A growing number of Americans are ending up homeless as soaring rents in recent years squeeze their budgets.
According to a Jan. 25 report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, roughly 653,000 people reported experiencing homelessness in January of 2023, up roughly 12% from the same time a year prior and 48% from 2015. That marks the largest single-year increase in the country’s unhoused population on record, Harvard researchers said.
i paid rent this month the exact same as last month and they emailed me after a week saying i owed them $35 more. just out of nowhere, just because. yes it’s only 35 but also fuck off
You forgot to tip
The company sure didn’t. They didn’t even bother to lube up first from the sound of things.
Just put the whole hog in
35 now, 35 more later, 35 more next year. Then you’re eventually paying $500 more in rent and can’t afford it anymore.
My front office totally fucked up my rent. They put me on a different rate than I agreed to, and added on their own renters insurance which I opted out of by showing proof I already had renters insurance. My bill was like an extra $300 because of their fuckups.
If it’s still a fuck up if it’s intentional?
Review your contract. If you aren’t month-to-month, tell them to pound sand.
But record low unemployment numbers guys! And wages made a tiny dent in decades of inflation!
You’re right I forgot green line go up!
Don’t look down
Or zoom out
I just wish that helped more people than just the rich
Yea, I’m starting to have a hard time believing what they’re telling us.
People drop off the unemployment numbers after 6 months as they’re considered to have “given up” searching for work. They’re one of many metrics the government uses to gauge how “good” our “economy” is doing that are absolutely useless and paint a false narrative.
Same when it comes to the stock market. Apparently, if the stock market is doing well, the “economy” is doing well. Pretty sure the stock martket doesn’t help the majority of Americans in any meaningful way.
It literally destroys lives every 3 months when companies try to bury things that normally happen but don’t mean profit under the rug by laying off employees so they can keep their stock market pimp daddy happy for another quarter.
Guillotines are expensive. :(
Actually… you’d be surprised how many things can be dropped with a similar success rate!
Hah. Touché. Butt, if I use my own weight it’s nearly free! Derrièrotine?
Just a head up, youtube has been attaching tracking links when you copy their urls now. You can delete the tracker ?si= string and it’ll still work.
Yooo that’s messed up. Thanks for the heads up!
Trebuchets aren’t, and they can yeet the fattest of fatcats at least 150m which is more than far enough.
They really aren’t though. The raw materials would easily be less than the price of my rent.
But the craftsmanship.
Quite easy to build…
Buy a sheet of metal about 50x100cm, a bit thicker so it has some weight. Use an angle grinder to sharpen an edge. Buy some wood (like 2x4), build it into a rectangular frame, slightly smaller on the inside than the blade, and make a channel for the blade to slide in. Make 2 holes into the blade so you can attach some rope.
All that’s missing is the wooden thing that goes around the neck. You can make that from 2 slabs of wood, and you can cut the neck shape with a jig saw.
Edit: thinking about it, you can simplify the build by making 2 wooden frames instead of 1, and have the blade slide between them.
In term of tools, all you need is an angle grinder, some kind of saw for the wood, and a drill/screwdriver.
Needs speed holes.
Also how do you make sure it doesn’t go crooked and get jammed on the way down?
Also paint it red.
honestly it’s really simpler than that, like you pointed out you only need one frame to make the track, the metal you do not need to sharpen if its less than an inch thick, most modern sheet metal, cookie pans etc will do, you just need weight and you cut the blade at an angle, then you use a table and some ratchet straps to hold the subject in place, but have you seen the price of lumber?
Need basic skills, we’re not building an artisanal execution device or to last decades.
As the guy who made r/Artisanvideos, I disagree.
I’m seeking series one funding for my startup which will be like Uber, but for guillotines. PM for investment opportunities.
Yeah we will have to start with dull wood axes I suppose, at least till enough rich people have dropped loot so we can buy a few.
The fuck they are, small pile of 4x4 lumber, a rope and an old grader blade.
Too complicated, just turn the lawnmower sideways.
…better be an electric lawnmower, gas will seize up
It’s okay, we only need one per region.
Corporate landlords are using price-fixing software to illegally raise prices and gouge average Americans. Executives need to go to jail for robbing us all.
No war but the class war
America no longer has classes. There’s the wealthy and the non-wealthy.
The non-wealthy get divvied up into something that is closer to caste.
We are at a point now where most people will see a person on the street and instantly toss them into a specific bucket of people based upon dress, posture, cleanliness, accent/dialect, hairstyle, car, whatever.
Notice specifcally missing from this list is race. I’m not saying America isn’t racist. But as a privileged suburban cis white male, I don’t think it’s nearly as relevant as it once was. There’s centuries of institutional racism that’s still weighing down progress, try as we might to avoid it…but I think that “race” is often getting mixed up with other “otherings” related to outward appearance, and the overlap tends to not include that persons own race.
I.e, I think there are a lot of people who would feel nervous around a muscular 20-something black or Latino man in urban-style streetwear downtown, that would otherwise gladly grab a coffee with the same person dressed in a well-pressed oxford shirt and khakis at the office. Racism there isn’t the problem, it’s more of a distaste culture that had been formed by the race, and that’s distinctly separate, in my mind.
Anyways, that was a bit of a tangent. What I’m basically trying to say is that class warfare isn’t really what we’re making it out to be. The classes are literally 8 billion people on one side and 20 on the other.
“Millionaire” don’t mean shit anymore. Any boomer who bought a house anywhere but BFE on the 90s and managed to pay it off is at least halfway there just in equity. Another quarter of the way there for the median 401k balance at 65 of $235k. Thats 75% of the way to a millionaire, just in house and 401k (and $235k isn’t really enough to live off on its own over the course of retirement. Thats something like $15k withdrawal from ages 65 to 85, and hopefully you die by then).
The two classes are the workers and the propertied class. The first supports it’s by working, the second supports itself by the work or the first. Capitalism came from feudalism, with a propertied class and those that serve them.
Those who serve have always been divided internally against each other, with some form of warrior class acting as class traiters.
They should GET A JOB! And don’t you COMMIES tell me that Wages won’t cover a one room rental because that’s a LIE! I BOUGHT my house 30 years ago working as a JANITOR! Kids today are just LAZY! GIVE me my Social Security you COMMIES!
College only cost me $25 and a jug of corn liquor and when I got out, they immediately made me president of a metal fabrication company! What are these lazy millennials complaining about?
HE’LL YAEH BORTHER!!!
deleted by creator
It just seems like really sarcastic trolling to me.
I realize there’s a higher than normal level of autism on Lemmy in general but sometimes the obvious sarcasm people miss is just wild.
Ever since 2016, people’s ability to detect sarcastic comments without the “/s” tacked on has just fucking gone out the window. People are just taking comments at face value and assuming the worst in each other anymore. I kind of get it sometimes though, there does seem to be alot of stupid people online, though in some cases it’s like people are purposefully misinterpreting comments. It’s so weird.
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
And…no one (people I know) believes me when I tell them who the homeless are. Every one just holds onto the concept that they are just mentally-ill people who need to be in an institution. When I explain that any person’s mental health decreases the longer they live without a home, a job, and a family for support. Homeless people end up turning to drugs because they can’t stand the fact that their ability has decreased so much that a drug-induced hallucination is better than reality.
A number of homeless are indeed are victims of our terrible socio-economic system. However I have heard many homeless outreach workers say the same thing “The ones who stay homeless are the ones who stay addicted”. Addiction is a serious issue and the challenge of beating it is nothing we should dismiss, however it is clear some people end up homeless due to drugs and stay homeless due to a refusal to get clean. When your life is centered around just getting high, you won’t care much about anything else. All the horrors of living on the street disappear once you get your fix, and some people are okay living like that.
I guess I’m writing all this to say that homelessness is a very complex and nuanced issue. They aren’t all victims, they aren’t all criminals, they aren’t all mentally ill, they aren’t all addicts, and for some its the only life they’ve ever known.
This is why the conversation around homelessness is so difficult. People just latch onto their idea of what being homeless is then build their argument from there, dismissing the remaining context of the concept.
I highly suggest doing homeless outreach to broaden your perspective on the matter (look up a local Food Not Bombs group if you live in a city!). If that isn’t something you’d like to do, there are plenty of videos on youtube that give you more insight into the homelessness experience. Obviously watch out for the videos that treat living on the streets as a spectacle or oddity, I absolutely hate these videos because they serve to shock and entertain, not educate.
A lot of people on the streets have no one left to help them for a reason. They’ve burned every bridge with loved ones. Saying this as someone who’s dealt with an addict on my wife’s family. Thankfully she’s not in the streets right now but she has been several times. We’ve helped her out in so many ways just to end up getting stolen from
So is this why people on the streets who AREN’T addicted unable to get back into housing?
Y’all let me know when we’re tired of the bullshit enough to get a “general strike” going. I’ll bake the “cookies”.
Yah but they can own guns, sooo
So if you don’t have a home, you can just take one.
If you’re white and it’s owned by a black family, it counts as Stand Your Ground in Florida. Probably.
If owning guns and having no address isn’t the ultimate freedom, then I don’t know what is.
And here I am…just earning some nine hundred dollars a month u.u wish me luck!
Bro. What are you doing here? You should be out there hustling. I turned down a $10 million inheritance so I can stay hungry. Hustle is life bro
Bro, I quit my 9-5 to become homeless and hustle every waking second of my life. Hustle is life.
Can’t. Hustling is informal in my country and has no benefits :') the amount i get is like, triple the minimum wage but still feels like garbage :(
good luck
Secure and close the borders to relieve the pressure on housing demand and limit the amount of people with no means to support themselves from entering the country. If our country and economy is failing at providing for the people we already have we shouldn’t be letting in any more.
Or… solve the wealth hoarding issue at the top, instead of blaming poor people.
No no it’s the immigrants!!! (please ignore the real estate funds buying up property and jacking up rents)
Ah. The Russian trolls/bots have discovered lemmy. It was nice while it lasted.
You’ve never seen lemmygrad or hexbear? And lemmygrads been around for years
Wtf? You’re the richest country in the world. It’s not a problem of too little money, it’s capitalism
You clearly haven’t educated yourself on the economic factors at play. The “richest” country in the world is rich in valuation, not monetary wealth.
There’s a difference between having a bunch of products (and businesses) that are expensive and of high quality than having a bank full of money. (See fed balance sheet)
If you actually take some time out of your day from being condescending to people that actually educate themselves on these matters and look up the current situation with liquidity (i.e. money) in the banking system, you’ll realize that the multiple bank failures in 2023 was a prelude to what’s going to be happening in 2024-2025.
This is an issue happening all over the world and people continue to not educate themselves on macroeconomics and then have the audacity to comment on it in the exact same fashion you just did.
If our country and economy is failing at providing for the people we already have we shouldn’t be letting in any more.
Wait – our country is supposed to be providing housing?
I won’t lie, I’m super into that. Normalizing rent across hundreds of millions of people would go a long way to stop bloodsucking leeches from buying property, price gouging residents to live there, and calling that a “job”
Removed by mod
How exactly are immigrants who can’t support themselves able to pay rent and put pressure on housing demand?
By adding crime into the fray
A great point were it not quantifiably true that immigrants have lower per capita rates of criminal activity than citizens. Also, it is perfectly legal to come into the country and ask for asylum (which many are doing), it is further known that there is rampant and illegal employment for migrant workers by agricultural and hospitality industries that rarely suffer any consequences for exploiting and underpaying workers. (See: dollar menu pricing)
Ignoring the motives behind migration and even worse the lack of funding for enforcement of legislation whose reform is stuck for political reasons blames the victims for their plight.
But simple explanations are easier, no matter how wrong they may be factually.
Yes, Mexicans are to blame. Well done.
They can’t afford the rent either.
Bidenomics!
You cracked the case!
It wasn’t anything like coordinated rent increases from large groups of landlords using a pricing app, it wasn’t a worldwide pandemic disrupting the market, it wasn’t America keeping housing as an investment vehicle instead of a means of sheltering humans, it wasn’t decades of wealthy investors buying housing to convert into rentals.
Nope, all of that complexity can be tossed out the window because one single man is to blame: Joe Biden. All in his first term as president too!
It’s amazing that rentals are going through the roof all around the world, there seems to be different reasons everywhere but the problem is the same. The underlying problem is probably capitalism underscored by neoliberalism which drives laws and policies to support short term, high growth returns.
RealPage needs to be dismantled and entire C-suite jailed. If Wall St isn’t scared to death of making price fixing trusts then we are all in very deep shit.
Buh those people take the risks without them there won’t be any housing 🤡
Hey Biden wants credit for the economy. He’s out there claiming it as his.
It wasn’t anything like coordinated rent increases from large groups of landlords using a pricing app
Which Biden has no interest in doing anything about. Why isn’t he using the bully pulpit to name and shame enemies of his administration?
it wasn’t a worldwide pandemic disrupting the market,
It’s been years since you and the rest of Democrats gave a shit about COVID, so it’s hypocritical to blame the ongoing pandemic.
Perhaps if Biden didn’t give up entirely on public health then the ongoing economic problems caused by COVID could be addressed, but instead we don’t even talk about it like it’s still a serious issue and ignore the ongoing wave of deaths. We are still having excess deaths far above the pre-pandemic period, but I bet you don’t even wear a mask to the store. What a joke.
it wasn’t America keeping housing as an investment vehicle instead of a means of sheltering humans, it wasn’t decades of wealthy investors buying housing to convert into rentals.
Both problems are something Biden helped establish over his long tenure as a Senator.
Nope, all of that complexity can be tossed out the window because one single man is to blame: Joe Biden.
Liberals in every country do this thing where they use complexity as a way to mystify and obscure the consequences of their party’s actions and inaction. Somehow the President is powerless and problems come from nowhere. No one is to blame, except maybe the red team.
Both parties are neolibs.
It’s just a duopoly.
All of your critiques apply to both parties.
I’m left so I hate right.
I’m right so I hate left.
So boring.
Introduce ranked choice voting.
We could hate omnidirectionally.
Strangely more often it’s “I’m left so I hate the US left” and they don’t bother criticizing Republicans at all.
You want someone to help you do something for the good of everyone. Do you ask the giant selfish asshole or a rock for help? Republicans are the rock.
They’re not asking or working with Democrats, they’re painting them as worse than ‘the rock’ and telling people to abandon the party. Oddly it’s the exact same thing foreign influence operations were doing on reddit in 2015, and Republicans in ~2006… discouraging young voters from voting at all. Huh, wonder who that helps.
Omnidirectional hate, I like that.
I hate everyone equally
Introduce ranked choice voting.
This!
We could hate omnidirectionally.
Not so much, this. Hate is bad, hate leads to destruction (Dark Side, etc).
We should ALL be asking our politicians about ranked choice voting. It’s not even mentioned currently by anyone though.
There is no left.
If you are located in the United States, this is correct.
The left is a bogeyman spectre used to prevent change.
Introduce ranked choice voting.
Out of curiosity, why do people write things like that? There’s 0% change of this happening. Are you delusional and propose this as actual solution or are you so disillusioned that at this point you don’t even care about actual solutions and just want to play fantasy politics?
Do you think you make any sort of sense with this way of writing? You are slamming Biden because you don’t know who is a actually responsible. It’s greedy landlords and the corporate overlords that run housing.
Biden runs the country. Not the whole housing market. If anything he helped it with his administration relieving college debt and made it more affordable to many Americans that don’t need to pay off debt.
You make zero points and I just throwing mud to make Trump the only choice.
Biden runs the country. Not the whole housing market.
He definitely could interfere with the housing market to a much higher degree. He could also make better use of the bully pulpit to attack greedy landlords and corporate housing by name.
He will not.
When Trump wins he will make everything worse and Biden is doing everything he can to make sure he loses.
He could also make better use of the bully pulpit to attack greedy landlords and corporate housing by name.
Biden: “You landlords are terrible and charge too much! Here are your names!”
Landlords: “Cool. How are you going to be able to stop us?”
Biden: “…”
Landlords: “Cool. How are you going to be able to stop us?”
He supposedly loves unions, right? How about he starts throwing his support behind tenant unions and rent strikes? How about he tells the millions of Democrats to take political and economic actions against landlords and real estate companies? “Here are your enemies and these are their companies, you know what to do.”
I think you may be misunderstanding who has all the money and all the high-priced lawyers in this equation.
You can what if all day long. And it’s not fact. It’s fantasy. So you don’t make sense in two posts. Keep going. Your whole account can look like a lost soul in a cult.
A cult of what? I’m just criticizing Biden! You seem to think the president is powerless and nothing that has gone wrong is his fault.
Is there literally anything you would criticize him for?
Not to you. Because you are Trump’s nuts and are a sad excuse for an American.
It’s interesting to see the assumptions and projections you put onto me. All I’ve said (or implied snarkily) is that the housing and homelessness crisis that we’re seeing in America is a multifaceted issue, and much larger than trying to simply blame one man.
For what it’s worth, I have no love for Biden and think he could be doing a hell of a lot more from his position, as could the rest of the corporate Democrat party, as could literally any Republican with a spine, but unfortunately we’re stuck with a party that won’t act and a party whose only purpose is to block the other.
I still don’t think you can distill the housing issue down to just ‘Biden bad’ though, so you should really do some introspection and see if your anger towards Biden might be blurring your viewpoint a little bit
Consider that, maybe, the assumptions and projections that you put on to me. When did I say Biden is to blame for everything? When did I actually distill the housing issue down to just ‘Biden bad’ except by glibly mocking their PR teams attempt to spin good economic news as “Bidenomics”. Remember, they’re the ones that made up that term. I was just referencing it.
When did I say Biden is to blame for everything?
I mean, sure, you didn’t type that exact sentence but when you provided an itemized list of why Biden is to blame for each item in my original comment, it’s not a huge leap of logic to think you blame Biden for these things.
I was just listing things Biden played a role in. Things he is partially to blame for, because he has not done everything he can to fight back.
Obviously he’s not the king of America and can’t just be blamed for everything, but I refuse to just say he’s blameless because of that.
You say that like Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment wasn’t a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans.
That’s not true, he also accelerated the decline of America and turned many of America’s allies against us.
Also he had that handsome hamburger party that one time. That was pretty funny, probably his favorite day of being president.
Hamberder
bogos bimted
Something tells me they don’t like Trump, either.
With a Republican controlled House and Senate, no less.
Complete control of the government, carte blanche to enact yr policies … All they can do is pass a tax cut.
Republicans are the most ineffective political body in the world. More so than Democrats, who’s only bid to relevancy is “I’m not them!” while simultaneously only passing Republican written legislation.
So the cycle, take note, is Republicans get power because Democrats don’t do shit for anyone on main Street, who’ve seen their living conditions fall to third world status (3rd world has cell phones too people, like 90% of humanity has a cell phone), bicker about social issues and imagined offensives then pass a tax cut and forgive debts to the people held by Big business. Supreme court shenanigans whenever possible. Democrats get elected with nice stories of going to Disney land. Get in, can’t do anything they promised cuz reasons but they pass the Republican think tank written policies cuz gotta point at something. BUUUT no field trip for you, get back to work. Get booted out because now I’m 47, living in a Kia with my 2 dogs and hamster and I’ve never been to the Disneyverse. Get told the economy is doing better everyday. Every other day someone else I know ends up homeless.
Rinse, repeat. The American way.
The goal of the Democratic party is to make sure they exist alongside the Republican party.
Hello? Hello friend?
This is why it’s a bad idea to stick your name onto whatever is the current state of the economy.
There’s also the repulsive way they keep trying to gaslight us into thinking the economy is good.
Well, at the moment, the other option is Trump. We all know we need better politicians in general, but are you suggesting things would be better with him?
Us Vs. Them creates a system that never improves.
3rd party and end the MIC
I hope that works out.
I fundamentally draw the line at voting for any candidate that funds genocide like joe. The two party system is broken.
The two party system is definitely broken. So, you’ll be voting for whom this year? None?
I’m not sure who yet, but I will be voting for a third-party candidate.
I hope that works out for all of us.
The other option is whoever we want. Wild how voting works.
Problem is absent major reforms in every state, that’s not how voting works. Third parties playing spoilers in the first-past-the-post system has been documented and evidenced many times. Whichever bloc has greater unity or no appealing 3rd party candidates will win. So you could end up with Trump being elected with 35% for Biden, 25% for West, and 40% for Trump. Run-off or ranked choice could fix that but we don’t have that.
Whichever bloc has greater unity
Ive got unity with the progressive candidate. Who also endorses that ranked choice we both want. Biden and Trump represent a conservative bloc.
That would be great but voting for them this round isn’t a practical choice. We have to somehow get voting reforms then support the candidates we actually prefer. That would start at a local/state level.
Right, this round. Next round for sure.
Before there is comprehensive voting reform it won’t work at all. It’s more likely to get whatever candidate you least support elected.
So you could end up with Trump being elected with 35% for Biden, 25% for West, and 40% for Trump.
And then the country would collapse. Do you actually think America would survive that?
How would the country collapse? Because Trump got elected and ruined it the rest of the way, or because the left/social liberal/Democrat vote was split between the D candidate and a 3rd party, like people keep suggesting we should do? Not sure what you mean.
the left/social liberal/Democrat vote was split between the D candidate and a 3rd party, like people keep suggesting we should do
Has anyone in this thread even done that? I know I haven’t. I haven’t told anyone how to vote.
Not sure what you mean.
The largest protests in American history happened under Trump. If he came back into power despite everything with such a small plurality, the citizenry would become ungovernable.
I’ll just ignore the first part since you’ve obviously spent half the thread condemning Biden.
Anyway, so people should have been out there going wild protesting Al Gore and Hillary Clinton losing the popular vote, I guess. However, that’s the way the system works, as bad as it is. I’m sure some people would protest but my example (which isn’t even realistic since it ignores the electoral college) would be interpreted as Trump winning by 5%.
Wild how voting doesn’t guarantee your preferred winner of the lot will actually win. We need ranked voting.
That applies to literally every candidate. Everyone gets one vote’s worth of a say. If a lot of people dont want Trump or Biden, they dont have to win. But that pesky self fulfilling prophecy.
You want ranked choice, vote for the candidate that endorses it. I dont know how you ever expect it to happen otherwise.
Ahh yes. Eggs and chickens.
I have not told anyone how to vote in this thread. Y’all just crawled up my ass about it because I blasphemed.
If you choose to vote for Biden despite hating him, I understand. But don’t try to silence criticism.
I’m not concerned with them. I’m engaging in conversation with you. Are you able to answer the question?
I literally did answer the question: I have not told anyone how to vote. That necessarily means I’m not suggesting Trump is better. 🙄
I’m not asking what you’re telling people. I’m asking what you think
I don’t think Trump is better either, what the fuck?
What is your problem? Stop crawling up my ass.
I’m a little confused why you’re being so aggressive when I’m just asking clarifying questions about your comment.
Don’t you that think maybe Biden, who I’m not saying is a great guy, took office during a free fall and can’t be expected to take on the full blame for what was already bound to hit the ground?
Weird how people who are ‘I’m so COMMUMIST!!’ reserve their criticism for US politicians closer to the left and don’t bother saying shit about Trump or the Republicans in congress.
It’s weird how you make things up to get mad at. The BLM uprisings were full of communists, did you forget about that? We were the ones who sided with the People’s demand to defund the police, before liberals betrayed us by trying to frame that as reform the police.
Your confusion comes from thinking liberals are close to the left. They are not. They are capitalist, imperialist, anti-communists.
Also, I am not telling people how to vote. I am criticizing Biden. Am I allowed to do that, or is that blasphemy?
‘defund the police’ and ‘abolish the police’ were very poorly slogans which scared off more people than they attracted.
US Liberals are a LOT closer to leftists than Republicans are… that’s the entire point. Generally they support socialized healthcare, labor unions, worker protections, consumer protection, social safety nets, helping people in need, police reform and many other topics leftists support, while conservatives oppose every single one of those.
Criticize Biden all you want but if it helps get Trump elected, good job I guess.
‘defund the police’ and ‘abolish the police’ were very poorly slogans which scared off more people than they attracted.
I want my enemies to be scared.
Except it scared off the people who might have supported you as well.
Just causes hampered or killed by bad optics are legion thru history.
They would never support us. Get real.
You missed the point by a mile. Your slogan is supposed to attract people who would support the policy changes you want, not your ‘enemies’. Saying ‘abolish’ and ‘defund’ didn’t attract the centrists and moderates you’d need to enact changes, which is why ‘reform’ was actually a better choice.
I am uninterested in appealing to the white moderate.
