urbanSTL

So, until recently did we have a sizable presence that lead to this discussion.  I am of that school that many who live here are invested in our community but are not always keen on what is happening everywhere else, hence they buy into the fact our community is bad because 'X' is happening here.  I travel a bit and do my best to be observant.  Locally, I see the one or two pan handlers off the interstates at 44 and Grand, or 40 and Kingshighway - and I genuinely feel bad for their unfortunate situation. BUT - I have also lived on the east coast and heard some of the same stories over an over:  I am from "X",I ran out of gas on highway "x" and I just need a few dollars to get my family home.   I'd offer to get them gas in their can and they declined.  They really needed the cash.   So, I stopped offering.  That doesn't mean that I don't sympathize, I am just a little more cautious.   Expanding a little more, I have traveled and been to other cities and seem a lot more panhandlers than we have.  One city that comes to mind is Louisville.  I65 through downtown I would see large numbers of panhandlers; I also saw large umbers of homeless on the beach in Waikiki / Honolulu. Then when visiting San Francisco I saw things I never thought I would ever see - homeless shooting up and defecating outside my Holiday Inn; they we kind to them, restaurants fed them , they had cell phones and were listing to music.  Then I used street view to see Skid Row in LA and working in corporate America I had to hear about current situations in Seattle and Portland .. all this to say that YES- we have an issue and I hope we deal with it.  BUT, before we start saying our sky is falling lets realize that we are no where near as worse off as some.  AND, let's find ways to continue to avoid being in there shoes.   Let's be kind and compassionate  and focus on resolution rather than crying about how bad things are here. 

LeBron James could pay for an apartment for every homeless person in Los Angeles why doesn't anybody complain about him?

He’s not constantly advocating for homeless urination laws, running crime filled shelters and organizing dangerous encampments in a downtown Saint Louis struggling to recover from the pandemic

dtgwvc wrote: ↑

Oct 31, 2023

He’s not constantly advocating for homeless urination laws, running crime filled shelters and organizing dangerous encampments in a downtown Saint Louis struggling to recover from the pandemic

At some point the billionaires who own and operate society need to take some responsibility for their actions. The fact is that homeless people exist so that rich people can underpay workers by threatening them with homelessness. Not because Larry Rice is helping them the wrong way.

Idk I am no friend of billionaires but I don’t know if broad social problems like homelessness can be blamed entirely on them, I make less than 20 bucks an hour, less than you can make in an Amazon warehouse and manage not to be homeless. You also mentioned Michael Jordan as an example, I don’t think he is contributing to the issue of homelessness. There are a lot of contributing factors to homelessness like drugs and housing prices and I don’t think that Jeff bezos owes a house to everyone who ends up on the street.

I wish we could focus on realistic solutions to problems instead of gesturing towards vague multifaceted problems like income inequality and poverty that St. Louis is in no position to do anything about

TheWayoftheArch_V2.0 wrote: ↑

Oct 31, 2023

MarkHaversham wrote: ↑

Oct 31, 2023

dtgwvc wrote: ↑

Oct 31, 2023

He’s not constantly advocating for homeless urination laws, running crime filled shelters and organizing dangerous encampments in a downtown Saint Louis struggling to recover from the pandemic

At some point the billionaires who own and operate society need to take some responsibility for their actions. The fact is that homeless people exist so that rich people can underpay workers by threatening them with homelessness. Not because Larry Rice is helping them the wrong way.

Again you sidestep the actual point for some virtue signaling.  Larry Rice isn't helping them at all.   He feigns at it.  

The point is that homeless people aren't feckless layabouts, they're victims. The only solution is to give them the help they need, i.e. housing, not to wag your finger at people who are giving them money "for drugs".

Embrace Larry Rice or blast him into space, it doesn't matter either way if that's all you do. Homelessness is what happens when people don't have homes, so either commit to guaranteed housing for everyone or just shut up about it, anything else is just hypocritical moralizing.

I think you take a lot of different, often abstract social problems and pin them on billionaires when they are many other factors at play. The price of housing for example, is not set by a guy, it’s a market that responds to supply and demand. I don’t know if you can blame Billionaires for most drugs.I can make meth and crack all by myself with no help. Cartels make quite a bit as well and aren’t billionaires

Also, we’ve gotten pretty far away from the original argument over rev. Larry. I don’t think he has produced any positive results for homeless people and I think he uses them as a political tool. If you disagree, I’d love to hear your take on him, rather than the meaningless billionaires rhetoric that, even if true, would be impossible for the city of St. Louis to do much about

I’ve never personally been to impressed by the idea of guaranteed universal housing, I think a market based solution will always be more effective, something like what we see in Tokyo. Some Public housing is great as well but most people are going to end up paying market rate. and I don’t think every person who end up on the street is a victim, who deserves endless accommodation, using my tax dollars. After all, I’m a victim of the evil billionaires too and I’ve got my own family to worry about.


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Trololzilla wrote: ↑

Nov 01, 2023

^ Isn't a big part of the housing crisis the fact that large corporations (real estate companies, banks, etc.) land bank and horde countless properties?

This. Of course, the home hoarders are %100 in bed with Permanent Washington and nothing will change because of it.

Elimination of 75% of the DC government apparatus would solve a lot of problems but it's too late now. It's done and there is no going back. It's. It's the slow lane to Hell as far as I'm concerned.

It will take a near total collapse and a revolution to eliminate Permanent Washington at this point.

Canada did a empty homes tax and it hasn’t made any difference on their housing market. Vacancy rates aren’t really that high in high demand metros. I will admit, I am curious to see the effect of an Airbnb crack down on the housing market. Some neighborhoods like Soulard and the grove could see an extra hundred or so rental units or houses come online if Airbnb was banned.

Adding a lot of supply to the market has helped the Twin Cities bring down rent, and they didn’t even have to take down the deep state real estate people to do it. So I’m still thinking its an inventory problem.


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dtgwvc wrote: ↑

Oct 31, 2023

I’ve never personally been to impressed by the idea of guaranteed universal housing, I think a market based solution will always be more effective, something like what we see in Tokyo. Some Public housing is great as well but most people are going to end up paying market rate. and I don’t think every person who end up on the street is a victim, who deserves endless accommodation, using my tax dollars. After all, I’m a victim of the evil billionaires too and I’ve got my own family to worry about.

Well there's your mistake. It should be paid for with Rex Sinquefield's tax dollars, not yours.

A society that forces people to be homeless is evil. Any solution other than guaranteed universal housing is going to force homelessness basically by definition.

The state of Missouri could end homelessness with $400 million a year. St. Louis by itself spends half that much on police. Our priorities are all out of wack because the people in charge benefit from punishing people, not from treating them with dignity. But, we should all want to live in a society that treats everyone with dignity! As you say, we're also victims of billionaires, maybe not to the same degree but we still benefit from solidarity.

No political expert but I think the policies that you are describing are what is causing so much people and business to move from California to Dallas. Not that it’s made a difference for their homeless issue, I guess they just didn’t tax people hard enough. If we tried it on a national scale, business would leave the country. Populism never works out in practice.

And just to be clear, I’m not against tiny homes and that kind of thing. I just think we can’t go about this in the way that the west coast did in terms of endless tax and spend with little tangible results. And the reality is there are some homeless people who don’t want help or to follow rules. If you don’t believe me, volunteer for a homeless shelter.

leeharveyawesome wrote: ↑

Nov 01, 2023

Trololzilla wrote: ↑

Nov 01, 2023

^ Isn't a big part of the housing crisis the fact that large corporations (real estate companies, banks, etc.) land bank and horde countless properties?

This. Of course, the home hoarders are %100 in bed with Permanent Washington and nothing will change because of it.

Elimination of 75% of the DC government apparatus would solve a lot of problems but it's too late now. It's done and there is no going back. It's. It's the slow lane to Hell as far as I'm concerned.

It will take a near total collapse and a revolution to eliminate Permanent Washington at this point.

I don't see what eliminating Washington would accomplish by itself. You'd still be leaving the same people in charge.

I was trying to make people aware of Larry Rice's long time influence on homeless downtown (lived on Wash Ave for ~7 years).  Local and relevant.  These macro force thesis postulations are useless. 

TheWayoftheArch_V2.0 wrote: ↑

Nov 01, 2023

I was trying to make people aware of Larry Rice's long time influence on homeless downtown (lived on Wash Ave for ~7 years).  Local and relevant.  These macro force thesis postulations are useless. 

Just house all the homeless people and Larry Rice won't have any influence. It's the only solution, but liberals don't want to try it because Those People are Fundamentally Flawed and so obviously you can't fix homelessness by housing people. The reason Larry Rice is able to twist people into knots so effectively is because his actions force the locals to confront the reality that they don't care about homeless people and just want them to go away. He's helping the homeless the wrong way, but nobody helps them the right way, so he remains.

The solutions to homelessness are known. They involve temporary publicly funded medical care, income/employment supports, and housing for those willing to follow the rules, and involuntary incarceration (hospitals and/or prisons) for those who can't/won't. The libs in California have done some of the former, (much of which just gets siphoned off by NGOs), and none of the latter.

Income and wealth inequality created by market-first policies have absolutely contributed to, if not outright driven, the mass immiseration of much of the US public over the last 50 years. This phenomenon has been documented ad nauseum, but I prefer this deceptively simple study from the Rand Corporation (aka the CIA's think tank) which found a redistribution of ~$47 TRILLION in annual household income from the bottom 90% to the top 10% (and really the top 2%) of income earners from 1978--2018. That translates to a whole lot of people/families that were previously secure in their housing that are now homeless or heading there thanks to economic trends far beyond their ability to address or arrest, and a tiny handful of oligarchs (and their government enablers) that have made out like absolute bandits.

Loving that this thread is discussing the real underlying problem here.  Median wealth per individual in St. Louis City is around $36K(including home ownership).  Multiply that by 300,000 people who live in STL city and you get $11B.  The 4 wealthiest people who live in St. Louis County are together worth $20B.   This is just the STL Metro.  Even more grotesque wealth elsewhere.  The problem is obvious and infuriating, and the solution is equally obvious but somehow politically impossible.   The intractability of this problem puts St. Louis in the awkward position of attempting to fulfill basic human needs with ever dwindling resources.  In this fight, cities like STL are reduced to making desperate deals to encourage growth to increase their budgets.  Its a fight that is lost, even if it succeeds.   Until folks accept basic, universal human dignity over the right to ludicrous wealth on a federal level and vote accordingly,  this doesn't change.   I know this board is all about talking about the trees, and thats great.  But, this is the forest. 

^Well said. Barring society-level changes, the City will always be fighting uphill with one hand tied behind its back. Plenty of powerful people in the County and State would be happy to chop off both its arms and kick it back down to the bottom.

This thread still sucks. As do people who come to an urban development forum and tell people they talk about urban development too much.