I don’t think anybody thinks that.
Not explicitly, maybe, but implicitly, absolutely, and in multiple ways:
- Supporting the system that creates one over the other
- Having ‘bootstrap’ attitudes about the poor
- Worrying about property value over utilization
- Complaining about the homeless rather than the lack of action on housing
- Voting against people who run on public housing
In so, so many ways, people say they prefer the latter over the former. Usually just with the caveat that the homeless people also be invisible.
Maybe we should institute a tax on underutilized land in metro areas.
Land Value Tax 👀
I think a simple law that if there is a building, it must be in a repaired state.
In St. Louis a person opened large portions of the city where they’ve let the holes decay.
He should have to keep them in a proper upkeep or tear them down.
Fuck anyone that uses money to buy things and let them rot. That’s a purposefully broad statement.
Based Geoism.
I wonder who is doing this voting? Oh, it’s people who live in the areas we can’t afford to live in. And capitalists add lobbying power to those voters selfish interests.
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In the United States at least, your local government’s public hearings for new housing developments kinda begs to differ.
People will demand the homeless be eliminated from their area while simultaneously opposing development of housing or shelters for the homeless in their area.
So maybe you’re right though: they don’t hate the apartments more, they simply can’t make up their mind on which they hate more.
I agree but want to say everyone jumps to homeless. There are a ton of normal people that are suffering from high rent, lack of options, etc. We need to think about way more than homeless.
So it sounds like zoning laws are the problem?
In some cases. But even proposed changes to zoning laws can get this kind of opposition.
Aside from zoning laws, there’s the lack of a unified federal intervention. This prevents any one area from addressing the local homeless issue because any area that takes steps to address it will consequently absorb more homeless individuals from other places in the country. For example, if a city in California develops a program to house any homeless individuals, then homeless individuals from other cities and states will be more likely to go to said city to get housed. Even worse, there are states that would actually pay for their transportation. What would happen is that either the city would have to solve a much larger homeless problem as new homeless move into town, or the initial wave of homeless people will be house while the new arrivals and homeless will stay homeless, leaving a continued homeless problem.
Succinctly put.
I think it’s more so that people don’t want an apartment complex built in their backyard, not that they are opposed to them being built in an area where there is proper infrastructure
It’s not far off what many think. Many think apartments are, oh so many adjectives, dirty, poor, unsanitary, inhumane, cruel, unusual, etc.
Who is “many”? Do you have surveys and data to support this?
Go to/watch any planning or proposal meeting and watch the pearl clutching and nimbyism. I think you know this but you want to demand “studies” instead of engaging in good faith.
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Second reply from user nutandcross for posterity;
I went to a planning meeting in my neighborhood and it wasn’t like that at all. Why did you lie about that?
Also, why don’t you value scientific research and evidence? Because they don’t corroborate your perverted worldview?
I think this is one of those communists who can’t be bothered to actually read or live by anything. The meeting was full of shouting communists, whose side I’m on, regarding a city golf course and it’s removal. You were way off. Why did you act like you knew what was going to happen? I’m not mad I’m just confused like, did you really think it was going to be like how you prejudged it or are you towing the disinformation line?
This is why it’s never good to engage with adolescents as someone with an intellectual conscience, and not just some wishful-idea-drunk autist that can’t tell human faces apart.
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Third reply from user nutandcross for posterity:
Answer: why did you lie to me?
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This is the response from user nutandcross for posterity, read to the end:
“instead of engaging in good faith”
So facts and good faith ethics are mutually exclusive?
I just got back from a planning meeting and it was nothing like how you said it would be. Why would you lie to me about that?
Why are you just constantly just lying to people from your room on the Internet? It’s it because when you die, you’ll just vanish and leave a bodily mess because you never became anything, never understood what it meant to be a human? Because you’ve turned yourself over to bad ideas cause your own were worse and now you’re some pimpled Putin puppet.
Communism, fascism, Jordan Peterson, Trumpist demagogues thrive on weak 14-year-old minds hungry to assert their powerful opinion on something they’ve have no actual experience with
I urge you to visit these Utopias, maybe move there. There you won’t be called parasite, you will experience the insouciant freedom of the lodged and suckling tick. Maybe the reason you feel so bad is that you don’t belong in a free nation because you’re too chickenshit to exist on your own merit.
They also recruit and weaponize mentally vulnerable people like young autistic men (4chan, Bannon, cp forums), here’s just a couple I’m sure you can can find commie versions of these stories you can stomach (you can use these to strengthen your good faith arguments):
You’re all George Santos wannabes in five years, too. Fucking garbage. My family didn’t fight and die so a bunch of little kids could run around with Hitler mustaches telling me which way to think is the correct way to think according to the correct men. Everyone can see how sweaty and dangerous and anti-social utopian philosophies really are except the fevered adherent who always ends up dead or in a cell. You’d shit your pants in a fight.
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I’d gladly live in one of those apartments in the first picture if it meant that everyone could have a home
I’d gladly walk my ass out to the wilderness rather than live in an apartment block, but at least then there’d be an extra spot.
The nice thing is in an anarchist society you could do just that, and no one would stop you
I’d personally prefer to be surrounded by people
Which is why I’m an anarchist. Pretty much every other system would force me to attempt to be happy in an apartment block, or waste huge amounts of resources creating suburbs that are still too goddamn crowded for me
I would like to share your attitude but fear the consequences when millions seek a place in the wilderness. What do you do when you arrive and your neighbor asks you to move on because he wants to be more alone?
I want to be more alone too, so I’d probably not get to the point where I was close enough to have them tell me to go away.
However, most people probably wouldn’t like the actual wilderness. They want a big country house somewhere and when they find out they need to build it themselves they’ll go back to the apartment blocks.
One reason I’m a fan of making cities less objectively terrible is that more people will live in them and be even further away from my hovel.
If everyone thought like this, everyone would have a home.
And 50 or so people would own all of the rest of the land and do nothing with it because we’re too fucking stupid to realize that a system that wants us all to live in 50m² micro apartments is a load of shit, and strung together by a greedy few.
There is enough land for us all to live comfortably, but a fraction of a percent don’t want anyone to use most of the land for anything useful so hey let’s just give up and take almost-squalor because at least it not squalor!
Fuck both these pictures.
“Land-usage” is such a narrow-minded way to think about the implicit wants and needs of society. You sound like you’ve never been to actual cities, or never got your head far enough out of your arse to actually experience one.
North American suburban sprawl already proves that “enough land for us all to live comfortably” is a terrible way to live sociable lives and drains the economy due to massive swathes of those lands being used for roads and the maintenance of said roads.
I implore you to take a trip to almost any European city, and see for yourself what actual “comfortable living” for most people looks like.
I’ve lived in cities my whole life, which paints a pretty broad picture of you doesn’t it? Couldn’t even get the premise of your own bullshit comment right.
You make dense housing like these apartments because it is the most practical way to house everybody quickly. Once you take care of the immediate problem, homelessness, you can continue to expand and build nicer, bigger housing for everyone.
What’s more important, that we have enough resources to house everyone, but there are still people forced to live on the streets or the fact that you don’t like the inconvenience of living in an apartment because it’s too small for you even in the short term? Guess that makes you one of the greedy few that can’t see past their own problems to think of their community.
Fuck you doubly.
You agreed with me and then said fuck you? Weird take but okay.
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The USSR didn’t do much good but those apartment buildings are definitely good. I used to live in a soviet apartment building and the funny thing about that was that every wall was a load bearing wall since all of them could hold up everything. They were thick as hell and fully concrete.
Every wall was a wall and not a cardboard decoration of a wall
FTFY. Not all of them were load-bearing, mind you, they were just proper walls made of wall.
I don’t think: “ah, buildings again. I’d rather live in camps featuring trash scent.”
The bottom picture also has a high rise apartment building in the background.
The communist housing blocks are also not super high on my list of “why I don’t want to live in a communist dictatorship”
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Yeah, but I didn’t have to pay anything for those people to live in tents. I keep my money out of their lazy hands.
/s, deeply, if it isn’t obv.
/s
And for those unaware, the cost of homelessness does exist, and it is quite high. We pay for it through emergency services (police, doctors, ambulance, hospital beds), waste removal services, etc.
The problem needs fixed, and part of the solution is commie blocks unironically.
You are forgetting the cost of building “asshole design” infrastructure, like spikes under bridges, instead of building affordable housing.
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I don’t get people that have such a visceral reaction to apartments (the horror). What they write is frankly hilarious how they think. Right up there with what they write about transit (ohhh noooo) and electric stoves [sobbing noises].
There’s a pretty big spectrum though. On the one hand you have people in suburbs or in-city suburbs complaining about not building the occasional apartment building, essentially because they’re scared of poor people, but then on the other hand you have people living in dense desirable mid sized cities watching them get manhattanized and have their relatively dense yet still pleasant row houses get torn to build rows of ugly skyscrapers that block sunlight from even reaching street level.
The shift of housing from being predominantly individually owned to being parts of major buildings has also come along with the corporatization of real estate, where individuals have less choice, less freedom, and are in many many cases, are being actively exploited by for profit landlords and real estate developers.
Yes, we need to density and build more apartments but people on the left these days who I normally agree with are so laser focused on building housing at all costs that they don’t even realize that they’re racing to the bottom. By today’s standards Jane Jacobs, basically the founder of the entire modern urbanism movement, would be a NIMBY just because she advocated for making sure that cities remain livable rather than just building at all costs.
Let’s build way more low and mid rise apartment buildings, and let’s build way more transit so that cities other than just the major ones are livable without a car, let’s ba airbnb, and let’s severely tax real estate and landlord profits to prevent them from hoarding supply. And yeah we’re gonna have to build some high rises, but let’s not pretend like replacing all of our individual housing with towers is universally a great thing.
You’re showing exactly what I said.
apartment building, essentially because they’re scared of poor people
Fake association that people in apartments are poor. Don’t know if you hold that idea, but you’re repeating it
ugly skyscrapers
You’ve now defined them as ugly and thus undesirable.
individuals have less choice, less freedom
Now you say apartments are against freeeeeddooomm lol.
actively exploited
As if you can’t own a condo.
Or if we increase apartments builds then there will be actual competition. Instead of the current scarcity. Basic supply and demand.
building housing at all costs
Not like we have a mf housing crisis. Noooo.
making sure that cities remain livable rather than just building at all costs.
Now you suggest that building apartments makes things unlivable! The very place people live is somehow unlivable. Or that apartments inherently make the surrounding area undesirable.
Yeah. Visceral reaction to apartments. Peace.
Fucking tell me about it. The best part is how they try to justify how they are only focused on themselves by shit like calling apartments “inhumane.” JFC, living in an apartment is not inhumane. Living on the street is inhumane.
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Why do you think people are living this way? Do you think it’s personal failure or maybe desperation? Where else do they have to go? If you tear down the buildings but don’t address the root problem, do you think they will just stop existing or will they be forced to find a new spot to live? Were these places always this way? What would you like me to call them?
Please continue making assumptions about my personal life and deriding me for my choice of words rather than contributing something useful. I try to meet people where they are at, which means speaking to what they know. In this case, you seem to know the symptom, but not the cause.
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Pretty sure that’s just NIMBYs.
Who is this society guy? He sounds stupid
Uh, the billionaires don’t see that. Even the millionaires can avoid seeing that.
Don’t worry, they’ve outlawed homelessness. Problem solved!
Literally though. And there’s a whole practice of hostile architecture that makes it harder and more uncomfortable to be homeless.
The point of hostile architecture isn’t to solve homelessness, just to send them to the next block/town over (not saying you don’t understand that, just pointing it out).
I wonder if hostile architecture also kills people. Increasing exposure to cold and reducing opportunities to rest doesn’t seem good for your chances for survival. I guess that would solve homelessness, but in the worst most morbid way possible.
You’re absolutely right in your suspicion. Like so many “let’s punish the poor and vulnerable so they’ll stop being poor and vulnerable” policies that people think are just a “righteous” inconvenience, hostile architecture DOES kill people.
It’s social murder just so the more fortunate don’t have to look at the consequences of an unjust system.
What is this trying to say???
That low income housing is good but people like when homeless people suffer.
Or that people living in block housing is preferable than some living in suburbs and some being homeless.
That’s a bad take.
The reason the meme doesn’t work is because it’s forgetting the core sticking point: cost. Of course people would rather homeless people have housing instead of living in tent cities everywhere. But they also don’t have any desire to pay for it when it comes time to do something and of course make moral arguments against the homeless. It’s all gross and true but the meme fails to communicate it by framing it as an aesthetic issue.
TL;DR: The two choices don’t frame the debate correctly.
Of course people would rather homeless people have housing instead of living in tent cities everywhere. But they also don’t have any desire to pay for it when it comes time to do something and of course make moral arguments against the homeless.
These are two different groups of people
The first, who are on board with state housing projects, are the common people who still have empathy for their fellow people
The second, who are totally on board with homelessness because the housing projects are “too expensive”, belong to the political and economic elite
But they also don’t have any desire to pay for it
Yeah, that cognitive dissonance doesn’t exist, and is misleading.
Dude it’s exactly like public transportation. Everyone allegedly supports it and pays lip service but then never wants to pay or use it. You’re acting like it’s so clearly bisected but it’s a venn diagram. Most people aren’t pieces of shit and don’t want people to be homeless, but then they’re unwilling to do anything to solve it because it requires money and effort. We also have internalized that a lot of homeless people “did something wrong” to get there, which doesn’t help.
You’re trying to oversimplify a complex cultural issue. That’s what is truly misleading here. I have no idea why you’re picking an argument with someone who probably largely agrees with you. But this site has quickly become reddit-lite so I’m not surprised.
Sidebar: That’s not what cognitive dissonance means. It’s a question of willpower/desire to actually help. No one wants people to be homeless but they also aren’t willing to do anything about it. That’s not cognitive dissonance.
Most people aren’t pieces of shit and don’t want people to be homeless, but then they’re unwilling to do anything to solve it because it requires money and effort.
Dishonest framing. The average worker has nothing to do with this issue. They are not the people we’re asking to solve this. Like I already said, it’s the political and economic elite. Capitalists. The state. Where is the worker’s money supposed to be sent? On what is their effort to be put?
We also have internalized that a lot of homeless people “did something wrong” to get there, which doesn’t help.
Yep, neoliberal chuds, as I said
You’re trying to oversimplify a complex cultural issue
How? What variables have I abstracted into a black box, here? What few mechanisms have I reduced the issue to? To me, “people want affordable housing but don’t wanna pay for it” sounds extremely oversimplified.
I have no idea why you’re picking an argument with someone who probably largely agrees with you.
I’m not “picking an argument with you” lol. I’m just correcting what I see as a defeatist, “what can we even do” attitude.
That’s not what cognitive dissonance means. It’s a question of willpower/desire to actually help. No one wants people to be homeless but they also aren’t willing to do anything about it. That’s not cognitive dissonance.
Sounds like semantic fudging to me. “These people need homes! No, stop building homes, it’s too expensive!!” sounds like cognitive dissonance to me.
When did I ever say we can’t do anything about it? You’re just making shit up now. I am describing a societal impulse, a general attitude. It clearly exists, as evidenced by the lack of housing for the homeless and the utter disdain we often treat them with.
There is a difference between what policies people support and what they say they support on an individual basis. People say they want infrastructure and good roads, but then suddenly they rage when it’s time to pony up. It’s not cognitive dissonance, it’s framing and understanding. It’s stated vs actual preferences.
I don’t get what you’re trying to accomplish here.
There’s also the third group of people who realizes that homelessness is a complex problem that won’t be solved by more housing.
That’s just a cop out. Of course it’s complex. No reason to just throw your hands in the air and say “it’s too hard, let’s just leave it to the market”. We already tried that. It led to this.
Also, no one is saying, literally, “building more houses will fix homelessness alone, nothing else needed, DURRR”. That’s just a strawman.
What we also need is a complete end to landlording. But this of course won’t happen under the current system, because capitalism fucking worships private property.
The entire post is about low income housing as a solution to people sleeping in tents. Building more apartments won’t stop people from living in tents.
Pointing out that it’s a complex issue that isn’t solved by more houses is pretty much the opposite of a strawman
No, that is not the point it’s making. It’s making the point that neoliberal chuds would prefer to see homeless people than affordable housing. It doesn’t say that building housing itself is the sole solution. Hell, it doesn’t say anything at all about building. We don’t see any construction in that picture, the blocks are just there. You could read it as saying that already built flats should just be given to people.
I don’t think it fails, but it does come from a specific cultural perspective.
Those are “ugly Soviet buildings” built by the government. That already communicates cost and the unwillingness to bear it in the US.
Nonono, it’s unreasonable for taxes to go toward helping the poor. They live on the street and starve by their own choice. No one wants to pay for those wretched people!
Where are the police when you need them to quickly usher the inconvenient truth of my selfish lifestyle out of my sight?
But most people aren’t really complaining about there being apartments. They complain about paying for the apartments. It’s not the actual visuals that come up. That’s at best a tertiary concern, it rarely comes up if ever. The image of the soviet dacha or Khrushchevkas is a bit of a fringe reference for most americans, definitely in the context of discussing housing the homeless. They’re just not really linked unless you REALLY want to stretch the point and discuss housing projects. But that really would be a stretch. You’d be better off dropping the soviet apartment idea altogether, because housing projects are less about visuals and more about who occupies them.
You’re in lemmy.ml, a Marxist instance, reading a meme criticizing capitalism and saying that Soviet apartment buildings are a stretch?
No, they’re the whole point of the meme. Paying for them is the point, who paid for the Soviet buildings? The message is that the Soviet Union built these and American capitalists allow people to live in tents on the street (while calling those buildings ugly). Housing projects would be a perfect “yeah but” except they are very low priority and not so common.
Ugly Soviet buildings are themselves a meme. Up there with the hammer and sickle and the color beige when Americans visualize the Soviet Union.
Honestly I just feel like you can scroll around this comment section and see the various ways this has been interpreted to see that, at the end of the day, it’s just too unclear here.
You’re possibly right here. The meme is just framed too poorly to be sure lol
Exactly. It’s not hard to keep the exterior of those buildings looking nice. You just have to pay someone to maintain it.
It’s also forgetting that a significant portion of homeless people are homeless by choice, or are homeless for reasons that just providing housing won’t resolve.
People have this idea that all homeless people are just regular people who experienced hard times, but that’s just a minority. Most homeless are mentally ill people who won’t take their meds or drug addicts who aren’t willing to quit.
It sucks, and they shouldn’t have to live on the streets, but you can’t force people to change.
I don’t think people have that idea at all, if anything they are more likely to assume a homeless person is mentally ill and drug addicted than they are to think they are experiencing hard times or employed but unable to pay for housing.
However housing first has been pretty successful, but goes against many people’s values for some reason. The big fear of someone getting something undeserved is strong.
Some might say the big fear of someone getting something undeserved is strong enough to prop up an entire political party.
But it is not exclusive to them, of course. Some are just very bad about it.
Framing this as primarily a choice is deeply problematic.
For many it literally is a choice, and framing homelessness as something that no one has control over is problematic.
No don’t change the parameters here. You said “most” are mentally ill or drug addicts who are
“unwilling” to get help.I never said it was something no one has control over. I said “framing it primarily as a choice.” Do not put words in my mouth.
You’re more than welcome to look up statistics. ~60% of the chronicly homeless have life long mental health issues, and ~80% have substance abuse issues.
Pretty much every city/state has resources to help the homeless, but the homeless have to be willing to accept the help. Most shelters are drug free, so addicts don’t want to stay there and they won’t accept people whose mental illness makes them violent.
You can’t force a person to take their medicine or stop doing drugs unless you want to start building more prisons.
Again, I was never saying that all homelessness is a choice, but a lot of people choose not to accept the help that’s available.
Source: My wife has her masters in the field and used to work with these populations as an addiction counselor, in Texas, so I know that resources exist at a state level even in a state that clearly hates it’s citizens.
You’re more than welcome to look up statistics. ~60% of the chronicly homeless have life long mental health issues, and ~80% have substance abuse issues.
When did I say anything remotely resembling what you’re implying here? You are saying it is mostly a choice. That is what I am disputing. That is not statistics. You are assigning value and making assumptions in the absence of evidence.
Again, I was never saying that all homelessness is a choice, but a lot of people choose not to accept the help that’s available.
I did not say you said all homelessness is a choice. I said, for the 3rd time now, that I objected to your assigning choice as the primary cause that explains why most people are homeless. Stop reducing our points and putting up strawmen. Stop pretending I’m saying things I didn’t say. Stop responding to arguments I am not making. So let’s try this again:
You said:
“People have this idea that all homeless people are just regular people who experienced hard times, but that’s just a minority. Most homeless are mentally ill people who won’t take their meds or drug addicts who aren’t willing to quit.”
I said:
“Framing this as primarily a choice is deeply problematic.”
So are you going to actually talk about what we said or are you going to keep building strawmen and pretending you can’t read what I’m writing?
This is just conservative propaganda
I’m a liberal, buddy. Homelessness is a very complex issue that won’t be solved by building more housing.
Yeah, liberals and conservatives only differ on whether gay people should be put to death, so you’re not really saying much. And being liberal does not, whatsoever, make you immune to conservative propaganda. We live in a capitalist society, founded on liberal values: whether conservatives know it or not, it is liberal values they are conserving.
Also, as I’ve said about 5 times now, no one is saying that building houses alone will solve the issue. So stop beating that strawman.
I believe you are arguing in good faith, so I’m hoping you can provide a source for your claim that the majority suffer from mental illness or drug addiction.
Yeah that can’t be right… The problem with these discussions I think is there’s a very big difference between the technical definition of homeless, and the one people use colloquially.
It’s the most visible minority of homeless people that tend to be the entrenched ones people think of when they think of homelessness, and those people essentially have nothing in common with the other “homeless” people other than having no permanent home. It makes the discussion harder as people are using the same word but talking about different things.
I think it’s a confused message. Not the best meme.
But the basic idea is that homelessness is caused by people preferring houses (“urban sprawl”) rather than apartment complexes.
It assumes you can recognize Soviet housing block, designed to quickly house as many people as possible. It has nothing to do with a preference for houses over apartments.
If you look through the rest of the photos in the source article, ask if living like they do is worse than homeless in a tent.
It’s one of the worst memes ever.
It’s trying to say that low income housing is the solution to homelessness.
It’s wrong, but that’s the point it’s trying to make.
No, not really. But it’s easy to read that into it.
seems like it’s trying to imply that homeless people are homeless because houses are too expensive.
as if the guys in the bottom pic could afford a department in the top picture, but have to live in a tent because housing is expensive.
I think what the meme does say is that OP is mentally 12.
The top is meant to represent the socialist solution to homelessness. These are socialist block apartments built to ensure that everyone had housing because homelessness was a huge problem. They were functional, but because they were built to functionally address a need quickly, they weren’t large or luxurious. They were built to last and the rent levels were controlled at a low rate if the people didn’t outright own the place themselves.
The bottom picture is the liberal solution to homelessness. Apartments suck, fuck the homeless, jack up the rent prices. The convenience of the few is prioritized over the needs of the many.
Funny how someone who is mentally 12 could put this together, but you couldn’t be bothered.
It is driving me to despair that so many people just don’t get this.
your average homeless will sell the house in 5 microseconds for crack money or sign it away under duress.
homeless people need safer shelters, healthcare, detoxing, therapy, coaching and resources to help them out of the downward spiral they are in.
throwing free housing to vulnerable people suffering from addiction and mental illnesses is one of the stupidest things I have heard.
I hate how when there is any picture of Soviet blocks it’s always shot in autumn or winter when it’s overcast. I live in an ex Soviet country and when these bad boys are maintained they can outperform new apartments, be it in functionality, amenities or price.
always shot in autumn or winter when it’s overcast.
To me this adds a lot to the charm. I’d love to live there (at least for some time)!
Is this really even a meme? Just seems like some random slice of depression.
Aren’t these basically the same picture? Like the second photo has a literal apartment building on the right of the background
Imagine thinking living in an apartment with heat, water, furniture, dishwasher, clothes washer, electricity, all the amenities, is the same as living in a tent. Exactly what the meme says: brainwashed society.
I’m just saying the two are part of the same picture, both literally and metaphorically. Often when people go against these they point to the homeless in cities. I get and agree with the point, I just don’t agree with the presentation; maybe some similar picture for the bottom in a suburb would do
both literally and metaphorically.
Imagine thinking that tents must be associated with apartments. And that apartments must be associated with tents.
See meme again: brainwashed society.
