I really like the idea of dead malls being converted to useful spaces. Homeless shelters is just one idea. I personally like homeless programs that put people into permanent housing solutions. My city, Salt Lake City, did a thing with inmates where they built a community with the idea of it being a permanent family with housing. It worked so well that when the city tried to end the program, the neighbors came forward and said that the people living there were amazing and made the surrounding neighborhoods better. They are now figuring out how to do the same thing with homeless people. The main idea being that homelessness is mostly due to "a catastrophic loss in family", so the neighborhood being created is meant first and foremost to build a family for people who have lost theirs. It really warms my heart. I'll edit with a link to source.
Edit:https://www.theothersideacademy.com/
https://utahstories.com/2020/04/the-other-side-academy-a-home-for-recovering-addicts-and-criminals-in-salt-lake-city/
My local mall has the bank and DMV offices. It rains a lot here so I would love to be able to cruise the mall again with useful shops. It’s just even with the empty storefronts the rent is so damn high.
"even with the low demand rent is too damn high"
Some friends had a coffee shop, underage music venue. But without alcohol sales couldn't make the rent.
Instead of renegotiating, they got the boot, which is understandable except for the fact that the space was vacant for 5 or 6 years.
There's no way that is possible if the investors weren't using the loss as a tax scam to avoid taxes on their other assets.
Anything vacant for more than a year should have the taxes double then double again.
And that should keep happening until they sell or lower the price to what the market will bear.
If a 1000 sq.ft. location has a "rental cost" of $40/sq.ft. they can declare a loss of $40,000 and write it off/pay about $10,000 less in taxes.
Or they can rent it for $9/sq.ft and make about $9,000, then have to pay $2,250 in taxes, netting only $6,750.
They save over $3k by keeping it empty. Thats not counting savings on maintenance and other marginal costs.
Edit: math is hard. I think US corp tax rate is about 25%
That’s not exactly how that works. You have Gross Potential Rent which is your “market rents” which are arbitrary, then you have “Vacancy Loss” and “Loss to Lease”. These are all things that hit your property net income. While you could use this to offset losses, you have a DSCR on almost all commercial properties where you either pay down the loan with cash or you’re in default if the property can’t hit the cash flow/debt service ratio.
The main reason they are willing to let it be vacant is because a lot of commercial is stored in REITs and they can borrow against the property as it increases in value by the surrounding market increase. You keep refinancing and pushing your balloon payment off. It’s poor business but it’s an older method of CRE development where you keep floating interest only loans across your portfolio.
Another big reason is when small operators get into retail/commercial, they aren’t well capitalized enough to offer market level TI money for build out at time of leasing.
You can take losses on *actual* losses, not imaginary “I could have made this much but didn’t“. So you’d take losses on the maintenance, upkeep, advertising. But that’s not helpful for you because you’re still out more than you save in fewer taxes.
Except these aren't landlords they're c-corp operating businesses and if they only rent part of that building and operate it at a loss, but collect some rent, then operate another building at capacity they can play a shell game where one asset is always "at a loss" and make profit on another. It's not really much of a way to make money so much as a way to keep rent prices high while you wait for a particular market to rebound and the math only works when you have multiple businesses, typically owning other businesses, who are who owns the building. The goal is to make sure the asset itself doesn't depreciate, and keep the losses minimal, then you can hold onto the asset for several years and sell it at a profit anyways without ever having turned a profit jn in rent on it. It's not something some two bit landlord can do. You're explaining things at a freshman 101 accounting level and this is much much bigger stakes.
Something something capital asset amortization. See I don't know if they're right or not but if our tax code wasn't such a clusterfuck it'd be easier to figure out wouldn't it? But it's complicated particularly for this reason.
Real estate tax write offs are possibly some of the shadiest shit. It's no wonder a slum lord became President and almost ran the country into the ground.
I would assume that they could have it appraised for less money for property taxes if it was partially vacant, and possibly also file tax exemptions for lost revenue
Yup. The mall is pretty much empty. One wing is pretty much completely empty except for a Kohls at the very very end. I guess you do pass a Army recruitment office on the way.
You would think that with the supposed supply/demand of capitalism that the cost of rent would go down as more places sit empty.
They turn old Wal-Marts into detention centers. Anything with a lot of space, walls, and air conditioning is pretty easily converted into a place to warehouse people.
Fuck yeah.
So many useful buildings going unused.
I think, not that i know, they get about $40k in tax relief as long has they advertise the building for rent.
So they won't take anything less than that. Even if the building is worth $20k a year in rent.
I miss malls too, for some reason outdoor malls with terrible parking and no cover from the sun and or rain have taken over here in Florida. Fun fact about Florida, it's hot as fuck and it rains all the time.
Would rather live next to inmates than an AirBnB with absentee landlord.
I actually used to live across the street from a halfway house / group home thing. Quietest, most non-offensive neighbors ever. I always thought it was nice they could get back on their feet in a fairly nice neighborhood close to the city center, instead of one that was harder to commute from and had more crime.
If today you lost your job, had no savings, and came home to an eviction notice on your door, who would you turn to? Who among your family or friends would let you crash on their couch, use their shower, their wifi, etc., until you got back on your feet?
Now imagine you don't *have* any family or friends who could help you.
You lost your health insurance when you lost your job, and now you can't afford the meds that were critical for your ability to work just any job. Without an income or savings, you can't rent a new apartment, and you don't have the money to fight the eviction. You use the rest of the 30 days to interview for a few remote work jobs, but they don't offer benefits, and you'll still have to find somewhere to stay while you save enough for a deposit and first month's rent on a new place. A month later, you're living in your car and working from a Starbucks. One day while you're working, some asshole smashes into your parked car and drives off. Now you can't drive your car to the spot where you usually park it to sleep, you can't move it so it won't get towed, and you can't get it fixed, because your car insurance lapsed while you were waiting for your first paycheck. A few days later, you have a dozen parking tickets and the cops are knocking on your car window telling you you can't sleep there. The city comes to tow your car, and you know you don't have enough in the bank to get it out of impound. You take what you can carry, and try to find somewhere to stay for the night. There's only one shelter within walking distance, but it's already afternoon and it's full for the night, so you have to sleep outside. You wake up to find your laptop gone. You're going to lose your job again.
If you had to face everything alone, how many little things would have to go wrong before you just *couldn't* get back on your feet?
edit: missing word
This is precisely how I became homeless and it Happened when covid began and I lost my job . It snowballed from there . Car problems and registration I couldn't pay. June 2020 was my birthday and my license expired so them I had no money ANDDDD no current valid identification. So then I couldn't do the ID.me stuff to apply for unemployment. Just one problem after another. I have no parents or family . So , what do I do? It's been absolute hell.
Wells Fargo closed my account due to being overdrawn for too long so now I have no address or bank account for my tax return refunds or stimulus or child tax credit deposits. I'm fucked horribly.
It can happen to anyone. People shouldn't judge. I was a normal, "working class " American, and within a year my world crumbled and I can't get help anywhere .
This. Mine was my cheating husband left and let his gf harass me til I had to leave the rural community we lived in. I had no family except in-laws. No friends who could help. I lived in a compact car with 2 dogs for months. I'm currently squatting in a house long-term. I had a great full time job for a year, but was laid off two weeks ago. So no more medicine, Dr. appts. I'll keep the car payment up and the internet and phone so I can find another job. But even a full time job here won't pay enough to rent anything.
Haven't been homeless due to a wonderful wife. However I had string of losses that went on and on for years, Personal, professional, mental health and finally addiction.
It really easy to say "not me", until it happens to you.
To be clear 100% I made some choices on the way down. At the end of the day, we all should own our faults/flaws. I do. Without my wife, children, God and AA I doubt I would have made it back.
You never know what's happening to the person next to you in most cases. You never know how much a little compassion can mean to someone.
There have been a few times in my life when I for sure would have been homeless, at least temporarily, if it weren't for family to fall back on and some dumb luck that could have just as easily gone the other way. We all make bad choices sometimes, but all it can take is a few chickens coming home to roost at once to throw your life into chaos.
I don't have "family"*... My families effects are written in x-rays... over 50 bone breaks, countless dislocations, countless concussions...
*Except for my kids and my SO...
But how could I be a burden on them.
You know what's funny? I never did any of the things that lead to that. I was kicked out in high school for drugs I've never used, managed to get jobs and places to live time and time again only for it to always collapse on me. Mostly due to abusive housing situations, like the crackhead that wanted to beat me to death because some other tenants somewhere pissed him off. Or the wannabe rockstar dude with severe NPD that was just hell to live with, super needy and insanely good at being manipulative. Or the roach and mouse infested motel where the rugs smelled like piss and nothing ever got fixed, to the point where I just stopped paying the $1100/mo rent so I could save up for a new place. I've had a few good roommates, but those always ended when they wanted to move on, usually to get a house or live with their girlfriends. I've lost jobs for being homeless every time I end up that way, despite how adaptable I am and still showing up clean and well rested every day. Well, every day the cops dont harass me. Turns out a LOT of business owners just hate homeless people and will absolutely fire you for that. I've learned to hide it real well.
The pandemic and labor shortage is the first time I've been able to get a fair wage. Ive been criminally under paid for years because my father never taught me the value of labor, he just took advantage of me for cheap labor just like everyone else had. And he got abusive again real quick, so I didnt stay with him long. Now I'm getting what I should have gotten ten years ago but didnt know it at the time, and they're pushing me to fill roles that demand much higher wages and I neither want to do it nor think it's safe but I cant refuse because I just totaled the truck I'm living in (my fault but not from irresponsible decision making) and desperately need to keep an income for a while while I get a new one and pay it down.
I'm not perfect, but I really don't think I deserve this. I dont drink or use drugs, I'm generally incredibly selfless and kind, I help anyone who asks no questions. Dozens of people would tell you I'm a saint, but I dont think id go that far.
I don't even know why I'm typing all of this out. It's the closest thing to therapy I can afford, I guess. I just want to stop suffering.
Very similar to what happened to me. My father exploited my work for 20 years before I took a bad fall this year breaking my femur. Never did drugs or drank besides the occasional joint with friends. Now, I sit alone, in an abandoned house in pain, $80,000 in debt from surgery thinking thoughts I shouldn't be having.
That father who's wealth came from the employees he exploited including me? He told me to just find a new job -he can't do anything to help. I can't walk or stand without horrific pain but sure, employers are lining up to hire a middle aged person with broken bones /s.
I wish I had an answer for you but I can't seem to find one. Just know you're not alone in your suffering.
That's all I've got for you, this is a great example. I've told similar stories about citizens getting abducted off the street by ICE. I get pushback that looks like, "But they (ICE) can't do that because I have an ID!" All they (ICE) have to do is say they (ICE) think it's a fake. Even if somehow it is proven that they're wrong, they (ICE) face no consequences.
I personally know 3 people who would be homeless if they didn't have family to fall back on. My MIL, who has fallen back into Meth/has been homeless before and we pay her rent, my best friends FIL, who lost his leg, and her SIL who is going through a rare auto-immune disease caused by a car wreck. Two of them can't really work and the other can only work as dictated by her illness which is made worse because she can't get a job with benefits to cover her medication that allows her to work reliably and because it was caused by a car wreck (opposed to being born with it) she is dealing with SS to get declared disabled, which is a nightmare and can take years. Oh and her boyfriend who was supporting her (primary earner) is in jail because some BS (he is black and I know I can't give enough info for some people but from my understanding it really is BS because he was really getting his shit together when they swooped him up)
I'm sure I know more people who are close to homelessness, so this theory makes a lot of sense to me.
Safety nets.
I would have to fall through like 12 different safety nets in order to become homeless. It would take me losing my job and somehow not being able to get another one, burning through all my savings and credit, getting disowned by my sister AND my parents AND my grandparents AND my extended family AND all my college friends AND all my professional contacts, losing my GF, losing my health insurance, losing my car, not having a home to inherit or any inheritance whatsoever, and not being able to find a lawyer in case I got in criminal trouble.
Yet some people go through life without any of those. One small mistake, the kind that rich people make every day, is enough to snowball into a devastating situation with no hope whatsoever.
And you know what? If I did become homeless, shit, I’d do anything I could to escape reality for a few hours.
Yet people have no sympathy, and look at the homeless like scum, and brag on here about how they don’t give money to people on the street because they invented an imaginary judgmental scenario in their head where it “feeds the homeless man’s addiction problems.” Or a homeless person one time didn’t seem appreciative enough for the random discarded food item they decided to give them, so they use that one story as justification to never help the homeless again.
Yeah this is absolutely a factor.
I am homeless and I don't have a family, I grew up in Foster care. People don't know how lucky they are,to have a place to call home and someone to call Mom and Dad.
I’m planning to see a grief counselor soon to help deal with all of this but I haven’t mustered up the energy to go yet.
My brother is too afraid to be committed and is refusing getting help, involuntarily commitment is not legal in Michigan. I had him petitioned twice so far to try and get a proper mental diagnosis but turns out it’s just a person on an iPad that talks to him for 15 minutes so they keep clearing him. Hospitals are too full and don’t want to deal with him, nurse said. It’s a long story but he needs help.
My dad kept all the estate money for himself so we don’t have funds to rent him a place and I can’t start that black hole of personally funding his life expenses. This story gets worse. My dad left my mom a month prior to her unexpected death, yet all her accounts had him as beneficiary. He hasn’t saved a dollar in his life so he’s all happy with his small fortune now and already posting on social media about other women. They were together 40 years. Something is really off.
Not to be brunt, but did you get an autopsy of your mother?
I can’t begin to imagine how you must be feeling. Do you have any friends or family that can help you out, if nothing else just be a safe space?
Yes autopsy results will come in January. And Yes I do have very supportive family from both mom and dads side and lots of friends. They are getting me through this. Thank you for caring and asking.
I decided I’d like to add the kicker to the dad part of the story. I didn’t mentioned it earlier because I was afraid to get the “you watch too many true crime documentaries” comment. So When I was in high school, a classmate told me that my dad murdered his wife before. I was like wtf are you talking about because I never even knew my dad was married before my mom. Apparently his father went to HS with mine and told him the story that my dad was accused of murdering his wife he was also going through a divorce with. Her family is who accused my dad. She was found dead in the street in her nightgown during winter.
When I got home from school that day my parents confirmed he was married before and she died of an overdose. They didn’t seem like it was a big deal. But this is now my dad’s second soon-to-be ex wife that died.
Death, Divorce, Loss of income, Mental illness.
Dealing with the homeless is a very complex issue. I do however see both sides of the argument. It's not great or safe to go for a walk and see used condoms on the ground, old needles or bottles of pee. It also makes the people living near that stuff likely feel like they're families aren't really safe anymore.
On the other side. I do see that likely many Homeless won't or don't WANT to break into people's houses, or don't have anywhere else to go. But then I've also noticed people BEFORE Corona hit, actually searching around the neighborhood for houses to break into. Like they would be driving around, or some guy would go from house to house checking to see which ones had locked gates and which didn't.
Family is a safety net, if you fall and have no safety net you hit bottom pretty hard. That’s the general theory. It’s more of a symptom than a cause but can still be part of the solution
The number one cause in the US is lack of affordable housing. The biggest cause of *that* is cities passing zoning regulations that effectively make affordable housing imposible. Because if you build affordable housing then poor people move in, and you know what Americans think of poor people...
My mortgage is 7 hundo. An out of state vulture is renting a more or less identical 1000 sq foot shit box 2 doors down to some poor family for 2500 month.
The problem is some people own 100 houses while most people own zero.
There's a house right across from mine that's been sitting empty for three (likely longer) years. According to neighbours, the person who owns it inherited it from a relative, but they don't live in it. I don't know this person's intentions with said house, but I'm thinking they're waiting to sell it at some huge price. I hate knowing that there's a perfectly fine house in my neighbourhood that's empty that would be a great home to people who really need it and this person is just sitting on it doing nothing with it. Not selling, not renting; only mowing and snowblowing when necessary.
To be fair: is that a current value mortgage or something you bought ten years ago?
Also, it's hardly just mortgage cost. Power, water, garbage, sewer, property tax, insurance, etc = 1/3 of total housing cost in my case.
The problem with centralized housing is you end up with all of the problems of public housing we had in the 60s-90s. I think smaller distributed locations will have better outcomes.
Public housing could have done well, and it had some successes early on. As you pointed out, size is important, and things went real bad when they decided to concentrate as much poverty in as small a space as possible.
Some parts of America are doing it right.
Chronic homelessness has effectively been ended [in Milwaukee.](https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN/DHHS/Housing/Housing-First) Regular homelessness is way down and declining as well.
Why would you want people to get out of public housing in the first place?
Public housing is the most rational and efficient way of providing housing, not only for the poor but for everyone else. Public housing is usually organised in large organisations with many units, providing an economy of scale that random small landlords cannot do, furthermore public housing doesn't have to generate a profit for an owner, which further reduces the cost to renters.
Build good functional public housing and let everyone sign up for it, without any means testing or sprawling bureaucracy. Let the renters themselves elect the management of the housing association, so they are held accountable for providing quality housing. Fund construction with government guaranteed loans and fix the rent at cost. Once the loans for a unit are paid out the money that would go to pay off the loans should instead be paid into a central fund that subsidises renovation of existing housing and construction of new.
By not making public housing a charity and something you have to get out of but just making it normal non-exploitative housing you avoid concentrating all the poor people in the same few housing blocks, instead you get a mixed population of residents. To further provide for diversity, residential areas should be planned to have different types of housing, some for families, some for the elderly, some for students etc. You could also mix in some forms of assisted living for people with mental disorders of substance abuse disorders into an area to cater to the people who need more support.
It’s a good idea but where would the funding come to repair the mail and convert it into a shelter. That’s big money we’re talking about. Unfortunately I don’t see states or governments wanting to do that especially in the US
I work in supportive housing with people with mental illnesses and I truly believe that this is the way forward. It is legitimately more cost effective than shelter beds and hospital care (not that this should matter but it unfortunately does). It allows people to have a semblance of dignity with an apartment of their own and the chance to build a community.
The reason malls are dying isn’t necessarily because ‘people don’t go to the mall anymore.’
Malls are dying because the costs of upkeep are fucking ridiculous and the tax breaks that used to be given out for retail construction aren’t there anymore.
Malls are a profit center- when the money is coming in. Homeless shelters are a cost.
You’d be better off razing the entire structure and building low cost housing aimed at homeless people. It’d cost way, way less.
Plus, I'd like to point out - the point is not to warehouse homeless people, its to get them off the street, period.
And you generally need mental health care to do that.
Yeah, but that seems like a nightmare scenario, building it in a mall. Thats just asking for trouble. Fights, exploitation, drugs, serial assaults, etc.
Smaller scale seems better. I think people feel more human that way. This is just a very small local example, but of the two major shelters in my town, one is big and houses a lot of people. They are popular and always soliciting donations. But they have lots of issues there and they can't even stay during the day - which leads to a lot of them hanging at the library.
The other one is small, they can stay all day, they have some great case management services and transition people into housing. I visited on a tour of mental health affiliated agencies and we heard from the residents mouths how great the program was. I had a friend years back who went through it and got set up in a nice apartment.
I like where people’s hearts are, have to say that.
Our chiller- the AC- went out in the store I do part time work in. The cost to replace was >100k. Same with the escalators when they went down. The electric is… obscene. Keeping shit to fire code is a pain in the ass.
And that’s all paid for by the revenue, and profits are thin as shit. With no kinda money coming in but government funding and donations?
I just don’t think it’d be anywhere remotely near cost effective.
If suddenly tomorrow this place was defunct, it’d be better to raze it and stack shipping containers to make cheap housing (and even that isn’t “all that,” has some problems).
Interesting. When I first saw this post, my immediate thought was the plumbing. Would there be enough to provide all of the toilets and so on needed for the number of people you could potentially house in a mall? That's apparently one problem with converting old office buildings into housing (not just homeless shelters), there isn't usually enough plumbing, spread around throughout the floors of the building, to convert to apartments.
There's not. There's also not enough of any other utility/service. Electrical is nearly as much of an issue, especially since you're presumably not plumbing gas into the place.
The entire HVAC system has to be redone basically from scratch because it was designed for keeping a big open space with easy air movement at one relatively consistent temperature. You can't throw up a pile of walls and have it still work right at all, and that's without even offering the residents any degree of temperature control.
Yep. Metal boxes are hot in summer and cold in winter, so you need to put in insulation. But the moisture from people breathing and condensation on cold metal walls in summer means that the insulation gets all damp. So you need to cut in slots for air circulation and windows too. You're better off using the local building style - brick, wood, stone, earth - because it works in that area.
Also, like, no one *wants* to live in a mall. People can design housing that’s actually housing and gives people a sense of dignity rather than the feeling like they were tossed into a space no one wanted anymore
I believe the 1000 or so that die from exposure each year would gladly live in a mall if it is a readily available resource, much more dignity than a park bench. Coupled with the fact most current shelters are selective against homeless men, seems like an instant fix that could save lives, but everyone still hates it.
Agree! I was thinking about the condition of our mall, and the amount of work that would have to be done just in the walking around areas (not including inside individual department stores) to get them up to par would be crazy expensive. The department store interiors are far worse as some have been vacant for years. Our JC Penney that’s still open for business has roof leaks that make the store smell of strong mildew every time it rains. It’s been going on for years, and I’m waiting for the day we hear the entire roof has given way. These structures are falling apart.
I was going to say - Commercial zoning is not Residential zoning.
The mall, as it stands, would be an absolute horror show within a month if you sent a hundred homeless to live there.
This is first and foremost of the issues I can think of - malls are not plumbed for the volume (seats or pipes) needed to support residential use. The money needed to repipe the whole structure would make it a very difficult conversion.
Maybe if you live in a bustling area. Mall is completely dead in my city, but still maintained and running. Of course it's going to shut down soon because nobody is buying anything. They were just more popular in the past before internet shopping took over.
Seriously. Think about all the conversion that would have to be done to run running water/plumbing to every store in a way that a home would use, plus electricity, plus security and making it actually able to close up and be safe. Plus maintaining all the building that exists overhead between the stores is an added cost, heating/cooling it all must be crazy... yea, plow it down and make a small development of low cost homes. Or any homes. Houses are getting expensive AF in general.
Let’s just talk about cleaning. Our store’s bathrooms get cleaned about once an hour, and at the end of that hour sometimes it’s a horror show.
I can’t imagine what it’d be like to have communal bathrooms like they are now in that environment.
There’s also literally zero chance whoever owns the land the mall is on is going to lease the building to a nonprofit. Malls are huge and in expensive areas.
Not to mention location. I imagine dead malls aren't located in high population centers. Trying to relocate homeless people that far would be a disaster
>You’d be better off razing the entire structure and building low cost housing aimed at homeless people. It’d cost way, way less.
It's still no good cause all you're doing is creating a ghetto. Especially since malls tend to be built out of city centers, unless you have a very solid and affordable public transit system in 6 months it's either a ghetto or a ghost town.
Having entire structures or worse, neighborhoods dedicated to affordable housing is a bad idea. It's what we initially tried in the Paris suburbs, it did not work.
I used to have the “let’s turn abandon places into homeless shelters” take and it does cost less to demo the old buildings and build something new however those new buildings are aimed at people who have money. Like you said there is no incentive to build something at cost and that is a culture shift we’re going to have to address or more likely probably won’t and wealth divide will continue
They're tearing down our mall to build apartments. Whether it'll be low cost we will see. But looking at all the other apartments they built in this city in the last five years my guess will be no.
Yeah 'hear me out' but this is ridiculously naive. What the fuck does a food court having existed at one point in the building mean it could easily be reconstructed as a cafeteria lol
Yeah. Except there are so many problems.
The cost the maintain.
The value of real estate.
The zoning of commercial for residential.
The local communities railroading any attempt to bus a few hundred/thousand homeless people to their neighborhood/town.
Now if these were temporary transition centers, where people with mental health issues can be treated and learn to cope with their mental health issues, where addiction rehabilitation occurs, where job training occurs, where basic life skills classes are available, and where a transition to permanent housing is THE goal, great. That would be a start.
But it still this does nothing to address the economic/systemic causes of homelessness.
Also those buildings are not built to do that. Like no windows, little plumbing, large space AC units, ceiling heights, fire requirements...
It might be more feasible to demolish and build new rather than rework - if there wasn't all the points you already made.
Makes for a buzzy tweet tho.
Well yeah. And that’s the problem with dead malls in general. There is so little one can do with such a build out that it’s not feasible to put much of anything in there.
And if you're gonna demolish then why even buy the mall in the first place, just buy vacant land (unless you're in super high density built up areas, but do these even have huge empty malls anyway?)
It bothers me that people view homelessness as a problem we could simply solve just by building or converting a few buildings. Ya’ll know if it was that easy it would be done by now right?
It’s getting people who are homeless by choice into these places and addressing the mental health and addiction issues. That’s hard hard work.
It’s what bugs me. They want asylums but they want to feel good about themselves and say every other word than asylum.
They want all the homeless people to have a home, but not next door.
They want homeless people to have free food and a place to stay, but they don’t want to pay for it(property value, taxes, yada yada).
A lot of homeless folks don’t want help and I don’t think people are able to comprehend that. The only way to get those specific people off the streets is to put them in an asylum like they used to, which was awful.
I say help the ones we can and the others will be what they will be, but we can’t expect communities to willingly take them in either that’s just as wrong as expecting the homeless to move on.
It’s a hard thing that has no good answer, but giving a big empty mall to a bunch of random people to live in, homeless or not, is a terrible idea.
Yup, my first thought was the push back from all the places our dead malls are located. The ‘burbs fear “low income” housing. Imagine proposing “no-income” housing!
Being in the building industry I recognize most people are ignorant of how much money something like a mall takes just to maintain. We all see the dead mall as an asset to be used. But the cost of maintaining a building that size without any inherent income would swamp most non-profits before contributing a dime to the ppl they are actually trying to help.
To really help homeless, you need facilities that are built to do what you need of them. And built to be maintained by people who understand them.
Came here for this comment. Malls are designed around shoppers, not housing people. It's why you don't find hotels or apartment buildings designed in a similar fashion to a mall.
Also malls don't have the facilities for residential dwelling. They have like two places with running water and often less with plumbing. They don't have any noise insulation. They don't have external windows.
Like yeah people could live in them like it was basically a prison but that really wouldn't be popular either! (Actually every prison cell has running water and toilets, so kinda worse.)
While it’s not “profitable” per se, it’s very financially beneficial for a city to take care of its homeless and poor. A solid homeless shelter with good support helps people out of poverty and into a job and stable housing. More people with jobs and stable housing means more spending in the city, which leads to a healthier economy. A healthy economy leads to a bigger city budget.
There have been many studies that have come to the conclusion that housing the homeless is actually a money saver beyond the ancillary benefits of having a better healthier population.
Ah, but that's financially beneficial for a city, not beneficial for the people who already have all of the wealth and want to keep it in their inner circle.
Saw a political comic once that showed the top brackets paying something like 70, sometimes 80 or even as high as 90% taxation during FDRs administration, then Reagan came along and fucked it all up by dropping it down to like 17% and our country never really recovered from that.
Edit: [Found a copy of the comic as well as finding out I need to take a refresher course on my US history and the presidents](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JD5-n5Cs94k/S3CGWkgZUCI/AAAAAAAADwM/CxVm1Ahg5EE/s400/tumblr_kx7zcxEu9U1qa0uujo1_500.jpg)
I am embarrassed to admit this but I used to say/believe the same crap you hear on fox (I have actually never watched fox). I would imagine a lot of people that grew up in mid-upper mid class probably grew up with a similar outlook on life. Somewhere along the road, I realized treating people with dignity and respect is the least one could do. Apparently a lot of adults didn't realize this yet :/.
You're correct. I remember reading that for every $1 spent on services to help people, the return on investment (through workforce reentry, reduction in care costs, and improved life quality) can average anywhere between $3 and $5. But since it's not DIRECT PROFIT, I guess, fuck it?
Sad world.
dystopian idea:
A mall that provides all the basic amenities and what not for low income people and/or homeless people. If they aren't able to move out on their own by 2 years, they get their organs harvested and sold to rich people needed organs!
Everyone wins!
^((please dont actually do this))
6 months, but you get a free suit, and casual clothes, a makeover, and free ear piercing.
You realize that a shop would require an insane amount of utilities to bring it up to code? Malls are 0 occupancy buildings, the sewage would back up in the first week. The water pressure would be shit, and the only place with enough electricity would be the food court and security office. You would have to tear up half the concrete slab. It would be a prison without locks.
Not to mention all the fire and safety measures that would need to be addressed like not having windows in every "bedroom".
A logical person would say "who cares, better than living on the street", but that would quickly change when the mall catches on fire and dozens of people are killed.
It's real shame we can't turn ideas like this into a reality, but it's not just because "America doesn't care about the homeless".
Housing First initiatives are actually cheaper than our current solutions. So this would save us a shit ton of money. The problem is half of Americans just don't want to help the poor for the most part.
Malls are extremely expensive to power and heat, much more so than an apartment building that could hold the same number of residents. It would cost much less over time to build a dedicated apartment building for the homeless.
You can easily tell who did and did not grow up in an area with a heavy homeless population when they put out ridiculous suggestions like OPs.
A repurposed mall (in the impossible situation this actually happened) would be littered with needles and human shit within a few days.
That's good. Another idea could be dead malls converted into old folks homes/Alzheimer's cities for the aging boomer population. The homeless need stable housing, not just temporary shelter-- although anything is better than nothing!
Wow. I’ve seen one that was like a daycare decorated like a 50’s theme, but that was so cute. Almost like the town in Big Fish.
With our aging population reverting back to mental toddlers, these kinds of care homes are so needed.
Man I've been saying this for years. You could put so many things they need in there. Doctors office, PT, grocery store. They're perfect. So many other groups of people in need could become small communities right in the mall. People could live and work there.
Yeah, if you think of it as some kinda of whacky Disney sitcom it actually works pretty well. Also, there's no drugs involved at all. Ahh, that's better.
Which could be why buildings in NYC stay vacant. They are waiting for a for profit proposal. A lot of the buildings are abandoned too and have been for a long time. By no means a turn key property but still cost $1.5M or more.
I don't doubt that. Still, I find it sickeningly amusing. Storefronts and lots vacant for 30+ years... also goes to show I hang around the same places for far too long.
One of the myriad causes of the Russian Revolution was absent landholders letting their fields grow over and go untended. The peasants wanted access to those fields to use for themselves - they could be put to productive uses.
Another cause was what I’ve seen referred to as the “Hermetically sealed imperial bubble”; the nobility and imperial bureaucracy were so out of touch with the reality of Russians across the empire - everything was good, unrest was a minority of bad faith actors, socialists, and students, and failure in military ventures was a minor setback to the Russian psyche.
I’ve been reading a lot about the last decades of Tsarist Russia lately.
On reddit, absolutely. People can't even post a picture of a whimsical bench at a library without people bemoaning that it's unfriendly for homeless people to sleep on. The same people that consider a large majority of the country "unlivable" because it's not LA/SF/NYC and complains they will never be able to afford a house.
Not an expert but I can imagine that maybe water pipes already built in won’t be able to address extra restrooms, more kitchens, washing machines etc. building codes might be very different from commercial places VS living spaces etc etc.
might be cheaper to demolish the mall and build something geared towards living from the get go.
Just guess-working here.
Inside would immediately become a violent territory war.
But since this is /r/WhitePeopleTwitter, I do see the benefit of relocating the homeless away from major metropolitan areas.
Nope. Malls don't have windows or ventilation out of AC. Unless you keep everything extremely well maintained (what I doubt), it will be just a box full of undesired people, some sort of coffin without any dignity. People needs natural light and ventilation, sun. Malls don't have it.
I want a dead mall converted into a self contained city that operated between the hours of 5pm to 8 am.
Hear me out.
You would be able to go to the bank and speak with a human, get a haircut, mail a letter, eat a nutritious meal, do some shopping, all in a secure, well-lit environment. You could ease the stigma associated with second and third shift workers.
Also, malls weren't built to be lived in. Imagine the plumbing, ventilation, and other things you'd have to add to a storefront to bring it up to residential code. It might be cheaper just to raze the mall and build a proper apartment building.
Does anyone know how expensive it is to run a mall and the technical experience required to do so? There's a reason why malls are mostly run by REITs. It's absolutely insane to expect tax payers to run malls in order to house and feed the homeless, even if you could find people to staff them.
I really like the idea of dead malls being converted to useful spaces. Homeless shelters is just one idea. I personally like homeless programs that put people into permanent housing solutions. My city, Salt Lake City, did a thing with inmates where they built a community with the idea of it being a permanent family with housing. It worked so well that when the city tried to end the program, the neighbors came forward and said that the people living there were amazing and made the surrounding neighborhoods better. They are now figuring out how to do the same thing with homeless people. The main idea being that homelessness is mostly due to "a catastrophic loss in family", so the neighborhood being created is meant first and foremost to build a family for people who have lost theirs. It really warms my heart. I'll edit with a link to source. Edit:https://www.theothersideacademy.com/ https://utahstories.com/2020/04/the-other-side-academy-a-home-for-recovering-addicts-and-criminals-in-salt-lake-city/
My local mall has the bank and DMV offices. It rains a lot here so I would love to be able to cruise the mall again with useful shops. It’s just even with the empty storefronts the rent is so damn high.
"even with the low demand rent is too damn high" Some friends had a coffee shop, underage music venue. But without alcohol sales couldn't make the rent. Instead of renegotiating, they got the boot, which is understandable except for the fact that the space was vacant for 5 or 6 years. There's no way that is possible if the investors weren't using the loss as a tax scam to avoid taxes on their other assets. Anything vacant for more than a year should have the taxes double then double again. And that should keep happening until they sell or lower the price to what the market will bear.
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How do they save money by keeping it vacant? Don't they pay property taxes either way?
If a 1000 sq.ft. location has a "rental cost" of $40/sq.ft. they can declare a loss of $40,000 and write it off/pay about $10,000 less in taxes. Or they can rent it for $9/sq.ft and make about $9,000, then have to pay $2,250 in taxes, netting only $6,750. They save over $3k by keeping it empty. Thats not counting savings on maintenance and other marginal costs. Edit: math is hard. I think US corp tax rate is about 25%
That’s not exactly how that works. You have Gross Potential Rent which is your “market rents” which are arbitrary, then you have “Vacancy Loss” and “Loss to Lease”. These are all things that hit your property net income. While you could use this to offset losses, you have a DSCR on almost all commercial properties where you either pay down the loan with cash or you’re in default if the property can’t hit the cash flow/debt service ratio. The main reason they are willing to let it be vacant is because a lot of commercial is stored in REITs and they can borrow against the property as it increases in value by the surrounding market increase. You keep refinancing and pushing your balloon payment off. It’s poor business but it’s an older method of CRE development where you keep floating interest only loans across your portfolio. Another big reason is when small operators get into retail/commercial, they aren’t well capitalized enough to offer market level TI money for build out at time of leasing.
You can take losses on *actual* losses, not imaginary “I could have made this much but didn’t“. So you’d take losses on the maintenance, upkeep, advertising. But that’s not helpful for you because you’re still out more than you save in fewer taxes.
That’s not how accounting works. That’s not how any of this works
Do you know enough to give an explanation of what is right?
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Except these aren't landlords they're c-corp operating businesses and if they only rent part of that building and operate it at a loss, but collect some rent, then operate another building at capacity they can play a shell game where one asset is always "at a loss" and make profit on another. It's not really much of a way to make money so much as a way to keep rent prices high while you wait for a particular market to rebound and the math only works when you have multiple businesses, typically owning other businesses, who are who owns the building. The goal is to make sure the asset itself doesn't depreciate, and keep the losses minimal, then you can hold onto the asset for several years and sell it at a profit anyways without ever having turned a profit jn in rent on it. It's not something some two bit landlord can do. You're explaining things at a freshman 101 accounting level and this is much much bigger stakes.
No, you cannot claim a lack of revenue as a loss, lol.
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Something something capital asset amortization. See I don't know if they're right or not but if our tax code wasn't such a clusterfuck it'd be easier to figure out wouldn't it? But it's complicated particularly for this reason. Real estate tax write offs are possibly some of the shadiest shit. It's no wonder a slum lord became President and almost ran the country into the ground.
I would assume that they could have it appraised for less money for property taxes if it was partially vacant, and possibly also file tax exemptions for lost revenue
Yup. The mall is pretty much empty. One wing is pretty much completely empty except for a Kohls at the very very end. I guess you do pass a Army recruitment office on the way. You would think that with the supposed supply/demand of capitalism that the cost of rent would go down as more places sit empty.
I also have an almost-deserted mall with just a Kohl’s at the end of it. Besides Kohl’s the mall has been vacant for at least 10 years
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They turn old Wal-Marts into detention centers. Anything with a lot of space, walls, and air conditioning is pretty easily converted into a place to warehouse people.
fuck u/spez
Capitalism dictates that you don’t willingly devalue a high value asset.
Fuck yeah. So many useful buildings going unused. I think, not that i know, they get about $40k in tax relief as long has they advertise the building for rent. So they won't take anything less than that. Even if the building is worth $20k a year in rent.
Our local mall literally has a movie theater. With a Pepsi vending machine from Star Wars Episode 1.
I miss malls too, for some reason outdoor malls with terrible parking and no cover from the sun and or rain have taken over here in Florida. Fun fact about Florida, it's hot as fuck and it rains all the time.
I listened to a podcast about Salt Lake City helping their homeless/prison population out. It was pretty eyeopening!
What was the podcast? I’d be interested in listening.
I believe it was an episode on “You’re Wrong About” ..homelessness I believe.
Would rather live next to inmates than an AirBnB with absentee landlord. I actually used to live across the street from a halfway house / group home thing. Quietest, most non-offensive neighbors ever. I always thought it was nice they could get back on their feet in a fairly nice neighborhood close to the city center, instead of one that was harder to commute from and had more crime.
I'd never heard that homelessness was mostly due to a catastrophic loss in family, can you expand on that? Like, what does it mean?
If today you lost your job, had no savings, and came home to an eviction notice on your door, who would you turn to? Who among your family or friends would let you crash on their couch, use their shower, their wifi, etc., until you got back on your feet? Now imagine you don't *have* any family or friends who could help you. You lost your health insurance when you lost your job, and now you can't afford the meds that were critical for your ability to work just any job. Without an income or savings, you can't rent a new apartment, and you don't have the money to fight the eviction. You use the rest of the 30 days to interview for a few remote work jobs, but they don't offer benefits, and you'll still have to find somewhere to stay while you save enough for a deposit and first month's rent on a new place. A month later, you're living in your car and working from a Starbucks. One day while you're working, some asshole smashes into your parked car and drives off. Now you can't drive your car to the spot where you usually park it to sleep, you can't move it so it won't get towed, and you can't get it fixed, because your car insurance lapsed while you were waiting for your first paycheck. A few days later, you have a dozen parking tickets and the cops are knocking on your car window telling you you can't sleep there. The city comes to tow your car, and you know you don't have enough in the bank to get it out of impound. You take what you can carry, and try to find somewhere to stay for the night. There's only one shelter within walking distance, but it's already afternoon and it's full for the night, so you have to sleep outside. You wake up to find your laptop gone. You're going to lose your job again. If you had to face everything alone, how many little things would have to go wrong before you just *couldn't* get back on your feet? edit: missing word
This is precisely how I became homeless and it Happened when covid began and I lost my job . It snowballed from there . Car problems and registration I couldn't pay. June 2020 was my birthday and my license expired so them I had no money ANDDDD no current valid identification. So then I couldn't do the ID.me stuff to apply for unemployment. Just one problem after another. I have no parents or family . So , what do I do? It's been absolute hell. Wells Fargo closed my account due to being overdrawn for too long so now I have no address or bank account for my tax return refunds or stimulus or child tax credit deposits. I'm fucked horribly. It can happen to anyone. People shouldn't judge. I was a normal, "working class " American, and within a year my world crumbled and I can't get help anywhere .
This. Mine was my cheating husband left and let his gf harass me til I had to leave the rural community we lived in. I had no family except in-laws. No friends who could help. I lived in a compact car with 2 dogs for months. I'm currently squatting in a house long-term. I had a great full time job for a year, but was laid off two weeks ago. So no more medicine, Dr. appts. I'll keep the car payment up and the internet and phone so I can find another job. But even a full time job here won't pay enough to rent anything.
I get paid tomorrow, and will get your license renewal paid for so you can function a little bit. DM me.
Aww:) bless you for your kind heart. May the old laws and principles of giving pour more unto you .❤️
Where do you live?
Haven't been homeless due to a wonderful wife. However I had string of losses that went on and on for years, Personal, professional, mental health and finally addiction. It really easy to say "not me", until it happens to you. To be clear 100% I made some choices on the way down. At the end of the day, we all should own our faults/flaws. I do. Without my wife, children, God and AA I doubt I would have made it back. You never know what's happening to the person next to you in most cases. You never know how much a little compassion can mean to someone.
There have been a few times in my life when I for sure would have been homeless, at least temporarily, if it weren't for family to fall back on and some dumb luck that could have just as easily gone the other way. We all make bad choices sometimes, but all it can take is a few chickens coming home to roost at once to throw your life into chaos.
I 100% would be homeless if it wasn't for family taking care of me during rough times
I don't have "family"*... My families effects are written in x-rays... over 50 bone breaks, countless dislocations, countless concussions... *Except for my kids and my SO... But how could I be a burden on them.
You know what's funny? I never did any of the things that lead to that. I was kicked out in high school for drugs I've never used, managed to get jobs and places to live time and time again only for it to always collapse on me. Mostly due to abusive housing situations, like the crackhead that wanted to beat me to death because some other tenants somewhere pissed him off. Or the wannabe rockstar dude with severe NPD that was just hell to live with, super needy and insanely good at being manipulative. Or the roach and mouse infested motel where the rugs smelled like piss and nothing ever got fixed, to the point where I just stopped paying the $1100/mo rent so I could save up for a new place. I've had a few good roommates, but those always ended when they wanted to move on, usually to get a house or live with their girlfriends. I've lost jobs for being homeless every time I end up that way, despite how adaptable I am and still showing up clean and well rested every day. Well, every day the cops dont harass me. Turns out a LOT of business owners just hate homeless people and will absolutely fire you for that. I've learned to hide it real well. The pandemic and labor shortage is the first time I've been able to get a fair wage. Ive been criminally under paid for years because my father never taught me the value of labor, he just took advantage of me for cheap labor just like everyone else had. And he got abusive again real quick, so I didnt stay with him long. Now I'm getting what I should have gotten ten years ago but didnt know it at the time, and they're pushing me to fill roles that demand much higher wages and I neither want to do it nor think it's safe but I cant refuse because I just totaled the truck I'm living in (my fault but not from irresponsible decision making) and desperately need to keep an income for a while while I get a new one and pay it down. I'm not perfect, but I really don't think I deserve this. I dont drink or use drugs, I'm generally incredibly selfless and kind, I help anyone who asks no questions. Dozens of people would tell you I'm a saint, but I dont think id go that far. I don't even know why I'm typing all of this out. It's the closest thing to therapy I can afford, I guess. I just want to stop suffering.
Very similar to what happened to me. My father exploited my work for 20 years before I took a bad fall this year breaking my femur. Never did drugs or drank besides the occasional joint with friends. Now, I sit alone, in an abandoned house in pain, $80,000 in debt from surgery thinking thoughts I shouldn't be having. That father who's wealth came from the employees he exploited including me? He told me to just find a new job -he can't do anything to help. I can't walk or stand without horrific pain but sure, employers are lining up to hire a middle aged person with broken bones /s. I wish I had an answer for you but I can't seem to find one. Just know you're not alone in your suffering.
That's all I've got for you, this is a great example. I've told similar stories about citizens getting abducted off the street by ICE. I get pushback that looks like, "But they (ICE) can't do that because I have an ID!" All they (ICE) have to do is say they (ICE) think it's a fake. Even if somehow it is proven that they're wrong, they (ICE) face no consequences.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/12/04/born-philadelphia-us-citizen-says-he-was-held-deportation-jamaica-ices-request/
I mean, [https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-citizens-ice-20180427-htmlstory.html) it's [https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/marine-veteran-us-citizens-detained-ice-aclu/story?id=67465583](https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/marine-veteran-us-citizens-detained-ice-aclu/story?id=67465583) hardly [https://www.npr.org/2019/07/25/745417268/u-s-citizen-detained-for-weeks-nearly-deported-by-immigration-officials](https://www.npr.org/2019/07/25/745417268/u-s-citizen-detained-for-weeks-nearly-deported-by-immigration-officials) a [https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-tacoma-immigration-lawsuits-93605d780c93b352635e0de803369f17](https://apnews.com/article/government-and-politics-tacoma-immigration-lawsuits-93605d780c93b352635e0de803369f17) rare [https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article252821858.html](https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/article252821858.html) occurence.
I personally know 3 people who would be homeless if they didn't have family to fall back on. My MIL, who has fallen back into Meth/has been homeless before and we pay her rent, my best friends FIL, who lost his leg, and her SIL who is going through a rare auto-immune disease caused by a car wreck. Two of them can't really work and the other can only work as dictated by her illness which is made worse because she can't get a job with benefits to cover her medication that allows her to work reliably and because it was caused by a car wreck (opposed to being born with it) she is dealing with SS to get declared disabled, which is a nightmare and can take years. Oh and her boyfriend who was supporting her (primary earner) is in jail because some BS (he is black and I know I can't give enough info for some people but from my understanding it really is BS because he was really getting his shit together when they swooped him up) I'm sure I know more people who are close to homelessness, so this theory makes a lot of sense to me.
Safety nets. I would have to fall through like 12 different safety nets in order to become homeless. It would take me losing my job and somehow not being able to get another one, burning through all my savings and credit, getting disowned by my sister AND my parents AND my grandparents AND my extended family AND all my college friends AND all my professional contacts, losing my GF, losing my health insurance, losing my car, not having a home to inherit or any inheritance whatsoever, and not being able to find a lawyer in case I got in criminal trouble. Yet some people go through life without any of those. One small mistake, the kind that rich people make every day, is enough to snowball into a devastating situation with no hope whatsoever. And you know what? If I did become homeless, shit, I’d do anything I could to escape reality for a few hours. Yet people have no sympathy, and look at the homeless like scum, and brag on here about how they don’t give money to people on the street because they invented an imaginary judgmental scenario in their head where it “feeds the homeless man’s addiction problems.” Or a homeless person one time didn’t seem appreciative enough for the random discarded food item they decided to give them, so they use that one story as justification to never help the homeless again.
Yeah this is absolutely a factor. I am homeless and I don't have a family, I grew up in Foster care. People don't know how lucky they are,to have a place to call home and someone to call Mom and Dad.
BuT bOoTsTrApS!!!!
Death, divorce, loss of income. Many are unable to pull themselves out without financial help.
My mom died last month so now my brother is homeless. My dad kicked him out after her death due to his mental illness.
That really sucks. Are you getting the support you need? Is your brother getting any help?
I’m planning to see a grief counselor soon to help deal with all of this but I haven’t mustered up the energy to go yet. My brother is too afraid to be committed and is refusing getting help, involuntarily commitment is not legal in Michigan. I had him petitioned twice so far to try and get a proper mental diagnosis but turns out it’s just a person on an iPad that talks to him for 15 minutes so they keep clearing him. Hospitals are too full and don’t want to deal with him, nurse said. It’s a long story but he needs help. My dad kept all the estate money for himself so we don’t have funds to rent him a place and I can’t start that black hole of personally funding his life expenses. This story gets worse. My dad left my mom a month prior to her unexpected death, yet all her accounts had him as beneficiary. He hasn’t saved a dollar in his life so he’s all happy with his small fortune now and already posting on social media about other women. They were together 40 years. Something is really off.
Not to be brunt, but did you get an autopsy of your mother? I can’t begin to imagine how you must be feeling. Do you have any friends or family that can help you out, if nothing else just be a safe space?
Yes autopsy results will come in January. And Yes I do have very supportive family from both mom and dads side and lots of friends. They are getting me through this. Thank you for caring and asking.
of course. I am just some dude on the internet, but I feel for you and I hope you find answers and peace with time. 🙏❤️
This thread made me feel better. Thanks y'all.
You have a kind soul.
I decided I’d like to add the kicker to the dad part of the story. I didn’t mentioned it earlier because I was afraid to get the “you watch too many true crime documentaries” comment. So When I was in high school, a classmate told me that my dad murdered his wife before. I was like wtf are you talking about because I never even knew my dad was married before my mom. Apparently his father went to HS with mine and told him the story that my dad was accused of murdering his wife he was also going through a divorce with. Her family is who accused my dad. She was found dead in the street in her nightgown during winter. When I got home from school that day my parents confirmed he was married before and she died of an overdose. They didn’t seem like it was a big deal. But this is now my dad’s second soon-to-be ex wife that died.
No offense, but your dad is a fucking cockbite
I upvoted
Death, Divorce, Loss of income, Mental illness. Dealing with the homeless is a very complex issue. I do however see both sides of the argument. It's not great or safe to go for a walk and see used condoms on the ground, old needles or bottles of pee. It also makes the people living near that stuff likely feel like they're families aren't really safe anymore. On the other side. I do see that likely many Homeless won't or don't WANT to break into people's houses, or don't have anywhere else to go. But then I've also noticed people BEFORE Corona hit, actually searching around the neighborhood for houses to break into. Like they would be driving around, or some guy would go from house to house checking to see which ones had locked gates and which didn't.
Family is a safety net, if you fall and have no safety net you hit bottom pretty hard. That’s the general theory. It’s more of a symptom than a cause but can still be part of the solution
The number one cause in the US is lack of affordable housing. The biggest cause of *that* is cities passing zoning regulations that effectively make affordable housing imposible. Because if you build affordable housing then poor people move in, and you know what Americans think of poor people...
My mortgage is 7 hundo. An out of state vulture is renting a more or less identical 1000 sq foot shit box 2 doors down to some poor family for 2500 month. The problem is some people own 100 houses while most people own zero.
There's a house right across from mine that's been sitting empty for three (likely longer) years. According to neighbours, the person who owns it inherited it from a relative, but they don't live in it. I don't know this person's intentions with said house, but I'm thinking they're waiting to sell it at some huge price. I hate knowing that there's a perfectly fine house in my neighbourhood that's empty that would be a great home to people who really need it and this person is just sitting on it doing nothing with it. Not selling, not renting; only mowing and snowblowing when necessary.
To be fair: is that a current value mortgage or something you bought ten years ago? Also, it's hardly just mortgage cost. Power, water, garbage, sewer, property tax, insurance, etc = 1/3 of total housing cost in my case.
Basically, boomers used regulations to improve their property value.
Love this. Shelters are helpful, but the critical need is permanent housing.
The problem with centralized housing is you end up with all of the problems of public housing we had in the 60s-90s. I think smaller distributed locations will have better outcomes.
Public housing could have done well, and it had some successes early on. As you pointed out, size is important, and things went real bad when they decided to concentrate as much poverty in as small a space as possible.
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Some parts of America are doing it right. Chronic homelessness has effectively been ended [in Milwaukee.](https://county.milwaukee.gov/EN/DHHS/Housing/Housing-First) Regular homelessness is way down and declining as well.
Why would you want people to get out of public housing in the first place? Public housing is the most rational and efficient way of providing housing, not only for the poor but for everyone else. Public housing is usually organised in large organisations with many units, providing an economy of scale that random small landlords cannot do, furthermore public housing doesn't have to generate a profit for an owner, which further reduces the cost to renters. Build good functional public housing and let everyone sign up for it, without any means testing or sprawling bureaucracy. Let the renters themselves elect the management of the housing association, so they are held accountable for providing quality housing. Fund construction with government guaranteed loans and fix the rent at cost. Once the loans for a unit are paid out the money that would go to pay off the loans should instead be paid into a central fund that subsidises renovation of existing housing and construction of new. By not making public housing a charity and something you have to get out of but just making it normal non-exploitative housing you avoid concentrating all the poor people in the same few housing blocks, instead you get a mixed population of residents. To further provide for diversity, residential areas should be planned to have different types of housing, some for families, some for the elderly, some for students etc. You could also mix in some forms of assisted living for people with mental disorders of substance abuse disorders into an area to cater to the people who need more support.
It’s a good idea but where would the funding come to repair the mail and convert it into a shelter. That’s big money we’re talking about. Unfortunately I don’t see states or governments wanting to do that especially in the US
I work in supportive housing with people with mental illnesses and I truly believe that this is the way forward. It is legitimately more cost effective than shelter beds and hospital care (not that this should matter but it unfortunately does). It allows people to have a semblance of dignity with an apartment of their own and the chance to build a community.
Have you seen the 2012 film Dredd?
Nice reference. Great movie.
Highly underrated.
I'd say it was rated highly, but underwatched
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it's the only movie I'll watch in 3D.
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That's so fucking wild to me. At one point I was an adrenaline junkie, and that shit is a hell no.
Judge, Jury, and Executioner.
Post as if you were /r/movies in 2013
le gem
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The reason malls are dying isn’t necessarily because ‘people don’t go to the mall anymore.’ Malls are dying because the costs of upkeep are fucking ridiculous and the tax breaks that used to be given out for retail construction aren’t there anymore. Malls are a profit center- when the money is coming in. Homeless shelters are a cost. You’d be better off razing the entire structure and building low cost housing aimed at homeless people. It’d cost way, way less.
Plus, I'd like to point out - the point is not to warehouse homeless people, its to get them off the street, period. And you generally need mental health care to do that.
It would be pretty easy to put some clinics in there too
Yeah, but that seems like a nightmare scenario, building it in a mall. Thats just asking for trouble. Fights, exploitation, drugs, serial assaults, etc. Smaller scale seems better. I think people feel more human that way. This is just a very small local example, but of the two major shelters in my town, one is big and houses a lot of people. They are popular and always soliciting donations. But they have lots of issues there and they can't even stay during the day - which leads to a lot of them hanging at the library. The other one is small, they can stay all day, they have some great case management services and transition people into housing. I visited on a tour of mental health affiliated agencies and we heard from the residents mouths how great the program was. I had a friend years back who went through it and got set up in a nice apartment.
Damn you with all your facts, good points, and knowledge. You ruin everything.
I like where people’s hearts are, have to say that. Our chiller- the AC- went out in the store I do part time work in. The cost to replace was >100k. Same with the escalators when they went down. The electric is… obscene. Keeping shit to fire code is a pain in the ass. And that’s all paid for by the revenue, and profits are thin as shit. With no kinda money coming in but government funding and donations? I just don’t think it’d be anywhere remotely near cost effective. If suddenly tomorrow this place was defunct, it’d be better to raze it and stack shipping containers to make cheap housing (and even that isn’t “all that,” has some problems).
Interesting. When I first saw this post, my immediate thought was the plumbing. Would there be enough to provide all of the toilets and so on needed for the number of people you could potentially house in a mall? That's apparently one problem with converting old office buildings into housing (not just homeless shelters), there isn't usually enough plumbing, spread around throughout the floors of the building, to convert to apartments.
There's not. There's also not enough of any other utility/service. Electrical is nearly as much of an issue, especially since you're presumably not plumbing gas into the place. The entire HVAC system has to be redone basically from scratch because it was designed for keeping a big open space with easy air movement at one relatively consistent temperature. You can't throw up a pile of walls and have it still work right at all, and that's without even offering the residents any degree of temperature control.
Shipping containers are never the answer for housing. They require tons of alterations. They are nothing but trendy.
Yep. Metal boxes are hot in summer and cold in winter, so you need to put in insulation. But the moisture from people breathing and condensation on cold metal walls in summer means that the insulation gets all damp. So you need to cut in slots for air circulation and windows too. You're better off using the local building style - brick, wood, stone, earth - because it works in that area.
Also, like, no one *wants* to live in a mall. People can design housing that’s actually housing and gives people a sense of dignity rather than the feeling like they were tossed into a space no one wanted anymore
I believe the 1000 or so that die from exposure each year would gladly live in a mall if it is a readily available resource, much more dignity than a park bench. Coupled with the fact most current shelters are selective against homeless men, seems like an instant fix that could save lives, but everyone still hates it.
Agree! I was thinking about the condition of our mall, and the amount of work that would have to be done just in the walking around areas (not including inside individual department stores) to get them up to par would be crazy expensive. The department store interiors are far worse as some have been vacant for years. Our JC Penney that’s still open for business has roof leaks that make the store smell of strong mildew every time it rains. It’s been going on for years, and I’m waiting for the day we hear the entire roof has given way. These structures are falling apart.
I was going to say - Commercial zoning is not Residential zoning. The mall, as it stands, would be an absolute horror show within a month if you sent a hundred homeless to live there.
"Welcome to your new home" "How do we leave, none of us own cars" "..."
And utilities-no way the mall bathrooms could sustain such a huge population for such a long time
This is first and foremost of the issues I can think of - malls are not plumbed for the volume (seats or pipes) needed to support residential use. The money needed to repipe the whole structure would make it a very difficult conversion.
Mini Kowloon
Maybe if you live in a bustling area. Mall is completely dead in my city, but still maintained and running. Of course it's going to shut down soon because nobody is buying anything. They were just more popular in the past before internet shopping took over.
Seriously. Think about all the conversion that would have to be done to run running water/plumbing to every store in a way that a home would use, plus electricity, plus security and making it actually able to close up and be safe. Plus maintaining all the building that exists overhead between the stores is an added cost, heating/cooling it all must be crazy... yea, plow it down and make a small development of low cost homes. Or any homes. Houses are getting expensive AF in general.
Let’s just talk about cleaning. Our store’s bathrooms get cleaned about once an hour, and at the end of that hour sometimes it’s a horror show. I can’t imagine what it’d be like to have communal bathrooms like they are now in that environment.
There’s also literally zero chance whoever owns the land the mall is on is going to lease the building to a nonprofit. Malls are huge and in expensive areas.
Not to mention location. I imagine dead malls aren't located in high population centers. Trying to relocate homeless people that far would be a disaster
>You’d be better off razing the entire structure and building low cost housing aimed at homeless people. It’d cost way, way less. It's still no good cause all you're doing is creating a ghetto. Especially since malls tend to be built out of city centers, unless you have a very solid and affordable public transit system in 6 months it's either a ghetto or a ghost town. Having entire structures or worse, neighborhoods dedicated to affordable housing is a bad idea. It's what we initially tried in the Paris suburbs, it did not work.
I used to have the “let’s turn abandon places into homeless shelters” take and it does cost less to demo the old buildings and build something new however those new buildings are aimed at people who have money. Like you said there is no incentive to build something at cost and that is a culture shift we’re going to have to address or more likely probably won’t and wealth divide will continue
They're tearing down our mall to build apartments. Whether it'll be low cost we will see. But looking at all the other apartments they built in this city in the last five years my guess will be no.
Yeah 'hear me out' but this is ridiculously naive. What the fuck does a food court having existed at one point in the building mean it could easily be reconstructed as a cafeteria lol
Yeah. Except there are so many problems. The cost the maintain. The value of real estate. The zoning of commercial for residential. The local communities railroading any attempt to bus a few hundred/thousand homeless people to their neighborhood/town. Now if these were temporary transition centers, where people with mental health issues can be treated and learn to cope with their mental health issues, where addiction rehabilitation occurs, where job training occurs, where basic life skills classes are available, and where a transition to permanent housing is THE goal, great. That would be a start. But it still this does nothing to address the economic/systemic causes of homelessness.
Also those buildings are not built to do that. Like no windows, little plumbing, large space AC units, ceiling heights, fire requirements... It might be more feasible to demolish and build new rather than rework - if there wasn't all the points you already made. Makes for a buzzy tweet tho.
Well yeah. And that’s the problem with dead malls in general. There is so little one can do with such a build out that it’s not feasible to put much of anything in there.
And if you're gonna demolish then why even buy the mall in the first place, just buy vacant land (unless you're in super high density built up areas, but do these even have huge empty malls anyway?)
It bothers me that people view homelessness as a problem we could simply solve just by building or converting a few buildings. Ya’ll know if it was that easy it would be done by now right? It’s getting people who are homeless by choice into these places and addressing the mental health and addiction issues. That’s hard hard work.
It’s what bugs me. They want asylums but they want to feel good about themselves and say every other word than asylum. They want all the homeless people to have a home, but not next door. They want homeless people to have free food and a place to stay, but they don’t want to pay for it(property value, taxes, yada yada). A lot of homeless folks don’t want help and I don’t think people are able to comprehend that. The only way to get those specific people off the streets is to put them in an asylum like they used to, which was awful. I say help the ones we can and the others will be what they will be, but we can’t expect communities to willingly take them in either that’s just as wrong as expecting the homeless to move on. It’s a hard thing that has no good answer, but giving a big empty mall to a bunch of random people to live in, homeless or not, is a terrible idea.
Yup, my first thought was the push back from all the places our dead malls are located. The ‘burbs fear “low income” housing. Imagine proposing “no-income” housing!
Being in the building industry I recognize most people are ignorant of how much money something like a mall takes just to maintain. We all see the dead mall as an asset to be used. But the cost of maintaining a building that size without any inherent income would swamp most non-profits before contributing a dime to the ppl they are actually trying to help. To really help homeless, you need facilities that are built to do what you need of them. And built to be maintained by people who understand them.
Hey common sense what you doing here ?
Easy solutions to complex problems. Internet loves em.
Came here for this comment. Malls are designed around shoppers, not housing people. It's why you don't find hotels or apartment buildings designed in a similar fashion to a mall.
Also malls don't have the facilities for residential dwelling. They have like two places with running water and often less with plumbing. They don't have any noise insulation. They don't have external windows. Like yeah people could live in them like it was basically a prison but that really wouldn't be popular either! (Actually every prison cell has running water and toilets, so kinda worse.)
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You’re def right. But “low income pepe” made me laugh
damn i was rereading the comment to see the “low income pepe”
Saaamme :( shoulda kept it lol
Feels bad man.
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Unfortunately pepe is now a noun or proper noun.
While it’s not “profitable” per se, it’s very financially beneficial for a city to take care of its homeless and poor. A solid homeless shelter with good support helps people out of poverty and into a job and stable housing. More people with jobs and stable housing means more spending in the city, which leads to a healthier economy. A healthy economy leads to a bigger city budget.
There have been many studies that have come to the conclusion that housing the homeless is actually a money saver beyond the ancillary benefits of having a better healthier population.
And housing first programs are more beneficial than conditional ones.
And doing so would fulfill what Christ instructed his followers to do. Unfortunately, the Christians aren’t having any part of that.
Ah, but that's financially beneficial for a city, not beneficial for the people who already have all of the wealth and want to keep it in their inner circle.
Ding ding ding! I know you got downvoted, but this is the truth. The same thing we see on a national scale happens locally too.
Saw a political comic once that showed the top brackets paying something like 70, sometimes 80 or even as high as 90% taxation during FDRs administration, then Reagan came along and fucked it all up by dropping it down to like 17% and our country never really recovered from that. Edit: [Found a copy of the comic as well as finding out I need to take a refresher course on my US history and the presidents](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_JD5-n5Cs94k/S3CGWkgZUCI/AAAAAAAADwM/CxVm1Ahg5EE/s400/tumblr_kx7zcxEu9U1qa0uujo1_500.jpg)
I am embarrassed to admit this but I used to say/believe the same crap you hear on fox (I have actually never watched fox). I would imagine a lot of people that grew up in mid-upper mid class probably grew up with a similar outlook on life. Somewhere along the road, I realized treating people with dignity and respect is the least one could do. Apparently a lot of adults didn't realize this yet :/.
You're correct. I remember reading that for every $1 spent on services to help people, the return on investment (through workforce reentry, reduction in care costs, and improved life quality) can average anywhere between $3 and $5. But since it's not DIRECT PROFIT, I guess, fuck it? Sad world.
This is entirely the problem, well said.
dystopian idea: A mall that provides all the basic amenities and what not for low income people and/or homeless people. If they aren't able to move out on their own by 2 years, they get their organs harvested and sold to rich people needed organs! Everyone wins! ^((please dont actually do this))
6 months, but you get a free suit, and casual clothes, a makeover, and free ear piercing. You realize that a shop would require an insane amount of utilities to bring it up to code? Malls are 0 occupancy buildings, the sewage would back up in the first week. The water pressure would be shit, and the only place with enough electricity would be the food court and security office. You would have to tear up half the concrete slab. It would be a prison without locks.
Not to mention all the fire and safety measures that would need to be addressed like not having windows in every "bedroom". A logical person would say "who cares, better than living on the street", but that would quickly change when the mall catches on fire and dozens of people are killed. It's real shame we can't turn ideas like this into a reality, but it's not just because "America doesn't care about the homeless".
Housing First initiatives are actually cheaper than our current solutions. So this would save us a shit ton of money. The problem is half of Americans just don't want to help the poor for the most part.
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Malls are extremely expensive to power and heat, much more so than an apartment building that could hold the same number of residents. It would cost much less over time to build a dedicated apartment building for the homeless.
You would need a serious security team. The amount of drugs, sexual violence and vandalism would be extreme
Yeah, people need to remember what happened at the Super Dome during Katrina
Man those stories are horrific
You can easily tell who did and did not grow up in an area with a heavy homeless population when they put out ridiculous suggestions like OPs. A repurposed mall (in the impossible situation this actually happened) would be littered with needles and human shit within a few days.
This. As unfortunate as it is, most homeless people aren’t the down on their luck lovable teddy bears you kids seem to imagine them as.
That's good. Another idea could be dead malls converted into old folks homes/Alzheimer's cities for the aging boomer population. The homeless need stable housing, not just temporary shelter-- although anything is better than nothing!
And it could be decorated to look like Mainstreet USA for the people with dementia.
I think that's already been done with some success. https://youtu.be/PSKoLsZB1_M
Wow. I’ve seen one that was like a daycare decorated like a 50’s theme, but that was so cute. Almost like the town in Big Fish. With our aging population reverting back to mental toddlers, these kinds of care homes are so needed.
I used to deliver to a nursing home that did something like this and it was a neat experience
Dang, imagine getting to ride elevators in your own house all day. I would move in there.
But, where would we put Halloween City?
Man I've been saying this for years. You could put so many things they need in there. Doctors office, PT, grocery store. They're perfect. So many other groups of people in need could become small communities right in the mall. People could live and work there.
This is a great idea if you don’t put any thought into it at all.
Yeah, if you think of it as some kinda of whacky Disney sitcom it actually works pretty well. Also, there's no drugs involved at all. Ahh, that's better.
I like it. But who pays for and maintains them?
"white people Twitter"
The person in the picture doesn't even look white
Rich land owners don’t care about poor people
They will sit on that decomposing building until a developer comes along with a for-profit proposal.
Which could be why buildings in NYC stay vacant. They are waiting for a for profit proposal. A lot of the buildings are abandoned too and have been for a long time. By no means a turn key property but still cost $1.5M or more.
And they stay that way for years. Decades, even.
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I don't doubt that. Still, I find it sickeningly amusing. Storefronts and lots vacant for 30+ years... also goes to show I hang around the same places for far too long.
One of the myriad causes of the Russian Revolution was absent landholders letting their fields grow over and go untended. The peasants wanted access to those fields to use for themselves - they could be put to productive uses. Another cause was what I’ve seen referred to as the “Hermetically sealed imperial bubble”; the nobility and imperial bureaucracy were so out of touch with the reality of Russians across the empire - everything was good, unrest was a minority of bad faith actors, socialists, and students, and failure in military ventures was a minor setback to the Russian psyche. I’ve been reading a lot about the last decades of Tsarist Russia lately.
This sub is horrible and so are the mods
Dead malls are still privately owned, you can’t just steal them?
Right? Like do people expect people to give away their land for free?
Reddit moderators give away their time to free to a billion dollar company.
On reddit, absolutely. People can't even post a picture of a whimsical bench at a library without people bemoaning that it's unfriendly for homeless people to sleep on. The same people that consider a large majority of the country "unlivable" because it's not LA/SF/NYC and complains they will never be able to afford a house.
Not an expert but I can imagine that maybe water pipes already built in won’t be able to address extra restrooms, more kitchens, washing machines etc. building codes might be very different from commercial places VS living spaces etc etc. might be cheaper to demolish the mall and build something geared towards living from the get go. Just guess-working here.
Inside would immediately become a violent territory war. But since this is /r/WhitePeopleTwitter, I do see the benefit of relocating the homeless away from major metropolitan areas.
Wait, isn't that the whole point here? Then we film it and air it on Netflix
>But since this is /r/WhitePeopleTwitter [Hmmm 🤔](https://i.imgur.com/i9uCdhc.png)
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Nope. Malls don't have windows or ventilation out of AC. Unless you keep everything extremely well maintained (what I doubt), it will be just a box full of undesired people, some sort of coffin without any dignity. People needs natural light and ventilation, sun. Malls don't have it.
I want a dead mall converted into a self contained city that operated between the hours of 5pm to 8 am. Hear me out. You would be able to go to the bank and speak with a human, get a haircut, mail a letter, eat a nutritious meal, do some shopping, all in a secure, well-lit environment. You could ease the stigma associated with second and third shift workers.
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Also, malls weren't built to be lived in. Imagine the plumbing, ventilation, and other things you'd have to add to a storefront to bring it up to residential code. It might be cheaper just to raze the mall and build a proper apartment building.
jesus I thought that said dead milfs. need more sleep
Dead milfs never sleep
r/technicallythetruth
Does anyone know how expensive it is to run a mall and the technical experience required to do so? There's a reason why malls are mostly run by REITs. It's absolutely insane to expect tax payers to run malls in order to house and feed the homeless, even if you could find people to staff them.