The US Supreme Court Thread - Post Roe v. Wade reversal edition

Also, build more homes, So there's not a housing shortage that creates stupidly high price increases.

 

Ceilings should only be for those on fixed incomes. Booting them from their homes, away from family and social networks, comes with a hefty social cost too. It should be a thing where they have to have lived in the home for X amount of years (say, 15-20?) THEN the ceilings apply. The ceiling does not transfer to younger generation or next of kin unless they are significantly disabled. Can only transfer once.

Where though? To a different state, a poor red one with poor social services? A city shouldn't just be for the wealthy. Again, I'm talking about just the elderly on fixed incomes who have spent a good deal of time in the home they own or pay a mortgage on.

 

There are more vacant and AirBnB homes in LA than there are homeless people.

There is not a housing shortage, there is a capitalism problem.

 

Let's talk wealth taxes and how they would work. FIrst question: Would the wealth tax on unrealized gains be in addition to the current tax on realized capital gains, or in addition to that tax?

 

I agree with that, as far as it goes. But solving the problem of people with substance abuse and/or mental issues isn't as simple as finding them shelter. I've been there and done that with two family members.

 

There have been a few experiments on dealing differently with homeless people, meaning that instead of giving them minimal temporary assistance and criminalizing most of the resulting behaviors, communities invested on housing and solid support services. The results were great and they only required a fraction of the money normally used to arrest/incarcerate/prosecute.

Regarding AirBnB, I think they need to be taxed and regulated almost as hotels, but eliminating them won’t necessarily lead to solve homelessness or to ease real estate demand, but it could ease rent prices, at least in some communities.

Finally, I do think we need a higher tax on capital gains and possibly a nominal tax on unrealized gains, but IMHO what we need to do is to a. Index our minimum wage to the cost of living, b. Cap executive compensation at certain amount over minimum wages, and c. Strongly regulated stock buybacks and shareholders redistribution. IOW, force companies to spend more on compensation of their employees, not only the executives, and make companies reinvest their profits rather than game the stick price. Easier said than done.

 

I'm still not sure what you do with ongoing substance abusers. My father and brother had housing. They had support services, No matter what the housing and who was providing support, they got drunk and abusive. Again and again and again.

I don't see how their situations could have been fixed either by cheap housing or higher tax rates.

 

If they are abusive they should probably be punished up to and including prison. The purpose for providing housing is providing housing, not correcting other social ills.

 

Do you have a link for that? I'm not doing my passive/aggressive "I call bullshit" here, I'm sincerely asking.

 

Sorry, I meant verbally abusive and disruptive. Not physically so, thus not prison material.

 

I thought this was interesting as well. Per the google, LA has ~60k AirBnB listings, with 75% of them being vacant at any given time (24.2% average occupancy rate) [1]

The City of Los Angeles claims 46k homeless, with 75k in the county as a whole [2].

So... it's close. Depends on your definition of "Los Angeles."

1 - https://www.alltherooms.com/resources/articles/average-airbnb-occupancy-rates-by-city/

2- www.lahsa.org/news?article=927-lahsa-releases-results-of-2023-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count

 

Thanks for getting to these before I could. Just to add to this:

https://lusk.usc.edu/news/crosstown-how-many-vacant-homes-are-there-la

From USC: "This summer, five Los Angeles city council members proposed a measure called the Empty Homes Penalty that would levy a fine on vacant units in order to push landlords to rent them out. The members cited 2017 U.S. Census Bureau data that estimated that as many as 111,000 homes were sitting empty, equivalent to 3.8% of the city’s rental units."

https://censusreporter.org/profiles/16000US0644000-los-angeles-ca/

2022 census data shows over 108,000 vacant homes in LA.

As stated in all of these, it depends on how you define LA and vacant. But there is certainly an opportunity to fix the homeless issue.

Are there going to be cases where addiction and/or mental health requires more interventions? Yes (Thanks Reagan, you dbag...). But this is a solvable issue with what's available on hand. No new buildings required (minus the treatment/hospitals but that's another issue).

 

Then what being suggested here. Most of the homeless I see out and about, are not homeless because there are empty homes in Beverly Hills.
They’re homeless because they don’t have the money to buy and rents are stupid face ridiculous.

 

The point is that rents wouldn’t be stupidface ridiculous if Airbnb-like rentals were actually single family homes.

 

If an REIT or some other rich person has bought a condo or house to sit on it and await capital gains while renting it to people 25% of the time... then that's a bad use of an apartment or condo.

 

When I was in San Francisco a few years ago I found out that the hotel had been recently converted from a SRO

 

Reverse Mortgage industry would fight this tooth and nail.

 

Any fix is going to be fought tooth and nail. Reverse Mortgages shouldn't really even be a thing.

 

Just to add a period to this homeless talk, here are a couple articles about Utah's endeavors and The Best City Ever(tm) Houston's efforts:

https://www.axios.com/local/salt-la...h-plan-reduce-homelessness-affordable-housing

They passed a plan back in the day that mostly put people in homes, but not much else. Surprise surprise, they had issues. Now they're working to fix that with supportive care.

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2023/06/08/...s-houston-model-eichenbaum-nichols/index.html

Houston rolled their version out aroundish the same time and included supportive care and it's been very successful. Not a solution but progress. Cut it over half (estimated of course) and 90% of those homed didn't become homeless after 2 years.

Neither are perfect and lets be real, this is a cleanup and stopgap measure instead of tackling the real problems of homelessness but hey...getting people into a house and treatment and helping them get jobs and their lives back is awesome. I just hope no one stops there and instead focus their efforts on the stupid cost of living, lack of wages, healthcare costs, etc.

Solve those and your homeless problem is going to get real small

 

Alabammy gets its 2nd Black congressional district handed to them:

In September, the federal court hired a special master to draw several drafts of the state's political boundaries, after refusing to accept their latest map with just one Black district.

On Thursday, the court selected “Remedial Plan 3,” because, according to the order, it satisfied “all constitutional and statutory requirements while hewing as closely as reasonably possible to the Alabama Legislature’s 2023 Plan.” The legislators and secretary of state also “indicated that it is less objectionable” than another proposed plan.

The two Black seats are Alabama's 2nd and 7th congressional districts.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...essional-map-second-black-district-rcna119031

 

You need to be honest and acknowledge that there is a significant segment of the homeless population who will never live in housing that is provided because it is their lifestyle to live on the street. And then add in the mentally ill which is a huge portion of the homeless population.

 

The current holder of the 7th seat (Terri Sewell) was concerned that the Black majority in the 2nd might not be enough to make it Black, and may challenge her own seat. OTTOMH, the new map takes a couple of counties from her district to make the 2nd. The concern is that both may go White.

It's a shame that we're here in 2023 taking about Black and White districts, but that's the story of the last four centuries...

 

The number of people that reject housing because “it is their lifestyle” is exceedingly small. The bigger issue is that almost all housing comes with a requirement to be clean before you get the housing. Unfortunately, getting clean while on the streets is darn near impossible.

 

Precisely. I'd rather make sure the Han Solo types who want to live on the fringe, to march to the drum in their head and heart, know we got their back if things go sideways, then leave them to whatever happens.

As for those with mental health issues, that can be solved. Not 100% because the human body is complicated but we can get most of them. A big part of that is a roof over their heads and treatment. Part of that requires housing. Another part requires hospitals/therapists/psychologists, all of which we don't have enough of.

 

I don't think a district needs to be 50% (+1) Black to elect a dem. I think there are more Whites who vote dem than there are Blacks who vote rep. Turnout matters a lot, of course.