Bugout Machine Subdivision Sprouts in Sunny California

[RE]

One of the few articles that really addresses the real underlying nature of the affordable housing problem, beyond the fact it's not as profitable to build housing for poor people as it is for rich people.  It's the nature of the financial model which was put into place after WWII and made housing a financial asset which could be financed by making large debt financing purchases possible for J6P.

Where he goes wrong is after identifying the actual problems, he says this system is immutable, basically handed down by God and can't be changed.

"The term "housing trap" is a way to explain the financialized craziness that makes housing prices more responsive to macroeconomic capital flows than local supply and demand dynamics. The reason housing prices are crazy everywhere at the same time isn't because every local market has the same supply constraints. Supply constraints exist in many markets, sure, but the story of housing affordability is primarily a financial one.

We financialized the housing market for expedient, even righteous, reasons. The consequence of this approach is that today's housing acts more like a financial product than a shelter for a family.

Local governments won't change our country's macroeconomic environment. No city can decouple bank reserves from mortgage-backed securities. No mayor will outlaw the thirty-year mortgage. There won't be a protest movement forcing public employee pension funds to divest from the housing market. For most housing products purchased by most people, we have to deal with the system we've been given.

WHY do we HAVE to accept this stupidity?  All that has to be done is give the HUD the authority to open competitive bidding to contractors for the price target housing you want in a neighborhood.  Da Goobermint can get all the materials for building the units cheaper than individual contractors can because they can contract directly with the large corporations like Weyerhauser or Dupont that produce the materials and cut out the middlemen.  Then, instead of selling the units at whatever the market will bear, make the price 33% of the average monthly income for a min wage worker in that neighborhood.  Maintain Price Controls on buying and selling units, and require the owner to live in the unit, not use it as a rental property.  Poof, problem solved.

The solutions he suggests like turning rooms in your McMansion into rental apartments andd building Tiny Homes in the backyard will do almost nothing, despite what afficionados like to say, most people don't want to line in a shipping container, and you can't cut up the inside of the typical McMansion and maintain the kind of privacy people buy those things for to begin with.

Housing can't be both a financial product to be securitized and traded and also a place J6P can afford to live.  Why won't it happen?  Because Baby Boomers who own paid off McMansions would see the value of the property drop like a stone, and people who have a mortgage would go so far underwater they would drown.  TBTF Banks holding 30 year mmortgages would all go belly up as the securities that form their Tier 1 Capital structure dropped to 20 cents on the dollar.  It won't happen because all the people who have benefited from this system would lose most of their wealth an because our financial system is built on it.  It will take a full on crash of the RE market for it to change.  Keep your fingers crossed.

https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2024/5/28/how-affordable-housing-distracts-people-from-housing-affordability

How Affordable Housing Distracts People From Housing Affordability

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[K-Dog]

I have never cared about how much the house is worth.  To me it was always about paying it off and having no rent.  Sell it for a fortune?  So what, a new place costs a fortune and you have to live somewhere.  And now houses are worth so much property tax is like new rent.

A system that reduced housing values should have a way for people to refinance homes as they lose value for those who have an underwater mortgage.  Construction of the system should however not reward those who must refinance to a lower value.  Only ease the pain of the stupid who bought air. Socialize their loss somewhat.

But this is random speculation.  We live in America.  Easing of pain is not what we do.

[RE]

I have never cared about how much the house is worth.  To me it was always about paying it off and having no rent.  Sell it for a fortune?  So what, a new place costs a fortune and you have to live somewhere.  And now houses are worth so much property tax is like new rent.

A system that reduced housing values should have a way for people to refinance homes as they lose value for those who have an underwater mortgage.  Construction of the system should however not reward those who must refinance to a lower value.  Only ease the pain of the stupid who bought air. Socialize their loss somewhat.

But this is random speculation.  We live in America.  Easing of pain is not what we do.

"Legacy" properties like yours pose another problem, because they are out of the system once the mortgage is paid off.  There no longer is a bank whose Tier 1 capital structure is affected, no pension fund holds securities of which it is a part.  The only effects are on the price it could be sold at if it were to be sold in the new controlled market and how it would be assessed for taxation purposes.  You also do not have a home equity line of credit attached and aren't using it as collateral upon which to leverage other loans or purchases.

The problem is here that it's uncertain who would buy this type of house with many bedrooms and large square footage and property if there are available homes that are much cheaper and more energy efficient that better fill the needs of the new population of DINKs (double income no kids).  I suspect the number of people who would buy such homes is quite small now, so they would either need to be razed or cut up into multifamily dwellings if the architecture is suitable for that.  That's what they did in old cities like St. Louis and Detroit to the Mansions built in the late 1800s when these cities were booming in the years after WWII.  I had a friend who lived in one.  The 1st floor was cut up into 3 apartments, 2nd floor 2 and the basement and attic each had 1.  They were all 1 or 2 bedroom apts. Floor plan was crazy nuts. This was the only way the people who owned these places could afford the taxes assessed on them as the cities lost their populations of wealthy people that could afford big homes.

As long as you could afford the new tax assessment under the new property financing structure, you wouldn't need to make any changes and any financial loss is just on paper, it's not realized until you sell the property or die.  If the new taxation is too high, you would either have to divide up the place to rent some units or sell it to Da Goobermint at a fixed rate to be replaced by housing under the new code in terms of square footage and energy efficiency.

I wouldn't worry about it because it's not gonna happen.  Your situation is not uncommon amongst old Boomers, but it takes a back seat to the much larger problem of all the homes owned by GenX and later that also often have 2nd & 3rd mortgages and consolidation loans that reduced their credit card debt & auto or student loan debt.  That's where resolving the financial mess would be a real nightmare. Jamie Dimon and the rest of the Masters of the Universe will never let this happen.

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[K-Dog]

The problem is here that it's uncertain who would buy this type of house with many bedrooms

Four bedrooms and 2700 square feet is not a palace.  Plenty of people would want this house.  It is nice but a lot of people would not think it is 'too much'.  Homes in Seattle are being built three stories high and five feet from the property line on all sides.  I see big and ugly everywhere.  What we have is nice.

Right now if the house was on the market it could sell in a day.  I picked the location to be close to Seattle and the I-90 I-405 freeway interchange.  I did that on purpose and looked at homes in the area so I could take any job south to Tacoma and north to Everett.  Commutes are not as easy as they used to be, so that area is now reduced, but the location remains good.

Better insulation in the attic would be good.  The new heat pump is working great.  I think the furnace only burned for two days this winter.

One of those bedrooms is the headquarters of the Doomstead Diner.  Four bedrooms is not too many.

[RE]

It all depends on the taxation structure and the price of new housing that substitutes for it.  It's not going to happen so don't worry about it.

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[TDoS]

Four bedrooms and 2700 square feet is not a palace.  Plenty of people would want this house.

True about the house. Is the garage part of the 2700 ft^2? Probably not. But as with most things, perspective matters. To you? No big deal, 2700 ft^2, a couple of Benz to tool around in and be comfortable.

I imagine someone who grew up in a place like this might have a different perspective. Hell, a garage with a pair of Benz's in it? Get rid of the Benz, get some cots and a porta potty, a hotplate, and you've got heaven!



PS: This isn't the one I was raised in. All the aluminum siding was still on ours when mom sold it to the next folks down the holler.  And ours had a creek out back we got water from in the winter when the pipes froze in the trailer.

[RE]

PS: This isn't the one I was raised in. All the aluminum siding was still on ours when mom sold it to the next folks down the holler.  And ours had a creek out back we got water from in the winter when the pipes froze in the trailer.

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[TDoS]

PS: This isn't the one I was raised in. All the aluminum siding was still on ours when mom sold it to the next folks down the holler.  And ours had a creek out back we got water from in the winter when the pipes froze in the trailer.

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That kid had a banjo. One of the kids up the holler had a fiddle? Was pretty good too. And dueling banjos is a great duet.

[RE]

A 1000 bed shelter?  If this is on the design of the typical "open plan" low barrier access shelters they put in school gymnasiums and warehouses, they lay out the floor with a 10'x10' checker board, 100 sq ft with a bed, dresser table with a couple of locking drawers, a chair and writing desk.  100 sq ft per customer.  That's 100,000 square feet just for the living space, then it needs bathrooms, food prep and storage, administrative offices, a waiting room etc etc etc.  This is basically a small town.  Except you have he whole town in a building with a footprint of a bit over 2 football fields.  Clearly it would need to be multistory, since I don't think they are gonna build a stadium.

Except of course unlike a small town, they mostly don't know each other, many have been on the street for years, many don't speak english, etc, etc etc.  You're going to house 1000 people together like this for an indefinite amount of time?

How many guards does a prison have on duty per capita?  10 seems to be average for minimum security prisons.  But prisons have cells to lock up the prisoners and they're generally not all free to move around at the same time.  The potential here for a fight to break out and turn into a full scale riot is pretty significant.  So besides being multistory, each floor would need to be cut up into a few large rooms.  If we make it 6 stories with 4 rooms on a floor, bottom floor for the lobby and offices and some kind of recreation areas, that's 20 rooms, so 50 people per room.  This seems somewhat manageable.

How many staff will you have on duty for 3 8 hour shifts per room?  shifts 8-4, 4-12 and graveyard 12-8.  In the Gulag here for 17 gomers per court, we have 3 CNAs for the day, 2 at night.  Let's say you could do it with 2 for the day shifts, 1 for the graveyard, that's 100 5 day/week full time, and another 100 2 days/week part time.  What's the pay scale for this job?  At least $25/hr to start, IMHO.  For just the full time workers, that's $50K/year each, $10M year for this bare bones of operating staff.  You're gonna need more building security, housekeeping and janitorial and of course a few highly paid administrators.  Social Workers also.

In other words, the costs incurred with this type of group housing end up far higher than if you give them individual apartments.  If 100 homeless set up a tent city, there are no official staff costs for this.  They usually will self-police to an extent and assign cleanup duty if the encampment lasts.  However, the sanitation department has to come in periodically, police get called often for domestic issues and they eventually contract for porta potties.  The more it becomes state sponsored, the more it begins to cost.  Here's CA costs per inmate:

Security	$44,918
Inmate Health Care	$33,453
Medical care	23,290
Psychiatric services	5,341
Pharmaceuticals	3,156
Dental care	1,666
Facility Operations and Records	$9,510
Facility operations (maintenance, utilities, etc.)	6,015
Classification services	2,363
Maintenance of inmate records	911
Reception, testing, assignment	193
Transportation	27
Administration	$9,508
Inmate Support	$4,723
Food	2,456
Inmate employment and canteen	1,259
Clothing	382
Religious activities	158
Inmate activities	469
Rehabilitation Programs	$3,652
Academic education	1,689
Cognitive behavioral therapy	1,422
Vocational training	541
Miscellaneous	$367
Total	$106,131

Costs for running Homeless Housing system to address the problems basically the same way a Prison or Nursing Home is run would be similar.  Not precisely the same, there would be different things required, like finding permanent housing, jobs and education for the kids.  The numbers we are talking about are already bigger than the Prison Population of the FSoA, the biggest Police State in the world.  There are  roughly 1.23M prisoners in the FSoA.  Nearly 2.6M people migrated to the FSoA in 2022.  Estimated homeless in 2022 was 582,000.  Based on observation around Anchorage, newz stories about homelessness and anecdotal stories, I estimate the number conservatively has tripled since 2022.  It also doesn't cunt couch surfers and people in other substandard situations like illegal apartments and shared apartments by immigrants where they sleep in shifts.

So, IOW, the idea wwe are going to be able to handle the growing homeless problem by increasing the size and scope of the public homeless shelter system is another example of Magical Thinking.  Taxpayers won't cough up thee money it would take, and billionaires and corporations won't foot th bill either.  They'll make a show, but the actual numbers will dwarf what is actually available in the system.  Wait lists for housing will stretch into years.  It's a time bomb waiting to explode.

https://www.10news.com/news/local-news/san-diego-residents-oppose-mayor-glorias-1-000-bed-homeless-shelter-proposal

San Diego residents oppose mayor Gloria's 1,000-bed homeless shelter proposal

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[RE]

In my post last night, I made the following Educated Guess (EG as opposed to WAG)

" Estimated homeless in 2022 was 582,000.  Based on observation around Anchorage, newz stories about homelessness and anecdotal stories, I estimate the number conservatively has tripled since 2022."

Today's newz from Chicago supports this latest estimate.

Much like FSoA debt, the rapid increase over such a short interval of time is an indicator that "critical mass" has been passed, the point at which normal incremental expansion of existing systems can't keep pace with forces that are driving the increase in numbers that the fixes are supposed to address.  It's the "Hockey Stick Moment", a phrase I am now coining and claiming as my own contribution to the Collapse Lexicon.  For the debt bomb, the Hockey stick graph looks like this right now.



Of course, the most famous Hockey Stick graph is the one of global population of Homo Sap Meat packages beginning in 1AD until today



The Hockey Stick Moment for Homo Sap based on the graph came right around Party Time on 12/31/1999.  The numbers had turned Due North and nothing short of a crash will fix the problem.

It's harder to get a single graph to cover the whole FSoA homeless situation, you can only get snapshots from different organizations that run shelters in different locations.  DHS has a pretty big system.



Here's fire's related to homeless encampments in SF



The lack of uniform statistics to track homelessness makes this a particularly hard problem to judge.  What few stats there are are also limited to just the Big Shities.  I'd be really interested to know what the stats are for small to medium size cities like Springfield MO.  This would give you a better view of what the local homegrown population of homeless is like without the constant input of new migrants.

If this trend continues more than a couple of years, cities like NY, SF, LA and Chicago will look like a floor display of tents at Bass Pro.  The size and number of Bidenvilles popping up in downtowns, under overpasses and in public parks already puts the problem in full view of anyone still fortunate enough to be cruising to the mall to do some shopping or heading to a restaurant for dinner out. Another doubling in a couple of years would inevitably lead to either anarchy or large scale concentration camps and deportations.

This of course is exactly the kind of scenario tailor made for for Trump  MAGAotts.



https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2024/06/07/chicago-homeless-threefold-increase-migrant-crisis

Chicago's homeless population increased threefold, a city snapshot shows, owing largely to migrants

RE

[RE]

I'll paste in the Top 10, since both K-Dog's and my Hometowns make it.  Anchorage comes in #6 and Seattle at #5. $4,3 & 2 are San Jose, NY & LA.  #1 in per Capita Homeless:  Eugene, OR.

Surprisingly, Chicago does not make the list.  Nor does Miami or Houston.  I find the stats somewhat questionable because of this.

Full Top 25 Homeless Cities List

10. San Diego, California

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 257

San Diego County's homeless population has reached a record high of 10,264, surpassing previous peaks in 2012 and 2017. The unsheltered population increased by 26% to 5,171 individuals. Homelessness among seniors increased by 46%, with 29% of the homeless population aged 55 or older. 80% of homeless individuals surveyed reported becoming homeless within San Diego County.
9. Savannah, Georgia

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 259

There are 259 homeless per 100,000 people in Savannah. In 2022, the Continuum of Care partners in Savannah served 4,058 unduplicated homeless individuals, per Homeless Authority. In 2022, the Chatham-Savannah Authority for the Homeless provided emergency shelter (hotel/motel stays) for 1,577 medically fragile homeless individuals. The authority also provided 441 transportation services and purchased 278 bus tickets to help homeless individuals access stable housing with family or friends.
8. San Fransisco, California

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 261

According to the 2024 Point-in-Time (PIT) Count, 8,323 people were experiencing homelessness in San Francisco, with 3,969 staying in shelters and the remaining 4,354 unsheltered. Job loss (26%) and evictions (13%) were among the top reasons for homelessness in the city, according to a survey. 62% of the homeless population in the city is male, 34% female, 3% transgender, and 1% gender non-conforming.
7. Las Vegas, Nevada

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 273

The 2023 annual estimate suggests that 16,251 people in Southern Nevada will experience homelessness at some point during the year which is a significant increase from the 2022 estimate of 13,972. The Black population is disproportionately represented among the homeless, with 37% of the homeless population identifying as Black, despite making up only 12% of Southern Nevada's overall population.
6. Anchorage, Alaska

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 274

There are 274 homeless per 100,000 people in Anchorage. According to Alaskapublic.org, the winter of 2022-2023, Anchorage experienced a record 24 deaths among the homeless population, with 11 fatalities occurring between October 2022 and April 2023. The city spent $161 million on the homeless crisis since 2020. Aceh.org reports that Anchorage has a gap of 221 shelter beds, 52 transitional housing units, and 2,478 permanent housing units (including rapid rehousing, supportive housing, and independent units) to meet the needs of the homeless population.
5. Seattle, Washington

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 349

Seattle has one of the highest rates of homelessness per capita in the United States. The Seattle-King County area accounts for roughly half of Washington's homeless population, with around 14,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2023.
4. San Jose, California

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 363

San Jose stands fourth among the cities with the highest homeless population per capita in the US. According to the 2022 homeless census report, roughly a third of the homeless population is unable to work, while 41% are looking for jobs and 28% are not seeking employment. Since 2020, the supportive housing system in Santa Clara County has helped 9,645 people move from homelessness to stable housing and has prevented homelessness for thousands of households.
3. New York City, New York

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 394

The total number of homeless individuals in New York City shelters reached an all-time high of 63,636 in 2023. In 2019, the city reported that 3,600 individuals experienced unsheltered homelessness, sleeping in public spaces such as streets and public transit rather than shelters. New York City stands third among the US cities with the largest homeless population.
2. Los Angeles, California

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 397

There were around 397 homeless per 100,000 people in Los Angeles. As of 2019, California had a deficit of 1.4 million affordable homes relative to demand. Since 2019, Los Angeles County has seen a 68% increase in shelter beds for the homeless, from 15,617 in 2019 to 26,245 in 2023. Since 2020, more than 21,000 individuals have been placed into permanent housing each year in Los Angeles County.
1. Eugene, Oregon

Homeless People per 100,000 Residents: 432

Eugene tops the list for being one of the cities with the highest homeless population per capita in the US with around 432 per 100,000 people being homeless. Around 44% (1,182) of the 2,690 homeless adults aged 25-64 in Eugene were experiencing chronic homelessness in January 2022. In total, 73% of homeless people in the Eugene area live unsheltered which is one of the highest rates in the country. Eugene had the second-highest number of people experiencing homelessness (2,880) among largely urban areas outside of major cities in the United States.


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[K-Dog]

Homelessness being as bad as it is, at least in Seattle people are able to walk into stores and take whatever they want.  If corporate decisions were not so glacially slow.  The head office would have already closed the store.

If that happened I would have to be here all the time.

[RE]

They figure the Shrinkage into the pricing.  Cost of doing retail in a Big Box store.

Walmart has tightened up their shelving and entrance/exit controls quite a bit.  Camping items are on locked shelves now along with electronics and gunz.  Food is basically free though.  Most clothing also. I could easily shop for free anytime.  They never check the receipt when a cripple on a EVchair zips through the exit corridor.

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[RE]

Speaking of the visibility issue, the Right-to-Shelter cities with the biggest numbers of migrants have just begun to enforce length-of-stay limits for the refugees currently in the system and have begun booting them out.

Obviously if they have to be kicked out, there isn't a permanent dwelling available they can afford.  So HTF is this a RTS?   Your RTS only lasts for 90 days?  The reason they're doing it is just as obvious, they have to make room for new refugees and they can't keep expanding the number they house indefinitely.  Besides the ballooning cost is the staffing issue, as I mentioned in a prior post, every one of these shelters requires a healthy size staff to maintain it.  Finding people who will do that is as hard or harder than finding home health care workers or CNAs, and they're competing for the same set of low skill, low pay workers.

It's exactly the same situation as what has gone on in hospitals over the last 30 years. Length-of-stay dropped from over a week to 3 days, although COVID bumped it up for a while.



Medicare will only pay for a few days where they determine "acute care" is needed, then you get bumped down to a SNIF if you still need care.  After 100 days, they stop paying for that, unless you're a cripple like me who can qualify for long term care.  The whole hospital biz outstripped the capacity to train doctors and nurses fast enough years ago.  The shortage gets worse every year.

Now, improvements in medical fixes allowed this to occur without the mortality rate increasing, though that is starting to change now as average life span decreased for men in the last couple of years.  Discharged patients did have homes to go back to though, so you didn't see them on the street.

Discharging people from shelters with no alternative housing means they go out on the street, where they certainly will be visible and come winter turning blue and showing up in the ER with frozen toes and fingers.  The Mayors hope this will get more money from the State & Fed, but this seems unlikely, especially with Trump.

I would expect the ACLU to file a class action suit to stop this, but again I doubt it will be very successful, and it will take a while to get to the SCOTUS.

The Dem Convention is in Chicago.  Reps are in Milwaulkee.  I fully expect to see Tent Cities of Homeless & Migrants pop up like Mushroom on a damp day in Kennett Square, PA at both locations.  New York I think offers a bus ticket to any homeless person who will leave the city.

During the Great Depression, the Bonus Army of WWI Vets marched across the FSoA to set up a huge Hooverville in Washington.  It was violently removed by the FSoA Military under the command of Gen. Douglas Macarthur.  George Patton was also part of the goon squad.





According to the history books, their numbers were in the 1000s.  I think it's possible this could be exceeded by 3 orders of magnitude and numbers could measure in the 1,000,000s.  Martin Luther King organized a Million Man March on Washington in the 60s.  FSoA population in 1960 was half what it is now.





I hope there is a plan already in the works by advocates for Homeless & Refugees calling for a March and Occupation of both cities.  However, I haven't heard of one yet, so I am hereby announcing a Diner Organizational effort and Fundraiser.  I suggest we announce this on our main website, start a Go Fund Me page, get a Social Media page etc etc etc.  I am willing to donate my copious free time and writing skills to getting this going.  We will need many more of our friends from the Doomer Community with expertiese in video, SEO, IT, AI, blah blah blah.

Let's take the lead on this.  It's something we can do.  We just gotta get the snowball rolling.  The snow is on the ground ready to be picked up.  I will be adding this post to my blog, and I will record a video tonight for the YouTube channel.  More ideas welcome.

Lets DO IT!

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/12/massachusetts-to-begin-enforcing-shelter-limits-00163041

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[RE]

Add the Windy City to the list of "Sanctuary Cities" evicting refugees from homeless shelters to Boston and New York.  Since the Dem convention is in Chicago, it's the Perfect Storm for Deja Vu of Chicago in '68.

Ya think they';; bring in as many Nat Guard & Army troops?

https://news.wttw.com/2024/06/12/johnson-defends-decision-begin-evicting-migrant-families-children-city-shelters

Johnson Defends Decision to Begin Evicting Migrant Families With Children From City Shelters

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