It came to my attention that it would be possible to house everyone who needs a home in America. All the homeless, all the low income, everyone could live in decent, crime free housing in the form of condominiums. In the 60s, they had the same idea and built the projects. However, we could change the rules. Recreate these condos and make them modern and then give away free housing for everyone who wants it in exchange for a commitment. We would require the owner guard the condo where we live against property crime. We would require they check up on the elderly and disabled and go shopping for them. We would require they learn to fix and then fix simple plumbing and electrical problems.. We would require they do bi-annual painting of all interiors and exteriors. In exchange, all housing would be free. We give prisoners free housing don't we? The cost to build these condos is minimal, maybe $7,000 per unit if done en-mass. Drywall is dirt CHEAP and that is 90 percent of the material in a house or condo!!! How do I know? I am a licensed property adjuster and deal with this stuff every day. The owner would be responsible for insurance, condo fee and local property taxes. Since the condo is worth $7,000 these fees should be minimal and could be paid for by a part time job working just a few hours a week. Those who couldn't work could pay due to disability could pay with their government subsidies. This would also pay for regular security guards (bouncers) of each condo to take care of anyone who didn't belong. What happens if they do not abide by the rules? There would be a condo board and they would get kicked out. It would definitely be in their best interest to cooperate. We can do this.
Sounds like the projects/subsidized housing to me. Which, generally, are the worst, most crime ridden parts of a larger city.
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But what do you when they refuse to look after the condos? Kick them out? Then you have lots of ruined condos & lots of homeless people. We could taser them everytime they muck around i guess, but we can't give the police the power to taser someone who isn't doing what the government wants I like the idea of work for the dole/unemployment benefit, which is what is available here, but i think it should be compulsory, unless you can actually prove that you are unable to work. At the end of the day however, you can't force someone to spend their paycheck on living expenses such as cheap accomodation, clothes & food, or force them to take their carreer seriously so that they can one day afford to really make something of themselves. What are you going to do when they take the savings from the free accomodation, and use that to buy more beer, wine or gunja? Or maybe they don't spend money on that sort of thing, but some sort of illegal business like piracy, selling other hot goods, etc... We had a thread a little while ago that dicussed how some homeless people are just really unlucky to be stuck where they are, but how many are there because they are just slack.
Is it possible? In theory/financially, yes. In reality, maybe I'm just being pessimistic but I say no just because of human nature. The majority would not hold up their end of the deal of self guarding and helping the elderly. Bouncers, they'd bust a couple people but bullets/knives don't bounce. I know this is a generalization, I've known a few people who just had bad luck or made a couple bad choices and end up with nothing but that doesn't change the majority. It would end up just another high crime area.
You're forgetting about the labor involved. Redesign an old condo? You need an architect and building inspectors (need to get all the old stuff up to code, after all). Then you need to source all the materials and labor to build all the necessary condos to house the millions of homeless. I would guess that each $7,000 condo is now upwards of $70-80,000, at least. The condo won't be worth $7,000. Even if you somehow got the cost of materials down to $7,000, the property value would be worth more than that. and I don't know of many communities that would want a $7,000 property to bring down their adjacent property values. On top of all that, you're asking the homeless (who are sometimes homeless because they have mental or physical disabilities) to suddenly be responsible for enforcing rules and regulations that may not have the capability to understand. It's a noble idea; unfortunately it's not very well thought out. -monkey
I'll be more specific than""- I worked as a repairman for condos like this. It was the only time in my life I felt the need to carry a gun. The guy who replaced me was found in a dumpster. -Yes, drywall is cheap, but paint, carpet, plumbing, fixtures, AC, and appliances are not. I've seen them all destroyed in less than a month. Low income housing is far more expensive to maintain in my experience. To make matters worse, extra regulations on rent-controlled properties, Section 8 housing, etc, make them a nightmare to maintain. -And I didn't reply immediately because I still don't know if you are a bot or a troll.
