[lr4444lr]

I never understood why even though homelessness is concentrated in the U.S. cities where car ownership is difficult (NYC, SF, some parts of Boston), when said areas only account even collectively for a fairly small portion of the country's overall population. Wouldn't it make more sense to help these people get a vehicle, and hwlp them resettle in areas that already have much cheaper housing and are desperate for workers? Such places might even have local government incentives if these new arrivals could commit to staying for a certain period.

Surely a large number of them are working low barrier to entry jobs that exist widely across the U.S.

[faeriechangling]

It does not make sense, vehicle usage is expensive, becoming more expensive due to energy costs increasing over time, and car owners are not paying for the true cost of their cars because externalities like the environmental impact of cars isn’t priced in.

A major policy objective is to get climate change under control, sprawl directly makes that problem worse.

Also think about why it is that some cities are so big. Usually big cities have access to a port, a railway, things that make moving goods cheap. New York has ports, Boston has ports, SF has ports, and part of the reason housing is so expensive is that being next to water constrains the space available for development. Building towns in bumfuck nowhere may be cheap in terms of land but that’s because actually living there results in high prices for daily living. A MASSIVE part of what is driving housing prices is energy prices, because it can make sense to spend more on housing and less on energy.

What makes more sense is a hub and spoke model. You don’t nessecarily want people living in a big city, but you can still efficiently move goods from the big city to “spoke” cities, and then you have these “spoke” cities adopt things like high/medium density housing like apartments, townhouses, and mixed vertical commercial/residental. Have some residents with cars, some without, so the latter can bum off the former. Take advantage of shared transportation options like package delivery (shared truck) or ride sharing (shared cars). Also by doing things in this way, you have to ensure people have services they need locally available and can easily afford to access them even if they have no car.

If your solution requires everybody to have a car it’s no solution at all because we literally cannot afford to buy a car for everybody especially given 50 years from now we’re likely going to run dry on cheap oil and we have no replacement available that can scale to the entire US population aside from maybe light EVs like e-bikes. 50 years isn’t that long of a time when we’re talking infrastructure. We really need to prioritize our transportation energy usage and focus it to applications like shipping goods and construction, not use it to move residents around because we designed towns in a way that they’re unviable if everybody does not have a car. In fact, we should be planning for this future NOW by making livability without a car table stakes for development of middle/low income communities.

[hamandcheese]

You seem to be ignoring reality. In most of America, a car is the only form of reliable transportation, and there is little to no bike infrastructure. Even if there was good bike infrastructure, everything is too damn far apart.

A 50 year plan for infrastructure to change that doesn't do anything for homeless today. But a car might.

[faeriechangling]

I understand it’s the only viable means of transortation. That is why it is an extremely bad idea to build more communities where a car is the only viable means of transportation.

If you transition to walkable/bikable communities now, you will be able to keep wealthier people in the car centric communities while allowing poorer people to use the newer more walking/biking centric communities. If you go “but cars are the only option because we are America and we can’t ever change our ways, anything that doesn’t immediately solve our issues in the short term is bad” you are going to end up with a fucking catastrophic poverty in 50 years.

You are the one ignoring reality. The reality is either America changes or there is a terrible future ahead. The idea we’re all going to have minimum wage workers using cars in low density suburbs is a fantasy. A dream. An illusion. It’s NEVER going to happen. If you continue building car centric communities, people will have to use them without cars, and it will be terrible, that’s just the reality.

[hamandcheese]

We can give cars to homeless people today, and also build walkable communities so that one day we don't need cars.

[earthling8118]

You seem to be ignoring their words and also reality. Yes, there is not a good solution in America that doesn't involve a car. That's the problem they are trying to speak about. Applying short term bandaids to the problem will absolutely help the people current experiencing struggles but isn't going to make it any less important to solve this at a societal level.