| The stigmatization of poverty is an Anglo-American tradition going back at least as far as the 1536 English Poor Laws.[1] Among it's intellectual benefits is a convenient absence of necessary inconvenience upon the wealthy. Stigmatization of poverty is not the only tradition at play in America. San Francisco's namesake advocated poverty and homelessness. The city was literally established by homeless men who lived in poverty. The "affordable housing" problem limits solutions to those meeting some criterion for "economically deserving." It precludes pursuit of universal shelter security free of relative political disability. Affordable housing allows eviction from public housing when a family member is criminally charged. Affordable housing allows assistance disqualification for past drug offenses fully paid. Affordable housing is premised on scarcity not abundance. At the macro-economic scale affordable housing has the delusional premise that there's a housing market that exists in an independent way. The delusion that there's a housing market that can reach equilibrium. Housing is not just one among many alternatives for achieving returns on real-estate investment. It's one of the worst because conversion of real-estate to housing is sticky. Conversion of housing to more productive commercial, industrial, and agricultural uses ranges from hard (rental trailer parks) to near impossible (multiple single family fee simple lots). Politically, housing houses voters. Economically, homeowners have an incentive to hold out during aggregation. Real-estate investment is primarily a vehicle for preserving wealth. It's long term. Cashing out is only rational when the returns are high. Cashing out into housing only makes sense when the cash value of the housing at time of delivery exceeds the potential long term value of other uses minus the increased risk from liquidating a perpetual real property title into goods, chattels, and/or financial instruments. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poor_laws |
I see our current homeless crisis as a crisis that emerged out of the success of past generations, much like London burned to the ground because as big cities finally emerged from a growing population, it wasn't obvious beforehand that thatched roofs and the like would be a disastrous detail when building a lot of housing under conditions of population density that had not been previously seen.
I am aware that classism and other evils exist. I experienced classism first-hand while homeless.
But I don't find it constructive to focus overly much on that and I don't feel that framing is particularly accurate. I think the majority of the problem is due to factors like blind spots on the part of the privileged.
In a case where you have a mix of root causes, it's generally better to focus your effort on the more readily resolved pieces of the problem. When one of those pieces is prejudice, addressing other pieces of the problem is an effective means to combat prejudice.
Condemning people for their prejudice tends to entrench the problem, not remedy it. Casting light on the fact that their assumptions are incorrect is far more productive.
I believe that this problem exists not because most people in power actively desire to be abusive assholes punishing the lower classes for existing but because they don't have good answers. I think the best thing I can do is do the research, figure out how to effectively communicate it and make it freely available on the internet for anyone interested in the topic.
That still leaves me with an unresolved question of how to pay my own bills. I'm off the street, but I still struggle to make ends meet. I'm currently nearly broke and facing a week where I am likely to go hungry for a few days.
This is an all too common occurrence in my life. Ads are "dead" so to speak and I don't know how to get enough tips and/or Patreon supporters to turn my writing into a middle class income for me.
But other than the detail that it isn't paying enough, I feel pretty confident that this model of 1. Do the research and 2. Put out good info for free is our best hope for finding a viable path forward on some of our current hard problems.
Thank you for your participation in this discussion. Your comments have been enormously helpful for me.