The Banished Bottom of the Housing Market

Yes, it's absolutely a "death by a half dozen gunmen" situation (the phrase "a thousand cuts" doesn't really imply the appropriate level of culpability for this situation IMO).

The reason we see these simplistic narrative is because nobody wants to blame their pet favorite regulation for having any hand in it.

A great example is HOAs. Everyone wants to complain that they stand in the way of diversification of housing stock or use of land. Nobody wants to address the fact that they're infinitely more prevalent than they would otherwise be as a side effect of environmental regulation and often their absurd rules were a condition of approval of the development in question in the first place.

> My understanding was that it was the tenant rights movement that killed SROs and boarding houses by making it practically impossible to keep them orderly, because it made eviction almost impossible and compliance with anti-discrimination laws presented too large a burden for low-cost housing.

Possible that tenant rights could have had some negative impacts as you say, what's the timeline on when that would have been happening? We do know that very early on that wealthy neighbourhoods were working hard to prevent SROs (prevent multi-unit buildings at all really) for class and racial exclusionary reasons. We have a great deal of direct evidence of this in contemporary reporting on these issues.

> By the early 1900s, cities and states were classifying lodging houses as public nuisances. Other laws increased building standards and mandated plumbing fixtures, raising costs and slowing new construction. Urban reformers next embraced exclusionary zoning to separate undesirable people and noxious uses from residential areas. SROs were deemed inappropriate in residential zones, and many codes banned the mixed-use districts that sustained them.

In Vancouver for example they brought in zoning to put an end to apartment development in a great deal of residential areas in the 1930s.

This tracks. There was a problem, the market solved the problem, regulations killed the solution and now we have a bigger and worse problem.

Here in Chicago there are still some SROs. Chicago has middling tenants rights: not as strong as New York or SF but stronger than most of the country. If tenants rights ended SROs you'd expect them to not exist in a place like Chicago.

I moved to logan square before gentrification. There were two SRO buildings that I knew of. Both were redeveloped by the time I moved out.

SROs often serve as half-way houses for people getting out of prison so there's a lot of community opposition. All the SROs that are left in Chicago have been around a long time, there aren't new ones being built and the old ones slowly go away when the area gentrifies.

The high-end SRO market arguably still exists. There are plenty of young Americans rooming with strangers they found on the internet, not infrequently converting the living room into an additional bedroom, and nobody in power really seems to complain unless they throw too many parties, even if the zoning laws prohibit it. I also think it's unlikely they'd rent to a down-on-his-luck, 45-year-old (even if they could afford it).

You can also find medium-term, single-room rentals on sites like FurnishedFinder, often explicitly catering to traveling nurses and other medical professionals. Again, my strong suspicion is that many of these violate local zoning laws, and nobody really cares.

In the 1920's SRO occupants were much more likely to be immigrants, with different cultural values and living expectations. So norms may have declined over time, but norms are much more uniform today than they were 100 years ago.

And while drug use is a problem today, alcohol abuse was a problem 100 years ago.

I think what made it more feasible in the 1920's was two things:

- much higher staffing levels. Hiring a janitor or cleaning or supervisors etc was so much cheaper than it is now due to Baumol's. They had staff cleaning kithcens and bathrooms, and staff warning and kicking out tenants that consistently left a mess. I can't imagine that being feasible today on a $231/month room rent.

- a willingness to kick out problematic tenants. The Y has a zero-alcohol policy, and will kick you out with no notice for violation. Tenant's rights laws and social norms make this much harder today.

What is your proposed alternative? If the options are "people have conflict over who cleans the kitchen" and "rampant street misery" the decision is obvious, at least to me.

Drug use and mental health are also problems that need to be addressed, but you cannot cure someone of their issues while they're sleeping on the street. Unlike shared apartments, homeless shelters, or the street, SROs provide each resident with a private room and a locking door. If those were the four options I could afford, I would choose the SRO every time.

> In the 1970s, states emptied mental hospitals without funding alternatives, pushing thousands of people with serious needs into cheap downtown hotels unequipped to support them.

In the runup to this, there were stories appearing regularly of people being committed to institutions against their will, and without valid cause. In other words, putting someone away for other people's convenience (or financial benefit).

I interpreted the outflow of mental patients as an unexpected side effect of efforts to halt the above-mentioned abuses. Of course it's also possible that reform of abuses was used as a cover for simple, unintelligent budget cutting.

I kinda wonder… I mean, we mostly didn’t use the kitchen in my dorm (I only became aware of it because dummies set off the fire alarms using it).

A person might be fine, like in a typical dorm, with a microwave, microfridge, and electric kettle.

Especially if there was a low-cost cafeteria in the lobby.

People live in the city because they want to eat out, right? We should start at the realistic assumption for typical city-dweller behavioral patterns, not, like, take a suburban house and try to randomly time-multiplex part of it…

WeLive/WeWork used to do this before the CEO fiasco. They operated a shared living space for working professionals. It wasn’t $231/mo but it was a great way for younger professionals to get their foot in the door living and working in the city.

Wouldn't you agree that the difficulties of homelessness pale in comparison to disputes over shared spaces?

> Then there’s the problem of widespread drug use. The availability and also the strength of street drugs is an extreme problem right now.

In 1875 San Francisco adopted an ordinance banning opium dens. A little history might provide some perspective.

Let churches run them. That's the C in YMCA. It was founded as a mission to guide the development of young men in health directions.

Immigrants still do this. Except now they fill apartments and houses with bunkbeds. I know because my dad did this in the early 2000's and is still in contact with the local immigrant community.

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This is and has been happening everywhere in the US except for the expensive coastal metros and maybe Chicago. What you're asking for comprises the vast majority of house that's been built in the last 10 years in my city. Dozens of 5-10 story apartment complexes with nothing bigger than a 2BR.

HN and people like the guy that wrote this article live in a bubble. There's plenty of cheap housing available in most of the country. It's people renting out rooms for $5-700 a month in a suburban house.

1000%. The good solution is Georgism (perhaps with rolling leases, which are hard to manipulate, rather than LVT, which is easy to manipulate) but obviously everyone who bought into the ponzi will fight you tooth and nail so probably the best we can hope for is to slap the Nth bandaid on the problem with some NIMBY busting.

There are countries in the world where homeless are pretty good hidden, by means of extreme expensive welfare, or are moved away from big cities, or at least touristic centers.

I have no idea in Japan. As I was there I saw extremely poor people (deduced from cloths and lack of hygiene) I doubt they had an own house. Even worst, I saw middle-class neighborhoods that I would associate with a favela in Brazil (albeit very clean and organized, each flat was smaller than a space in Rio.

Japan's also got plenty of dubiously legal operations for that kind of thing, like "24-hour cafes" with private booths obviously set up as illegal capsule hotels.

There is no "cheap place to live" due to property taxes in most areas.

Yep. But it's twice as expensive as the ones mentioned in the article.

https://www.northshoreymca.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/28/2...

Thanks for bringing Vancouver into the discussion.

We have SROs here still, and they have a contentious relationship with both the government and the population they serve. Sometimes it's hard to tell if they are good or bad, other than they're probably better than people living on the street.

For example, a few days ago it was announced that a major SRO downtown would close. It was perceived to be causing nuisances, but also, we have FIFA coming soon and many cities do this sort of "cleanup" when events like that happen.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/vancouver-gr...

You're right that Eby has shifted rightwards somewhat. In my estimation it's more to do with where the voters are. Sometimes we're electing socialist advocates for the unhoused to be premier and then we're electing Bitcoin-happy bagel merchants to be the mayor. Make it make sense.