Tech millionaire builds 99-unit tiny house neighborhood for homeless Canadians - rent is kept at 30% of income, the large majority of residents pay a maximum of $200 — including all utilities
https://www.goodgoodgood.co/articles/marcel-lebrun-tiny-house-neighborhood-for-homelessOpen linkView original on sopuli.xyz1090
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“The word ‘philanthropy’ is often interpreted as someone who gives money,” he told the alumni magazine.
“But the Greek roots of the word ‘philos’ and ‘anthropos’ mean to love humans. What I have discovered is spending money is the easy thing, spending yourself is the hard thing. The 12 Neighbours project is how I can best spend myself.”yl
I'm not crying, you're crying... Sniff
I also liked this:
Seems like a decent dude.
I like this part as well:
This is fine, but millionaires won't save us
I really don’t like that you got downvoted so much for this. You are not wrong, that is the anti-taxer take, and your exposure to those who might not be aware contributes to the discussion in a meaningful way. I don’t know or care if you’re anti-tax I just know you brought up well thought-out points relevant to the conversation and I don’t like seeing the upside down vote count.
Thank you
He did actually save those homeless people.
I don't think it's possible to amass "millions" as an executive, while giving fair payments to everyone down the chain.
Sure, but let's pretend this one hasn't done significantly more than others.
Absolutely, but it is food seeing some people who actually use their money for something good.
They could, but they won't.
Maybe if they all teamed up and were organized to do so. But a tiny handful of billionaires control as much wealth as the millionaires. It's much harder for a class to voluntarily do good than for a small handful of people. That's why society needs to step in, tax them, and distribute to projects as needed.
Back during the gilded age and earlier it was common for wealthy individuals to found public services like hospitals and schools partly because these services were unlikely to exist without a wealthy benefactor to create them, so they'd found them with their own family and friends in mind first, but also as a hedge on helping improve their public image as the lack of any protections for the working class created literal battles between the working class and mercenaries hired by the owning class
Elon Musk would never lol. He could do so much good with his money but he just chooses not to. Has he built a library? A park? A school? Literally anything?
Didn't you know empathy is a sin and weakness.....
Can't believe he said that shit.
Something something he could've ended world hunger, but chose not to.
He twisted and parroted the words of someone else. Fucker's absolutely incapable of original thought or actual creation
If he said that, he needs to be ground into a fine paste, eaten, and then shit out because that's some garbage-tier humaning.
He's a billionaire. Id be surprised if he said otherwise.
Since you asked according to Wikipedia the Musk Foundation has given $50 million to st Judes, although Musk and his foundation have been criticized for their low payouts.
He also promised to solve world hunger if given a plan and when the UN gave him a plan, he backed out.
Thanks for looking, like honestly. At least he's done something I guess.
Very smart to put solar panels on each unit. I hope the residents will be allowed to plant some flowers, bushes, and trees to brighten up the area.
This is in my town. They are allowed and encouraged to do so. Their place is THEIR place, it fosters a sense of community and ownership of the community.
This project really kicks ass and it's making waves. I know the guy is a millionaire, but I've listened to a few interviews and his heart is at the right place. He genuinely cares and is being pragmatic about it.
I wish I could say the same for the billionaires of this province. Looking at you, Irving shitbags.
It's actually not as crazy being a tech millionaire nowadays since so many people build a great service and then just have it bought up by the competition.
It said right in the article Salesforce bought his product in 2011 and thats what made him a millionaire. Pretty good way to use that life changing money for the better of others and not just himself.
A million dollars ain't what it used to be. Won't even buy a house in many cities anymore.
A million will get you a home in just about any city. Whether it's a really nice one or not is the question.
Remember, theres a gigantic difference between the wealth of a billionaire and the wealth of a millionaire. For one thing, its possible to make a million without harming others, a BILLION though, you HAVE to sacrifice others to achieve.
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars
While the guy happened to manage to acquire almost $400 million by selling his company, it seems that he's really trying to do some good with that, quite frankly, ridiculous amount of money.
Also it seems that his employees were compensated somewhat above market rate while he owned the company.
Not exactly a dragon of his own making, we shall observe his career with great interest to see if he follows what seems to be his chosen path, as of now.
On paper, sure. But I might argue that the process of accruing paper wealth as a backstop against misfortune and a reserve during retirement is inherently deleterious - forcing people to forego quality of life in the immediate term as a hedge against the future. This is a highly inefficient process for individuals to manage - who carry the whole cost of an incidental risk/exceptionally long life. And it is the whole reason public pensions and public insurance came to exist.
That's before you get into the moral hazard of certain professions and fortunate individuals being predisposed towards retirement, while others work right up until their dying days.
Some rocker tried to do that in LA and they arrested him and kicked out all the homeless.
When the time comes we let this one unbothered
He gets a pass in my book. Maybe he did it because he wanted to be spared in the future.
Why can't other people be more like this? Go Marcel!
I accept millionaires.
I've yet to see moral billionaires.
Yep, I've seen friends reach the seven figure area through steady seven day weeks and some luck picking their trade and finding industrial clients over a period of fifteen to twenty years. I have seen how little they slept and how kids were basically only possible because they were pretty self reliant from age 12 or 13 and helped a lot around the house. I have no idea how a human could possibly create a thousand times that value in their lifetime.
They can't. Billionaires can only exist by taking value generated by others. Absolutely nothing Jeff Bezos could do within 60 seconds is worth continuously "earning" over 18.000$.
The difference between a million dollars and a billion dollars is about a billion dollars. Although the millionaires have to stop clutching their pearls, step up and realize that they're a lot closer in class to the homeless than the billionaires.
Well you sure as hell can't have generally high moral standards and earn a billion from scratch. You have to either screw the environment on a very large scale and/or screw lots and lots of people.
And if you are in a context where you inherit a billion and think there is no problem with an individual having billions, odds are you are also not in a great position moral-wise.
I think the main ethical pathway to billions is through intellectual property. Write a beloved book series where each installment sells over 10 million copies, gets adapted into a movie cinematic universe that grosses billions, sells a shitload of merchandise, etc., and taking a fair cut of all that economic activity might result in a billion dollars.
Yes, in a sense it's still rent seeking of being paid some kind of toll for someone else building on your work, but that foundation is still your own work.
On a smaller scale, you've got songwriters, filmmakers, other entertainers, who can do one thing that gets seen/appreciated by billions. Same with inventors or artists.
fair point, for creative stuff whether or not its worth is really billions is another discussion which might touch ethics but is not always an obv violation.
It can really be a grey zone though since some inventions could really improve humanity as a whole (such as those in medicine) but when capitalised becomes accessible only by a certain class and makes the inventor possibly a billionaire. Now if you categorize earning billions from this as non-ethical but earning billions from other creative processes as ethical this will likely create a loophole. So I am still in favor of putting these in the same bag.
Most millionaires probably don't even know it and certainly don't feel it. It's old people who've been living in the same house for 50 years, who still worry about the price of beans.
Looks like he did this because he’s actually a decent reasonable person.
This is how fucking easy it is. This is a millionaire. Imagine what someone with hundreds of billions of dollars could do.
Imagine what WE could do if we taxed millionaires and billionaires.
We could build these in every city in the country.
You can have a soul, or you can have billions of dollars; not both.
Imagine if the public sector did this and didn't limit it to a single development.
We could even build bigger-than-tiny sized units. Maybe include additional amenities like schools and health clinics and food malls in the immediate vicinity. Throw in a rail stop so people can get to the metro center easily. You know... actual urban development.
No idea where we could get money for that, though. Maybe if Canada didn't exempt 50% of capital gains income from taxation for some reason... But no, that would never work.
My city built a bunch of these, but they are 10 ft x 10 ft pods. Hundreds of them. We still have 5-6,000 homeless living on the street. Our county has been handing out free tents for 8 years and guess what, didn't help.
I mean, tents help keep the rain and the wind off you. It helps in so far as any amount of camping gear is going to help. But its not solving homelessness unless you classify rough outdoor living as a solution.
Also...
you're paddling against the current if you're handing out tents in a city where the police pounce on homeless encampments and tear them up.
Feels like now is the best time for other nations to have low capital gains taxes. No?
Dude's getting 20k/mo rent and helping the poor. That's fucking awesome.
Considering utilities are included, I doubt he gets much of that
Eat this guy last
He can sit on my side of the table if he keeps this up
Honestly when I see "tech millionaire" and "altruism" in the same article, I expect to seese seriously ghoulish shit.
I still have concerns around the long-term outcome - the land is ostensibly still privately held, and I assume the homes are as well. I'd like to
It said former, he sold his business 14 years ago and looks like he doesn't work in tech anymore.
Did you forget to finish that last sentence before you hit post ?
Yeah I was kind of working on a long effort post in Jerboa over the course of my day, which is already risky since it doesn't save drafts, but I think somehow switching apps resulted in my posting three times to this thread when I had not intended to post anything at all yet.
So now there are three comments from me on this thread, this one, another without the partial sentence at all, and one completely blank.
Looks goofy as hell but I'm gonna leave them up anyway.
Worst case the business will forcibly close due to lack of rent payments, though, right?
Or he is doing millionaire thing and looking for new kidney.
As long as he pays, capitalism lives on
Rember kids; philanthropy is advantageous upon failure of collective efforts
Based
Honestly when I see "tech millionaire" and "altruism" in the same article, I don't expect to see someone actually using their wealth to do something decent.
Millionaires still have their humanity on occasion.
Rent pricing is what the people should target first. Hard to fight the nutjobs when rent is so expensive
Building more housing helps, but building new housing will remain expensive for as long as land is expensive, so it's vital that we avoid wasting land. Which means density.
Some people read "density" and think "ah, taller buildings!", but that's only half the picture - you can save tremendous amounts of space by improving horizontal density - look at how dense OP's one storey housing is, by shrinking the houses, and by ditching the front yard and dedicated sidewalks.
Except, most of the space is still empty! Those streets are oversized (take a look at traditional cities, most streets are under 20ft wide (6m wide) wall-to-wall), and the houses all have gaps next to them which look big enough to fit (or almost fit) another house. So you could easily more-than-double the density without even going up, assuming the housing isn't car-centric (I'm guessing those empty spots might be car parks, and the streets are overly wide because they're for cars).
If this sounds nitpicky, it's not: building one-storey houses is dirt cheap; imagine trying to make a portable two-storey tent. It even makes it realistically possible to remove developers from the equation, without too much going horribly wrong. It just needs to be efficient with the land it uses.
240sqft = 22.3sqm
What the actual fuck are these suggestions. This sounds a lot like the conservative members of my area that argue homeless people don't deserve anything. They want to cram the all into one building with no privacy, get rid of sidewalks and green spaces because people loiter, and generally make life as uncomfortable as possible for the destitute instead of treating them like normal human beings.
For reference, your standard wheelchair accessible hotel room will not be less than 20sqm.
I want cities to be more like Venice or Florence or basically any city built before the 1780s. They worked just fine. There are places like that in the city I live in, but they're horrifically expensive because it's literally illegal to build more of them.
And to be clear, I'm not saying "I want to put homeless people in these places", I'm saying "I want to live in these places, and lots of others do to so stop making them fucking illegal to build more of."
https://www.andrewalexanderprice.com/blog20131204.php
I don't entirely disagree, but that article lost me when it said "this is as human scale as it gets" and shows a photo of stairs, which are a nightmare for people with mobility problems, and there aren't any people in the photo. I did finish reading it, but it did little to address my concerns.
I will also forever have a chip on my shoulder about city planning and transit because I loved living in a walkable city while I was homeless. However, it being a nice place to live is why I couldn't actually find affordable housing there. Thanks to the ass-backwards tax structure in the state, public transit is mostly funded via vehicle taxes, which sounds great until you're being forced to buy a car because of lack of transit outside the city, then you realize it's really just a tax on being too poor to live in the city.
The county is focusing all efforts into continued improvement on the city, but refuses to expand the county bus service. As if a bus packed with standing people going 50mph down a bumpy county highway isn't dangerous. I talk to friends about it, and they go "well, it's a rural red area and they don't want it anyways, so fuckem", completely ignoring that 1) It has more than doubled in population since Covid, 2) It's blue enough to have drag queens at the bar, 3) We do want it.
When people in my situation read the article you linked, I assume it's not going to be somewhere I will ever afford to live. Even the article doesn't really address it. It's got a spot for responding to criticism, and admits that cost is one of the criticisms, but it just says "it's not expensive" and then tries to say gentrification is a good thing actually.
It concludes with this: "People spend their life savings just to spend a week in a place like that. What if you could create that in your city?"
The answer is no. I don't want to build another city that's so expensive it takes your life savings to visit for a week. Because that's exactly how it would go in America.
approving more housing is like realizing that hey maybe i should stop actively hammering the splinter into my toe!
i mean yeah, you should do that, but if that's the point we're at maybe it's time to start screaming about it rather than going "man this situation is suboptimal"
This is good, but if we address this at a systemic level, we don't need to put people in tiny low-density homes unconnected to anything for it to be affordable.
China addresses it by looking at how much labor and materials is required and ensuring the price of concrete, steel, glass, etc is sufficiently low for the number of homes they need constructed, and that there is enough of each type of skilled labor that goes into building a home.
Presumably local governments have some mechanism for when they know a house costs X materials and Y labor, and they see new construction costing significantly more than that.
The result is detached homes@avg 75USD/sqft and apartments@55/sqft. With current interest rates of 6.768%, you'd get ~400 sqft homes with a $200/mo 30 year mortgage at those prices, 600sqft if interest rates were 3%.
Yup. A group local to me put up around 20 tiny homes with a grant from the city. With the cost of upkeep, it would have been cheaper for the city to pay for 20 hotel rooms. Which wouldn't have had any fewer amenities than the tiny homes they made.
There's some benefit to them as backyard "mother in law houses" or for a cabin in the woods. For solving homelessness, no, there are better options.
Detached house construction in the US costs are closer to $150/SF.
I was like, holy shit that 55/sqft must be some 10 times as much as my rent (I'm not sure how much a foot is; I think I'm paying about 20-25€/m^2 per month). And then I realized those are BUYING prices. Holy shit.
827USD/m2
To be clear, this isn't exactly an apples to apples comparison; even if the US did free trade school with subsidies for living costs and everything, you're not going to get skilled metal workers and carpenters working for $35/day. While labor costs are only ~25% of the cost of construction, the same applies to how low you can get material costs, even when you've got central planning for concrete and steel industries.
Labor costs are typically 50-60% of the cost of construction.
I meant holy shit, as in, holy shit that is such an affordable buying price that I confused it for a steep rental price at first.
How are they planning to sustain this long-term?
Surely, someone is paying for the difference. Unless I totally missed it from the article 🫣
You're one of today's lucky 10,000! Landlords typically charge even more than the cost of building and maintaining the house, and then just pocket the rest as profit. It's bonkers!
He donated money to pay for the housing units, possibly the land. So that's probably all paid off. There are still taxes and utilities to pay for, which is probably where the rent is going.
This is just an educated guess though.
It's why the tech millionaire financing this isn't a tech billionaire.
I get that he's financing it, but that's not sustainable if you want to implement something similar around the country.
I love the idea, and the tiny house village looks amazing! But if it relies on a millionaire to voluntarily subsidize the project, I can't see it lasting too long.
Now, that brings us to a wonderful new option: tax the rich more than we do.
The top 5 billionaires could fund 1000s of these tiny home villages with just a fraction of a percent increase on their hoarded wealth.
Public services don't need to be profitable to be sustainable. You just need to tax base to be okay with it.
Yeah, I don't want them to be profitable, but sustainable.
Even if taxpayers are paying for it, you can't rely on the (struggling) general population to lift people out of homelessness. Let the rich carry that burden. They are the ones who've hoarded money that should have gone to everyone else.
That's not how money works?
Yes, because hoarding billions means it was stolen from someone else. Either through low wages, low taxes, loopholes, or unethical business practices.
Nobody should ever be able to accumulate billions of dollars. We have people who will be trillionaires in our lifetime. Unjustifiable.
No it isn't? Usually it just means owning stock in a company, that others want to buy. That stock isn't "stolen", neither is the value that others assign to it.
Hell at the government level they can even just create money if needed. There's a growing body of evidence that careful and measured "money printing" can actually be beneficial to an economy, and I suspect will become crucial to maintaining economies as populations decline and eventually stabilize
Sure it is. You have to have government fund it, like a normal social democracy would do.
Any examples?
Sweden had the Million Programme back in ~1960, which produced a significant amount of the housing people live in to this day. Just shitloads of commie blocks (and houses, actually) because they recognized that people needed a place to live.
You can find apartments in these buildings for $200 per month, they'll be tiny but they're fine. $600 is pretty standard and gets you something i'd almost consider luxurious for a single person.
And these days there's still a lot of subsidies going into housing, plus the fact that a lot of the apartment buildings are commissioned by municipal housing companies (i.e. owned by the municipality, and not operated for profit) or by what are effectively housing co-ops.
Look at riksbyggen for example, they're kind of the bread and butter housing here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riksbyggen
Which is why this needs to be a government task, and the rich shouldn't be begged for voluntary charity, they should be taxed.
These places are tiny at 240 square feet. There's not going to be much $$ tied up in them for material and utility costs can't possibly be that hught because the homes are so compact.
If each home cost $40k, which is probably generous, over 30 years that's $111/mo. Internet is probably a commercial line to the site and then a local network type setup. The real question is how much the land cost.
Rent might not cover everything 100%, but it would be close. It wouldn't surprise me if some money from the locality was involved since people living on the streets isn't free and simply providing housing can be a massive first step to getting people reintegrated back into society.
"Lowest cost for a Canadian tiny home: $80,000 to $150,000" (SOURCE)
Yes, probably less if they are building them all themselves, but $80,000 seems to be the norm for temporary tiny homes. Uxbridge priced tiny homes made from trailer containers at $80,000, too.
I think they could be sustainable as far as electricity (solar) and even water and heating (propane), so that's not a bad thing.
But how is the land being paid for? Taxes? etc.
Every tiny home project I've heard about has these barriers that get in the way. What needs to change so we can build more of these, instead of single, detached homes with massive yards??
We need more of these!
I have done zero research, but that figure seems crazy. I could see it holding up if you were trying to build a single tiny home as each of the contractors will want to ensure a full day's worth of income. However, if you're build 100 units the piece cost should fall substantially. 240 square feet is truly tiny, so it should be pretty fast to assemble and wouldn't take much raw materials. One other possibility for keeping costs down is volunteer labor, similar to habitat for humanity. That type of model won't scale, but it can help keep prices low for a handful of jobs.
You would be surprised. There are a lot of fixed costs for building tiny homes, you have all of the appliances that need to be installed, trailer bed, plus framing, siding and roofing trades that need to happen.
Plus there is sitework, sewer, electrical water, and development fees.
Hopefully they got economies of scale to work here but they still can be a bit pricey.
Canada doesn't have the single family zoning problem that is prevalent in the US. Lots of Canadians live in high rise apartments.
This is proby a smaller community though.
I contribute to the OpenStreetMap project, and there are a lot of detached homes here. Some areas have like 20 homes in a space that could house thousands of people. It's pretty disgusting, actually.
We should be building up, and not contribute to sprawl.
But tiny homes are a great solution for keeping land space confined, while still offering functional homes in very little time.
Single family homes and their land should be smaller. How does two people in 2000+ square feet of house make any sense? I can tell you right now, in my ~1400 sq foot house with 2 kids and 2 adults we have two rooms that are largely unused, so I cant imagine the amount of waste in a larger house.
And the lawns! Ever since I measured some standard 1970s era suburbs and saw just how huge those expanses of grass that exist just for grass's sake I can't stop thinking about how rediculous many lot sizes are. 50 feet by 100 feet of grass. No flowers, no gardens. Just pure grass. There's no reason for that much land to be wasted on fucking grass. And then you measure from front door to front door across the street and it's over 150 feet! Because the road and sidewalks are about 60 feet wide for a road with 20 houses on it!
There is no way you can't cut that 80k number in half if you're actually trying to build something with the goal of being affordable. Those are companies that are trying to make a manufactured home sound hot and trendy for profit, not an organization trying to make affordable housing.
I would estimate their construction cost is closer to $100k CAD than $40k. Maybe somewhere in the middle. Construction costs can be very high for a tiny home, which is what these are. They are built on a trailer.
That's nuts from a construction cost per square foot perspective. In the US at least, you can buy a complete single wide and have it shipped to your location for well under $50k. Building them on site, on footings, seems like it would be even cheaper. I wonder where that cost came from.
Those houses don't cost 40K. I've seen that kind of houses for 20K and less. Either in wood or sandwich panels.
These units may be basically sheds, but I've seen people pay half a million to have the same thing three floors up in central London.
If I was homeless I'd take solid four walls the size of a medium-sized tent if it meant warmth, utility services, your own toilet and anything else I'd need to even be able to focus on caring for myself or even others more than merely survive. Those tiny buildings might be the minimum, but they ARE something you can call a safe home.
I'm wondering though, how was this more cost-effective to build than a long apartment complex...? Do those tiny things not need any concrete foundation, perhaps regulatory stuff…?
Looking at the video, they're basically trailers. How much does it take to set up a trailer park? Fill a base with concrete, slap in some plumbing and electrical points. Probably quite economical to do it all in one go.
I suspect the most expensive part is the land in most places. Looks like this town has plenty of room around it. Probably costs a bit to heat them though, being where it is.
And I got to be honest, a small separate home looks a lot nicer to live in than an apartment building. Especially if it's built from wood like these are. Being able to hear constant noise from 10 other people around you just walking about is not for me.
There are ways to build apartment complexes rather sound-proof, however probably not as economically. Just hope the long-term costs of these tiny houses won't eat up any savings; at least in terms of energy everyone got solar panels, that should offset the probably rather weak insulation.
If it was possible to build co-ops of these it'd be what I've been suggesting for like 9 years.
I have and there aren't any. Regardless they should be the standard, not the exception.
When I lived in germany full time, I would've loved to live in a tiny home, but germany would've rather put me on the street than allow a tiny home lmaoo.
That's the problem in a lot of the US too. We transitioned from building massive subdivisions of small/cheap homes to smalle subdivisions of larger/more expensive housing. This is due to a mix of zoning that favors single family detached housing, land availability, and consumer tastes.
Homes have drastically grown in size over the past 200 years while the number of people living in them has decreased. Not to mention nicer material, which also contributes to cost. No more "builder grade" cabinets and formica counters these days.
My grandma lived in this trailer park for 40 years until she died. Pretty low overhead.
Impressive, it's even a walkable place seen that it is a mixed use neighborhood with commercial buildings too
This is really great to see. So glad there are people like this out there willing to extend empathy to people who are struggling. I love that this project also respects their clients' autonomy as well. The fact that you don't have to stay sober to be there, I think it's great. Just give someone a stable roof over their head, a small support network, and I believe they can turn around their addictions and their lives.
Damn, $200 sounds low, on the other hand 30% is a crazy share. I'm targeting 10-15% at most.
German here, 30% of income after taxes was the rule since a few decades, but in reality many people are closer to 50% now. How do you manage 15%?
EDIT: Oh, right, just saw the 8k income. That's C-Level money here.
It's a lot but certainly nowhere near C-level.
High risk, high reward I guess. Less social security, more immediate gain.
You misunderstand me, I'm German myself. That's nowhere near C-level, at least not in the bigger corporations. 8k a month is not even 100k a year. Engineers can earn that.
8k after taxes? That's like 16k before.
I was thinking before actually. There's our misunderstanding. Never mind.
I am C-level and also German.
Wait what? Your rent is 10-15% of your income? What's that like in absolute numbers?
Closer to 9% right now, 700 USD vs. 8k income after tax. But I generally don't spend more than 1k regardless, it's a hard limit for me.
The thought of 700USD for housing just gave me a boner
Do you work remotely? I'm finding it hard to imagine a high salary in a very low rent area.
Where I live, 8000 net would be 150k a year. That's a high salary around here and rent is not less than 2k a month for a basic apartment for one.
Yes I do, but my office is pretty much exactly 40 miles from where I live, so I could technically commute if I had to. Takes me about 45 min to get there on a good day, with traffic can be 1:15h.
You have a pretty good deal! Do you live in a swamp or something? 😂
Nope, capital city of my State, in a recently built gated community (2018). Corner lot with nice garden and 2400ft², 4BR. 😎
Amazing. Nice one on finding the dream!
That would get you a student studio at best where I live.
In France the law does not allow rent (or mortgage) payments higher than 1/3 of net monthly income.
It is pretty effective at keeping the housing market vaguely in check.
Fell apart after COVID when a bunch of Parisians sold their little apartments and arrived in the provinces with a million in their pocket. The law has kept it level after that big jump though I think.
In fairness seems to also include all utilities (wonder if internet counts as a utility?)
30% is a good target for keeping things balanced because theoretically youd spend 30% on housing, 30% on food and necessities and 15% for savings and 15% for fun stuff. But reality is for most people the required costs are much higher so you end up with most income going to housing and transportation
I’m just glad it’s housing for the unhoused. In general, we shouldn’t compromise for any less than a normal standard of living for all. But, in absence of that we can’t wait around while people freeze and OD on the streets. As long as this doesn’t become normalized and is simply a step forward. Which is a very serious concern. But, this is a solution in that it’s a 1 not a 0, which is often how things play out irl - messy, and lots of compromises.
Off topic, they look like detached homes. Was there a conscious choice not to make duplexes, quads, or an apartment building? Tiny homes are just so weird to me... People will really do anything except stick units next to each other
It's nice not to have to listen to your neighbours through the walls
If you insulate against noise properly, you won't.
Yeah, the airgap between units is the cheapest form of noise insulation
They're easy to manufacture and move into place and remove if theres problems(pests, fire, etc). Depending on how he selects people a lot of the unhoused population are not mentally well and/or have substance abuse problems. This means if someone is a hoarder or sets their own place on fire it is not as consequential to their neighbors. It also is less likely to cause problems with neighbors if you have just a little bit of room. I would imagine for something like this to thrive you would want to build community and if people are annoyed with their neighbors because they are sharing a wall it would cause problems. I don't know the real reason just throwing out ideas.
This should be normal but unfortunately thee things are rare.
Usuallly the billionaires the MSM labels as philanthropists are among the worst people on earth and their 'good deads' a way to evade taxes or make more money.
I get that he enjoys staying involved with the project including providing/helping services for the community, but this probably doesn't need to use the "30% of income rent" crutch that is typical. Would be less time consuming to sell homes at cost, perhaps partner with bank to guarantee mortgages at low rates, let the community be a self managed HOA. Can make unlimited communities that way instead of tying up all your/his time into this one.
That may be fine at first, but the price of those houses will skyrocket every time they're sold until they reach the current market prices again. By only renting them, he can ensure the price stays artificially low.
If community is awesome, then prices can go up. All the better reason to buy with arranged financing if needed. Ultra generous rent control benefits can prevent you from improving your life if it means moving.
Wouldn't the prices going up immediately negate the entire reason the community exists?
Helping the most people comes with building the most homes. The awesome part of what he's doing is foregoing profit. Helps even more people. But keeping "self financed" production up, without micromanaging communities, is likely the best use of his time. The best way to help people isn't necessarily by gatekeeping for only those who deserve the most help, and reducing the total help provided, bc of the gatekeeping getting in the way.
Go and implement your way of doing it then, get back to us. Otherwise, STFU from your warm home with, I assume, little experience of the concerns of homeless people. Even if I'm wrong on that last part, please just be happy about something positive going on without sticking your keyboard nose in it.
Go outside and talk to someone. Maybe a homeless person.
Locking rent to income allows people to get their finances under control and get back onto their feet without the risk of loosing their housing because they make too much
Are these houses good shelters for tornados?
They don't look like they would be. That alone kills the tiny house for a huge chunk of the US :/.
You can have community tornado shelters.
I know they do that in trailer parks, but you still have to make it to the shelter. And there are a lot of people who would prefer to gamble than do that. Trailers at least have heft to them, and multiple walls to catch flying debris. You can duck into a bathroom for instance if things get real bad real quick.
Edit: but I clearly haven't thought this out as the people would otherwise be homeless and have 0 shelter
Generally this can be solved with hurricane ties (to prevent the structure from completely flying) and a community tornado shelter in affected regions. It won't eliminate damage but will reduce it as much as can be.
If you build one big shelter for the neighbourhood its probably way more cost effective than per house.
It’s in Canada.
Alberta and Saskatchewan do have some tornado risks, but it's not nearly as bad as central US.
It's not scalable, but good on him
Why not?
I mean.. we can't rely on rich people funding our housing
But also the way it's built. They're all small, single story homes. It's great for starting an independent community like he did, but most people want to live in cities, and this would never work in a city
Rich assholes hoarding wealth instead of emulating this guy.
That's not quite the same thing as it not being scalable
When is that 30% determined? Sounds like this would be an inescapable situation. If they finally start making more, they're suddenly overpaying for this shit and can't save up anything to move somewhere better
they could move somewhere else where they wont be overpaying and let someone with less income move in. why inescapable?
You tend to need a deposit to move into a new place. Which requires savings. It's hard to save when the biggest expense you have keeps going up in direct proportion with the money you make...
Why is this so hard to grasp?
Yes, apparently there's a cap, but if there hasn't been, it sounds like one of those surface level nice things that is actually exploitative
Currently a little over 50% of my income goes to rent+utilities, then there's still food+transport to deal with. I'd gladly take 30% as it would actually give me some room to save instead of living paycheque to paycheque.
If my income were to improve where 30% is unreasonable, I'd just move back to flat-rate renting as I am now.
You'd need to make $2000/month for a cheap apartment (~$600/month) to be cheaper than this. And if you are, just move there.
Anyways, this is irrelevant; Marcel implemented a rent cap much before that.
There's max at $200. I guess it's enough to keep it running and maintained.
When you earn so much that these 30 % are more than usual rent, you are far from being homeless very quickly. Not to mention the 300 $ cap.
There's a cap of $200.
And places like this should have income caps, after which you need to move out. A good practice is a system where income has to be under one cap to move in and have to leave after making a different, higher cap. It lets people get a foothold and establish some savings to prepare to support themselves.
Affordable is awesome. If it helps people who can only afford affordable, awesome. But this could be organized more decentrally to help everyone that wants affordable. It would be a disadvantage in "buying" a home, if your efforts to improve your income backfire/kick you out of your home.
Man, shut up. This dude made bank when he sold his company and thought, "how can I improve the lives of others with this money?"
Then he put in the work to figure out the best way to spend it. And then he fuckin did that.
Should the government be handling the problem? Yes. Is that how every rich person should think and act? For sure. But is that reality? No, so we should celebrate it when it happens.
You'll never be happy if you let perfect be the enemy of good.
"You’ll never be happy if you let perfect be the enemy of good."
what a great comment
I learned it watching a guy play Cities: Skylines and boy did it stick with me
Your comment made me think of The Office quote formatting of:
"You’ll never be happy if you let perfect be the enemy of good." -Voltaire -Some guy playing CS
I had to think of who it was but it was City Planner Plays
"A year ago, I was homeless. Now I have a home, I'm not on the street and I have peace because every place where I stayed before was temporary. Here there is very much a sense of community. Marcel has a heart and a passion for what he is doing."
People got homes. Ones that dont require them to starve themselves to death.
30% of income spent on housing is a perfectly reasonable number
It's the maximum reasonable amount as per StatsCan.
People spending 30% or more of their income on shelter costs are considered to be rent-burdened, or in unaffordable housing.
To me, "perfectly reasonable" implies that there would be wiggle room on either end where the figure could still be reasonable were it higher or lower.
It's an arbitrary number, which means there is definitely wiggle room. People are surviving up at 60% (barely) so I think yes, these days 35% would also be considered reasonable by most
Yes, it's an arbitrary number, but that doesn't make it meaningless.
Renters are losing wealth faster than any other demographic in this country, and
I think it maxes at $200
if it did, the text wouldnt be "the large majority" but "everyone".
Perhaps that tiny fraction is paying more because they get more or really earn much more. Who knows. But this certainly is not something to criticize. Once 30 % of your income is way too much for such a house, you are far away from needing this kind of help and should move anyway.