: why did you lie to me?
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This is the response from user nutandcross for posterity, read to the end:
“instead of engaging in good faith”
So facts and good faith ethics are mutually exclusive?
I just got back from a planning meeting and it was nothing like how you said it would be. Why would you lie to me about that?
Why are you just constantly just lying to people from your room on the Internet? It’s it because when you die, you’ll just vanish and leave a bodily mess because you never became anything, never understood what it meant to be a human? Because you’ve turned yourself over to bad ideas cause your own were worse and now you’re some pimpled Putin puppet.
Communism, fascism, Jordan Peterson, Trumpist demagogues thrive on weak 14-year-old minds hungry to assert their powerful opinion on something they’ve have no actual experience with
I urge you to visit these Utopias, maybe move there. There you won’t be called parasite, you will experience the insouciant freedom of the lodged and suckling tick. Maybe the reason you feel so bad is that you don’t belong in a free nation because you’re too chickenshit to exist on your own merit.
They also recruit and weaponize mentally vulnerable people like young autistic men (4chan, Bannon, cp forums), here’s just a couple I’m sure you can can find commie versions of these stories you can stomach (you can use these to strengthen your good faith arguments):
You’re all George Santos wannabes in five years, too. Fucking garbage. My family didn’t fight and die so a bunch of little kids could run around with Hitler mustaches telling me which way to think is the correct way to think according to the correct men. Everyone can see how sweaty and dangerous and anti-social utopian philosophies really are except the fevered adherent who always ends up dead or in a cell. You’d shit your pants in a fight.
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Sure they do. Look at all of the posts from my neighbors on Facebook and Nextdoor every time a developer tries to build an apartment building instead of a single family home in our neighborhood.
We’re not building homes, we’re not focussing on density. But apparently our elected officials have no problem letting people set up shanty towns. Where do you think the priorities lay?
What do you mean we’re not building homes? I have plenty of homes and apartments being built in my city that cater to lots of strata of incomes.
The world will never recover until poverty is seen not as a character flaw, but as a failure of society itself to provide for the most vulnerable.
They wouldn’t be vulnerable if they just overcame their own biology and lifetime of trauma. Its that simple, they arent trying hard enough.
What do you mean by “overcame their own biology”?
I think he’s trying to make a joke by appealing to the absurdity, like pulling yourself up by the boot straps. Literally impossible.
Though Poe’s Law and general stupidity are up lately, so…
Literally people born with or contracting disabilities that leave them permanently destitute due to you not being able to eat or house yourself without work you can’t do because your disabled.
And because of how disability works in the US, if they want care they’re legally forbidden from ever having money so…
The simple fact of the matter is that most things most people do are simply input -> biology happens -> output. Breaking that hardwired process that happens in the background for every miniscule decision you make is the basis of like, every kind of therapy, self-help, meditation routine, etc.
They’re being satirical. They’re saying it’s virtually impossible to not succumb to poverty if you have disabilities, trauma, or racial prejudice working against you.
Also historical and/or generational poverty.
I’d file that under trauma. If there was no trauma caused by extreme poverty like; parent was a sexworker; watching a parent lose it all; emotional neglect; physical neglect; history of incarceration; generational drug abuse, it would be more unlikely they would succumb to homelessness. That said, you are right.
Generational poverty is also historically about racism. Now, that’s changing but it’s changing more because it’s just getting harder to get out of poverty than it is because there’s less racism…
I do not disagree.
I get your point, and while there is certainly a subset of people who are suffering through no fault of their own, there are plenty of people who are lazy and/or made terrible decisions. Lumping them all together like you are doesn’t help the situation. Those who want help should absolutely be helped. Those who don’t should not be allowed to ruin it for the rest of us.
No one is on the street because they are lazy. That is ignorance.
Also, what exactly are they ruining for the rest of us? What upward mobility are they keeping me from? Are you suggesting someone living in a tent or shelter ruins your???Propery value? Urban view? Existence?
Sounds like to me there is a certain pettiness you hold on to and letting that go means you actually have to accept the humanity of people less fortunate than yourself. That also sounds like an illness you should rid yourself of because it’s rottng away at you.
No one chooses consciousness. We are all coming in from the cold. We have this one chance to peer into the nature of the universe. Except, some are more concerned with the length of small little plants out in front of their house.
No one is on the street because they are lazy. What an entirely ignorant and stupid comment. Come to the West coast idiot. I can show you plenty of people that are lazy ass mother fuckers among the homeless. Not all, but enough.
No lazy person wants to be homeless. The amount of stress and anxiety cause by being homeless would crush you. To be lazy a person needs shelter, food and clean water, clean cloths, and good health. Homelessness is about survival.
You’re always going to have someone looking to gain from the system. The thing is, I don’t care. Most people want a sense of fulfillment more than they want anything else, and that usually comes from being productive. Not always in the “get a job, earn money” way, but in the “I’m going to create, in a way that makes me happy” sense. Unfortunately, for a lot of people, even finding that thing that fulfillment is such an upward battle because it requires a ton of resources. Time, energy, money. Things the destitute don’t have. Let the few be lazy, fuck it you’ll never get rid of lazy from society, stop trying, it’s just hurting the regular man. Focus on bringing the bottom up, and the whole of society benefits.
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There are also those who make bad decisions and are lazy but have a lot of money and power regardless. Being lazy/making terrible decisions does not equal poor; same as being hard working/making good decisions.
The system at this stage is just geared towards making the poor poorer and the rich richer. E.g. making people pay lots of money to stay healthy rather than give people equal opportunity, making good education only accessible to the rich by making it prohibitively expensive, the wage divide between an employee and a CEO, family trusts and associated taxes etc.
I’d guess absolutely every person in a shit situation wants help. No one WANTS to be homeless, destitute, and addicted. The problem is, that for a lot of the worst off people in the world, that’s pretty much all they have. Sometimes, the only source of any light in someone’s life is a chemically induced high. Who am I to tell someone in that situation that they can’t do one of the few things that makes life kind of ok?
This kind of thing is a failing of society, not the person, no matter how deep you drill. Each and every one of the people in this shit needs help, not judgement, not to get clean, not to make money. Start with providing actual help, a home, food, mental and physical healthcare. It doesn’t have to be luxurious,just safe.The rest will follow naturally.
“The point” was actually a joke.
We all have our limits. Some people seem to be tougher than others. There are things people go through that I would last maybe two weeks before killing myself. When analyzing these situations it’s hard to balance compassion and being reasonably critical.
You’re going to get downvoted into oblivion for speaking the truth. Lemmy is full or libritards who are just as bad as the far right nutjobs. Both don’t live in reality.
What is your reality that is so much more salient and rational?
That’s the ticket. The most hardworking people I’ve ever met are also some of the poorest.
I hate how when there is any picture of Soviet blocks it’s always shot in autumn or winter when it’s overcast. I live in an ex Soviet country and when these bad boys are maintained they can outperform new apartments, be it in functionality, amenities or price.
always shot in autumn or winter when it’s overcast.
To me this adds a lot to the charm. I’d love to live there (at least for some time)!
Kruschev housing outperforms new apartments? That’s the opposite of what we see of Russia in North America.
I am simply not believing that 50 year old apartment blocks are outperforming new ones by any metric.
I’m glad you’re happy and there are plenty of 100+ year old homes in my country that are just fine but they are not outperforming anything.
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Yeah i was recently looking for someone to work on windows and finding someone who does work in the traditional way is not easy. They’re still out there, but for every one of them there’s ten hack shops using minimum wage labor for everything. Even then, the real good techniques just seem like lost technology. They didn’t get passed down to our generation.
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Standards have improved 10 fold, I moved from a house built 70 years ago to a new build. It is completely different, air tight, less moisture, more efficient heating, permanent hot water, triple glazed windows. Literally everything is more secure and improved. There is nothing an old house can do a new one can’t.
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Heating is an accessory? The new tech associated with central heating compared to 50 years ago is night and day. The building materials have changed, the regulations have changed. Houses have better insulation, soundproofing, fire guarding, plumbing, electrical circuitry like how is this even a discussion.
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Oh we don’t have timber framed housing here, my house is concrete and the 50 year old house I was in, probably closer 100, was a stone cottage.
The new house has exactly those things you listed. I’m fairly certain they have to be in all new builds where I am. Though the solar is optional, we have a heat pump instead.
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That’s a load of nonsense, experienced builder or not. Heating is part of building a house just like the other plumbing, electrical and joinery work.
air tight, less moisture, more efficient heating, permanent hot water, triple glazed windows.
And why “I moved from unmaintained house” is argument against old housing? I have all those things in 50 years old house.
So you gave your old building a retrofit with new technologies… more in line with today’s standards and have seen results more in line with today’s standards.
What is your argument here?
So you gave your old building a retrofit with new technologies… more in line with today’s standards and have seen results more in line with today’s standards.
So you understand this!
So modern building standards, materials, technologies and completed products are better than old?
I don’t see many people taking out the cavity insulation to make their homes more old style.
Here in Finland a lot of new apartment blocks have very small apartments. Three rooms and a kitchen crammed into 60 m2 (650 sq ft) are not uncommon. That means bedrooms that can fit a double bed and nothing else, and kitchens built into the side of the living room. Older blocks by contrast have much more spacious apartments. The condo I bought in a building built in the 1970s is three rooms and kitchen in 80 m2 (860 sq ft). The condo goes through the building, so windows on two sides. The kitchen is its own separate space. Bathroom and toilet are two separate rooms. (The building is not a proper commie block, though. Or “Soviet cube” as they’re called in Finnish. We were never Soviet, but we took some inspiration from their cheap building styles.)
Even communism aside, this is actually not uncommon. One of the advances we’ve made in construction is knowing how to save even more money, making the right sacrifices and meeting the minimum bars of code compliance, to maximize our margins.
I don’t know how you say this unironically as criticism. That’s arguably one of the biggest advantages people claim capitalism has: managing finite resources. It’s not a good thing to waste manpower and resources for no real gain.
They literally sacrificed quality and safety to maximize profits and you call that good? Come on… You’re being too biased.
That’s literally not what I said.
You called the thing I criticized “one of the biggest advantages”.
for no real gain
What gain? More profits for the ultra rich? A dying planet?
People living in comfortable apartments is no real gain in capitalism because it means less ROI. But it is a huge gain to everyone’s quality of life if they can live comfortably.
Market mechanisms are very powerful in optimising resource allocation - but they aren’t optimising for maximum quality of life, they’re optimising for maximum ROI. Which lands in the pockets of the ultra rich, which then allocate the accumulated capital in only those endeavours providing maximum ROI, and the cycle goes on and on until so much wealth is extracted from society that the middle class collapses and the planet dies - and the ultra rich with them, for they depend upon the plebes to work for them in order to have an ultra rich lifestyle in the first place.
I mean if we were trying to house people we should be aiming for inexpensive and non-wasteful building choices, shouldn’t we? When we’re handling basic human needs we send boats full of rice and beans, not a bunch of badass chefs.
Why not? Why not let people have nice things?
I mean it’s kind of a scarcity thing. Resources aren’t infinite. I have no problem with letting people have nice things and would certainly want minimums to be pretty decent, but when you’re getting people off the street or something then efficiency means lives saved.
We have all the money in the world. We have more than enough homes to house people, right now. We have an abundance of housing, of resources to build more housing, of everything. What we do not have is a distribution that allows people who need housing to get it. Instead we have a literal Spiders Georg situation where a tiny fraction of the country each own hundreds of homes they don’t live in or even have any intention of living in. This situation is deranged.
Alright, then show the numbers. Let’s ignore that seizing all that property will go super well. I know, you want people that own more than one house dead, so even include it as double the free housing. Figure out how much it costs to upkeep rental properties. Double it, maybe more, for people that literally don’t give a fuck about it. Add costs for policing the shit.
Seizure won’t fix it.
That’s arguably one of the biggest advantages people claim capitalism has: managing finite resources
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha
Yeahhhhh…
That’s arguably one of the biggest advantages people claim capitalism has: managing finite resources.
No, it’s not capitalism, this is definition of economy itself. Which by the way includes communism.
Por que no los dos?
It’s something capitalists claim. Communism claims to distribute things equitably and they have to fight over efficiency. Capitalism is the opposite.
Communism claims to distribute things equitably
No, communism claims to distribute things fair.
they have to fight over efficiency.
Same does any other economic system, but define efficiency differently.
Fair on both counts.
An apartment complex went up outside my work and it’s made of wood. That’s against fire safety code but they found some creative work arounds to convince the inspectors it was legal. (And of course the inspections are all toadies who have been put in place to rubber stamp developer plans.) Very efficient until it burns down and kills everyone inside.
So it doesn’t actually meet minimum standards?
It meets the law but it sure as hell doesn’t meet the safety.
Laws usually follow industry standard safety guidelines.
Tons of large buildings are older than you’d think. Hell, a lot of large buildings don’t even get serious structural inspections until they’re 40+ years old!
It was one of many contributing factors to the Champlain Towers South building collapsing in the US in Florida. No communism or Soviet corner cutting. Just good ol’ fashioned American ineptitude. That building was undergoing some work so they could raise prices. It wasn’t a low class building nor did many people think it was too old to invest in.
What OP said is extremely likely to be true: Those buildings are competative.
It’s less a matter of technical capability and more one of cost. It’s not like people didn’t know how to build good, efficient homes before. It was just expensive.
We have absolutely made strides in material technologies for construction over the last 50 years. Take asbestos for example.
Asbestos has some pretty insane properties, though. Just a shame it causes cancer when disturbed and inhaled.
As a building material? What’s even better than asbestos in terms of the trifecta of sound/heat isolation, bulk, melting point, and structural soundness? Aerogel?
Not just that but internal insulation and fireguarding has come a long way.
yes they are, they outperform american’s cardboard house
I’d gladly live in one of those apartments in the first picture if it meant that everyone could have a home
I’d gladly walk my ass out to the wilderness rather than live in an apartment block, but at least then there’d be an extra spot.
The nice thing is in an anarchist society you could do just that, and no one would stop you
I’d personally prefer to be surrounded by people
Which is why I’m an anarchist. Pretty much every other system would force me to attempt to be happy in an apartment block, or waste huge amounts of resources creating suburbs that are still too goddamn crowded for me
I would like to share your attitude but fear the consequences when millions seek a place in the wilderness. What do you do when you arrive and your neighbor asks you to move on because he wants to be more alone?
I want to be more alone too, so I’d probably not get to the point where I was close enough to have them tell me to go away.
However, most people probably wouldn’t like the actual wilderness. They want a big country house somewhere and when they find out they need to build it themselves they’ll go back to the apartment blocks.
One reason I’m a fan of making cities less objectively terrible is that more people will live in them and be even further away from my hovel.
No, you see, anarchism means I can do whatever I want. Who cares about the other people?
That’s horrible. Have empathy. :(
There’s a reason why anarchism doesn’t scale
surrounded by people
I would literally prefer to put myself in a human sized toaster than live amongst people.
bruh…
You believe that housing is not a basic human right, yet you say to me, “bruh…”
Just gonna pre-emptively block your bootlicking ass
If everyone thought like this, everyone would have a home.
And 50 or so people would own all of the rest of the land and do nothing with it because we’re too fucking stupid to realize that a system that wants us all to live in 50m² micro apartments is a load of shit, and strung together by a greedy few.
There is enough land for us all to live comfortably, but a fraction of a percent don’t want anyone to use most of the land for anything useful so hey let’s just give up and take almost-squalor because at least it not squalor!
Fuck both these pictures.
“Land-usage” is such a narrow-minded way to think about the implicit wants and needs of society. You sound like you’ve never been to actual cities, or never got your head far enough out of your arse to actually experience one.
North American suburban sprawl already proves that “enough land for us all to live comfortably” is a terrible way to live sociable lives and drains the economy due to massive swathes of those lands being used for roads and the maintenance of said roads.
I implore you to take a trip to almost any European city, and see for yourself what actual “comfortable living” for most people looks like.
…Why did you reinterpret the premise of their statement into something entirely different and then attack them for it?
I’m not saying your interpretation is wrong, but that was mean.
I’ve lived in cities my whole life, which paints a pretty broad picture of you doesn’t it? Couldn’t even get the premise of your own bullshit comment right.
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What if we made the commie block apartments 140 m² each?
The USSR didn’t do much good but those apartment buildings are definitely good. I used to live in a soviet apartment building and the funny thing about that was that every wall was a load bearing wall since all of them could hold up everything. They were thick as hell and fully concrete.
Every wall was a wall and not a cardboard decoration of a wall
FTFY. Not all of them were load-bearing, mind you, they were just proper walls made of wall.
I’d say those were made from at least 3 walls worth of wall.
Appartments in panel buildings have load bearing walls inside.
Okay, I just went from “eh, commie blocks are gross but better than tents” to “fuck all the other apartments, bring on the commie blocks”. Buildings in the US are built so ridiculously cheaply that in a lot of lower-rent buildings you can hear everything.
Commie blocks do have some issues like absolutely awful electrical wiring or lack of insulation but a lot of ex soviet countries renovate those buildings which leaves no downsides.
Commie blocks do have some issues like absolutely awful electrical wiring
Default wiring is not impossible to replace. My building from 70-ies has global PE, only thing left is to replace aluminium wiring without PE inside appartment to 3-wire copper wiring.
How soundproof were they? I’m in an apartment with shitty drywall and sometimes I hear my neighbors fart.
As far as I knew I never even had neighbors or I at least never heard any.
I’m living in a soviet-built tenement block, and the only time I’ve heard anything from a neighbour is when the guy living above me dropped a bowling ball.
guy living above me dropped a bowling ball.
This is universal for all buildings. But I only hear when neoghbours do renovation and wall-penetrating ear-piercing baby cries.
Not from Eastern Europe, but from India. Most buildings are made from bricks. Good enough to block most of the sound from adjacent apartment.
In fact, some builders started using drywalls and there has been a pushback because drywall is considered poor quality material by people here. Which it absolutely is when the country has 4 months of monsoon every year. Drywall doesn’t play well with moisture, does it?
https://thelogicalindian.com/exclusive/krishnaraj-rao-lodha-builders/
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I find brutalism beautiful. Wish we could have more of it in my country but solid concrete, especially preformed, performs poorly under shear.
It’s gotten so “brutalist” is almost synonymous with “earthquake-prone”.
that every wall was a load bearing wall since all of them could hold up everything.
It seems you lived in panel building. There are limitations to it like you should not add horisontal chases becaue it reduces load capacity or can’t replan appartment because it will be destruction of load bearong wall. So wiring better be done in factory-made in-wall concrete tubes.
I don’t think: “ah, buildings again. I’d rather live in camps featuring trash scent.”
The bottom picture also has a high rise apartment building in the background.
Except it’s owned by rent oligopolist.
The communist housing blocks are also not super high on my list of “why I don’t want to live in a communist dictatorship”
Imagine we could take care of the poor while at the same time not revert to a totalitarian dictatorship. Like if we could do both?
That’s complete nonsense though, obviously. We get either to take care of the poor and go full Stalin or not and not. /s
Hell I live in a social democracy that on the whole runs pretty well so you have my vote.
But the place in this picture was probably a Stalinist dictatorship or at least that’s implied.
Mass housing wasn’t mass while Stalin was in power. Search for Stalinka, this is very not mass housing.
This is kinda like saying we need more farms to solve hunger.
The cost of housing is very detached from supply. For rentals, companies bought up housing and just jacked up the price, because renters are a semi captive client base.
New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.
Even for home buyers, they’re facing a major up hill battle going against existing home owners who have access to the capital of their current homes, and even worse corporate home buyers.
This isn’t to say supply isn’t an issue and we can ignore it, but we need to stop housing from just being an investment vehicle. Otherwise we’re just going to get garbage housing at prices no one can afford.
it’s not detached from supply at all, single house zoning and mandatory minimum parking make for a whole lot of trouble in the US
Again I’m not saying supply isn’t an issue, and zoning is def a major problem in many states. But if the issue was only supply, rent would be growing more or less in line with the population not at the astronomical rate that it is.
yeah but due to immigration the population is growing in the USA, AFAIK, also you need to account for the trend of Urbanization (somewhat offset by move to WFH)
When Vanguard and Blackrock own half of the supply, then it’s not a free market. Also, you said it’s not detached from supply at all, but then proceeded to list reasons detached from supply that affect cost.
New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.
The argument I hear against this is that the 36 people who move into the luxury apartments moved from somewhere, and so 36 other apartments become available. The reduced demand for the vacated apartments then drives their prices down.
Of course, housing as a market is super distorted for a bunch of reasons so this effect is muddled. But I think it would be a net negative to fully disregard supply and demand in a market-based economy and preserve 12 affordable units in favor of 36 luxury ones.
Largely agree with all your other points though.
I get that argument and I think there’s some merit to it since like you said this whole thing is muddled. But the counter point is often those vacated units are in another town or city. So in the way overly simplified scenario, if 36 “programmers” move to the city, the vacated units through out the country don’t help the “bus drivers” who are tied to the area.
Again we largely agree, I just wanted to illustrate even the simple assumptions like building more is good isn’t always that straight forward in this fucked up system.
The obvious and immediate flaw with the 36 people moving into luxury apartments is, that’s not usually how luxury apartments work. Particularly in certain markets, it’s more and more common for luxury housing to be temporary homes, vacation homes that are turned into investments the rest of the year, e.g. air BNB. So a lot of the time, you get 36 regular homes destroyed, for 12 luxury apartments that get bought up by either people or companies that either then rent them out or keep them empty most of the year, with no increase in available housing.
Rich people don’t really move into these luxury apartment. They buy it as an investment, use it as a holiday home, etc.
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I understand the point. But France has done this and ended up with giant ghettos filled with si much crime that no emergency services whatsoever go there anymore.
In the US, they built giant housing projects like this where poverty was concentrated and the same thing happened. Crime installed itself in those projects and these neighbourhoods became dangerous ghettos.
Picture 1 is not the solution you think you want.
The condo building where I live is not so big. And it was built with 25% dedicated to social housing where poor families and underpaid workers can live comfortably in an apartment unit as big as my condo unit, which I paid nearly $400k CAD, for the price of about $650 CAD per month. This allows them to integrate with everyone else and live with everyone else and near where all the jobs are.
Don’t worry, they’ve outlawed homelessness. Problem solved!
Literally though. And there’s a whole practice of hostile architecture that makes it harder and more uncomfortable to be homeless.
The point of hostile architecture isn’t to solve homelessness, just to send them to the next block/town over (not saying you don’t understand that, just pointing it out).
I wonder if hostile architecture also kills people. Increasing exposure to cold and reducing opportunities to rest doesn’t seem good for your chances for survival. I guess that would solve homelessness, but in the worst most morbid way possible.
You’re absolutely right in your suspicion. Like so many “let’s punish the poor and vulnerable so they’ll stop being poor and vulnerable” policies that people think are just a “righteous” inconvenience, hostile architecture DOES kill people.
It’s social murder just so the more fortunate don’t have to look at the consequences of an unjust system.
The most morbid way i heard about was in the news, when i lived in Brasil. Store owners used to pay police officers to get rid of the homeless disturbing their business in Rio de Janeiro.
Carried out at night, organized & stealthy, most victims were kids.
I don’t remember if someone really went to jail for this. That was in the 80s, like 20 years ago.
1980 was 43 years ago :P
Noooo! All of the 90s were 10 years ago and always will be, so it follows that the 80s were 20 years ago!
Make it unconstitutional for a municipality to let anyone go unhoused? Based, love it.
Capitalism has you thinking that these are our only options
For big cities, density is key.
Moscow, built mostly 9-story housing, not more than 16-story in the end of USSR. Density is not height.
The other options are, sadly, hours away.
I don’t get people that have such a visceral reaction to apartments (the horror). What they write is frankly hilarious how they think. Right up there with what they write about transit (ohhh noooo) and electric stoves [sobbing noises].
There’s a pretty big spectrum though. On the one hand you have people in suburbs or in-city suburbs complaining about not building the occasional apartment building, essentially because they’re scared of poor people, but then on the other hand you have people living in dense desirable mid sized cities watching them get manhattanized and have their relatively dense yet still pleasant row houses get torn to build rows of ugly skyscrapers that block sunlight from even reaching street level.
The shift of housing from being predominantly individually owned to being parts of major buildings has also come along with the corporatization of real estate, where individuals have less choice, less freedom, and are in many many cases, are being actively exploited by for profit landlords and real estate developers.
Yes, we need to density and build more apartments but people on the left these days who I normally agree with are so laser focused on building housing at all costs that they don’t even realize that they’re racing to the bottom. By today’s standards Jane Jacobs, basically the founder of the entire modern urbanism movement, would be a NIMBY just because she advocated for making sure that cities remain livable rather than just building at all costs.
Let’s build way more low and mid rise apartment buildings, and let’s build way more transit so that cities other than just the major ones are livable without a car, let’s ban airbnb, and let’s severely tax real estate and landlord profits to prevent them from hoarding supply. And yeah we’re gonna have to build some high rises, but let’s not pretend like replacing all of our individual housing with towers is universally a great thing.
You’re showing exactly what I said.
apartment building, essentially because they’re scared of poor people
Fake association that people in apartments are poor. Don’t know if you hold that idea, but you’re repeating it
ugly skyscrapers
You’ve now defined them as ugly and thus undesirable.
individuals have less choice, less freedom
Now you say apartments are against freeeeeddooomm lol.
actively exploited
As if you can’t own a condo.
Or if we increase apartments builds then there will be actual competition. Instead of the current scarcity. Basic supply and demand.
building housing at all costs
Not like we have a mf housing crisis. Noooo.
making sure that cities remain livable rather than just building at all costs.
Now you suggest that building apartments makes things unlivable! The very place people live is somehow unlivable. Or that apartments inherently make the surrounding area undesirable.
Yeah. Visceral reaction to apartments. Peace.
On the one hand you have people in suburbs or in-city suburbs complaining about not building the occasional apartment building, essentially because they’re scared of poor people,
Fake association that people in apartments are poor. Don’t know if you hold that idea, but you’re repeating it
It’s pretty obvious I don’t, and if you think accurately describing the misguided motivations of people counts as repeating propaganda, then you must live in a pretty thick bubble.
You’ve now defined them as ugly and thus undesirable.
They are.
As if you can’t own a condo.
You have to buy the condo from a corporation, you have to pay condo fees to a condo board that is out of your control, and much of the quality of your home is determined by the original corporation that built it, as well as that board that you have no real control over and typically pays out maintenance, repairs, upgrades, etc. to other corporations.
Or if we increase apartments builds then there will be actual competition. Instead of the current scarcity. Basic supply and demand.
I advocated for increasing apartment builds. I also advocated for numerous other measures to increase rental supply, I just didn’t advocate for blindly buying the developer propaganda and letting them build high rise after high rise.
Not like we have a mf housing crisis. Noooo.
So since we have a food supply crisis we should all stop cooking and hand over all food control to corporations that will sell us back bland nutrition paste?
Now you suggest that building apartments makes things unlivable! The very place people live is somehow unlivable. Or that apartments inherently make the surrounding area undesirable.
They literally do. Go live in Manhattan, it sucks. Sunlight literally doesn’t hit street level except for at noon because you’ve put a bunch of gargantuan towers everywhere. Go look at a complex like Habitat 67 that actually tried to make apartments pleasant to live in instead of just being the cheapest they can possibly be to maximize developer profit. Go look at the size of Walmart parking lots in small towns that are the size of entire Manhattan blocks. Yes we need to densify, no we don’t need to necessarily build blindly and continue just letting the free market decide what gets built where.
Yeah. Visceral reaction to apartments. Peace.
Yeah, not having a visceral reaction to anything, just plainly stating their benefits and downsides, though you seem to be having a visceral reaction to any perceived criticism of apartments whatsoever.
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never fails to amaze me how “progressive” types do a complete 180 as soon as someone mentions solving the homeless problem by giving them homes
edit: i rest my case
I don’t think “progressives” have any issue with housing the homeless. The issue is where.
Go to a conservative (or indeed any) neighbourhood and tell them you’ll be building 200 apartments nearby to house rough sleepers, see how that goes down.
Most homeless are invisible to us anyway. They hold down jobs, they have gym memberships, they just sleep in their car, or on a mate’s sofa every so often. Nobody would have a problem with them moving in nearby.
It’s the aggressive beggars, addicts, and shitting in shop doorways (and these three are the same person) that nobody wants anywhere near them. These are who most people think of when they hear the word “homeless”. Most of them need more treatment than just a roof. We don’t have enough of that either.
I’ve no issue with my taxes helping all these people. I’m happy to pay tax to reduce the chances of me personally being robbed by somebody in desperate poverty.
I think fears about the homeless robbing you are massively overblown. I’ve been panhandled hundreds of times, and the worst response I’ve ever gotten is a dirty look.
I also think that the people shitting on public, etc. are more likely to be mentally ill than addicted (although they could be both). The reason is that Drugs Are Really Expensive. Also, I’m not aware of any addiction that causes you to shit in public, but it’s easy to find mental illnesses that would.
What causes the homeless to shit in public is that we barely have any public toilets. And the ones we do have are locked overnight, because we’re terrified that gays will have sex in them.
They also don’t want junkies to shoot up in them and nod off/OD and die on the premises.
*Edit to say I don’t agree with limited public toilets. Just posting another reason why they don’t exist in some places.
I have a house and a job and I’ve almost shit in public. I can totally see how it could happen if you didn’t have access to one or either of those two (because they have bathrooms).
The left leaning rich progressives are all hypocrites when it comes to investing, money, housing, tech, jobs, waste, emissions, and more.
Who knew the people who have the most to gain from capitalism would be so willing to also suck the dick of it for their own personal gain. Imagine that.
Creating the projects by concentrating poverty into towers of terror is no better than having skid rows.
you cant give a home to everybody smartass
Yeah, but I didn’t have to pay anything for those people to live in tents. I keep my money out of their lazy hands.
/s, deeply, if it isn’t obv.
/s
And for those unaware, the cost of homelessness does exist, and it is quite high. We pay for it through emergency services (police, doctors, ambulance, hospital beds), waste removal services, etc.
The problem needs fixed, and part of the solution is commie blocks unironically.
You are forgetting the cost of building “asshole design” infrastructure, like spikes under bridges, instead of building affordable housing.
Hostile architecture makes my blood boil. We’ve really let more money be invested into hurting people that need help than to actually help them.
Very much so. Legal system, downtown areas, medical care… all face expenses of one sort or other, and those get passed on to the consumer and taxpayer. But a lot of people that don’t have to deal with the homeless because they live in a poor and/or rural area, or are incredibly hostile to homeless, that it’s fine for them to push the indirect tax onto areas that don’t have that demographic.
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Pretty sure that’s just NIMBYs.
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