My last post has me thinking more about California and I considered tweaking it but I think I have too much to say to do that.
I've lived all over California, both as a housed military wife and later while homeless. I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy from SFSU and I've blogged about homelessness for years.
I believe California is the dumping ground for America's national homeless problem. California accounts for 12.5 percent of the US population, 25+ percent of its homeless population and more than 50 percent of its unsheltered homeless -- people sleeping in tents instead of at a homeless shelter.
I believe the big coastal cities of California have such large numbers of homeless because of the temperate weather -- little rain and few freezing nights -- and because big cities are where the services are.
If you are completely destitute, have no bank account, no food stamps, no income at all and possibly no ID for trying to get your life back, it's possible to stay fed in a big city. They have soup kitchens and other resources.
I don't think you necessarily NEED to house all the homeless in places like Los Angeles by providing them affordable housing IN the city in question.
If they have affordable housing and can make their life work in some fashion, for MANY -- though certainly not ALL -- homeless people in those big cities, it would be sufficient to house them in one of the smaller cities nearby where OTHER prices will generally be lower than in the big city.
If you built enough market-rate affordable housing in the smaller cities of the High Desert, a LOT of homeless people in Los Angeles could go live there instead of staying in Los Angeles. Food in a place like Barstow will cost a LOT less than in Los Angeles and commuter bus service means you can get to those cities from the Los Angeles basin and aren't simply stranded in a small town if you live without a car there.
I know because I took a series of commuter buses from San Diego County to the High Desert to leave Southern California as a homeless person and relocate to Fresno in hopes of being able to get back into housing in California because at the time, housing in Fresno was "average" for THE NATION which means it was CHEAP for a big city and for the state of California.
And when we spent one night in a hotel in I think Barstow, I was SHOCKED at how much less food was in the grocery store and the local Burger King compared to what I had been paying in San Diego County. If I had thought we could find affordable housing in one of those cities, I might have just stayed there instead of going on to Fresno.
And then Fresno proved to not be a place where I could arrange housing either. ALL of California has housing issues and all of California could benefit from more affordable housing options.
As someone who no longer drives and spent more than two years researching where I might move to get myself back into housing, I found that a shockingly large barrier to finding a place to live was "You can't get there from here without a car."
You can readily and affordably get to the High Desert from San Diego County and the Los Angeles basin via commuter bus. You can also live fairly comfortably without a car almost anywhere in San Diego County because it has much better public transit than most of the US and extremely temperate weather all year.
So if I were trying to solve homelessness in Los Angeles and in the Gaslight District of Downtown San Diego -- and I kind of am because I am trying to solve homelessness generally across the US and I believe California is where a lot of our homeless go and then can't get back off the street again because of the high cost of housing there -- I would not be desperate to build housing IN THE BIG COASTAL CITIES of California that can potentially cost as little as $500 or $600 for a unit if you have NO CAR and so do not need to pay for parking spaces under my Two Towers model.
No, I would build Two Towers projects in smaller cities all over the High Desert and San Diego County near transit hubs, local eateries and local grocery stores.
I would also try hard to get OTHER cities across the US to build such projects to STOP the influx of chronic homeless people into California. The entire nation lacks an adequate supply of affordable housing and it disproportionately impacts the state of California.
I believe you can help solve homelessness in California by building affordable housing anywhere in the contiguous lower 48 states.
I was stuck in downtown San Diego as part of a homeless family with my two adult sons for about six months. That's how long it took to get replacement ID for all of us, some of us having NO ID when we arrived there, arrange food stamps and get to a point where I no longer desperately needed soup kitchens and various other services available in downtown in adequate abundance to keep us alive and moving towards solutions, unlike most smaller cities.
We left downtown just as soon as it was a viable option for us. We left San Diego County after floating about some of the smaller cities and trying to figure out if we could get back into housing somehow and concluding that while THIS works for us while homeless, it won't work for us if we get back into housing AND we would need like a million dollars to afford housing HERE and if I had a million dollars, I could go ALMOST anywhere else in the US, pay cash for a house and have money leftover to live on for a few years.
Then we went to Fresno, tried to figure out how to get into housing there and failed and ultimately left the state to get back into housing.
Are ALL homeless people as footloose and willing and able to relocate as I was? No, of course not.
Are SOME of them? You betcha.
Over the course of many years, I have spoken to homeless people online and in person and SOME of them have income, they just don't have enough income to support a middle class lifestyle. The breakpoint I hear repeatedly is they could get off the street if they could find a place for $600 or less that ACTUALLY was available (without some crazy long wait list), actually was decent housing and was viable for THEM as a handicapped person or person who no longer drove a car.
Homeless people are frequently handicapped and if you can no longer drive, then you CANNOT get some dirt cheap rental in the sticks and DRIVE to a grocery store. You need an affordable rental NEAR AMENITIES, such as in a downtown of a small town.
And these days, many historic walkable downtowns have been gutted by parking minimums and an exodus to bigger cities such that many small towns don't even have their own grocery store.
The cities of the High Desert make my radar as appropriate for Two Towers projects in part because there is affordable commuter bus service to the Los Angeles basin and from there you can potentially go anywhere on the West Coast reasonably affordably via a combination of buses and trains. Or anywhere in the world if you can afford plane tickets.
Cheyenne, Wyoming makes my radar because it has affordable, frequent bus service to Denver, Colorado about 100 miles away and roughly 90 minutes drive and has unusually good amenities for a town of its size due to being the state capital, even though the state as a whole has about the same population as the city of Fresno, California.
Most places in San Diego County likely also would work. The county has unusually good public transit for the US.
Fresno, California has unusually good local bus service, train service, and an international airport. It is relatively affordable by California standards, but you still cannot readily find anything below $600. They could use more affordable housing options for retirees, students, etc.
Many places in the San Francisco Bay Area may also work well with this kind of project. In spite of the high levels of car traffic and sometimes 8-lane freeways through relatively small cities, the Bay Area has more train service, better bus service etc. than many parts of the US and generally temperate weather which helps make it feasible to live without a car.
This list is not intended to exclude any particular location. If you think this project works in Los Angeles, have at it, though I doubt you will be able to build market-rate housing without government subsidies in L.A. and also successfully hit a low enough price point to actually make a dent in homelessness.
You MIGHT be able to do so by moving such projects to cities in the High Desert with a bus connection to the L.A. basin so people can access important amenities they may need, such as major hospitals.
I don't personally like living in the big city. I like living within about three hours of a big city.
I like to be able to get there if I need something you aren't likely to find in a small town, such as shopping options, medical specialists or an international airport.
If you live in a small town that has its own grocery store, some eateries AND some kind of transit connection to a larger city with MORE transit options, your town is a potential candidate for such a project.
If you live in a medium-sized city with a housing crunch that needs more parking, this may also make sense in your city.
If you live in a small town that has LOST its local grocery store and you want to try to bring it back, a Two Towers project is a potential means to transition to that. You might need to work at making sure it's feasible to get enough to eat without a car, but if you do the on-site vending machine lunches and flesh out a write up of how to order enough staples online that can be delivered, plus maybe a few local options for fresh foods, like a produce stand and convenience store, you may be able to put together a plan for establishing a concentration of local population that would support a grocery store again.
If you live in a vacation destination, this project has the potential to let vacationers help create a supply of affordable local housing instead of crowding it out.
Can this work in a bigger city? Probably.
Most parts of most cities have an average height of buildings less than four stories.
It just may not work in the densest part of a big city where you find all the skyscrapers.
Because SOME Americans could be off the street TODAY if they could find something like this. They have retirement income or disability income or even a JOB and simply cannot find something cheap enough that lets them readily access the basics they need in day-to-day life.
I've lived all over California, both as a housed military wife and later while homeless. I've had a college class on Homelessness and Public Policy from SFSU and I've blogged about homelessness for years.
I believe California is the dumping ground for America's national homeless problem. California accounts for 12.5 percent of the US population, 25+ percent of its homeless population and more than 50 percent of its unsheltered homeless -- people sleeping in tents instead of at a homeless shelter.
I believe the big coastal cities of California have such large numbers of homeless because of the temperate weather -- little rain and few freezing nights -- and because big cities are where the services are.
If you are completely destitute, have no bank account, no food stamps, no income at all and possibly no ID for trying to get your life back, it's possible to stay fed in a big city. They have soup kitchens and other resources.
I don't think you necessarily NEED to house all the homeless in places like Los Angeles by providing them affordable housing IN the city in question.
If they have affordable housing and can make their life work in some fashion, for MANY -- though certainly not ALL -- homeless people in those big cities, it would be sufficient to house them in one of the smaller cities nearby where OTHER prices will generally be lower than in the big city.
If you built enough market-rate affordable housing in the smaller cities of the High Desert, a LOT of homeless people in Los Angeles could go live there instead of staying in Los Angeles. Food in a place like Barstow will cost a LOT less than in Los Angeles and commuter bus service means you can get to those cities from the Los Angeles basin and aren't simply stranded in a small town if you live without a car there.
I know because I took a series of commuter buses from San Diego County to the High Desert to leave Southern California as a homeless person and relocate to Fresno in hopes of being able to get back into housing in California because at the time, housing in Fresno was "average" for THE NATION which means it was CHEAP for a big city and for the state of California.
And when we spent one night in a hotel in I think Barstow, I was SHOCKED at how much less food was in the grocery store and the local Burger King compared to what I had been paying in San Diego County. If I had thought we could find affordable housing in one of those cities, I might have just stayed there instead of going on to Fresno.
And then Fresno proved to not be a place where I could arrange housing either. ALL of California has housing issues and all of California could benefit from more affordable housing options.
As someone who no longer drives and spent more than two years researching where I might move to get myself back into housing, I found that a shockingly large barrier to finding a place to live was "You can't get there from here without a car."
You can readily and affordably get to the High Desert from San Diego County and the Los Angeles basin via commuter bus. You can also live fairly comfortably without a car almost anywhere in San Diego County because it has much better public transit than most of the US and extremely temperate weather all year.
So if I were trying to solve homelessness in Los Angeles and in the Gaslight District of Downtown San Diego -- and I kind of am because I am trying to solve homelessness generally across the US and I believe California is where a lot of our homeless go and then can't get back off the street again because of the high cost of housing there -- I would not be desperate to build housing IN THE BIG COASTAL CITIES of California that can potentially cost as little as $500 or $600 for a unit if you have NO CAR and so do not need to pay for parking spaces under my Two Towers model.
No, I would build Two Towers projects in smaller cities all over the High Desert and San Diego County near transit hubs, local eateries and local grocery stores.
I would also try hard to get OTHER cities across the US to build such projects to STOP the influx of chronic homeless people into California. The entire nation lacks an adequate supply of affordable housing and it disproportionately impacts the state of California.
I believe you can help solve homelessness in California by building affordable housing anywhere in the contiguous lower 48 states.
I was stuck in downtown San Diego as part of a homeless family with my two adult sons for about six months. That's how long it took to get replacement ID for all of us, some of us having NO ID when we arrived there, arrange food stamps and get to a point where I no longer desperately needed soup kitchens and various other services available in downtown in adequate abundance to keep us alive and moving towards solutions, unlike most smaller cities.
We left downtown just as soon as it was a viable option for us. We left San Diego County after floating about some of the smaller cities and trying to figure out if we could get back into housing somehow and concluding that while THIS works for us while homeless, it won't work for us if we get back into housing AND we would need like a million dollars to afford housing HERE and if I had a million dollars, I could go ALMOST anywhere else in the US, pay cash for a house and have money leftover to live on for a few years.
Then we went to Fresno, tried to figure out how to get into housing there and failed and ultimately left the state to get back into housing.
Are ALL homeless people as footloose and willing and able to relocate as I was? No, of course not.
Are SOME of them? You betcha.
Over the course of many years, I have spoken to homeless people online and in person and SOME of them have income, they just don't have enough income to support a middle class lifestyle. The breakpoint I hear repeatedly is they could get off the street if they could find a place for $600 or less that ACTUALLY was available (without some crazy long wait list), actually was decent housing and was viable for THEM as a handicapped person or person who no longer drove a car.
Homeless people are frequently handicapped and if you can no longer drive, then you CANNOT get some dirt cheap rental in the sticks and DRIVE to a grocery store. You need an affordable rental NEAR AMENITIES, such as in a downtown of a small town.
And these days, many historic walkable downtowns have been gutted by parking minimums and an exodus to bigger cities such that many small towns don't even have their own grocery store.
The cities of the High Desert make my radar as appropriate for Two Towers projects in part because there is affordable commuter bus service to the Los Angeles basin and from there you can potentially go anywhere on the West Coast reasonably affordably via a combination of buses and trains. Or anywhere in the world if you can afford plane tickets.
Cheyenne, Wyoming makes my radar because it has affordable, frequent bus service to Denver, Colorado about 100 miles away and roughly 90 minutes drive and has unusually good amenities for a town of its size due to being the state capital, even though the state as a whole has about the same population as the city of Fresno, California.
Most places in San Diego County likely also would work. The county has unusually good public transit for the US.
Fresno, California has unusually good local bus service, train service, and an international airport. It is relatively affordable by California standards, but you still cannot readily find anything below $600. They could use more affordable housing options for retirees, students, etc.
Many places in the San Francisco Bay Area may also work well with this kind of project. In spite of the high levels of car traffic and sometimes 8-lane freeways through relatively small cities, the Bay Area has more train service, better bus service etc. than many parts of the US and generally temperate weather which helps make it feasible to live without a car.
This list is not intended to exclude any particular location. If you think this project works in Los Angeles, have at it, though I doubt you will be able to build market-rate housing without government subsidies in L.A. and also successfully hit a low enough price point to actually make a dent in homelessness.
You MIGHT be able to do so by moving such projects to cities in the High Desert with a bus connection to the L.A. basin so people can access important amenities they may need, such as major hospitals.
I don't personally like living in the big city. I like living within about three hours of a big city.
I like to be able to get there if I need something you aren't likely to find in a small town, such as shopping options, medical specialists or an international airport.
If you live in a small town that has its own grocery store, some eateries AND some kind of transit connection to a larger city with MORE transit options, your town is a potential candidate for such a project.
If you live in a medium-sized city with a housing crunch that needs more parking, this may also make sense in your city.
If you live in a small town that has LOST its local grocery store and you want to try to bring it back, a Two Towers project is a potential means to transition to that. You might need to work at making sure it's feasible to get enough to eat without a car, but if you do the on-site vending machine lunches and flesh out a write up of how to order enough staples online that can be delivered, plus maybe a few local options for fresh foods, like a produce stand and convenience store, you may be able to put together a plan for establishing a concentration of local population that would support a grocery store again.
If you live in a vacation destination, this project has the potential to let vacationers help create a supply of affordable local housing instead of crowding it out.
Can this work in a bigger city? Probably.
Most parts of most cities have an average height of buildings less than four stories.
It just may not work in the densest part of a big city where you find all the skyscrapers.
In the central business district of Manhattan, high-rise buildings with 50 or more floors are common. However, residential buildings in other neighborhoods can have anywhere from 2 to 20 floors, on average.If you build a Two Towers project anywhere in the US and make it possible to rent SOME of the units at $600 or less (if they aren't paying for any parking spaces), YOU will be helping to take people off the street or prevent them from landing on the street. And you will be doing so without them going through any kind of "program."
Because SOME Americans could be off the street TODAY if they could find something like this. They have retirement income or disability income or even a JOB and simply cannot find something cheap enough that lets them readily access the basics they need in day-to-day life.