[burnoutgal]

They're spending money to build housing, which will be used to house people without homes. The headline makes it sound like they're paying a million dollars in rent, but in fact this is real estate development.

[kansface]

40000 * 837000 = 33.48 billion dollars. This solution, as implemented, can not possibly solve the problem, ever. The upkeep on the housing alone would be a billion dollars a year!

[GrantYE]

Its because they don't actually want to house the unhoused. They want to make it seem like this impossible challenge to provide affordable housing that doesn't cost the average person in LA $1M+

[Kalium]

San Francisco had a similar problem in recent years, where trying to build housing for the unhoused was running a cost of about a million a pop.

It's perhaps possible that this isn't a deliberate display of incompetence, but a set of systemic problems that make housing in California very expensive to build.

[Dylan16807]

They can choose anywhere to build, the government controls zoning, and they're making apartments. Doesn't that get past all the big systemic cost problems?

Though the article doesn't actually say anything about average costs or cost per type of unit, and since this is a professional news outlet they don't link their sources...

[Kalium]

> Doesn't that get past all the big systemic cost problems?

You would think so! Unfortunately, this is not the case. In SF, some of the systemic issues are planning processes voted into the city charter decades ago, so the city doesn't get to bypass them. Some of the larger issues, such as land price and CEQA, are state-wide issues that cities can't avoid.

[b112]

The people control zoning, and thus, where things are built.

[vkou]

Also, it's worth noting that building a house isn't a hole that you throw money into, it's an asset that appreciates.

[zdragnar]

That is definitely not a universal truth. Anyone who has rented out a house knows just how expensive a bad tenant is.

I have had a few friends who were in that position because they had to move but couldnt sell their houses (2008-2014 era roughly). They would have been better off taking the loss on leaving it empty after taking out loans to undo the damage done.

[scantron4]

Not if it gets trashed by the residents.

[vkou]

In a world where housing prices grow in an unbounded, absolutely detached from reality manner, it is.

[kyleblarson]

It is the homeless industrial complex. A massive grift.

[shkkmo]

837000 is the maximum, not the average, so your math is just made up BS.

[throwoutway]

It sounds to the reader just like it is in reality: overspending on real estate.

That’s a ridiculous sum of money for one unit of housing any way you look at it.

I’m glad they’re housing the homeless, but are you telling me that there’s no way to build this cheaper?

[Retric]

On one hand: The program “is producing more units than promised, at a lower cost than expected,” Garcetti wrote.

But I have trouble thinking that’s an efficient use of funds.

[chernevik]

That's still a mighty expensive unit.

[asdff]

LA also does spend money just booking rooms at for profit hotels for homeless people vs constructing shelters at cost too, so not everything they are doing is totally productive and efficient.