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It’s Sick Because It’s Done By Design

A report from the Dallas Observer in Texas. “Khraish Khraish is no longer in the low-rent landlord business. Three years ago, Khraish was among several large-scale landlords targeted by the former mayor and City Council in a campaign to drive them out of business. Every single charge and accusation brought against Khraish, he and his lawyer eventually rebutted and defeated. But the damage was done.”

“Is there some fundamental underlying cause or force that explains our serial failures to get anything done about affordable housing in spite of our cyclical revisiting? ‘Here’s what I think is the real issue,’ Khraish said. ‘Everybody is paying lip service to this issue of affordable housing, but it’s not in City Hall’s best interest to have a lower rather than higher property tax base.'”

“‘Even though everybody likes to say we need affordable housing, the truth is that the city does not want it. What City Hall wants is as high a median housing price as possible. The constituents who would be occupying these houses do not make political contributions and are less likely to vote than higher income constituents. So there is absolutely no political incentive whatsoever to provide affordable housing in the city of Dallas.'”

“Khraish told me something remarkable about the families to whom he has sold his former rental houses in West Dallas: ‘In a couple years,’ he said, ‘the amount of money my homeowners are going to pay in property taxes per year is going to exceed the amount of principal and interest they must pay.'”

“‘I’m telling you, it’s sick. It’s sick. And it’s sick because it’s done by design. They know that these communities in Dallas cannot afford higher property taxes, and so that’s why they raise them the most, so they can get them out. Get them out. That’s what the whole point is. How do you raise the property tax base unless you get out the existing population and build something new and shiny there? And how does that jibe with your whole supposed lip-service mantra, ‘We need affordable housing?'”

From City Lab on California. “The week before Thanksgiving, housing Twitter exploded. The focus of the debate: the significance of vacancy rates. Comedian Kamau Bell wrote, ‘We’ve been led to believe that there’s a housing crisis in Oakland. But there are 4 VACANT units for every homeless person. This isn’t a housing crisis. It’s a crisis of greed.'”

“The contested report, ‘Who’s Buying Los Angeles?’ identified apartment vacancies as a more urgent issue, finding an average vacancy rate of 70 percent in 10 new apartment buildings in downtown Los Angeles. The authors noted that, despite these high vacancy rates, the apartments are not lowering their prices: ‘This is what speculation looks like in practice: empty luxury towers while thousands live in desperate poverty on the streets below.'”

“Even if the new apartments in Oakland are not vacant—as in Los Angeles, there remains tremendous pent-up demand even for expensive apartments—they may as well be to the homeless and housing insecure people who live next door. In the urban core of Oakland and downtown Los Angeles, construction is rampant—Oakland has 9,300 homes under construction while downtown Los Angeles has seen 35,000 units built since 1999.”

“If you’re just looking at all those cranes, it hardly looks like there’s a housing shortage. And if no one you know can afford these apartments, then for all intents and purposes, there is an over-supply.”

The Moose Gazette. “Along much of the northern Front Range, renters will pay less per month if they keep renting rather than trying to buy a comparable home, according to an analysis from Meyers Research. In metro Denver, a renter who puts only 3.5% down on a median-priced home at a 4% mortgage rate will pay $511 more a month than renting a comparable property, according to Ali Wolf, who put the analysis together.”

“Of the 23 metros the index tracks, 19 favor renting over buying at this stage of the real estate cycle, including Denver, which was the second least favorable market for buyers after Dallas. ‘Dallas, Denver and Houston are the canaries in the coal mine. As they go, so should markets like Seattle, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Miami, Portland and San Francisco,’ Ken H. Johnson, a real estate economist at FAU and one of the creators of the index, said this summer in his report.”

The Star Tribune in Minnesota. “Stunned by all the rentals popping up around the Twin Cities? Just wait until next year. Apartment developers in the Twin Cities are on track to deliver a record 6,000 new units this year and even more hitting the market in the coming year — most of them in the suburbs, according to a third-quarter report from Marquette Advisors.”

“That shift to the suburbs is being driven by a glut of new units in some parts of downtown Minneapolis and a persistent shortage in many second- and third-tier suburbs. In addition to the 6,700-plus units that are expected to be built next year, developers are planning to add more than twice as many in 2021 and 2022. Two-thirds of those new units will be in the suburbs.”

“‘I think many have been and still do anticipate a slow down, although our market continues to be one of the strongest in the country,’ said Brent Wittenberg, a Twin Cities-based vice president with Marquette. ‘We are pretty well positioned as a market heading into any sort of slowdown.’ Concessions, including free rent and lease bonuses, are being offered in many submarkets.”

The Plainsman in Alabama. “Student housing was a recurring theme at this week’s City Council meeting, as Council members made several decisions. Mayor Ron Anders proposed that the Council ask City Manager Jim Buston and other City staff to write up a new ordinance that would put a temporary hall to the building and development of all student-housing projects to give the City time to determine how to move forward.”

“‘All in all, it is my opinion that we are over-subscribed for student-housing beds in our community,’ Anders said. ‘There is an overabundance of student beds in our market, or soon will be,’ Buston said.”

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This Post Has 98 Comments

  1. ‘I’m telling you, it’s sick. It’s sick. And it’s sick because it’s done by design. They know that these communities in Dallas cannot afford higher property taxes, and so that’s why they raise them the most, so they can get them out. Get them out. That’s what the whole point is. How do you raise the property tax base unless you get out the existing population and build something new and shiny there? And how does that jibe with your whole supposed lip-service mantra, ‘We need affordable housing?’

    Every once in a while the truth gets through. You’d never hear this in the Dallas Morning News.

    1. I was astonished to read raw, unfiltered truth in a news article. He hit the nail on the head. Municipalities don’t want poors; they want people from whom they can extract wealth. “Affordable housing” schemes are all about funneling taxpayer money into Democrat patronage and graft rackets, and do nothing to address the root of the problem. Similarly, while progressives might rail about “greed,” their globalist bankrollers will cut them off in a heartbeat if they ever dare to mention the central role of the Keynesian fraudsters at the Fed in making the housing market a speculative vehicle, rather than seeing it as shelter – a basic human need.

      1. > Municipalities don’t want poors; they want people from whom they can extract wealth

        As a former resident of Dallas, Tarrant and Rockwall counties, there’s not a word there I disagree with Ben.

        Property Taxes are the BIG income source for local government, since there is no state income tax, and sales taxes are smaller than in many other states and constrained by voters (The amount of sales tax the goes to Dallas County is 2%).

        On top of that, city & county governments see their lower income/lower costs neighborhoods as a problem, and a net drain on their resource stream.

        The county tax assessor offices in Texas metro areas have a policy of raising their valuations the maximum amount allowed per year, EVERY year, and waiting for people to challenge it. Homestead exemptions are usually a joke (what? $20k off assessment) – the only exemption worth anything is the over-65 senior exemption as those people have time to keep up with things and VOTE.

    2. “They know that these communities in Dallas cannot afford higher property taxes, and so that’s why they raise them the most, so they can get them out. Get them out.”

      Texa$, & Taxe$, & High $chool game$ that are the youth gateway to delayed adult concu$$ion injurie$.
      (What’$ wrong with badminton or volleyball or tennis or precision rifle shooting?)

      Welcome to Collin County, Texa$, the high $chool football $tadium capital of the world

      By Zach Barnett – September 18, 2018

      Frisco has been one of the fastest-growing cities in America for a generation now — 1990 population: 6,000; today: 163,000 — and the city has used $ports to boo$t its profile. It’s the home of the area’s MLS team, FC Dallas, the Rangers’ and Mavericks’ minor league affiliates and the Cowboys’ and Stars’ practice facilities. You’ve heard of The Star, but you may not be aware that’s also where the city’s eight high schools play. The city and Frisco ISD covered $90 million$ of the $262 million$ to build the Ford Center indoor facility, which holds 12,000 people.

      https://footballscoop.com/news/welcome-collin-county-texas-high-school-football-stadium-capital-world/

      1. People that have not lived in TX have no idea the level of crazy sorrounding HS football. We lived in a little town called Liberty Hill outside of Austin which had several gas stations and a few small restaurants. The LH HS stadium rivals that of small collegiate stadium.

        1. And yet football is declining in popularity in the US. Participation in HS football is down 11% since 2009

          https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/11/08/sports/falling-football-participation-in-america.html

          “Those forces make securing the future of the sport a substantial challenge. Football participation is down even in unexpected places, while soccer and cross-country running have grown significantly.”

          Also, the share of HS players who are white is down dramatically.

        2. “The city and Frisco ISD covered $90 million$ of the $262 million$ to build the Ford Center indoor facility … ”

          Will, being from a Kansas farm town of <200 citizens, for a high school di$trict to tax folk$ for $90,000,000.00 (million$) to have a HIGH $chool $tadium, … well, that'$ "rich". Makes one wonder how much they $pend on those that $uffer within there "city limit$"

  3. “In metro Denver, a renter who puts only 3.5% down on a median-priced home at a 4% mortgage rate will pay $511 more a month than renting a comparable property”

    Sounds about right.

    I have zero debt. And no incentive to borrow money to buy a used house in Denver. And regarding the “3.5% down” the local radio ads for American Financing dot net should be banned from the airwaves for fraud.

    1. “The natural law of supply and demand isn’t working right now,” said Nicole Rueth, a member of the association’s market trends committee and a Denver-area branch manager for Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation. “It’s not fully impacting pricing the way you typically think it should,” she said.

      Sellers are holding off on putting their current homes on the market until they find their next home at an affordable price, Rueth said.

      “So there’s no houses to buy. So they sit and wait.”

      https://denverite.com/2019/12/04/metro-denver-housing-market-buyers-and-sellers-both-show-hesitancy/

      1. I was never crazy about the term narrative, but seeing that media reporting has become absurd, it’s relevant. Why is a lender on the UHS committee? Supply and demand aren’t working. Dogs and cats sleeping together. These BMW loans aren’t going to pay themselves!

        When people made nails by hand we had plenty of shacks.

        1. American Financing’s radio ads claim that “buying” is cheaper than having to come up with first and last months rent plus deposit. Every commercial/corporate radio station on the AM or FM dial here is saturated with these ads.

          The Denver city-data forum will unironically defend this, and if you question it you may get banned from the forum.

          1. CityData is full of REIC shills and DebtDonkeys. Everyone there thinks their shack will go to the moon in value. The Boston forums are really something else…

            Don’t dare mention in there that prices are down YoY in GBA (or on Reddit, for that matter).

        2. > These BMW loans aren’t going to pay themselves!

          BMWs owned: 7
          BMWs paid cash for: 7
          BMWs bought new: 0

          2. But Scotty Kilmer says that used BMW’s are “endless money pits” 😉

            Yeah, if you get a turbo engine 😛 The M30 and M54 engine cars are pretty easy. I’m on my last one as the brand has changed its emphasis too much.

            But my point sticks – let some other sucker pay for the depreciation – even on the M5 station wagon.

  4. ‘a majority of voters recognize homelessness as a crisis — exacerbated by a paucity of affordable housing, escalating rents, retaliatory evictions and gentrification. But, The Times notes, “there is some appetite among L.A. County residents to have law enforcement be more involved.”

    ‘To Weinstein, the humanitarian calamity on the streets and the criminalization of homelessness is a moral outrage. Weinstein, whose first apartment at 19 was in West Lake for $100 a month, believes the supposed “trickle down” of luxury complexes actually makes surrounding housing units too expensive for someone living on minimum wage.’

    “And so we went out in the marketplace and we bought our first single room occupancy hotel that was two thirds vacant and we rehabilitated it to put people in there,” Weinstein told the Los Angeles Blade. “And now we have seven of them and we have almost 800 rooms. The average cost is $100,000, including the renovation — whereas the city is spending $500,000. And the first units from Proposition HHH, which was the city initiative around building affordable housing, have yet to come online, not one single unit.”

    https://www.losangelesblade.com/2019/12/06/special-report-the-arc-of-michael-weinsteins-moral-outrage-from-aids-to-homelessness/

    ‘The average cost is $100,000, including the renovation — whereas the city is spending $500,000’

  5. “Apartment developers in the Twin Cities are on track to deliver a record 6,000 new units this year and even more hitting the market in the coming year — most of them in the suburbs, according to a third-quarter report from Marquette Advisors.”

    How many new Somalis do you need to import and give section 8 housing vouchers to fill that many apartments?

      1. ‘Yesterday, an eighty-three-year-old retired farmer named Merle Gorman addressed Joe Biden at a New Hampton, Iowa campaign event. Gorman rightly questioned his son Hunter’s qualifications for a lucrative post he once held on the board of a Ukrainian gas company, a job which saw him compensated up to $50,000 some months. (Though Gorman more dubiously insinuated that the former vice president had “sent” him to work there.)’

        ‘Instead of correcting him the best he could, or addressing his concerns, Biden responded with absolute vitriol. “You’re a damn liar, man.” He then touted his physical strength and mental alacrity, and appeared to call Gorman fat: “Look, fat — look, here’s the deal.” (His campaign has unconvincingly claimed he was trying to say “facts.”) As his supporters cheered on, Biden encouraged the man to a push-up competition or to compare IQ scores with him.’

        ‘Gorman, who said to reporters afterward that he was leaning toward Elizabeth Warren in the primary, told Biden that he was asking a question based on what he heard on MSNBC. The former vice president scoffed at that idea, insinuating that he had in fact heard it on Fox News…We suspect Clinton, after all, of elitism, even though Joe Biden, if anything, was a far more fervent handmaiden of the Democratic Party’s neoliberal turn — an “early adopter.” Biden, however, gets away with open displays of contempt for the public and the public’s right to ask powerful people questions largely because of his self-created “Amtrak Joe” persona — a persona as cheap, thin, and manufactured as a drug-store Halloween mask. This time, however, the mask slipped.’

        ‘The credit card companies’ favorite former senator doesn’t just pursue policies that hurt workers, he harbors an unearned sense of superiority to them, one he hides behind focus group-tested appeals to “middle-class” American values and old-timey, folksy slang like “malarkey.”

        ‘Joe Biden has long played up his “middle-class” credentials — the regular guy from Scranton, Pennsylvania — but if he wins the Democratic nomination and keeps letting the mask slip, there should be no surprise when people like Merle Gorman tell him to fuck off in November 2020.’

        https://jacobinmag.com/2019/12/joe-biden-son-hunter-iowa-voter-liar-fat

        1. Repost of an article published in April 2019:

          “Why is this dirty old imperialist and corporatist dog being rolled out to corporate media acclaim as the supposed people’s alternative to Trump in the White House? It’s all about blocking Bernie Sanders, who is the Democrats’ best chance to win back the presidency since he nearly won the Democratic presidential nomination three years ago (Sanders would have prevailed over the vapid centrist Hillary Clinton but for the corrupt shenanigans of the Democratic National Committee) and is still running (as before) in sincere accord with majority-progressive-populist sentiments on key domestic issues.”

          https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/04/26/joe-biden-an-imperial-corporatist-wrapped-in-the-bloody-flag-of-charlottesville/

          1. Sanders has no chance. When campaign ad season hits, Republicans will not let voters forget that Sanders had a heart attack. Warren is tacking left to present herself as a healthy Sanders, but Republicans won’t let voters forget that she too wants to give health care to illegal immigrants. I think Joe will self-destruct before then.

            The choice of Dem running mate will be paramount. He/She/Ze will have to be a POC at least. Kamala needs to keep her phone on. Even then, after 8 years of Obama, VP may not be enough.

          2. Why would a “person of color” matter at this point? We already elected a black man to office.

          3. A POC may bring out the minority vote,even for vp. Hilary lost largely because the poc didn’t turn out in the rest belt.

          6. Sander’s campaign is doomed for the same reason Kamala Harris had to throw in the towel: the freeloaders and Gimme Dats that make up their core constituency are all about the redistribution of other people’s wealth, but aren’t about to part with any of their own money to fund a political campaign.

            Sanders’s campaign announced that they have 5 million individual donations, the most in US history. They were also the fastest campaign in history to get to 4 million individual donors. I see Sanders support around here, even in deep red southern Utah.

        2. Biden running at his age is a joke. If Biden is the best that party has, than they are in trouble. That guy is so arrogant and dumb. I can’t even stand looking at him. Biden is not mentally sound and he is no doubt corrupt.

          I do not want that jerk in charge of this Nation. How low can they go in putting up such a flawed person who also can’t explain his actions regarding his Sons money schemes in a corrupt foreign country. I think Biden ran to protect the corruption of his party that includes himself.

          Biden, the man that will protect the Swamp as well as the commie Obama Care.

          1. The Democrats are in trouble. Trump has an approval rating six points above Obama at the same point in their presidencies. We all know that he does not have to win the popular vote to win the presidency:
            “The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Friday shows that 51% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-eight percent (48%) disapprove.”

          3. Biden and his corporate Democrat backers seem completely oblivious to how fed up ordinary people are with the Establishment status quo. Biden was the parrot on Obama’s shoulder when Obama was giving the Wall Street-Federal Reserve Looting Syndicate top cover for the biggest swindle ever perpetrated against the American middle class: the Wall Street bailout and subsequent debasement of the currency and destruction of Americans’ purchasing power. Trump is a flawed human being who has failed to follow through on most of his campaign promises to govern as an economic nationalist and drain the swamp, but a vote for him is still a middle finger for the corporate statist status quo.

            https://westernrifleshooters.files.wordpress.com/2019/09/be153327bdfd0e63.png

          4. I do not want to have to endure another four years of Electoral College whining, that’s for sure.

            Even if Trump wins the popular vote (which I think he will) the Left will no desist in trying to bring him down. It will be like this all the way to 2024, when I fear we will elect a hard core leftist because the GOP will nominate some unelectable creep.

          5. when I fear we will elect a hard core leftist because the GOP will nominate some unelectable creep.

            The electorate is going to shift massively in the next 8-12 years because of demographics.

          6. Trump won the popular vote in the combined total from the 49 states that are not California, and probably would have from all 50 if we stripped out illegal aliens, non citizens and other fraud.

        3. “Biden encouraged the man to a push-up competition”

          That’s lame Creepy Joe. Pathetic really. Your sneering little bastard of a son can stomp the 83 year old after he collapses.

          Bidens are filthy lying crooks.

          2. Hunter Biden smoking crack in the VIP room of strip clubs (New York Post), and this was in his 40s, not some youthful indiscretion, LOL.

          3. “The electorate is going to shift massively in the next 8-12 years because of demographics.”

            Yes, if you are not a liberal when you are young you have no heart. If you are not a conservative when you are older you have no brain. The millennials will be much older and will have time to compare how the world really works to what they were taught in college.

          4. The millennials will be much older and will have time to compare how the world really works to what they were taught in college.

            I don’t view the label “liberal” as bad/wrong, nor do I view the “label” conservative as right/good.

            The traditional notion of left/right, liberal/conservative is going to be upended, if it has not been already with DJT. DJT was a dem earlier in his career, and Warren was a republican earlier in her career. I think there is going to be a lot more fluidity between parties and some major realignment. What that looks like in the end, I do not know. In 10 years the priorities of the millennial voting bloc will be different.

        4. people like Merle Gorman tell him

          He did tell him he appeared to be spineless.

          I lived near Scranton in the ’70s and political corruption was celebrated. They had a guy called Dapper Dan who was actually in jail and got reelected. I heard people explain that of course he steals, but he steals for us!

          1. I heard people explain that of course he steals, but he steals for us!

            In the last election, 66 million people cast votes for a one-woman crime spree with a 30-year track record of sleaze, corruption, and influence peddling, not to mention a trail of dead former acquaintances that would confound any insurance actuary tables. When the body politic is that willing to enable corruption, the nation’s terminal decline into outright kleptocracy is pretty much assured.

          2. In the last election, 66 million people cast votes for a one-woman crime spree

            That was both sobering and breathtaking. Were it not for the Electoral College system, that thug would be president now.

            When the body politic is that willing to enable corruption, the nation’s terminal decline into outright kleptocracy is pretty much assured.

            Or worse. If the electorate is willing to look the other way and elect a murderer, then we are truly lost.

          3. The electoral college is resistant to fraud, which is why the Ds want it gone. But it would require a constitutional amendment ratified by 3/4 of the states so it will never happen.

          4. Yes, if you are not a liberal when you are young you have no heart.

            That might’ve been true a couple of generations ago, when the globalists still had a monopoly on news and information. These days, with Generation Z being the first generation to rely on the Internet rather than the oligarch-controlled MSM to inform their worldview, most young white males see right through the lies, mental contortions, and willful self-delusion of liberals, and are rejecting that failed ideology.

        5. “(Though Gorman more dubiously insinuated that the former vice president had “sent” him to work there.)”

          He should have gone Scarface on him.

          You know what a haza is Joe?! A pig that don’t fly straight, and neither do you!

          Joe and Hunter Biden golfed with Ukraine gas executive in 2014
          By Mark MooreOctober 1, 2019

          A photo has surfaced that shows former Vice President Joe Biden posing with his son Hunter and Devon Archer, who served ​with Hunter ​on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, during a 2014 golf outing in the Hamptons.

          https://nypost.com/2019/10/01/joe-and-hunter-biden-golfed-with-ukraine-gas-executive-in-2014/

          What ever happened to Devon Archer?

          U.S. judge overturns New York man’s conviction in tribal bond scheme

          U.S. LEGAL NEWSNOVEMBER 15, 2018

          By Brendan Pierson

          (Reuters) – A federal judge on Thursday overturned the conviction of a New York man on charges that he helped run a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe and multiple pension funds through the issue of $60 million worth of tribal bonds.

          U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams in Manhattan ruled that the evidence at the trial earlier this year had not shown that the man, Devon Archer, knew that the bond issue was fraudulent, or that he received any personal benefit from it. Abrams said she was “left with an unwavering concern that Archer is innocent of the crimes charged.”

          She upheld the convictions of John Galanis and Bevan Cooney, who were tried and convicted alongside Archer.

          https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-tribalbonds/us-judge-overturns-new-york-mans-conviction-in-tribal-bond-scheme-idUSKCN1NK341

          But wait there’s more.

          Look who appointed the judge that overturned the conviction of Biden’s golfing buddy.

          Born 1968 in New York, NY

          Judge, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
          Nominated by Barack Obama on July 28, 2011, to a seat vacated by Lewis A. Kaplan. Confirmed by the Senate on March 22, 2012, and received commission on March 23, 2012.

          https://www.fjc.gov/history/judges/abrams-ronnie

        6. Biden says AOC is “not where the party’s at.” He’s wrong. The Democrat old guard comprised of corrupt corporate Democrats like Biden, Hillary, and Fauxahontus (yes, she’s one of them) are going to be purged by far-left militants who want to wrest control of Democrat patronage and graft rackets from Old Guard, as well as radically expanding the “redistribution of the wealth.” White males in particular are going to be turned out to pasture as the non-diverse have no future in the Democratic Party.

          https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbmmpa/biden-aoc-is-not-where-the-partys-at

      2. From what I understand, Section 8 vouchers are limited in number, unlike food stamps. I recall reading that in Denver there is a lottery to get onto the waiting list. Of course a Democrat controlled federal government could change that.

        1. Yes that is what I was suggesting. The Democrats would expand section 8 so much that it would even include illegals. If Medicare for all is a right which includes everyone the same would apply to section 8.

          1. I recall reading that in Denver there is a lottery to get onto the waiting list.

            True in a lot of places.

            Of course a Democrat controlled federal government could change that.

            Not so sure about that. Here in the leftist/socialist utopia of King County/Seattle, there’s been next to zero effort to do so despite the $100M per year spent on ‘homeless’ and ‘affordable housing’, etc.

            And if someone if fortunate enough to wind up with a voucher, good luck finding a place to live in that a) accepts Section 8, and b) is priced low enough to use the voucher, and c) is safe/clean/worth living in. I’ve seen all this first hand – helping a disabled lady (on SSDI) I went to school with move out here and get established. The majority of landlords, private and commercial, SFH to massive apartment complexes, don’t want to deal with Section 8 (for reasons both correct and false) and make things very difficult to do so.

          2. It does seem that no matter how much money is allocated, there are long waiting lists. When I was in London I read in the papers about how long the waiting lists were for “Council Housing”. And you can’t swing a cat in London without hitting some council housing. It was simply stunning in its numbers. That London apartment building (Grenfell Tower) that burned in 2017 and killed over 70 people was council housing.

          3. “Here in the leftist/socialist utopia of King County/Seattle, there’s been next to zero effort to do so despite the $100M per year spent on ‘homeless’ and ‘affordable housing’, etc.”

            Large facilities are needed to address the homeless problem. These facilities not only need beds, bathrooms and showers, but they need security and a system in place which identifies what the underlying factor is in each individual’s situation. Mental health issues, go to area A. Substance abuse, go to area B. Broke but neither A nor B, go to area C. From there, the goal is to get them back on their feet either by mental health treatment, substance abuse treatment or vocational rehab, or all of the above. Those such as schizos need to be institutionalized for good.

          4. Mental health issues, go to area A. Substance abuse, go to area B. Broke but neither A nor B, go to area C.

            Largely agree with this.

          5. Large facilities are needed

            Charity and community support are one thing. Reeducation camps behind barbed wire are quite another. We don’t actually own human beings, at least not here and now.

          6. “These facilities not only need beds, bathrooms and showers, but they need security and a system in place which identifies what the underlying factor is in each individual’s situation.”

            TL;DR – They’re likely beyond help.

            The problem with many of these chronic street peeps is that the level of help they need costs more than what is needed to support a family of four, and at the end of the day they’re probably not ever going to be productive again given that so many of our low skilled jobs have been off-shored.

          7. It does seem that no matter how much money is allocated, there are long waiting lists.

            @In Colorado – exactly. My point was that with all of the “help” being spent, the Section 8 program, which is to assist people (who otherwise don’t show up on the local radar) in having a normal rental housing setup, is pretty much ignored by the govt, and feared by landlords that they’ll be stuck with a crappy tenant.

          8. The problem with many of these chronic street peeps is that the level of help they need costs more than what is needed to support a family of four, and at the end of the day they’re probably not ever going to be productive again given that so many of our low skilled jobs have been off-shored.

            Probably right. These are the black tags of society. Give them the drugs they are addicted to under medical supervision to reduce crime and criminality of cartels/drug operations. Move them away from urban city centers and prevent them from street camping.

      1. That house looks rayciss! Theres one pending on Iris dr. Looks better than this rayciss one and less.

          3. appraiser can’t blatantly lie

            IIRC, 3 comps (same size and acreage w/n 0.75 mi) with prices lower than its last purchase price at $1.4M. Why else would it have fallen through at least 3 times then go pending again within less than a week?

          6. Still grossly overpriced.

            Yes, it is! That’s why I’m not buying but rather transferring equity inland.

  9. Quite enjoyed listening to this article on my run this afternoon:

    I Worked for Alex Jones. I Regret It.
    New York Times Magazine
    Josh Owens
    5 Decembe 2019

    “I dropped out of film school to edit video for the conspiracy theorist because I believed in his worldview. Then I saw what it did to people.”

    “As soon as I pulled the camera off him, he reached for the white Dixie cup. Is this really how I’m going to die? I thought to myself, imagining the scene: Jones veering too close to the guardrail, ranting about George Soros and Hillary Clinton. Sirens echoing in the distance, flashing lights reflecting off oil-soaked pavement as he grabs the camera and utters his final words, “Hillary … rigged … the car.” His listeners would have believed it. Years earlier, I would have believed it.”

    “Working for Jones was a balancing act. You had to determine where he was emotionally and match his tone quickly. If he was angry, then you had better get angry. If he was joking around, then you could relax, sort of, always looking out of the corner of your eye for his mood to turn at any moment.”

    1. Gosh, I’m sure glad I read that article. From now on I’ll only get my news from the corporate media.

          3. I don’t block or ignore anyone in here. I may not agree with OAM on most things, but I’m not about to shut off points of view that differ from my own.

          5. I’m not about to shut off points of view that differ from my own

            OAM is dismissive of people, like BlueSkye and ABQdan, who are far more knowledgeable than he is. Thankfully, drumminj’s JTE gives us the choice to ignore.

          6. OAM is dismissive of people, like BlueSkye and ABQdan, who are far more knowledgeable than he is.

            Not dismissive. We just disagree on the how fast the transition will occur from gas cars to electric cars. The good news is that no one is forcing ABQDan or BlueSky to buy an EV. And I am still quite happy with my model 3 and several of my immediate family members are purchasing theirs in the next couple of months.

          7. “I don’t block or ignore anyone in here. I may not agree with OAM on most things, but I’m not about to shut off points of view that differ from my own.”

            I’m in agreement with you there. I don’t like echo chambers, and prefer to see all sides. I read everybody’s comments, even those people who I don’t ever agree with.

          1. TBFB?

            The Bay’s Finest Bitches
            The Boys From Brazil
            The Broken Family Band
            Tile Based Frame Buffer
            Total Body Fat Burning
            Tourisme Belgique Flandre & Bruxelles
            tracheobronchial foreign body

      2. My favorite Alex Jones stunt was during the 2016 election campaign when he offered $10,000 to anyone who could get themselves in the background on a live CNN shot holding a sign saying “Bill Clinton is a rapist.”

        https://imgur.com/a/8opIr6Y

  12. ‘This is what speculation looks like in practice: empty luxury towers while thousands live in desperate poverty on the streets below.’

    LA and San Diego have a lot in common.

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