This is my most common fantasy if I somehow came into a billion dollars.
It’s a fantasy, but I would create an apartment complex with mixed 1 2 and 3 bedrooms and set the rent below market value and then find a lawyer to draw up a legal document to turn it into a co-op so that after enough people moved in I could turn control over to them.
If I were a multibillionaire I would do this again and again until non market housing was normal In my city, and anyone wanting to build housing has to compete with a bunch of non market housing.
Are there better, more efficient ways to accomplish this? Yes. Am I glad they at least did something though? Also yes.
Americans will build literal shoeboxes instead of 1 apartment building
When dealing with homeless and mentally ill this setup of isolation from other units is better. Dealing with unsanitary living, smells, fires, sounds, are all are easier to mitigate in this setup. Also America is not hurting for wide open spaces to build this type of thing.
Nor is Canada, where this is.
I dunno, wouldn’t it be cheaper to make and wouldn’t be easier to look after as well? (Having all the plumbing, heating, wiring, AC in one place)
Independent homes require a lot of work and maintenance, compared to shared Apartment buildings.
Sanitary wise, I could see it being a problem in both the cases. It really depends on the people.
Besides, just because you have land doesn’t mean you should use it. Trust me, living in a place where there’s virtual no trees to look at, I’d prefer to just live in a shared Apartment and enjoy the view (that’s going by the picture and if there’s one).
Americans are too scared of apartment buildings because it reminds them of the projects, imo. That apartments are a poor person thing.
is it just me or anyone else thinking that row houses would have been way more efficent than these? giving everyone living there more than 1 room
Depends. Given this happened in North America there might very well be existing production lines for these tiny houses, and construction laws are also way simpler to fulfill with those basically anywhere (e.g. in Germany you’d just have had to make the whole place a camping site). They all look pretty standardized, including those solar panels.
Although I’d agree that a properly build big building would probably last longer. Not too sure about that though, I’m just happy to hear there are still people with money actually taking care of those who’re at rock bottom.
I think this is the correct answer, outside of large cities it is not legal to build apartments or row houses in many places in the States. It would probably be significantly easier to skirt the zoning laws to buy a plot of land and put 100 tiny houses on it, than to attempt to get some sort exception granted to the zoning in order to build an apartment or row house.
not legal
I don’t know this, but I am willing to bet it’s not legal because of the segregation era suburban dystopia laws.
They are also a lot more expensive. The most expensive with these houses he built is probably the ground, but he might’ve gotten it for free from the town.
Might be, but those look cute as well to be honest.
You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
“We’ve given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We’ve given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing.”
Who would have thought that the way to reduce crime was to reduce people’s need to commit crimes by giving them homes and a future.
Bruce Wayne but sane
10M over 20 years to help a community of 3000 or $166 per person per year. USA is planning to increase the military budget by 150B this year or over $400 per US citIzen…
Yeah I was shocked by the math on that one too. It is ridiculously cheap to lower crime and poverty, while increasing graduation rates and college enrollment. It’s almost like keeping people poor and stupid and criminal is intentional.
You’re saying that as if investment into military was unnecessary these days
Alternatively you could eliminate oil company tax breaks and direct subsidies and that alone would fund it.
It is if you don’t use it when you’re part of a contract that got broken from another Partie of the contract.
So breaking contracts now justifies military intervention?
So this guy shouldn’t be news, this should be the standard, it’s scary that the one good guy with enough money to do something like this is the exception and not the norm.
We all evolved to live in tribes; we have to work together as people.
The problem is that we allow individuals to amass so much wealth, it inevitably leads to the rest of us being at their mercy like that. If we’re lucky, they’ll be sorta benevolent, like this person. Would be much easier if we took out the randomness and just had the funds to do necessary stuff like this collectively.
That’s why we elected people to help the community with our collected funds. To help govern the distribution of the community effort. Well, that was the idea.
Yo
Idea
What if ALL the houses we build are for reducing homelessness?
At least think about it
Just want to remind everyone that we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a cost of living crisis. Everyone deserves a place to live and we have plenty. The will is the only thing. Fight YIMBY traitors. We can do it!
Yimby traitors?
What’s wrong with yimbys?
They won’t solve the underlying problem. Sure, that requires wealth redistribution, but where is the downside?
“YIMBY traitor” – isn’t that just a NIMBY?
Two things can be wrong. We can (and should) dispose of landlords and build more housing.
Not sure what you’re talking about, but here in the UK we need over 4m houses to be built to house the current population. That’s quite a lot for a country of 68m.
Ahaha! Wtf is this shit? Bloody think tanks…
Well, can you provide some context to your +4m new houses figure?
Then we can discuss where the difference comes from.
Do you understand what the word “household” means? A household is an entity which pays council tax. The amount of households cannot be higher than the amount of houses, it’s just impossible.
Some examples of households:
- A single person living in a flat.
- A family of four living in a house.
- A group of unrelated five people living in an HMO.
First of all, households do not include homeless. There are at least 354k homeless people in England according to Shelter. That’s 354k houses needed. Homeless don’t live in a house, they don’t pay council tax, they are not counted towards household number. Your bullshit think tank has decided that homeless are not humans and do not deserve a place to live.
Second - a family of four has two kids, kids need their own place. That’s two more houses needed for this example household. ONS census indicates that at least 4.9m adults live with their parents. That’s 4.9m more additional houses needed. Your bullshit think tank has decided that kids should live at parents’ house until they die and dropped them from their statistics interpretation.
And last, but not least, HMOs are a temporary accommodation. People living in them - they all need their own place. There are around 480k living in HMOs in England, that’s an additional 480k houses needed. But your bullshit think tank decided that these people don’t matter.
The difference comes from statistics manipulation to fit the agenda to keep the houses growing to please landlord donors.
Do you guys have room for that?
There’s loads of space. We just need to mow down terraced houses and get rid of aristocracy, which owns 40% of land in England.
Ah, yea fine makes sense.
Anyone has room for that if it’s not built in the style of American suburbs.
Well tbf Americans have room.
There’s a lot of negativity from armchair experts in this thread but this seems like a genuine case of somebody putting a lot of thought and a lot of effort into actually helping the homeless. It’s not just dropping a bunch of tiny houses and saying “job done”.
It’s deadass exhausting seeing people whinge whenever anything that improves the world happens. Always enough time for criticism, never enough to do something anywhere near as positive IRL.
yep, image has been accurate for a long time now.
Agree. Imperfect, enemy, good; you know the spiel. We all know it by now.
Probably stems from powerlessness and endorphin release from online interactions (tbh, guilty) taking place of actual, uh, I guess praxis is the term.
It’s hard not to be jaded. I bounce between both sides constantly.
Either way, this guy did an incredible thing.
Incredible read, thank you for sharing this
I think most likley that is actually the case. Y’all are masters at the sophist uno card. Cha cha real smooth…how low can you go…Charity is a band aid of tyranny and all those in the hierarchy play their part. Some towns out west that have a bunch of rich people don’t have any infrastructure for the poor so the peasants can serve them their cheeseburgers at their local McDonald’s. This means the rich need us. It is not altruism but out of necessity, but you can spin anything the way you would like, especially when it’s hard to tell rich people what to do.
Yes this… “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Butttttttt… “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6, ESV)
Rich people love peacocking managing perception and you will lap it up like a loyal dog unaware of your position in the hierarchy. I am not even Christian but raised Christian I suppose.
Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
Fight against homelessness shall not be charity driven.
Yes but this is still a good idea in the meantime
How good it is depends on the details, of course.
I have nothing against “home first” strategy, however when some random millionaire decide without impact study or methodology how to fix the problem it might look like home shelters outside of zones where homeless get their social, work or food access, without lights, water or any usefull public infrastructure.
That’s a good point. Homeless encampments will be within range of all the services they need. No guarantee these houses are anywhere near those services.
But like someone else said, it all depends on the details.
Really what this is showing me is that the public coffers don’t have nearly enough money in this region if some random is out here addressing critical infrastructure problems.
Nice!
Now, it would be good not to rely on good will of some individuals and actually enforce this for all the rich.
But still mad respect for the man.
Someone took 99 families off the streets? Wow fuck that asshole, how dare she have enough money to do that. How dare she not give up her home and make it 100 families off the streets, not good enough!
-Half this website, angry 99 families now have a place to live who didn’t before this event
The anger isn’t (necessarily) for the rich person who housed people. It’s for the system who left people homeless in the first place, the system that will put those people back on the streets if they don’t pay rent/property taxes/whatever other fee people have to pay to exist, the system where the solution is literally just “have rich people pay their share and almost everything will be fixed” but for some reason the people in charge can’t (or don’t want to) figure that out.
You conflating anger with the system with anger for people getting houses is disingenuous.
She?
Bold of you to assume their gender identity!
(I need glasses)
He denied their choice to live like they wanted and God intended! What an asshole. Who is he to decide for them?
This website is full of envy is the simple answer. Hate for people who have more, tons of entitlement and the “I totally wouldn’t want to be a billionaire!” bullcrap flying around.
the bullshit is that the system left 99 people without homes in the first place
Millionaire? Nice. Billionaires should follow suit, but 1000x
(With ~800 billionaires in the US, that’s 79,200,000 homes)
Except it would be unethical for a billionaire to throw that much power around. They should relinquish the value back to the communities from where they took it.
That’s my takeaway. The positive effect of the charity of this mere millionaire really does a great job showing just how fucking evil billionaires are. So much potential for positive change in the world siphoned into yachts and propaganda
How many homes do we actually need?
Funny story, we actually have enough housing for everyone. It just isn’t always where people want to live, and corporate landlords would rather leave a space vacant to drive up rents than make all of their inventory available, so there is a shit ton of residential (and commercial) property that is basically abandoned.
Some estimates say there are as many as 12 vacant homes per homeless person
this countryin the United States.
Edit: millionaire in OP is from Canada
Last estimates I saw before the pandemic had the rate above 30:1. I haven’t looked since then, but I’m certain it’s only gotten worse.
Yeah, we were gonna do that anyway. After covid, I lost faith in humanities ability to be decent.
What we need is tax on vacant property. Make it a ladder system so its worse based on number of vacant units and value.
And eliminate corporate ownership of residential property. Tax the shit out of anyone owning more than three residences, and bring property values back down to earth. Bail out homeowners who owe mortgages for more than the value of the properties, and let the market self-correct.
I’d go so far as to attack the idea of a corporation. Letting a business own property or act as a liability shield for human choices is clearly bad for society.
It goes both ways though. I have a corporation for my contracting business to shield possible frivolous lawsuits from unscrupulous people. I do my best to screen clients and not work for wackos, but that’s not necessarily enough to protect myself and family.
Same. Different entities for different concerns keeps each siloed WRT finance and liability. But that should have no bearing on what I believe is true.
TLDR: Thomas Jefferson asked us to “crush” them. Better late than never.
Corporate entities in the USA are out of control and absolutely must be reigned in at every level of government. Their overreach is not a new problem. Thomas Jefferson said it had already begun in a letter from 1816:
I hope we shall take warning from the example [of the lawless English aristocracy] and crush in it’s birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations (emphasis mine) which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength, and to bid defiance to the laws of their country.
Spoiler, we didn’t. We just let them bribe legislators to change the laws so they no longer even had to defy them. And of course a few of the largest corporations recently purchased the republic outright for a relatively paltry sum, as if it were a startup acquisition.
It’s obvious to anyone who owns corporations that they make nearly everything easier. So much about the economy and government has been hugely optimized for them, while the real flesh-and-blood citizenry experience greater friction year over year.
Edit: TLDR because no one reads walls of text
There’s also the fact that many of those houses have sat vacant and have been left to rot for many years, meaning that plenty of them need to be demolished and rebuilt before they can be lived in. Small towns have been dying for decades as suburban sprawl consumes ever-increasing amounts of land and bleeds our cities dry of tax revenue, forcing them to continue making more suburbs to pay off the previous ones.
The official homeless number for 2024 in the US was 771,480. That’s probably just reported and not actual.
Analysts think we’re about 4.5 million homes short of what we would need to a well-functioning housing market. I’m not sure exactly how they’re defining that.
I would assume that figure takes into account not just how many homeless there are, but renters and home prices vs wages as well. There isn’t a single county in the US where a worker with the average annual wage can afford to buy a house at the average price range in that area, for example.
Drive through a small town, and all of your questions will be answered.
This is not a housing problem, it’s not a mental health problem, it’s a fucking unadulterated greed problem.
Please arm yourselves. The opposition will.
I’ve heard elsewhere that we already have enough vacant homes being reverse squatted by property management companies to house every homeless person.
Vacant homes in general, yes. Similar numbers of people have second homes for vacations as are homeless in the US. There are also quite a few abandoned homes in dying rural communities with no jobs.
Property management companies are managing rentals, not squatting. Some investors hold properties empty, but they aren’t in large enough numbers to be THE problem.
They didn’t become billionaires by being charitable.
Quite the contrary. You CAN’T accumulate that much money except by exploiting others, creating issues like homelessness.
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
millionares($) wouldn’t be able to afford multiple yachts, or even so large of a yacht. billionares, those who offshoring wealth makes sense for, are the problem.
not the docter nor lawyer, but the whale.
millionares pay about 48%-49%, at least where im from.
Man, Im starting to think I’m tarded. Something about this isn’t letting my brain work, please do more sentences
People are downvoting because “retarded” is increasingly considered a slur or hateful term (just providing context, do with that what you will)
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
No one is saying it’s better for rich people to independently spend money on charity pet projects. Appropriate taxation is better but this was still a good way for him to spend his money, it’s still good for him to help his community (he could have just spent that money on a yacht)
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
This is a variation on the saying “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Which means don’t reject good things just because they aren’t perfect. Perfect is an ideal that doesn’t exist, and good is still worth celebrating.
In this case, the commenter is saying that perfect would be better taxation and government programs that provide this service to the people. But a private citizen helping people with their private wealth still helps people. That’s a good thing even if it’s not the perfect ideal solution
Personally I am a huge advocate of the “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” mentality :) hope this helps and I hope you have a good day!
I probably shouldn’t have said that. I’m gonna double down though a little and say I’m not out here to hurt anyone or make anyone feel hurt, I’m just trying to add voice to my writing. Sort of a tension cutting tool. Some of my favorite people are tarded, like my wife. She’s a pilot now.
Joking aside though, I appreciate the effort of you ELI5ing this to me, and I should have been more direct. I just don’t get why this guy commented this when what he’s commenting on essentially said the same thing. I’m just more surprised that almost the same amount of people upvoted both. They’re both valid in the same way.
If you carefully read the negatives and positives he’s saying kinda the opposite of the first guy :)
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
“I don’t believe letting them just spend their money this way is better than doing it with taxes”
And then even more simplified (obviously loosing nuance)
“I don’t think this is as good as doing this with taxes”
Dude, you are just a gem.
I’ve been drinking a bit tonight, and I’m going to look at this tomorrow. I imagine that it’s all going to flow together nicely, but it’s never going to be as nice as you’ve been.
Thank you, and just be proud of how kind you are. I’m astonished currently. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll get to the bottom of this:)
Lol, I really appreciate that. Drink some water and rest well man!
This statement might be true, but we’re not taxing him. Should he just donate his money to the government?
I don’t even think you can do that.
If every billionaire did this and ended homelessness perhaps they would have a point about their wealth hoarding. I won’t be holding my breath for this to happen though. Tax the rich!
Absolutely. We don’t need kings making decisions like this. The downside is the difficulty in forcing government and the anti-help-anyone segment of our society to spend such taxation correctly to actually help people.
I’m also angry he did a good thing despite the government’s abject failure to tax the rich.
Sure there are lots of failures to the way we govern ourselves. This shouldn’t be a need. The reality is that it is a need and that person did what he could. Have you?
I see one: he actually did something instead of a council that blows all of the money on meetings
What makes you think Trump’s administration will make better use of that money?
Especially because his unilateral decision is optional. Someone got lucky with his choice vs someone was guaranteed an outcome.
Corruption could make that money go to some people’s 3rd, 4rd or their relatives houses UNFORTUNATELY . The question here is: what about those who pay a rent???
Corruption already makes most millionaires’ and billionaires’ money go to that anyway. At least if it’s taxed some of it will actually go to toward necessary housing, maybe even frequently enough that it’s not newsworthy when it does, the way it is now.
I did not understand what you said, sorry
You’re worried that if we collect money from the wealthy through taxation, it might not be used to reduce homelessness. However, if we don’t tax the wealthy, they’ll spend the money on their own goals, which definitely won’t be to reduce homelessness. While you’re right that taxes are largely wasted, they do still fund important things such as fire departments, medical research, and yes, government housing. It’s true that we need to implement better tax management systems, but we also need a wealth tax.
I never said we don’t need a taxation system, I’m just reporting what’s happening almost everywhere.
Alternatively a possibility is to give the public sector to woman, they should be a little bit more immune to corruption (I might be wrong though).
So we’re so scared of corruption that (checks notes) we stop even trying for fairness and instead just let rich fucks make all the decisions and hope for the best?
It’s clear that a lot of people switched to that way of thinking, thanks to those corrupted people.
That’s what current voting results say all around
This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn’t have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn’t get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Good for him, but this is pretty much an Orphan-Crushing Machine moment.
Haha uhhh gawd.
First time reading this?
