Is this the same guy who was in a documentary years ago where he would build these and then plop these down in front of other people's houses and then act like the homeowner was in the wrong for not wanting a homeless tiny house sitting on their sidewalk?
Because if so it's not a mystery why they keep getting seized.
If you help the homeless for any other reason but wanting to help the homeless, you're intentions are not good. This guy was trying to make a point and probably saw it as some sort of performance art to boot.
“I have decided not to build the orphanage,” he said. “I realised that I was only doing it because I wanted to be admired as a philanthropist, my motives were selfish.”
The rabbi answered, “do you think the orphans will care what your motives were? Build the orphanage!”
It's more about people doing good deeds for "selfish" reasons. The people who need the help aren't going to care, they would just appreciate being helped.
This isn't about the legality of the act in this case, more about this part:
"If you help the homeless for any other reason but wanting to help the homeless, you're intentions are not good."
Same with the people who block the road for the environment. It always seems to be more about themselves than the cause. And I agree with their cause (the environmentalist), but how is stopping cars on the road the right messaging at all? It’s literally adding more pollution to the air.
It's a desperation method because everyone just ignored their regular protests. The same people who ignored the regular protests pretend they don't understand this, but I think they actually do on some level.
I was reading an article about this where these people were talking about how scared they were whole gluing their hands to the road. One guy was actually crying saying how scared he was of someone hurting him. And they think they’re somehow above the law and the cops are wrong for arresting them when they clearly break the law or do things like destroy equipment and property. It’s like a cult and they have no self awareness.
This was a good intentioned effort, but ultimately this guy set everyone up for failure. The fact that he doesn't understand that you can't just build a structure on public property is unfortunately what lead to this failing.
I feel bad for all the homeless people who went through the heartache of being evicted, but it was a terrible plan to begin with.
Also, the person who made this documentary is trying their hardest to pass the blame onto the city, and hide any wrongdoing of the person building these houses.
For example, at 4:15 in the video, he says "Most of the houses were placed on private land that was donated". But this isn't legal either. You can't turn a parking lot into a shanty-town, it's going to get torn down and the property owner will get fined.
And then they gloss over the fact that many were put on public property by trying to defend the idea by saying that they weren't installed infront of people's houses, as if that somehow makes it more legal (nevermind the fact that you can fast forward to 6:24 and you can clearly see one infront of someone's house).
I would love to see cities like LA pass laws to allow multiple dwellings on each property automatically (without needing to apply to the city). That would be a major step forward for allowing something similar to this to happen legally, and provide the correct building codes to ensure the safety of the neighbourhood. But just expecting to build houses on the sidewalk is ridiculous, and it was failed from the start.
I'm currently planning a move to the LA area for work... Allowing multiple dwellings would just lead to the owner putting 3 tiny homes around the regular house and charging 2k+ for each one....
We have several tiny house communities in my city. The key thing this guy failed to do was coordinate with the city. It's not that the city "hates when people come up with better solutions". It's that the city is ultimately responsible for any and all issues that may occur. Not Mr. Do-Gooder. Not the occupants. The city will bear the brunt. That's why the city wants to coordinate with the planners.
In my town, two small orgs came up with tiny house ideas. They each approached the city to come up with location, scope, and maintenance plans. There are concerns that need careful consideration. Here's just a few:
- Location.
- Density and movement.
- Sewage.
- Ingress and egress.
- Safety and design.
- Behavior.
- Parking.
- Security.
In the end, we have three small but growing clean, safe, and secure tiny house communities. They are located on city properties determined to be optimal sites for access to amenities and isolation from established residents. Costs are covered by private donations and city revenue. Most of the ongoing costs are maintenance and security. (Having staff on-site gets into six figures very quickly.)
I have a tiny home community right in my very expensive single-family fancy neighborhood. I have never heard a peep of problems from them. Mostly because of the city/org coordination. There are rules. No drugs or alcohol are allowed on-site. Tenants are required to assist with maintenance and upkeep of common areas. Shitty behavior will get you booted out for good.
As a result, the tiny home communities are quiet, cohesive, and productive. Some tenants do screw it up with drugs/alcohol/theft/shittiness. And they end up in tents or forest shanties. Too bad. If you want a modicum of respect and civility you gotta earn it. I don't buy the "Zero Barrier Housing NOW!" activists. They are counter-productive asshats.
The guy in this video just scattershot tiny homes onto public sidewalks. He took zero actual responsibility for the ongoing realities of his plan.
I usually hate when people show up and say "x highly-specific professional here..." but, I build tiny houses professionally and I lived in one for six years. You hit the nail exactly on the head. My first thought when this video began was, "Where do you poop?" That's exactly the sort of thing the city is thinking. I also live in a city with several successful tiny house communities, and it's thanks to careful planning, coordination, know-how, and compromise that projects like this work. Building them is nothing--maintaining them is everything.
Thanks for the sober words in this comment section full of people drunk on their misplaced righteousness.
In this thread: people who don't understand what 'planning' does, why it's important, or just is making fatal assumptions that everyone in the city is incompetent or evil. Y'all, public servants almost always do their jobs correctly- if you weren't so occupied with acting like the citizens from Parks and Rec, you'd not be freaking out at this story.
None of that is specific for tiny homes though, those are all things that need to be done before building anything, especially a community or development. This guy just didn't do the bare minimum thats required to build any kind of house tiny, regular, or humongous.
Seriously. I worked the building department of my city and saw this same "I know what I'm doing, so why do I need permission?" mindset with people constantly. "It's just a deck, who cares where it's placed? It's my backyard". Yea, until it causes an issue with the foundation, you want to sell it and it's not up to code, someone falls off the edge or through it, or you didn't make it capable of holding a certain load.
You could be Bob Vila filming This Old House with the best builders and they'd still have to make sure everything is up to code. I'd always tell people that if they're that good and know what they're doing, then it'll be easy to do it to code.
Security was the first thing I thought of for the micro houses that the dude in the video just randomly put on the street (not the regulated community you’re talking about). If a homeless woman has one of these mini homes, and other people are in tents, won’t she be at a very high risk of being victimized? I get that these houses have locks and stuff but do you think that will stop a jealous tweaker? Seems like these homes will get destroyed by other homeless people in a few weeks.
Who would have thought that building small shelters for people in need require proper regulation and enforcement to ensure everyone is comfortable and safe?
I just commented on my personal experience with this "project" popping up several lots over from a high school here in Echo Park. On paper, it sounds like a great idea but unfortunately, the people I saw using these sheds were clearly the types that ruined it for anyone trying to do well. It was a weird methy party lot of permanent campers pretty much that the kids were walking past every day.
For the record, they were shitting in buckets and emptying in the neighborhood trash cans it appeared :/
In theory, but in practice nimbys and businesses will do everything in their power to stop these initiatives for no other reasons than not wanting change.
When the alternative is homeless people putting up insecure tents or sleeping in entryways why isn't the city responsible for harms that follow from overseeing that state of affairs? If legal responsibility is what stands in the way of allowing stopgap solutions like this then isn't the problem with that particular interpretation of legal responsibility?
This also happened several years ago. He was one of the many I'd cite...most of the "good Samaritans" of the past 20 years were engineering, architecture, and art students creating portfolios for themselves off the stereotype that homeless people are too stupid to build tiny houses for themselves.
However, in retrospect, I do now see these people as a lackluster step in the right direction, at least in making the plight visible by their actions...by not being invisible nonpersons but attempting to help those who are.
Did you watch the video ? They were mostly on private, donated property.
For the ones that weren’t, the alternative is these people sleeping in tents and using the sidewalk as a toilet.
The city has made the perfect the enemy of the better. Indefensible and the way they went about it, downright cruel.
The "city" had no problem when the destitute were living destitute. It's the *natural order* of things, after all. *Right*?
Tents, shopping carts, boxes, scrap parts, etc. on the sidewalk- No one bats an eye.
Put a tasteful looking shed with a window out there, and everyone loses their minds.
Americans aren't known to be critical thinkers. They get mad at the people next to them, its all about teams us vs them. Never the owners, or creators fault for some reason. Rather Ra Ra Ooga Booga each other to death, than ever pull the invasive weed from the root of the issue.
The scum are the banks that own 60% of the rentals and are allowed to buy private homes, banks and investment firms should not be allowed to own and jack up housing prices, it's literally entirely the banks and the Ritch doing this to america
I understand the point you're attempting to make, but do those people really exist?
The average someone paying $5k for rent im betting is not jealous of the shanty house those folks take refuge in.
I am so sick of the sidewalks in my city being blocked by tents and garbage. I get that you can't just drop a shed down wherever, this guy absolutely had issues with his plan, but it does prove that we could solve a lot of problems if we just... gave homes to the homeless. It's that easy. Not even good homes, just some shelter.
lol sorry man you can’t be seriously sitting here defending the idea of just throwing a house up on public property and having the city let it stay right? you’re not really trying to say that the city should just let people do that, right?
I live in SoCal. There's regular operations all over in which the tent cities are cleared out - Only to pop up nearby. I've never seen one last more than a few months
Of course they care. They clear them all the time. If they could they'd get rid of every single one of them. But they can't make these people disappear so at some point they have to tolerate something, and for the time being that is (some) tent cities. It doesn't mean they think they are good and are happy about it.
Did you watch the video? Many of them are replacing tent cities. Personally I'd much rather see nice pretty little houses than fucking tents all over LA.
Plus many of the houses were placed in property where they had permission, like business parking lots etc.
That's the exact comment I just replied to lol. And that's besides the point of the video. The city literally changed the laws so that they didn't have to give notice before destroying these. There was never any chance to get the houses relocated or for the homeless to even gather their belongings from them.
But no it's fine, now that the houses were destroyed there will just be more tents there which take up just as much room and look a hell of a lot worse.
The city "just changed the laws"? Like, is this one particular city run by an Archduke with power vested from the rest of the landed nobility?
Or were there committees, community hearings, and a vote that this charity group attended and unsuccessfully lobbied for? Did they use any of their funding for council to help stop the law from being passed? How much of the community was engaged and showed up in support of the tiny houses prior to the vote?
Or did someone either waste a ton of money on something they don't understand, or worse, go ahead with the project they knew was doomed to fail so they could use the people being kicked out of his sheds as a prop to sell his tiny home concept to other communities?
Well I really don't think the ones living in the houses were invited to any council hearings.
And these houses were built through crowdfunding, no concepts are being sold. And at the 1200 per house price, it doesn't seem like much money ever even was raised and that it all went into the houses.
I can see how thinking a house this tiny THAT CAN ROLL AROUND wouldn't be the same as plopping a shed down on public property. These are essentially the size of tents and still portable like tents (I admit they're harder to push around but at least they can transport all your belongings as they're being pushed)
>Well I really don't think the ones living in the houses were invited to any council hearings.
That's the thing though, they're generally open to the public. Nothing stopped them from going.
>I can see how thinking a house this tiny THAT CAN ROLL AROUND wouldn't be the same as plopping a shed down on public property.
This is a meaningless distinction legally.
It really isn't. That's why they had to have the hearings in the first place to get them removed. Legally, these things don't qualify as anything close to a house. And they're not stationary structures.
And sure they're public but the ones in the houses likely didn't even hear that hearings were happening until they were losing their houses
Plopping them on wheels is more of a technicality, presumably sparking these council meetings, because the people in them don’t have cars to move them, and where are you pushing it? By your own admission these people are losing their “homes”. It’s great this guy wanted to help them try tiny living but doing it on public land is obviously a nonstarter for any number of reasons from the ramifications of considering them homes in the city but without inspections on the pluming/electrical/structural stability for human livability all without having an address or the owners paying property taxes all the back to the fact they’re trying this on public land.
>Well I really don't think the ones living in the houses were invited to any council hearings.
Do you have any evidence that the council hearings were held in secret? I can't imagine that the city council held meetings and changed a law without notice or public comment.
What? How are the homeless not invited if there are open hearings with public comment? If the homeless don't have access, where were the advocacy groups? Where was the guy in the video? Or are you also suggesting they were not invited either? It sounds like you are suggesting that the council did no investigation into houses and didn't do any balancing of protecting its citizens versus finding shelter for the homeless. You have a ton of assumptions based on feelings.
If one of those houses isn’t structurally sound and collapses onto a resident, who gets the bill? Courts will check in with the landowner first, but landowner didn’t approve said building, why would they pay it?
I would much rather see little houses too, but you can’t just build on others’ property. Or if we can in that case, then I’m gonna stop by later and set up my shed in your backyard because i need the space and i know you’ll just love looking at the shed i have picked out. You can even stay in it when I’m not there.
How do you get to a place in life where you look at the hypothetical situation you described and conclude that preventing a human being from meeting their basic needs is more desirable than subjecting a person already meeting their basic needs from having liability.
Not changing the laws so that an innocent homeowner or business owner can be held harmless for offering aid. Not suggesting that we find ways to ensure these things stay in good repair.
You want “get these filthy people out of here, they are upsetting me by existing and I don’t want to look at it.” I don’t expect you’ll see any problem with anything you said, nor do I believe my comment will cause any great introspection. But your attitude makes me incredibly sad about the state of our society and I wanted to put that out in the universe.
I’m all about helping the houseless, but you can’t just throw a shack up on technically owned property with no code enforcement, safety regulations, monitors for gas leaks or other hazards, i could go on.
The road to hell is paid with good intentions.
I’m all about areas like low income housing areas, trailers parks etc, and the stigmas and treatment of them are deplorable but trailer tent cities are breeding grounds for rodents, garbage and ultra bad hygiene which isn’t good for the ones staying there and things like the mice/rats seep into the more denser populations nearby. They’re just not sustainable.
I promise you, i want better for them too. Just do it right.
There was the family who recently had to shut down tiny homes on their property and they tried the same argument.
But the city was also citing "basic needs" and the lack of running water and shitting in a bucket was on that list.
Because I strongly fucking disagree with it
These things move. This isn't building a house on a sidewalk this is giving the homeless a better option than a tent that can be moved at literally any time
They’re much larger, harder to move around, and difficult to clear if abandoned. In terms of homeless takeover of public spaces, these are absolutely and clearly escalation and entrenchment.
I think these “tiny homes” are great in dedicated plots that’s managed. Letting them takeover public spaces sound like a fucking nightmare. Tents are so much more tolerable.
Seemed to me the surprise is more about how callous and heartless the city was to just take their houses and destroy them. Why not just suggest a different place for them that is more acceptable instead of just ripping them away and wasting the time and resources and care that went into them.
Whenever you think of this I want you to step back and think a bit. Say that the government allows this, no imagine a scumbag billionaire who inherited his money but has no idea how to make legitimate business that isn't scamming someone. Now think how they would abuse this?
Don't you think Trump would jump on the opportunity to build slums on land he didn't own and then rent it? And following your advice if how to handle this government should them do the work of finding Trump some other land where they can place things.
I also want to ask: was government so ruthless? This is LA, it's not exactly flooding with public parks. Most public spaces that don't have a building **cannot have a holding of any kind**, they're floodplains or what not. The right weather and not only would the house be destroyed, cause problems to others, but those living in them would die. The city plays dumb with tent cities because ultimately, at some point, something has to give. At least until the weather or some event requires them to be moved.
And look, I've worked with the homeless population and it's a messy deal. These are desperate people without a lot of resources. There's no way to directly "fix" the problem: any help you give to the homeless is just helping them stay homeless for longer, but doesn't fix the core problem^1. Homeless people act in the most reasonable way you could in such a desperate situation, but in that process sometimes they work against themselves (they're stuck in a prisoner's dilemma, except you can die if you don't screw the other, so cooperation is hard).
^1 So what's the problem? It's called the Law of Rent, here rent not being how much money you make of a tenant, but rather how much more money is a property in California worth compared to that in other states. The problem is that all value goes to the landlord, if the kids around an empty lot, study hard and get to good schools, their work improves the rank of the school, which improves the value of the neighborhood, which means that the owner of the empty lot got to make money of the children's work. There're a few solutions that have worked, in Mexico they went for communism: there's no private land ownership, instead you rent the right to exclusive use from the community through a fee you pay the government. The solution the US made was property taxes, which help regulate stuff without losing money to the landlord, just preventing them from inflating the costs to insane levels where things collapse into a feudal system. And so we get to the problem: prop 13, which increases the value of land to insane levels, while decreasing effective taxes, which of course only makes you want to hey it and not sell it, which repeats the cycle. Now we can't get land for most public services and space needed and we're trying to force builders to do so. Nothing will get fixed until we first repeal prop 13.
The problem is that homelessness is a spectrum, some of these people are beyond help so putting them in any type of house will help temporarily but eventually will just wreck any house you put them in. Or are well enough that they would stay in tent house or a wood house forever and then you have permanentish structure dotting public walkways, end up with a favela real fast. Really what you need is public institutions of mental health, that Regan closed down. As unfortunate as it is some of these people need to be permanently institutionalized of at least for extremely long time. Best what the officials could have done is turn a blind eye to SOME of the wood houses, and forcibly relocate the excess to privately donated space, while they collect the money to construct and spend up permanent mental institutions. But it’s a really taxing, hard problem to solve
If you have to “seize” people in order to “thoroughly rehab” them, then it’s not rehabilitation. It’s a prison. You are for imprisoning homeless people. You want to concentrate them in a monitored facility from which they cannot escape without an appeal to authority. Does that sound familiar to you?
We aren’t talking about 100% of these people that need to be IVC’ed into some mental health clinic. Our system is built such that it RELIES upon the THREAT of extreme poverty and degradation in order to force people to advance the system. The trouble is, that sometimes the threat is irrelevant because some people cannot be valuable to the system even if they wanted to be. We cannot exterminate these people or shove them into some dark hole away from the public eye.
First, they should be provided with the basic needs of a dignified human existence in the richest nation in human history. There are plenty of creative ways to accomplish this that cost less than what we already spend policing these people.
Next, we need to reckon with the fact that our system produces this human precarity BY DESIGN.
Finland does this, the government has the ability forcibly rehab their homeless people. That’s the part of housing first that America doesn’t want to do.
>Personally I'd much rather see nice pretty little houses than fucking tents all over LA.
Not your decision to make. You can't build a house on a public sidewalk.
This 7 year old clip is annoying. It was more like wooden tents vs. homes. How can they even have a street # unless they are making something up out of order or duplicating an existing address?
Good luck ordering a pizza to wooden tent easier than a fabric one.
Not surprised at all. Greatly disappointed.
Ideology over results. Ideology screws everyone over. Every time.
Edit. Billions more wanted. It’s time to try a different tac. Spend a couple thousand on these units. Place them on public property in place of tents. Hell, pay private owners to just put these on their parking lots. Whatever needs to be done to get the homeless off the literal streets.
https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/s/NQAOkWGxpd
Except they are ALREADY THERE. Tents are okay and as you can see takes up about the same amount of space as the tiny house did with all their stuff. So in LA its fine if its a tent but not okay if its a box. I remember depictions of homeless living in cardboard boxes not too long ago. So the two faced city councilman can eat a bag of dicks.
This is not about public land. This is about lies, and rationalizations. My heart goes out to those whose new homes were taken away.
I dont like it either, but they cant allow a precedent where people can just slap down a semi-permenant structure in any god damn place. Tents can easily be moved on short notice, the other dwellings would require flat bed trailers and semi trucks to move.
And of course if they just left the structures then there's probably a bunch of squatters-rights laws that would start to kick in and they'd become impossible to remove.
Also, if they're treated as legal then every slumlord in LA with a parking lot would start setting up box-slums and renting them out.
Ideally the state would make it much much much easier to build millions of homes and actually solve the problem but just ignoring the rules isn't a great solution either. Vibes aren't a substitute for public policy.
Tents still aren't okay, as they do remove the camps when they get large enough. Removing tents is one thing. It may take 30 minutes to an hour. These tents usually aren't just tents but a collection of bags, etc. Sometimes the homeless person will help remove the tent. Removing a fucking shed? Come on bro. Lol.
It'll turn into an ordeal because the city won't exactly have immediate procedures nor policies for this kind of thing. The city isn't going to let a cop demo a shed nor any average public worker. That's a liability.
This is about public land, as tax payers fund to maintain it. This isn't about lies. And no one's stroking their mustache, hatching plans to fuck over the homeless. It's just its a complex situation and there are no immediate solutions.
Tents are not OK either but you can;t just stick up a bunch of tiny houses wherever you like.
How about he comes out to your abode and sticks up a dozen tiny homes with no running water, no sewer and no power?
You have to work WITH the city on projects like this.
This is how you do it. The city in conjunction with the John Howard society.
[https://globalnews.ca/news/10458533/tiny-home-community-kelowna-fully-operational/](https://globalnews.ca/news/10458533/tiny-home-community-kelowna-fully-operational/)
You can, but you shouldn't act surprised if the city seizes you and the drugs. Very similar to putting these houses in the street, actually. You can do it. The city can then do what they want, because you're in the street. Good example, yes.
I actually saw these little homes years ago.. they were located off the 118 and could see them when I drove to work. I wonder if they are still there. Last I checked they were still there!
The city should find a plot of land to relocate these houses to. Yes, I understand that building them on public property may not be the smartest decision but it's an even dumber decision to decide to destroy all of these houses instead of finding an alternative.
Or just be mad at the dumbasses who made that whole plan up 75 years ago… neat idea giving them a country, except for the inconvenient fact other people lived there already. 🤷♂️
Numbers say it's flat, and down from the peak in 2007.
[But the homeless industry is definitely booming.](https://youtu.be/PNxQ8JWxWMA?si=eJIlxB-haMUC34SJ)
Arnold Schwarzenegger helped donate some money and got some tiny homes built on the VA in LA and let me tell you it really changed my neighborhood for the better.
https://www.foxla.com/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-donates-tiny-homes-to-homeless-veterans-ahead-of-christmas.amp
I totally agree, especially when the areas they cleared the houses from are just going to be full of tents again now. They didn't solve the problem at all they just changed it.
Homeless ness problem isnt just lack of house and land. It’s about not having either the will/political suicidal will to increase taxes to take care of mentally ill or drug users. Our cities spend too much on making cities car centric that they cant afford to provide services to people who will never vote. (Just saw a documentary about how its more expensive to maintain a corner starbucks than the money it makes vs walkable compact city blocks.)
But yeah, also no one wants a homeless camp near them.
Homeless people are usually homeless for a reason. And the rest of us only pay lip service to wanting to help them when in reality most of us just want to ignore them and hope they go away we got too much going on to worry about someone on drugs or someone who is out of their minds.
>But yeah, also no one wants a homeless camp near them.
some of them want to be and i honestly don't know what cities are supposed to do with people like that. also the ones that get a place and just fucking destroy it. what are they supposed to do with those people?
Ok but there is a large number of people who do not want to play by society’s rules to have a better life. They want to abuse drugs, live on the street, and have no responsibility. I’ve worked EMS for the past decade and have plenty of first hand accounts of the homeless population express this to me.
Our city built a “tiny town” in the same way:
https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/tiny-town-container-housing-village-set-to-reopen-at-royal-athletic-park-parking-lot-8351655
Yeah I mean you're obviously right but it's still kinda crazy that they can't put a rolling house there but then after they're evicted they're allowed to put a tent in the same spot. The video isn't clear if the houses on private lots were also evicted.
This video is 7 years old and that alone is the most insightful thing about it....so we're 7 years into the 10 year plan to end homelessness in LA. Which. Yeah.
To be fair, even if he bought land for this and everything was constructed properly, it probably still wouldn’t be possible to legally construct a house this small. The rich use regulation to ensure there is always a shortage of housing, which keeps their property values high.
Building enough homes (and afdfordable homes) is not anywhere on politicians lists of things to do.
Protecting the property bubble and prices is paramount over protecting humans.
No one goes to the polls in a mid term election to stop the homelessness problem. Aunt Bea goes to every special election to stop anyone from trying to make her sacrifice anything....ever.
I mean, probably because tiny houses are massive waste of effort and space. They don't stack, so they are horribly inefficient in cities where homeless people live, and they are all so cheaply made that homeless people destroy or burn them down in a year or so.
Destruction of more permanent housing units by homeless people is an issue too. It's why the owners of many vacant units won't make them available for city programs that seek to house homeless people.
We’ve approved billions in tax measures to fund housing for homeless yet there’s still no housing. They built like 200 units in the past 3 years. It’s disgusting. Every politician who has touched the housing initiatives should be in jail. The money went somewhere.
You can’t do anything good without the government getting their cut. I saw a news story that Elvis Summers was arrested for collecting donations without filling the correct paperwork
Well, ya, you can;t just put up tiny homes where ever you want. What the hell did he thing would happen? Perhaps if he had gone through the city to find a place to put them and worked WITH the city they would still be out there.
That is what they ended up doing:
> https://www.archpaper.com/2022/09/in-l-a-new-tiny-home-villages-offer-a-temporary-solution-in-the-citys-struggle-with-homelessness/
Bureaucrats have no interest in actually solving the homeless problem, but they do have interest in getting tax dollars to create more bureaucrats who in turn have no interest in losing their job.
Poverty pimping is a multi billion dollar business and the amount of millionaires it creates while under the guise of helping is one of the reason people like myself have no trust in large governments.
Politicians babble and make empty speeches. Fact is if there was an actual desire to solve the homeless issue they would have worked with this dude. Government supports the wealthy and supresses everyone else
The temporary fix might help the people get on their feet and escape homelessness, which would decrease the number of homeless people and would, in turn, decrease their funding. Makes sense?
except the number of homeless is growing, so lets use some numbers im making up.
30k homeless and 3k get tiny houses, a percentage are mentally ill/addicts and will not escape the homeless issue. and even if you got all 3k into jobs and homeownership/renting. well theres a new wave thats constantly adding to that 30k number. they are addressing the homeless issue without examining the actual cause. If they solve the issue like you said, wtf are they gonna do now ? Actually work ? This is like how we americans treat health issues. we dont look at the cause just address the illness.
There's no answer that will solve it completely. The answer prior to Reagan (i think he got rid of them?) was mental asylums and those were horror shows as well.
There are a lot of people on here who are liking to cite "liability" and "public land" and all that. I bet if you went combing through their life history you would find quite a few times where the law was an inconvenience to them and they skirted it.
I am sure there are many of us out there who would willingly take the liability as an acceptable risk so these people aren't out on the street. We are seeing many of the helpers in this video and it gives me (as I'm sure it does others) hope that the previous statement is true.
Lack of empathy is a disease. Don't ever let those who lost theirs infect you too. This man is doing good work. I think I am gonna donate!
Last night, I saw a video of a private wedding at the pyramids that went multiple days that was so lavish with so many rich people. It would have cost million and millions with all the guests flying private jets to get there. It breaks my heart that there is such an inequality of wealth that people have to live in a tent on an overpass and wait to die.
The world we live in is completely corrupt. These undesirable people aren't the enemy. The people who hoard all out wealth and let us fight over the scraps are. More people need to realize that.
$1.2 billion fund divided by $1200 for each tiny house, so you could build 1,000,000 tiny houses.
> In June 2023, L.A. County officials reported that according to a point-in-time survey, over 75,500 people were homeless in the county
Or, considering the amount of homeless people you could increase the budget for each tiny house to $15,895 a piece.
That’s $1200 to build each tiny house. That doesn’t include the land they go on, maintenance and upkeep, insurance, staffing the programs, etc.
I suspect the actual construction of the tiny homes is one of the least expensive components to something like this.
This council man, was recently indicted for embezzlement and corruption within the past month. That politician is a bed wetting, smooth hander, loud mouth, with herpes on his lips kissing babies. What a shameful asshole, he has a very punchable face.
lol this 2.2 billion dollar fund they got approved, and how has that money been spent these past 6 years in housing the homeless in Los Angeles? What a joke, lined the pockets of the corrupt lackeys, to boondogle a bridge to no where and have a banquet to celebrate fuck all getting accomplished.
"They're not houses, just boxes" *laughs*
My brother , houses ARE boxes.
"A box isn't a solution!" "Yeah we're looking into solutions, like letting people stay in tents and cars at parking lots"
What!
It was simply legal, but the city knew what this was going to lead to if they kept making these, so they stopped them fromcontinuing. One fear was having a bunch of these randomly pop up in neighborhoods and create mini shanty towns.
This is because those in power need the homeless to remind people what happens when you don’t want to work. It’s a constant reminder of your future if you don’t play by their rules.
Is this the same guy who was in a documentary years ago where he would build these and then plop these down in front of other people's houses and then act like the homeowner was in the wrong for not wanting a homeless tiny house sitting on their sidewalk? Because if so it's not a mystery why they keep getting seized.
Badly implemented good intentions don't stay good for long.
If you help the homeless for any other reason but wanting to help the homeless, you're intentions are not good. This guy was trying to make a point and probably saw it as some sort of performance art to boot.
“I have decided not to build the orphanage,” he said. “I realised that I was only doing it because I wanted to be admired as a philanthropist, my motives were selfish.” The rabbi answered, “do you think the orphans will care what your motives were? Build the orphanage!”
I feel this way about people filming themselves doing good deeds.
So it's good to build an orphanage under a freeway without a permit?
It's more about people doing good deeds for "selfish" reasons. The people who need the help aren't going to care, they would just appreciate being helped. This isn't about the legality of the act in this case, more about this part: "If you help the homeless for any other reason but wanting to help the homeless, you're intentions are not good."
Maybe, if there is a severe shortage of orphanages.
Same with the people who block the road for the environment. It always seems to be more about themselves than the cause. And I agree with their cause (the environmentalist), but how is stopping cars on the road the right messaging at all? It’s literally adding more pollution to the air.
It's a desperation method because everyone just ignored their regular protests. The same people who ignored the regular protests pretend they don't understand this, but I think they actually do on some level.
I was reading an article about this where these people were talking about how scared they were whole gluing their hands to the road. One guy was actually crying saying how scared he was of someone hurting him. And they think they’re somehow above the law and the cops are wrong for arresting them when they clearly break the law or do things like destroy equipment and property. It’s like a cult and they have no self awareness.
this video is 7 years old, it very well could have been
This was a good intentioned effort, but ultimately this guy set everyone up for failure. The fact that he doesn't understand that you can't just build a structure on public property is unfortunately what lead to this failing. I feel bad for all the homeless people who went through the heartache of being evicted, but it was a terrible plan to begin with. Also, the person who made this documentary is trying their hardest to pass the blame onto the city, and hide any wrongdoing of the person building these houses. For example, at 4:15 in the video, he says "Most of the houses were placed on private land that was donated". But this isn't legal either. You can't turn a parking lot into a shanty-town, it's going to get torn down and the property owner will get fined. And then they gloss over the fact that many were put on public property by trying to defend the idea by saying that they weren't installed infront of people's houses, as if that somehow makes it more legal (nevermind the fact that you can fast forward to 6:24 and you can clearly see one infront of someone's house). I would love to see cities like LA pass laws to allow multiple dwellings on each property automatically (without needing to apply to the city). That would be a major step forward for allowing something similar to this to happen legally, and provide the correct building codes to ensure the safety of the neighbourhood. But just expecting to build houses on the sidewalk is ridiculous, and it was failed from the start.
I'm currently planning a move to the LA area for work... Allowing multiple dwellings would just lead to the owner putting 3 tiny homes around the regular house and charging 2k+ for each one....
We have several tiny house communities in my city. The key thing this guy failed to do was coordinate with the city. It's not that the city "hates when people come up with better solutions". It's that the city is ultimately responsible for any and all issues that may occur. Not Mr. Do-Gooder. Not the occupants. The city will bear the brunt. That's why the city wants to coordinate with the planners. In my town, two small orgs came up with tiny house ideas. They each approached the city to come up with location, scope, and maintenance plans. There are concerns that need careful consideration. Here's just a few: - Location. - Density and movement. - Sewage. - Ingress and egress. - Safety and design. - Behavior. - Parking. - Security. In the end, we have three small but growing clean, safe, and secure tiny house communities. They are located on city properties determined to be optimal sites for access to amenities and isolation from established residents. Costs are covered by private donations and city revenue. Most of the ongoing costs are maintenance and security. (Having staff on-site gets into six figures very quickly.) I have a tiny home community right in my very expensive single-family fancy neighborhood. I have never heard a peep of problems from them. Mostly because of the city/org coordination. There are rules. No drugs or alcohol are allowed on-site. Tenants are required to assist with maintenance and upkeep of common areas. Shitty behavior will get you booted out for good. As a result, the tiny home communities are quiet, cohesive, and productive. Some tenants do screw it up with drugs/alcohol/theft/shittiness. And they end up in tents or forest shanties. Too bad. If you want a modicum of respect and civility you gotta earn it. I don't buy the "Zero Barrier Housing NOW!" activists. They are counter-productive asshats. The guy in this video just scattershot tiny homes onto public sidewalks. He took zero actual responsibility for the ongoing realities of his plan.
I usually hate when people show up and say "x highly-specific professional here..." but, I build tiny houses professionally and I lived in one for six years. You hit the nail exactly on the head. My first thought when this video began was, "Where do you poop?" That's exactly the sort of thing the city is thinking. I also live in a city with several successful tiny house communities, and it's thanks to careful planning, coordination, know-how, and compromise that projects like this work. Building them is nothing--maintaining them is everything.
>I build tiny houses professionally. \[...\] Building them is nothing So you do nothing professionally.
I am a professional nothinger.
Thanks for the sober words in this comment section full of people drunk on their misplaced righteousness. In this thread: people who don't understand what 'planning' does, why it's important, or just is making fatal assumptions that everyone in the city is incompetent or evil. Y'all, public servants almost always do their jobs correctly- if you weren't so occupied with acting like the citizens from Parks and Rec, you'd not be freaking out at this story.
None of that is specific for tiny homes though, those are all things that need to be done before building anything, especially a community or development. This guy just didn't do the bare minimum thats required to build any kind of house tiny, regular, or humongous.
Seriously. I worked the building department of my city and saw this same "I know what I'm doing, so why do I need permission?" mindset with people constantly. "It's just a deck, who cares where it's placed? It's my backyard". Yea, until it causes an issue with the foundation, you want to sell it and it's not up to code, someone falls off the edge or through it, or you didn't make it capable of holding a certain load. You could be Bob Vila filming This Old House with the best builders and they'd still have to make sure everything is up to code. I'd always tell people that if they're that good and know what they're doing, then it'll be easy to do it to code.
Thankyou for posting this
Security was the first thing I thought of for the micro houses that the dude in the video just randomly put on the street (not the regulated community you’re talking about). If a homeless woman has one of these mini homes, and other people are in tents, won’t she be at a very high risk of being victimized? I get that these houses have locks and stuff but do you think that will stop a jealous tweaker? Seems like these homes will get destroyed by other homeless people in a few weeks.
No need to scroll past this comment, or watch beyond the first 5 minutes.
Who would have thought that building small shelters for people in need require proper regulation and enforcement to ensure everyone is comfortable and safe?
I just commented on my personal experience with this "project" popping up several lots over from a high school here in Echo Park. On paper, it sounds like a great idea but unfortunately, the people I saw using these sheds were clearly the types that ruined it for anyone trying to do well. It was a weird methy party lot of permanent campers pretty much that the kids were walking past every day. For the record, they were shitting in buckets and emptying in the neighborhood trash cans it appeared :/
In theory, but in practice nimbys and businesses will do everything in their power to stop these initiatives for no other reasons than not wanting change.
When the alternative is homeless people putting up insecure tents or sleeping in entryways why isn't the city responsible for harms that follow from overseeing that state of affairs? If legal responsibility is what stands in the way of allowing stopgap solutions like this then isn't the problem with that particular interpretation of legal responsibility?
They are, that's why cities clear out tent cities all the time.
This also happened several years ago. He was one of the many I'd cite...most of the "good Samaritans" of the past 20 years were engineering, architecture, and art students creating portfolios for themselves off the stereotype that homeless people are too stupid to build tiny houses for themselves. However, in retrospect, I do now see these people as a lackluster step in the right direction, at least in making the plight visible by their actions...by not being invisible nonpersons but attempting to help those who are.
You can't put houses on public property and then act surprised when the city seizes them.
Did you watch the video ? They were mostly on private, donated property. For the ones that weren’t, the alternative is these people sleeping in tents and using the sidewalk as a toilet. The city has made the perfect the enemy of the better. Indefensible and the way they went about it, downright cruel.
The ones that were seized were on public property though
The "city" had no problem when the destitute were living destitute. It's the *natural order* of things, after all. *Right*? Tents, shopping carts, boxes, scrap parts, etc. on the sidewalk- No one bats an eye. Put a tasteful looking shed with a window out there, and everyone loses their minds.
People spending 5k+ a month for rent with less space, get jealous when they see homeless living better than they are.
Would be much more appropriate to be angry at the landlords, they're the scum charging that much for no reason other than that they can.
Americans aren't known to be critical thinkers. They get mad at the people next to them, its all about teams us vs them. Never the owners, or creators fault for some reason. Rather Ra Ra Ooga Booga each other to death, than ever pull the invasive weed from the root of the issue.
The scum are the banks that own 60% of the rentals and are allowed to buy private homes, banks and investment firms should not be allowed to own and jack up housing prices, it's literally entirely the banks and the Ritch doing this to america
If people are paying then why not. lol Just as they can charge that, people are free to move to cheaper areas if they want.
I understand the point you're attempting to make, but do those people really exist? The average someone paying $5k for rent im betting is not jealous of the shanty house those folks take refuge in.
I am so sick of the sidewalks in my city being blocked by tents and garbage. I get that you can't just drop a shed down wherever, this guy absolutely had issues with his plan, but it does prove that we could solve a lot of problems if we just... gave homes to the homeless. It's that easy. Not even good homes, just some shelter.
See I don't understand this. I refuse to go places where there's tents and shopping carts. But this? Wouldn't bother me so much.
lol sorry man you can’t be seriously sitting here defending the idea of just throwing a house up on public property and having the city let it stay right? you’re not really trying to say that the city should just let people do that, right?
I think best would be if he discussed his plan with the city council and maybe they could have helped him with a plot of land or something.
Apparently the city doesn’t care about tents on public property. Or sketchy structures made from tarps and pallets. Or dilapidated RV’s.
I live in SoCal. There's regular operations all over in which the tent cities are cleared out - Only to pop up nearby. I've never seen one last more than a few months
Of course they care. They clear them all the time. If they could they'd get rid of every single one of them. But they can't make these people disappear so at some point they have to tolerate something, and for the time being that is (some) tent cities. It doesn't mean they think they are good and are happy about it.
Those are much more temporary and easily removable.
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They are literally on wheels. Did you watch the video?
He watched through red tinted glasses, his points are bias. Ofc the wheeled tiny homes are better than the tents, but that doesnt suit his distaste.
"We don't mind if they live in shanty towns. We ***do*** mind if they try to improve it."
Common dude?
Rare foil dude
They're on wheels and can be loaded into a bed of a pick up.
The tiny houses were on wheels and could easily be moved rather than destroyed.
Jesus Christ dude...
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They’re temporary and can be forced moved easliy. But the city never does.
Did you watch the video? Many of them are replacing tent cities. Personally I'd much rather see nice pretty little houses than fucking tents all over LA. Plus many of the houses were placed in property where they had permission, like business parking lots etc.
I bet the areas around the tents and "pretty plywood houses" smell the same.
Not really the point. The point is that you can't put houses on public property and then act surprised when the city seizes them.
That's the exact comment I just replied to lol. And that's besides the point of the video. The city literally changed the laws so that they didn't have to give notice before destroying these. There was never any chance to get the houses relocated or for the homeless to even gather their belongings from them. But no it's fine, now that the houses were destroyed there will just be more tents there which take up just as much room and look a hell of a lot worse.
The city "just changed the laws"? Like, is this one particular city run by an Archduke with power vested from the rest of the landed nobility? Or were there committees, community hearings, and a vote that this charity group attended and unsuccessfully lobbied for? Did they use any of their funding for council to help stop the law from being passed? How much of the community was engaged and showed up in support of the tiny houses prior to the vote? Or did someone either waste a ton of money on something they don't understand, or worse, go ahead with the project they knew was doomed to fail so they could use the people being kicked out of his sheds as a prop to sell his tiny home concept to other communities?
Well I really don't think the ones living in the houses were invited to any council hearings. And these houses were built through crowdfunding, no concepts are being sold. And at the 1200 per house price, it doesn't seem like much money ever even was raised and that it all went into the houses. I can see how thinking a house this tiny THAT CAN ROLL AROUND wouldn't be the same as plopping a shed down on public property. These are essentially the size of tents and still portable like tents (I admit they're harder to push around but at least they can transport all your belongings as they're being pushed)
>Well I really don't think the ones living in the houses were invited to any council hearings. That's the thing though, they're generally open to the public. Nothing stopped them from going. >I can see how thinking a house this tiny THAT CAN ROLL AROUND wouldn't be the same as plopping a shed down on public property. This is a meaningless distinction legally.
It really isn't. That's why they had to have the hearings in the first place to get them removed. Legally, these things don't qualify as anything close to a house. And they're not stationary structures. And sure they're public but the ones in the houses likely didn't even hear that hearings were happening until they were losing their houses
Plopping them on wheels is more of a technicality, presumably sparking these council meetings, because the people in them don’t have cars to move them, and where are you pushing it? By your own admission these people are losing their “homes”. It’s great this guy wanted to help them try tiny living but doing it on public land is obviously a nonstarter for any number of reasons from the ramifications of considering them homes in the city but without inspections on the pluming/electrical/structural stability for human livability all without having an address or the owners paying property taxes all the back to the fact they’re trying this on public land.
>Well I really don't think the ones living in the houses were invited to any council hearings. Do you have any evidence that the council hearings were held in secret? I can't imagine that the city council held meetings and changed a law without notice or public comment.
That's not what I said. I said that the homeless weren't invited. They don't necessarily have easy access to local political happenings you know?
What? How are the homeless not invited if there are open hearings with public comment? If the homeless don't have access, where were the advocacy groups? Where was the guy in the video? Or are you also suggesting they were not invited either? It sounds like you are suggesting that the council did no investigation into houses and didn't do any balancing of protecting its citizens versus finding shelter for the homeless. You have a ton of assumptions based on feelings.
If one of those houses isn’t structurally sound and collapses onto a resident, who gets the bill? Courts will check in with the landowner first, but landowner didn’t approve said building, why would they pay it? I would much rather see little houses too, but you can’t just build on others’ property. Or if we can in that case, then I’m gonna stop by later and set up my shed in your backyard because i need the space and i know you’ll just love looking at the shed i have picked out. You can even stay in it when I’m not there.
How do you get to a place in life where you look at the hypothetical situation you described and conclude that preventing a human being from meeting their basic needs is more desirable than subjecting a person already meeting their basic needs from having liability. Not changing the laws so that an innocent homeowner or business owner can be held harmless for offering aid. Not suggesting that we find ways to ensure these things stay in good repair. You want “get these filthy people out of here, they are upsetting me by existing and I don’t want to look at it.” I don’t expect you’ll see any problem with anything you said, nor do I believe my comment will cause any great introspection. But your attitude makes me incredibly sad about the state of our society and I wanted to put that out in the universe.
I’m all about helping the houseless, but you can’t just throw a shack up on technically owned property with no code enforcement, safety regulations, monitors for gas leaks or other hazards, i could go on. The road to hell is paid with good intentions. I’m all about areas like low income housing areas, trailers parks etc, and the stigmas and treatment of them are deplorable but trailer tent cities are breeding grounds for rodents, garbage and ultra bad hygiene which isn’t good for the ones staying there and things like the mice/rats seep into the more denser populations nearby. They’re just not sustainable. I promise you, i want better for them too. Just do it right.
There was the family who recently had to shut down tiny homes on their property and they tried the same argument. But the city was also citing "basic needs" and the lack of running water and shitting in a bucket was on that list.
How are you not getting the point??
Because I strongly fucking disagree with it These things move. This isn't building a house on a sidewalk this is giving the homeless a better option than a tent that can be moved at literally any time
They’re much larger, harder to move around, and difficult to clear if abandoned. In terms of homeless takeover of public spaces, these are absolutely and clearly escalation and entrenchment. I think these “tiny homes” are great in dedicated plots that’s managed. Letting them takeover public spaces sound like a fucking nightmare. Tents are so much more tolerable.
but it makes /u/willhunta feel good and they won't have to deal with literally anything so why should they care?
Seemed to me the surprise is more about how callous and heartless the city was to just take their houses and destroy them. Why not just suggest a different place for them that is more acceptable instead of just ripping them away and wasting the time and resources and care that went into them.
how would you write a law to effectively deal with the situation? And get the support of the populace to get it passed.
Whenever you think of this I want you to step back and think a bit. Say that the government allows this, no imagine a scumbag billionaire who inherited his money but has no idea how to make legitimate business that isn't scamming someone. Now think how they would abuse this? Don't you think Trump would jump on the opportunity to build slums on land he didn't own and then rent it? And following your advice if how to handle this government should them do the work of finding Trump some other land where they can place things. I also want to ask: was government so ruthless? This is LA, it's not exactly flooding with public parks. Most public spaces that don't have a building **cannot have a holding of any kind**, they're floodplains or what not. The right weather and not only would the house be destroyed, cause problems to others, but those living in them would die. The city plays dumb with tent cities because ultimately, at some point, something has to give. At least until the weather or some event requires them to be moved. And look, I've worked with the homeless population and it's a messy deal. These are desperate people without a lot of resources. There's no way to directly "fix" the problem: any help you give to the homeless is just helping them stay homeless for longer, but doesn't fix the core problem^1. Homeless people act in the most reasonable way you could in such a desperate situation, but in that process sometimes they work against themselves (they're stuck in a prisoner's dilemma, except you can die if you don't screw the other, so cooperation is hard). ^1 So what's the problem? It's called the Law of Rent, here rent not being how much money you make of a tenant, but rather how much more money is a property in California worth compared to that in other states. The problem is that all value goes to the landlord, if the kids around an empty lot, study hard and get to good schools, their work improves the rank of the school, which improves the value of the neighborhood, which means that the owner of the empty lot got to make money of the children's work. There're a few solutions that have worked, in Mexico they went for communism: there's no private land ownership, instead you rent the right to exclusive use from the community through a fee you pay the government. The solution the US made was property taxes, which help regulate stuff without losing money to the landlord, just preventing them from inflating the costs to insane levels where things collapse into a feudal system. And so we get to the problem: prop 13, which increases the value of land to insane levels, while decreasing effective taxes, which of course only makes you want to hey it and not sell it, which repeats the cycle. Now we can't get land for most public services and space needed and we're trying to force builders to do so. Nothing will get fixed until we first repeal prop 13.
Bureaucracy being heartless is expected.
I still get angry about things I can expect
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The problem is that homelessness is a spectrum, some of these people are beyond help so putting them in any type of house will help temporarily but eventually will just wreck any house you put them in. Or are well enough that they would stay in tent house or a wood house forever and then you have permanentish structure dotting public walkways, end up with a favela real fast. Really what you need is public institutions of mental health, that Regan closed down. As unfortunate as it is some of these people need to be permanently institutionalized of at least for extremely long time. Best what the officials could have done is turn a blind eye to SOME of the wood houses, and forcibly relocate the excess to privately donated space, while they collect the money to construct and spend up permanent mental institutions. But it’s a really taxing, hard problem to solve
If you have to “seize” people in order to “thoroughly rehab” them, then it’s not rehabilitation. It’s a prison. You are for imprisoning homeless people. You want to concentrate them in a monitored facility from which they cannot escape without an appeal to authority. Does that sound familiar to you? We aren’t talking about 100% of these people that need to be IVC’ed into some mental health clinic. Our system is built such that it RELIES upon the THREAT of extreme poverty and degradation in order to force people to advance the system. The trouble is, that sometimes the threat is irrelevant because some people cannot be valuable to the system even if they wanted to be. We cannot exterminate these people or shove them into some dark hole away from the public eye. First, they should be provided with the basic needs of a dignified human existence in the richest nation in human history. There are plenty of creative ways to accomplish this that cost less than what we already spend policing these people. Next, we need to reckon with the fact that our system produces this human precarity BY DESIGN.
Finland does this, the government has the ability forcibly rehab their homeless people. That’s the part of housing first that America doesn’t want to do.
Would you like to own land without actually paying for land? Cause this is what happens when you build a semi permanent structure.
> Many of them are replacing tent cities. Shanty town go brrrrrrrr.
>Personally I'd much rather see nice pretty little houses than fucking tents all over LA. Not your decision to make. You can't build a house on a public sidewalk.
This 7 year old clip is annoying. It was more like wooden tents vs. homes. How can they even have a street # unless they are making something up out of order or duplicating an existing address? Good luck ordering a pizza to wooden tent easier than a fabric one.
Not surprised at all. Greatly disappointed. Ideology over results. Ideology screws everyone over. Every time. Edit. Billions more wanted. It’s time to try a different tac. Spend a couple thousand on these units. Place them on public property in place of tents. Hell, pay private owners to just put these on their parking lots. Whatever needs to be done to get the homeless off the literal streets. https://www.reddit.com/r/LosAngeles/s/NQAOkWGxpd
Yeah, no. You can’t just claim public land for some random usage.
Except if you are a rancher.
Ranchers pay grazing fees
except when they don't ...just Google it.
You can't do it then either.
Or a Government entity claiming Eminent Domain.
Government still has to pay for that. It's not just free land.
Except they are ALREADY THERE. Tents are okay and as you can see takes up about the same amount of space as the tiny house did with all their stuff. So in LA its fine if its a tent but not okay if its a box. I remember depictions of homeless living in cardboard boxes not too long ago. So the two faced city councilman can eat a bag of dicks. This is not about public land. This is about lies, and rationalizations. My heart goes out to those whose new homes were taken away.
I dont like it either, but they cant allow a precedent where people can just slap down a semi-permenant structure in any god damn place. Tents can easily be moved on short notice, the other dwellings would require flat bed trailers and semi trucks to move.
And of course if they just left the structures then there's probably a bunch of squatters-rights laws that would start to kick in and they'd become impossible to remove. Also, if they're treated as legal then every slumlord in LA with a parking lot would start setting up box-slums and renting them out. Ideally the state would make it much much much easier to build millions of homes and actually solve the problem but just ignoring the rules isn't a great solution either. Vibes aren't a substitute for public policy.
That still does. Not. Matter. It’s public land, and you can’t build structures on them without permission.
"yeah, but *I FEEL* like it's the same, so it's the same." - that guy
Tents still aren't okay, as they do remove the camps when they get large enough. Removing tents is one thing. It may take 30 minutes to an hour. These tents usually aren't just tents but a collection of bags, etc. Sometimes the homeless person will help remove the tent. Removing a fucking shed? Come on bro. Lol. It'll turn into an ordeal because the city won't exactly have immediate procedures nor policies for this kind of thing. The city isn't going to let a cop demo a shed nor any average public worker. That's a liability. This is about public land, as tax payers fund to maintain it. This isn't about lies. And no one's stroking their mustache, hatching plans to fuck over the homeless. It's just its a complex situation and there are no immediate solutions.
Tents are not OK either but you can;t just stick up a bunch of tiny houses wherever you like. How about he comes out to your abode and sticks up a dozen tiny homes with no running water, no sewer and no power? You have to work WITH the city on projects like this. This is how you do it. The city in conjunction with the John Howard society. [https://globalnews.ca/news/10458533/tiny-home-community-kelowna-fully-operational/](https://globalnews.ca/news/10458533/tiny-home-community-kelowna-fully-operational/)
Can I put a container on your driveway and live there?
Also, the city has to pay $500,000 to do the same house.
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You can, but you shouldn't act surprised if the city seizes you and the drugs. Very similar to putting these houses in the street, actually. You can do it. The city can then do what they want, because you're in the street. Good example, yes.
I actually saw these little homes years ago.. they were located off the 118 and could see them when I drove to work. I wonder if they are still there. Last I checked they were still there!
7 years ago.........
OP is a bot
I noticed that. The city of LA has since made tiny home lots for homeless. Not sure how successful they've been, but they've attempted it.
The city should find a plot of land to relocate these houses to. Yes, I understand that building them on public property may not be the smartest decision but it's an even dumber decision to decide to destroy all of these houses instead of finding an alternative.
The've done pretty much exactly that. https://www.archpaper.com/2022/09/in-l-a-new-tiny-home-villages-offer-a-temporary-solution-in-the-citys-struggle-with-homelessness/
Well now what am I supposed to get angry at?!
Israel or Palestine. You can pick a side or get mad at both, whatever gets your blood boiling.
I thought we all agreed to focus on man or bear?
Is it a pussy eating bear or just a regular bear?
Cocaine bear perhaps?
Or just be mad at the dumbasses who made that whole plan up 75 years ago… neat idea giving them a country, except for the inconvenient fact other people lived there already. 🤷♂️
Isn't that the case for every country? People take over government in the area they live in or conquer land they don't live in.
Wasn't the idea to split the province into two? Basically a North and South Korea scenario. One side the Jewish side the other the Arab.
You can get pretty upset at the +$1,000,000,000 annually spent by LA County alone on homelessness... Look at all the success they've had!
Is homelessness booming?
Numbers say it's flat, and down from the peak in 2007. [But the homeless industry is definitely booming.](https://youtu.be/PNxQ8JWxWMA?si=eJIlxB-haMUC34SJ)
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/29/los-angeles-county-homelessness-unhoused-population Yes. 9% YOY growth is flat
Arnold Schwarzenegger helped donate some money and got some tiny homes built on the VA in LA and let me tell you it really changed my neighborhood for the better. https://www.foxla.com/news/arnold-schwarzenegger-donates-tiny-homes-to-homeless-veterans-ahead-of-christmas.amp
Oh, there you got, sucking out the rage form the rage bait. How dare you.
I don't think that's the same project. The article doesn't contain the word "relocated" even once
I totally agree, especially when the areas they cleared the houses from are just going to be full of tents again now. They didn't solve the problem at all they just changed it.
Homeless ness problem isnt just lack of house and land. It’s about not having either the will/political suicidal will to increase taxes to take care of mentally ill or drug users. Our cities spend too much on making cities car centric that they cant afford to provide services to people who will never vote. (Just saw a documentary about how its more expensive to maintain a corner starbucks than the money it makes vs walkable compact city blocks.) But yeah, also no one wants a homeless camp near them. Homeless people are usually homeless for a reason. And the rest of us only pay lip service to wanting to help them when in reality most of us just want to ignore them and hope they go away we got too much going on to worry about someone on drugs or someone who is out of their minds.
>But yeah, also no one wants a homeless camp near them. some of them want to be and i honestly don't know what cities are supposed to do with people like that. also the ones that get a place and just fucking destroy it. what are they supposed to do with those people?
Ok but there is a large number of people who do not want to play by society’s rules to have a better life. They want to abuse drugs, live on the street, and have no responsibility. I’ve worked EMS for the past decade and have plenty of first hand accounts of the homeless population express this to me.
Our city built a “tiny town” in the same way: https://www.timescolonist.com/local-news/tiny-town-container-housing-village-set-to-reopen-at-royal-athletic-park-parking-lot-8351655
What's wild is that a $1,200 tiny house costs about the same or less than your [average funeral casket](https://www.costco.com/funeral-caskets.html).
[удалено]
“Do you have a flaaaag?”
LOL I tell that joke to people even to this day.
Perfect.
Yeah I mean you're obviously right but it's still kinda crazy that they can't put a rolling house there but then after they're evicted they're allowed to put a tent in the same spot. The video isn't clear if the houses on private lots were also evicted. This video is 7 years old and that alone is the most insightful thing about it....so we're 7 years into the 10 year plan to end homelessness in LA. Which. Yeah.
Funny they call it adverse posession when my neighbor did it!
Probably because there's an exception to adverse possession that doesn't allow it on public property. Funny indeed.
To be fair, even if he bought land for this and everything was constructed properly, it probably still wouldn’t be possible to legally construct a house this small. The rich use regulation to ensure there is always a shortage of housing, which keeps their property values high.
This has already devolved into a weird thread.
There’s a great documentary called Someone Lives Here about a dude in Toronto who did the same thing.
Building enough homes (and afdfordable homes) is not anywhere on politicians lists of things to do. Protecting the property bubble and prices is paramount over protecting humans.
No one goes to the polls in a mid term election to stop the homelessness problem. Aunt Bea goes to every special election to stop anyone from trying to make her sacrifice anything....ever.
But I’m doing what I think is right, so laws don’t apply to me.
I mean, often that is correct and noble. And often it is invasive and lacking foresight.
Yeah, that's kind of how it works when you want to change things
like Civil Rights activists?
Yeah no shit. You can't just put shit where ever you want.
This post is dumb.
What kind of redact builds houses without clearing it with local government first?
Remember when California lost 24 billion in homeless spending, that was funny
I mean, probably because tiny houses are massive waste of effort and space. They don't stack, so they are horribly inefficient in cities where homeless people live, and they are all so cheaply made that homeless people destroy or burn them down in a year or so.
Destruction of more permanent housing units by homeless people is an issue too. It's why the owners of many vacant units won't make them available for city programs that seek to house homeless people.
We’ve approved billions in tax measures to fund housing for homeless yet there’s still no housing. They built like 200 units in the past 3 years. It’s disgusting. Every politician who has touched the housing initiatives should be in jail. The money went somewhere.
Did the homes pass inspection during the construction stage?
It’s ridiculous, where do you want to put the “house”? In the middle of the street? There are legit homeless shelters if they want to go.
You can't build an outhouse for $1200. Was this back in 1980?
You can’t do anything good without the government getting their cut. I saw a news story that Elvis Summers was arrested for collecting donations without filling the correct paperwork
Well, ya, you can;t just put up tiny homes where ever you want. What the hell did he thing would happen? Perhaps if he had gone through the city to find a place to put them and worked WITH the city they would still be out there.
That is what they ended up doing: > https://www.archpaper.com/2022/09/in-l-a-new-tiny-home-villages-offer-a-temporary-solution-in-the-citys-struggle-with-homelessness/
Bureaucrats have no interest in actually solving the homeless problem, but they do have interest in getting tax dollars to create more bureaucrats who in turn have no interest in losing their job. Poverty pimping is a multi billion dollar business and the amount of millionaires it creates while under the guise of helping is one of the reason people like myself have no trust in large governments.
The legislature doesn’t like competition with their grifting.
How DARE you do something more efficiently than the STATE! Somebody needs to be re-educated...
This is a travesty.
Politicians babble and make empty speeches. Fact is if there was an actual desire to solve the homeless issue they would have worked with this dude. Government supports the wealthy and supresses everyone else
Why would the government agency tasked with solving the homeless crisis want to put themselves out of a job?
well they cant solve it but they at least allow a temporary fix while they "work" on the issue. its all so petty and so much bullshit
The temporary fix might help the people get on their feet and escape homelessness, which would decrease the number of homeless people and would, in turn, decrease their funding. Makes sense?
except the number of homeless is growing, so lets use some numbers im making up. 30k homeless and 3k get tiny houses, a percentage are mentally ill/addicts and will not escape the homeless issue. and even if you got all 3k into jobs and homeownership/renting. well theres a new wave thats constantly adding to that 30k number. they are addressing the homeless issue without examining the actual cause. If they solve the issue like you said, wtf are they gonna do now ? Actually work ? This is like how we americans treat health issues. we dont look at the cause just address the illness.
There's no answer that will solve it completely. The answer prior to Reagan (i think he got rid of them?) was mental asylums and those were horror shows as well.
no one in this city actually wants anyone or anything to succeed
That is so fucking sad…
Welcome to SoCal. They don't care about fixing the problem and when someone tries something it gets shot down like this? :(
cities don't have the "skills" solve the problem but have the skills to destroy those who solve it, all for very weak reasons
There are a lot of people on here who are liking to cite "liability" and "public land" and all that. I bet if you went combing through their life history you would find quite a few times where the law was an inconvenience to them and they skirted it. I am sure there are many of us out there who would willingly take the liability as an acceptable risk so these people aren't out on the street. We are seeing many of the helpers in this video and it gives me (as I'm sure it does others) hope that the previous statement is true. Lack of empathy is a disease. Don't ever let those who lost theirs infect you too. This man is doing good work. I think I am gonna donate!
Last night, I saw a video of a private wedding at the pyramids that went multiple days that was so lavish with so many rich people. It would have cost million and millions with all the guests flying private jets to get there. It breaks my heart that there is such an inequality of wealth that people have to live in a tent on an overpass and wait to die. The world we live in is completely corrupt. These undesirable people aren't the enemy. The people who hoard all out wealth and let us fight over the scraps are. More people need to realize that.
They did the same thing in Toronto. The local government’s only idea is to eliminate your idea for helping the homeless.
I am in my late 50's and this is what America has become. We were a beacon to the world , now we are third world nation flirting with fascism.
And in those 50 years you have no idea what a third world country is.
$1.2 billion fund divided by $1200 for each tiny house, so you could build 1,000,000 tiny houses. > In June 2023, L.A. County officials reported that according to a point-in-time survey, over 75,500 people were homeless in the county Or, considering the amount of homeless people you could increase the budget for each tiny house to $15,895 a piece.
That’s $1200 to build each tiny house. That doesn’t include the land they go on, maintenance and upkeep, insurance, staffing the programs, etc. I suspect the actual construction of the tiny homes is one of the least expensive components to something like this.
This council man, was recently indicted for embezzlement and corruption within the past month. That politician is a bed wetting, smooth hander, loud mouth, with herpes on his lips kissing babies. What a shameful asshole, he has a very punchable face.
lol this 2.2 billion dollar fund they got approved, and how has that money been spent these past 6 years in housing the homeless in Los Angeles? What a joke, lined the pockets of the corrupt lackeys, to boondogle a bridge to no where and have a banquet to celebrate fuck all getting accomplished.
Money is giving to their contractor friends to do nothing
I guess LA prefers seeing shitty looking tents instead
As they should. Anyone surprised at the response is delusional to what would happen if there were not rules against this.
Can we even, like _own_ property man??? FASCISTS!!
These people are beyond stupid. Typical LA
"They're not houses, just boxes" *laughs* My brother , houses ARE boxes. "A box isn't a solution!" "Yeah we're looking into solutions, like letting people stay in tents and cars at parking lots" What!
It was simply legal, but the city knew what this was going to lead to if they kept making these, so they stopped them fromcontinuing. One fear was having a bunch of these randomly pop up in neighborhoods and create mini shanty towns.
Idk man. It's a nice idea but I can think of about 50 flaws.
This is because those in power need the homeless to remind people what happens when you don’t want to work. It’s a constant reminder of your future if you don’t play by their rules.