An earthquake would open up new ground that is currently prohibitively expensive by regulation (the 'social' part of the problem ) to allow enough housing to be built to reduce cost significantly.
Homeless people still exist where housing is dirt cheap. It doesn't matter whether the rent is $2500 or $500 when you don't have the skills or mental health to be employed at all.
I imagine that strained resources in a disaster would drive many to leave the area. Katrina, for example, led many poorer people to leave New Orleans permanently.
On the other hand, the homeless are used to dealing with meager resources and might be able to better tolerate a crisis situation.
In the Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake a few years back many of those killed were from the masonry facade of buildings collapsing into the street.
There was even an earthquake a few months earlier that killed nobody because it was in the middle of the night.If something similar happened in SF then the front of buildings falling into the street/sidewalk could kill lots of homeless even if the buildings themselves stayed fairly intact.
The real problem with rent control is SFs /bizarre/ implementation: it's determined by the age of the house, not the financial position or age of the residents.
I know multiple 20-30 year olds earning Bay Area tech salaries who have rent control. Which is insane.
Which suggests that rent control is not about protecting those that need low cost housing. It's also interesting the one-on-one adversarial relationship that rent control creates. What is the goal of rent control? Presumably it's something more beneficial and less tautological than to "control rent".
I have been looking for a house to buy in SF for the last 6 months. What's been very interesting is that most of the houses we have reviewed, did not have solid foundations (many being 2-unit condos). They are all located in liquefaction zones and the disclosure packages mentioned the foundations had cracks (or needed retrofitting). Still, buyers did not care and bid huge amount of money. Our estate agent told us the average buyer does not take that into consideration nor care to retrofit the foundation. Scary.
Foster city real estate is an enigma. Had anecdotally heard from a lot of people that houses close to the bay are sinking very gradually. Nothing seems to affect the prices though :-)
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 76.3 ms ] thread2 birds, one stone.
That being said, I'm certainly not learned on the subject.
On the other hand, the homeless are used to dealing with meager resources and might be able to better tolerate a crisis situation.
I'm not sure if your comment was meant to echo Jonathan Swift.
There was even an earthquake a few months earlier that killed nobody because it was in the middle of the night.If something similar happened in SF then the front of buildings falling into the street/sidewalk could kill lots of homeless even if the buildings themselves stayed fairly intact.
I know multiple 20-30 year olds earning Bay Area tech salaries who have rent control. Which is insane.