Quote from: RE on Jan 05, 2025, 11:08 AM

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 05, 2025, 08:37 AMSure. USSR style communism.

The Soviets weren't perfect, but homelessness was not a problem.  Everybody got an apartment.  If you were a successful gymnastics coach, you got a really nice apartment too! 

Sure. Special folks did well. Others not so much. So the obvious answer is make two distributions, with the same minima and maxima, except one is skewed heavily towards the American living standards and the other towards the USSR back in that time.

Guess where you, me and ACP member K-Dog choose to live? Along with hundreds of millions of Soviet citizens. CFS

Time for Tesla to join the junkyard of failed automobile companies with Deloreans.  At least they made good Flying Time Machines when fitted with a Mr Fusion reactor.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/2025-01-03-tesla-is-cooked/

Tesla Is Cooked

RE

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 05, 2025, 08:37 AMSure. USSR style communism.

The Soviets weren't perfect, but homelessness was not a problem.  Everybody got an apartment.  If you were a successful gymnastics coach, you got a really nice apartment too! 

Far as more recent examples of goobermints that have a successful Affordable Housing system, the Austrian socialists did a pretty good job over the last 20 years or so. Vienna's Unique Social Housing Program is known as an effective and innovative model for providing superior, affordable housing to the city's residents.

Of course, given all the problems the central European countries have right now with energy due to the Ukie war and the general piss poor state of the Euro economy there's no guarantee this will last, but our economy isn't yet in such a dogshit state so we could apply that model fairly easily, if the political will was there to stand up to the bankers, hedge fund mgr and RE brokers, which there is not.

RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 04, 2025, 11:40 PMOne thing is 4 sure, the ACP couldn't do worse than the current goobermint in dealing with the problem.

Far as what the ACP has as a plan to address homelessness, I doubt it involves 7 figure homes.

Well, the ACP hasn't accomplished anything to date, so sure, it could possibly do better. Could certainly be worse. We know the results of communism and warehousing people, we've got plenty of USSR/Chinese and central/south American folks as examples.

Their 10 step plan seems completely reasonable for anyone, and it obviously works for dopers and drunks..not all of them of course...but some. Is "some" solution enough to be better at scale...or worse?

Quote from: REProbably they would have HUD build 1 bedroom apts on a standard plan for singles and townhouses or condos for couples and young families at a subsidized cost, off a waiting list until enough units were built to get everyone housed.  That's the most straightforward plan anyhow.

Sure. USSR style communism. Personally, I think K-Dogs ACP version is much better. Teach people to be better, and then the results will follow from sticking to the self improvement principles. BOOM....7 figure homes and cars for all ACP members. We promise!

Quote from: REA better plan would be to use this as an opportunity to completely redesign our paradigm and get away from the urban/suburban/rural models of housing and begin demolishing the current suburban individually owned McMansions in favor of more flexible modularized mobile housing.  Both of these methods could be employed depending on the situation in the current community.

RE

Hopes and Dreams abound. Outcomes however...well...I think K-Dog has it right. Get yours first..and THEN proclaim your support of ....whatever...and the ACP salesmen can use those ACP members as examples of what being a good ACP member can get you.

Changing paradigms is hard. Americans aren't the hard workers they once were, fast, loose, and easy rule the day now. Get on the internet, become an influencer, collect your cut of the ad sales, everyone can do it (or they want others to believe that) and presto! Call the system whatever you want, as long as those pitching it got theirs first. You need them to bring in the suckers.

Not doing much better in Chi-Town than Seattle with making progress on their homeless population either.  They're slightly above the national 18% increase, at 300% in 2024.     Don't worry though, they have BIG PLANS in the works!

There are also plans to explore a $2 million rental assistance program for Chicagoans.

Let's see, if you divide up that $2M by the roughly 20K people who experienced homelessness last year for rental assistance, you can slip each of them a cool C-note one month this year to help with the rent.  Forget the rent, maybe that's enough to keep the lights on for a month.  Are we just a little bit underfunded here?

Also highly encouraging is bringing the Chicago Public Schools and the Teacher's Union into a room together to work out how they can help with the homeless problem.      This makes sense since they do such a great job with running the school system.  Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some of the teachers are homeless.

Really this political farce which makes homelessness appear "insoluble" is ridiculous when it's a simple problem with an obvious solution.  BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING UNITS!  Don't issue any Building Permits for luxury housing until you have a surplus of apartments that rent for $1000/mo, or around 30% of the monthly income for a min wage worker.  Problem solved.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/real-estate/2025/01/04/homelessness-rate-chicago-migrants-affordable-housing

RE

One thing is 4 sure, the ACP couldn't do worse than the current goobermint in dealing with the problem.

Far as what the ACP has as a plan to address homelessness, I doubt it involves 7 figure homes.  Probably they would have HUD build 1 bedroom apts on a standard plan for singles and townhouses or condos for couples and young families at a subsidized cost, off a waiting list until enough units were built to get everyone housed.   That's the most straightforward plan anyhow.  A better plan would be to use this as an opportunity to completely redesign our paradigm and get away from the urban/suburban/rural models of housing and begin demolishing the current suburban individually owned McMansions in favor of more flexible modularized mobile housing.  Both of these methods could be employed depending on the situation in the current community.

RE

Quote from: Surly1 on Jan 03, 2025, 11:53 AMFirst Severe Human Infection Of Bird Flu Virus In The US Shows Signs Of Mutation
Got raw milk?

I remember when Matt Savinar (original peak oil doomer, unemployed ambulance chaser, palm reader and recently substitute public school teacher) was selling the older versions of bird flu when peak oil turned into a dud, and he needed something to scare the ever plentiful disciples into more solar ovens and his Amazon store sales.

I have heard some reports from Michigan detailing quite a robust flu season, didn't think anything of it until I noticed this article. Mutation of one of these pesky bugs has always been a more reasonable path to some form of doom than the usual (OMG do we have to recycle this one AGAIN) types.

Quote from: RE on Jan 04, 2025, 05:31 PMhttps://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-new-report-on-homelessness-shows-a-catastrophe-for-wa/
The new report on homelessness shows a catastrophe for WA
RE

Catastrophe indeed. I say K-Dog gets the ACP to come in there, sell their plan, and get all of those homeless 7 figure homes and luxury cars for them and their spouses by just making them good Communists! It would cure the homeless problem, the ACP can take the credit, throw in some MAGA politics to run off the "undesireables" (dark skinned, South/Central American origins, or slanty eyes of any type or maybe even suspicious Canadians?), and presto! New America! Still lousy weather, but the homeless problem solved, and those who already own 7 figure hovels and luxury cars will need to find other mechanisms to display their social status. Maybe special gold medallions or secret hand shakes or something? 

Looks like Seattle is the odds-on favorite to win the "Worst City in the FSoA to be Homeless" Award.  Despite the fact it's far smaller than NYC, it far exceeds the Big Apple in terms of the number of people sleeping rough and is doing the worst job at addressing the problem possible.

The term "stark outlier" is used for Seattle four times in that study

As in it's so far off the curve it sticks out like Shaquille at a party for Kentucky Derby jockeys.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/the-new-report-on-homelessness-shows-a-catastrophe-for-wa/

The new report on homelessness shows a catastrophe for WA

RE

The last years of life can be really tough if you don't die from a disease or metabolic failure that kills you relatively quickly.  Nowadays also there are meds and procedures that keep people living when they really should just die.  We really need the euthanasia option available.

RE