California Dreamin' (Homeless Crisis)

Honestly, many middle class people live paycheck to paycheck, and are literally just one paycheck away from poverty. Or bankruptcy. Or homelessness. When we solve that problem, then there'd likely be far less homelessness. Why is the middle class sector of society being squeezed so tight?

(Mar 13, 2018 06:40 PM)Syne Wrote: One party bore an outsized blame for the recession, and one party bears all the blame for the California housing market.

Like said, I’m not associated with any political party but Bush did sign the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992.

We’re all at fault.  Even I’m guilty.  I knew something was happening, I just didn't know what it was.

Luckily, I sold my place right before it popped.  I built a new one and now my equity is double what it was during the first bubble.  I’ve been thinking about cashing out again but I can’t find another state that I like.  I love the ocean, our mild winters, and damn, California has so much to offer especially, to an outdoorsy person. I could pay cash for a mansion in some of those southern states with plenty left over, but I hate big bugs, and I’m not a huge fan of bible thumpers either.

Kentucky was beautiful, and the houses are cheap, but while searching for antiques for a friend that collects black memorial, I asked a gentleman why the face was painted yellow.  He said, girl you’re in Kentucky now.  We can paint out "N" words any damn color we like.  I thought, Kentucky?  Hell, I've a feeling I'm not in United States anymore.  WTF?  

Still looking, though.

Here we have a big metro area just north of that state border and just within the midwest where there is somewhat of a haven.

(Mar 13, 2018 11:59 PM)elte Wrote: Here we have a big metro area just north of that state border and just within the midwest where there is somewhat of a haven.

North of Kentucky? Indiana? Ohio, perhaps?

Yuck! Flatland.

Unfortunately, I'm an addict when it comes to mountains. Ever been to Yosemite? It’s a must see before you die. Nothing special until you turn a corner and then it’s pure awe.

(Mar 13, 2018 11:41 PM)Leigha Wrote: Honestly, many middle class people live paycheck to paycheck, and are literally just one paycheck away from poverty. Or bankruptcy. Or homelessness. When we solve that problem, then there'd likely be far less homelessness. Why is the middle class sector of society being squeezed so tight?

The middle class is shrinking because more of them are moving into the upper middle class. The lower class has also shrunk.
The biggest problem with middle class earners is that they run up credit debt instead of living within their means, which they would be capable of doing. If you're paying credit card interest, a mortgage, and a car payment, those are why you're living paycheck to paycheck. A little delayed gratification goes a very long way.

So like the housing bubble was caused by easier loans, easily accessible credit largely does no favors for personal finance.

(Mar 13, 2018 11:43 PM)Secular Sanity Wrote:

(Mar 13, 2018 06:40 PM)Syne Wrote: One party bore an outsized blame for the recession, and one party bears all the blame for the California housing market.

Like said, I’m not associated with any political party but Bush did sign the Housing and Community Development Act of 1992.

That would not have been a problem had Clinton not then perverted the market by mandating under-qualified loans.

Quote:We’re all at fault.  Even I’m guilty.  I knew something was happening, I just didn't know what it was.

Luckily, I sold my place right before it popped.  I built a new one and now my equity is double what it was during the first bubble.

How does that make you guilty? You don't have any say over the general market value of your property.

BTW, I did watch most of those videos, just to appease you. And I learned nothing new from that bad presentation (I guess you get what you pay for). He failed to address any actual policy/institutional causes. As primer for some of the basic economic ideas and instruments, I guess it has value.

(Mar 14, 2018 12:43 AM)Syne Wrote: That would not have been a problem had Clinton not then perverted the market by mandating under-qualified loans.

It contributed and so did the so-called free market.  

Syne Wrote:How does that make you guilty? You don't have any say over the general market value of your property.

Well, sort of.  There's something that we like to call comps. I can ask what I want and if suckerfish Bob comes along...and he did.

Unfortunately, I live in a small community and I still run into suckerfish Bob.  Even though the market bounced back, it’s still location-location-location.  Suckerfish Bob still owes more on that house than it’s worth now.

(Mar 14, 2018 12:12 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote: North of Kentucky?  Indiana? Ohio, perhaps?

Yuck! Flatland.

Unfortunately, I'm an addict when it comes to mountains.  Ever been to Yosemite?  It’s a must see before you die.  Nothing special until you turn a corner and then it’s pure awe.

Ask my bicycling joints about how flat it is.  Just a few hundred feet west of here is a big elevation rise (for here) that is 200 feet high.  There are hills around the Oh river valley here, which is on the north side of that river.
About a hundred miles east are the Appalachian foothills, which are pretty nice.   Somewhat east of that are the mountains themselves.  People enjoy hiking on the Appalachian trail, which is hundreds of miles long.   The deciduous trees here are much nicer to me than pine trees in the western states.

(Mar 14, 2018 01:35 AM)Secular Sanity Wrote:

(Mar 14, 2018 12:43 AM)Syne Wrote: That would not have been a problem had Clinton not then perverted the market by mandating under-qualified loans.

It contributed and so did the so-called free market.  

Even if it did, it's sponsor was a Democrat, and Democrats had a veto-proof majority in the House and only needed a few Republicans crossing the isle to have one in the Senate. But it didn't, and neither did the free market. It only granted HUD the regulatory authority Clinton exploited with changes to the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995.
https://www.forbes.com/2009/02/13/housin...a8bc8e778b
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cra-d...ide-2009-6
"In July 1993, President Bill Clinton asked regulators to reform the CRA" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_...anges_1995

Quote:

Syne Wrote:How does that make you guilty? You don't have any say over the general market value of your property.

Well, sort of.  There's something that we like to call comps. I can ask what I want and if suckerfish Bob comes along...and he did.

Unfortunately, I live in a small community and I still run into suckerfish Bob.  Even though markets back, it’s still location-location-location.  Suckerfish Bob still owes more on that house than it’s worth now.

How do comparables make you guilty of anything? If Bob bought, that means the market could bear the price...or Bob was far too eager in his bidding. Either way, it was a voluntary exchange in the free market. Unless you had insider knowledge of the housing bubble crash, you had no idea that the value would tank.

You may feel bad about the results, and perhaps even a little guilty for your own luck, but that doesn't make you guilty.

Los Angeles has a 'homeless' problem that just won't quit. An estimated 60,000 people live on the streets in downtown LA.

There are a whole bunch of problems in California. Don't confuse them.

It's true that the Middle Class is being squeezed out of many parts of California like toothpaste out of a tube.

Here in the Bay Area (and in LA too) high earners and real estate speculators are bidding up home prices in any remotely desireable neighborhood to unaffordable levels for regular people. In my Silicon Valley neighborhood, comprised of 1950's middle class homes and nothing special, the average home price is about $1.4 million. Great for those of us who own our houses, not so great for anyone of moderate means who wants to buy a home. (Rents are equally exorbitant.) Given the price of housing around here, you have to have an income of over $100K just to exceed "low income" status. (It's true.) Yet houses are selling and are in demand. I get at least one unsolicited offer each month from real estate brokers representing undisclosed buyers (many of them Asian) who are willing to buy my house for cash, sight unseen, for $100K or more above market price. My next door neighbors took the money and left and now their house is an Air B&B short-term rental. I expect that's why they want my house too. (That's today's Silicon Valley. The engineers and scientists that created the Valley couldn't afford to live here now and wouldn't get hired if they could. It's all e-business and social media concepts these days.) My neighborhood once was a community where people knew each other up and down the block. Today I have no idea who lives next door or across the street. (Some Sikhs I think, who never speak to any of the rest of us, replaced the existing house with a huge oversized McMansion and constructed a wall around their property like a fortress.)  

At the same time, Mexicans and Central Americans (many of them illegal) are taking over every less desireable neighborhood where crime skyrockets, gang graffiti abounds and schools collapse. It's gotten to the point where you can't get a service job (or a construction job or a skilled trades job) unless you speak Spanish. So the remaining Middle Class is giving up and leaving California. That's one reason why Phoenix has grown so explosively to something like 4 million people. It's the former white Middle Class from Los Angeles. Lots of Californians are moving to Texas too. And the Bay Area's black population, many of whose parents arrived during WWII to work in the shipyards, are disappearing too, selling their modest houses to real-estate speculators, taking the money and moving to Atlanta in many cases.

But the homeless problem is a very different problem and a very different population. Most of these people have never been Middle Class and given their psychiatric and drug problems, they never will be.

Why are they on the street? A variety of reasons. One of the biggest is the disappearance of all the old single room occupancy hotels (SROs) that used to house the more marginal population. These used to be everywhere in skid row areas. But the wonderful progressive social planners tore many of them down in the name of "urban renewal". Then the remaining ones were taken over by immigrant populations. So the psychiatric outpatients and the substance abusers found themselves on the street with their welfare housing vouchers worthless because there were no housing units where they could use them.

Yet California remains a magnet to people like that. They don't fit in wherever they come from (they aren't typically California locals), so they head to LA where the anything-goes sex-and-drugs allure is strong, the weather is (almost) always warm, where social services are (relatively) abundant, where there are others like them so there's a (sometimes pretty scary) social community, and where the local government forbids the police from messing with them and lets them do whatever they like.

People have headed to California in search of fantasyland since the Gold Rush, they hoped to become stars in Hollywood, surfers on Southern California beaches, hippies to San Francisco, people from all over the US (and Asia) head to Silicon Valley today in hopes of getting rich in (hugely misnamed) "tech" (it has less to do with science and engineering every year), Mexicans sneak across the border in their endless hordes (and about 1/3 head to California), and drug addicts and psychiatric sufferers just add to the flood and end up on the streets. You hear about the 'opioid crisis' out in Middle America, this is where many of those people end up.

Meanwhile many of the normal people are moving out and heading the other way in a counter-flow. That explains California's growing cultural peculiarities and its increasing difference from (and sometimes hostility to) the rest of the United States.

Welcome to the Hotel California... you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...

And no doubt the same politicians and bureaucrats who helped create those conditions will scapegoat the "evils of capitalism" for the income inequality they fostered.
I guess whatever "undesirable" populations socialist schemes don't put in front of the firing line they push into the gutter. Heck, even give them "safe injection sites" so they have less incentive to get off drugs. https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/07/health/sa...index.html
Sounds like a perfect storm for a few "angels of mercy". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angel_of_m...inology%29