Especially seeing how these types of buildings being gentrified to the benefit of the types of people commonly perusing this site. Nice to have people see the real world implications of their desires.
Indeed, an interesting coincidence is that it's often the same list of cities that are cited as being hot for techies, and also for having a housing crisis.
Please don't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is spam or off-topic, flag it. Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead. If you flag, please don't also comment that you did.
Ok will do. There's not a lot of context you can give while flagging something though (zero), so it seems easy to be misinterpreted by mods as being flagged for some other reason than that I thought it was off-topic.
One of the problems is that you probably can't legally build something like that again. You have to build an apartment with a full kitchen and parking spots.
I am curious whether creating "welfare cities" would be viable. I get that people don't want to create ghettos, but politically homelessless is currently preferable to higher property taxes and density. That is just our current reality.
You could locate them in areas that naturally would have a low cost of living (mild climate to keep energy costs low, few natural disasters, no prior pension fund debt for services, etc) and design them to be cheap and efficiently provide some services with a subsidized bus into town. You could avoid restrictions on zoning and building codes that prevent housing that is low cost.
This chain of inquiry implies that it's reasonable to grant a pass to make residences without the capability to support basic functions of living. Or am I missing the meaning of "Full kitchen" here, which I'd define as as cooking surface, sink, a couple cabinets, and some spots for appliances which if done right can become quite a tight footprint.
If the Parking spot is the sticking point here, please consider that it really isn't reasonable to expect someone to be tightly constrained too just their current city, or their general locale. That's what gets you predatory markets and price gouging. I.e. the "convenience tax". The solution to that is accommodating the full spectrum of transit aids a society sports.
So... I apologize if I'm being daft... How would one propose that at least 1parking space per household is an unreasonable requirement for urban development in the abscence of other controls/subsidized infrastructure the current residents are willing to foot the bill for?
Because a kitchen isn't a basic function for living as these people demonstrate. They use a hot plate and microwave, not a stove/oven/large fridge/dishwasher. They are making do with a single sink, the bathroom one.
Obviously not great, but far better than where they were pushed.
These people cannot afford cars anyway. So even if transit sucks and it requires them to walk 20 minutes each way, they are using it.
Wouldn't that be something like a large "family hotel" (most hotel rooms don't have kitchen and 1 parking spot per room). Would I not be able to build a 4/5 story hotel with (legally) minimal facilities and rent it at very low prices (say $10 to $15 the night) to these people?
EDIT: Asking as someone who doesn't live in the US
Depends on zoning laws in the area and how much residents nearby have a say in things.
In the US, there are plenty of cities where neighbors would block a modernist concrete house from being built because it "ruins the neighborhood character". And similarly, lots of neighborhoods are notorious for blocking multi-tenant housing because it's housing for poorer people--they'll rarely say it so blatantly, though.
> KNKX tracked down 12 former tenants of the Merkle displaced in 2018 and found that half — six in total — spent time homeless at some point after they were forced out of the building, staying in shelters, cars, storage units or the streets. That’s according to interviews with the tenants themselves, their relatives, or people who helped them.
> In just three years, at least five former tenants have died.
> KNKX first interviewed Merkle tenants as they scrambled to find housing in the days before the building closed. That’s where the story ended: with residents teetering on the brink of homelessness. For years, no one knew the full toll of displacing them.
Putting aside the housing/humanitarian issue, which I am sympathetic too, I find it disingenuous to try to connect some of these deaths to the lack of housing.
One person died of brain cancer. Another had jaw cancer. Others had chronic kidney issues and were on dialysis, which even in the best of cases, is associated with severe mortality risks and much shortened lifespans.
I am sympathetic to the fact that people in such conditions should not be left to die out in the cold, but I don't think being homeless killed them, severe illness did. If they remained in this housing, I would bet they would still have died. I know very privileged people that unfortunately also died way too young and unfairly from cancer or other diseases.
That's as obtuse as saying getting pushed out of a plane didn't kill a person; the impact did.
> Studies show that people who die while homeless in the U.S. are, on average, about 30 years younger than people who die in the broader population.
If the people were living stable housing, they could focus on getting the treatment they needed instead of worrying about where they could sleep the next night, or whether their belongings would be stolen.
Broadly speaking, I agree with you that lack of housing can lead to increased mortality, whether from greater exposure to violence from other transients, heat or cold stress, greater drug use caused by stress, making it harder to get attention to medical issues, or other factors. I also think some of the population is homeless because of medical issues, such as severe mental illness, and those are a risk factor that lead to early death and contribute to the statistic you cited.
At the same time, I continue to think it is unsurprising that a group of 5 specific people with existing cancer (brain cancer no less!) and severe kidney issues died, and suspect they would have died regardless. The 5-year survival rate for people with a cancerous brain or CNS tumor is apparently 36%; in an elderly person on medicaid (if anything), whether housed or not, I suspect it is less.
In other words, I don't think we disagree, but think that this is a bad group of 5 individuals to use to advocate the issue...
When I was in elementary school class one day I tipped my chair backward far enough that the kid behind me thought I'd tip over, so he put his foot gently against the bottom of one leg to prop me up. I didn't feel it, and so relied on it to tip back even further.
Then the kid had to stand up, and withdrew his foot, without malice. I flopped over backward and rung my bell pretty good on the floor. I don't think that would have happened if that kid hadn't propped me up.
I can't blame the kid who tried to help. It was my own damn fault.
Charity can do a lot of good, but not necessarily. And even when it does there is no obligation to continue it forever.
Title of the article should be “low supply of housing units relative to demand resulted in higher prices than some people could afford, possibly resulting in some people dying”.
I do prefer my non fiction without fluff, at least when it is in the form of news articles.
Otherwise, it is about as useful as writing an article about a Hawaii beach resort owner forcing me out because I am unable to continue paying for my stay at a price agreeable to both parties.
Right, because when using the kind of flowery prose you see in this article, we would, hypothetically, confuse your inability to afford Don Perignon at dinners that your personal chef prepares - with the problems of people literally starving to death.
They sound pretty similar, though, if the language you are using solely revolves around supply, demand, and market clearing prices. [1] Couch it in those euphemisms, and your tragedy of the resort doesn't sound all that much different from theirs.
[1] It has been postulated by some that the inability to afford food at market-clearing prices has in certain locales and situations potentially resulted in negative health outcomes.
The problem of people starving to death due to high housing costs is not going to be solved by blaming it on single developers buying at a lower price and selling at a higher price, a thing that every business does.
What would solve the problem and help people is writing articles about who is causing the supply of housing to be insufficient relative to demand, and how political power can be re allocated to increase the supply of housing.
It is less informative ("how many people possibly died...")
It is wordier and less catchy, both bad for a headline.
Finally, it introduces speculation ("possibly resulting in some people dying") where the original article has none ("several years later, 3 out of 5 are dead..." you can conclude it was related, or not, but the headline doesn't take a position).
Is there something somewhere in between renting and home ownership? Something where you can live simply without having to deal with the extra responsibilities of home ownership, but where you also don't have the risk of getting bought out and evicted? I guess that's like rent control, but it wouldn't apply to every property. Is this kind of what Section 8 is?
Public housing. We could use a couple hundred thousand units in the USA. People love to rag on housing projects but at the end of the day, those units are occupied!
An other way might be to be a landlord with a basic apartment to rent out, and be willing to rent to Section 8 tenants. Although I think that only gives subsidies, and doesn't offer additional eviction protection.
I think we need to agree on two basic things in order to move forward:
1.) fact: not everyone is capable of supporting themselves (temporarily or permanently).
2.) cultural standard: it is unacceptable to allow people to die from exposure or hunger.
If we collectively agree (and believe this in our hearts, not just saying it), then we can prevent what happened in the article from recurring. It may be a matter of resources. We may need to provide something like state-run SROs for a hundred thousand people in this country. It will cost money.
Personally I would happily pay an extra 10% in taxes if I knew that nobody was forced to go hungry or sleep outside in this country. I have friends who were rough sleepers. I've come close to being homeless myself, which is incredibly stressful BTW.
You'd also want to add 3) not everyone should live in a high-cost-of-living area. There are lower CoL areas that could still provide good (or better, due to lower cost) services for people in need.
Your addition is your interpretation of how we might meet 1) and 2). There are other options, like addressing the causes of high CoL. Whereas you can't really fix severe intellectual disability or argue what exactly "dying from hypothermia" actually means.
There's a complicated and painful story here. According to other news sources, the Merkle Hotel was built in 1913 and was last operated as 40 single room occupancy units. The building was ill-maintained: it had rats, bedbugs, noise problems, and broken windows covered with plyboard. But it also cost less than $400 per month with no background checks or security deposits required.
KNKX wrote another article that explains why Seattle lost so much of this type of housing:
The key reason: following a deadly fire in a hotel like this in the 1970s, family members of victims sued the city. The city passed new safety ordinances. The safety ordinances brought higher safety and higher prices.
I see a lot of questions in this story but no easy answers. It's not safe to build more buildings like this one. It wasn't even sanitary or comfortable to live in the old one; someone could be fairly described as a "slumlord" for renting properties like the Merkle Hotel circa 2017. But forcing people on the edge out of a slumlord property is even worse for them. Building new properties is part of the solution, but it takes a long time for the 46 new micro-apartment units redeveloped on the site ("Tacoma Flats") to fall in price enough for people at these low income levels to afford them.
Brazilian flavellas are also cheap, or free. Comes with the downside of stray bullets and no justice. There are no good answer for operpopulation and migration to cities.
There have been decades of criticism of "slumlords", and various laws to bring up the standards of housing to what are essentially middle-class expectations.
This article now nostalgically glorifies real low-income housing with no proper kitchen, and mice and bedbugs.
It shows that you can't wave away problems with laws. Mandate nice apartments, and the cost will go up.
You can rely on charity or government programs, but the donors and taxpayers/voters have limited resources that they are willing to part with.
Substance abuse is a major factor because, honestly, few really make it out. It's most effective to do something before addiction.
I'm against the war on drugs in general. But when it comes to meth or herione, sometimes I wonder...
> There have been decades of criticism of "slumlords", and various laws to bring up the standards of housing to what are essentially middle-class expectations.
Most of the population is working class, and still needs housing. Middle-class standards are driven by middle-class affordability.
44 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 71.2 ms ] threadYou could locate them in areas that naturally would have a low cost of living (mild climate to keep energy costs low, few natural disasters, no prior pension fund debt for services, etc) and design them to be cheap and efficiently provide some services with a subsidized bus into town. You could avoid restrictions on zoning and building codes that prevent housing that is low cost.
This chain of inquiry implies that it's reasonable to grant a pass to make residences without the capability to support basic functions of living. Or am I missing the meaning of "Full kitchen" here, which I'd define as as cooking surface, sink, a couple cabinets, and some spots for appliances which if done right can become quite a tight footprint.
If the Parking spot is the sticking point here, please consider that it really isn't reasonable to expect someone to be tightly constrained too just their current city, or their general locale. That's what gets you predatory markets and price gouging. I.e. the "convenience tax". The solution to that is accommodating the full spectrum of transit aids a society sports.
So... I apologize if I'm being daft... How would one propose that at least 1parking space per household is an unreasonable requirement for urban development in the abscence of other controls/subsidized infrastructure the current residents are willing to foot the bill for?
Because a kitchen isn't a basic function for living as these people demonstrate. They use a hot plate and microwave, not a stove/oven/large fridge/dishwasher. They are making do with a single sink, the bathroom one.
Obviously not great, but far better than where they were pushed.
These people cannot afford cars anyway. So even if transit sucks and it requires them to walk 20 minutes each way, they are using it.
EDIT: Asking as someone who doesn't live in the US
In the US, there are plenty of cities where neighbors would block a modernist concrete house from being built because it "ruins the neighborhood character". And similarly, lots of neighborhoods are notorious for blocking multi-tenant housing because it's housing for poorer people--they'll rarely say it so blatantly, though.
tl;dr NIMBY
> KNKX tracked down 12 former tenants of the Merkle displaced in 2018 and found that half — six in total — spent time homeless at some point after they were forced out of the building, staying in shelters, cars, storage units or the streets. That’s according to interviews with the tenants themselves, their relatives, or people who helped them.
> In just three years, at least five former tenants have died.
> KNKX first interviewed Merkle tenants as they scrambled to find housing in the days before the building closed. That’s where the story ended: with residents teetering on the brink of homelessness. For years, no one knew the full toll of displacing them.
One person died of brain cancer. Another had jaw cancer. Others had chronic kidney issues and were on dialysis, which even in the best of cases, is associated with severe mortality risks and much shortened lifespans.
I am sympathetic to the fact that people in such conditions should not be left to die out in the cold, but I don't think being homeless killed them, severe illness did. If they remained in this housing, I would bet they would still have died. I know very privileged people that unfortunately also died way too young and unfairly from cancer or other diseases.
> Studies show that people who die while homeless in the U.S. are, on average, about 30 years younger than people who die in the broader population.
If the people were living stable housing, they could focus on getting the treatment they needed instead of worrying about where they could sleep the next night, or whether their belongings would be stolen.
At the same time, I continue to think it is unsurprising that a group of 5 specific people with existing cancer (brain cancer no less!) and severe kidney issues died, and suspect they would have died regardless. The 5-year survival rate for people with a cancerous brain or CNS tumor is apparently 36%; in an elderly person on medicaid (if anything), whether housed or not, I suspect it is less.
In other words, I don't think we disagree, but think that this is a bad group of 5 individuals to use to advocate the issue...
Then the kid had to stand up, and withdrew his foot, without malice. I flopped over backward and rung my bell pretty good on the floor. I don't think that would have happened if that kid hadn't propped me up.
I can't blame the kid who tried to help. It was my own damn fault.
Charity can do a lot of good, but not necessarily. And even when it does there is no obligation to continue it forever.
> But, to the tenants who lived there, it was just about the last place in the city where a disability check still covered rent.
The real problem seems to be that there was nowhere else they could go where rent was similarly affordable.
/s
Otherwise, it is about as useful as writing an article about a Hawaii beach resort owner forcing me out because I am unable to continue paying for my stay at a price agreeable to both parties.
They sound pretty similar, though, if the language you are using solely revolves around supply, demand, and market clearing prices. [1] Couch it in those euphemisms, and your tragedy of the resort doesn't sound all that much different from theirs.
[1] It has been postulated by some that the inability to afford food at market-clearing prices has in certain locales and situations potentially resulted in negative health outcomes.
What would solve the problem and help people is writing articles about who is causing the supply of housing to be insufficient relative to demand, and how political power can be re allocated to increase the supply of housing.
It is less informative ("how many people possibly died...")
It is wordier and less catchy, both bad for a headline.
Finally, it introduces speculation ("possibly resulting in some people dying") where the original article has none ("several years later, 3 out of 5 are dead..." you can conclude it was related, or not, but the headline doesn't take a position).
1.) fact: not everyone is capable of supporting themselves (temporarily or permanently).
2.) cultural standard: it is unacceptable to allow people to die from exposure or hunger.
If we collectively agree (and believe this in our hearts, not just saying it), then we can prevent what happened in the article from recurring. It may be a matter of resources. We may need to provide something like state-run SROs for a hundred thousand people in this country. It will cost money.
Personally I would happily pay an extra 10% in taxes if I knew that nobody was forced to go hungry or sleep outside in this country. I have friends who were rough sleepers. I've come close to being homeless myself, which is incredibly stressful BTW.
KNKX wrote another article that explains why Seattle lost so much of this type of housing:
https://www.knkx.org/south-sound/2021-12-10/in-the-loss-of-t...
The key reason: following a deadly fire in a hotel like this in the 1970s, family members of victims sued the city. The city passed new safety ordinances. The safety ordinances brought higher safety and higher prices.
I see a lot of questions in this story but no easy answers. It's not safe to build more buildings like this one. It wasn't even sanitary or comfortable to live in the old one; someone could be fairly described as a "slumlord" for renting properties like the Merkle Hotel circa 2017. But forcing people on the edge out of a slumlord property is even worse for them. Building new properties is part of the solution, but it takes a long time for the 46 new micro-apartment units redeveloped on the site ("Tacoma Flats") to fall in price enough for people at these low income levels to afford them.
https://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN2BZ132
This article now nostalgically glorifies real low-income housing with no proper kitchen, and mice and bedbugs.
It shows that you can't wave away problems with laws. Mandate nice apartments, and the cost will go up.
You can rely on charity or government programs, but the donors and taxpayers/voters have limited resources that they are willing to part with.
Substance abuse is a major factor because, honestly, few really make it out. It's most effective to do something before addiction.
I'm against the war on drugs in general. But when it comes to meth or herione, sometimes I wonder...
Not in the slightest. The article's stance on the matter is probably bessed summed up by this line:
Most of the population is working class, and still needs housing. Middle-class standards are driven by middle-class affordability.