How Do You See Real Estate Helping Solve Homelessness?

Question

Hi everyone,

I’ve been involved in community work that supports street families and homeless individuals in the U.S. through housing solutions.

From my experience, even small housing projects can create a huge impact in people’s lives.

👉 Question for you: Do you think real estate investors can play a role in solving the housing crisis — and if so, how?

Excited to hear different perspectives!

Eric Gerakos · Answer

Real estate investing keeps me from being homeless. So there's that.

Josh C. · Answer

So many cringe ChatGPT responses in here. People, you look silly when blindly copy and paste computers.

But the homelessness wouldn’t be solved by housing. If people want to do drugs and have no desire to stop then you can’t help them. Homeless people can re enter society, but they have to want it. Our office for the last 10 years has been in one of the highest density of homelessness areas of the city. And watch out our windows everyday the drug induced zombies happily stumbling all over, digging in our dumpster and sleeping under our overhang. They will only ever get better if they want to and seek help. No law or program helps people that don’t want to change.

Henry Clark · Answer

OP

Homelessness and housing crises are two different issues.

Real estate investors are different than social engineers.

I’ll exaggerate just to move your thought process forward.

1.   If we built 50,000,000 new residences there would still be homelessness.

2.  If you got a homeless person into a house with a loan.  A majority of them would go into debt and bankrupt.  Losing the home.  Wasted resources in the wrong approach.

3.  If you gave them the house free.  Most could not keep them up.  And would lose the home.  Wasted resources on the wrong approach.

4.  If you bring 20,000,000 illegal aliens you create more homeless.  From the bottom end.

5.  If you allow uncontrolled STR you create homeless from the top down by causing rates to rise and be pushed down.

6.   There is plenty of housing available if they move locations.  Homeless people if looking for affordable and available housing should not be in locations like LA, SF, Austin, etc.

7.  You need to stratify the homeless, since each group will have a different approach.

8.   Don’t combine profit motive with Social Welfare.  If an investor wants to donate funding great.   But each deal analysis should be done from a profit motive.

9.   Mental health issues are tied to homelessness.   You need to address the mental health issues then the housing solution follows.I did an exercise in high school where I had to argue the opposing view.  It really opened my thought process on looking at divisive topics or issues.

Stratify your discussion.

James Hamling · Answer

A couple years back I pitched a Senator my idea for a solution for the hopeless, homeless, under privileged as well as FEMA;

Federalize the Salvation Army.

Make it an Army that instead of carrying guns and bullets into battle, they bring hammers and nails.

Almost all of conventional military structure would apply. Citizens can join to serve, get housing, basic training, specialized training, a roof over the head, food int he stomach, a purpose and most importantly skill that will empower and aid them in post service life.

Asvab upon entry to direct on MOS, because most have no direction and that helps dictate direction.

Instead of combat there going to learn carpentry, plumbing, disaster relief, firefighting, all non-combat.

FEMA bleeds $ like crazy. Imagine a Federalized "Army" ready for deployment during any natural disaster?

You want better international relations? imagine deploying "1st Salvation Army Corp." who has older de-militarized littoral ships and flat tops, black hawks etc., all the stuff that today just get's moth-balled, to international places of disaster. Again, no bullets or bombs just food, building, well drilling etc..

Via this route it is a kind of free trade school for any & all BUT there also getting experience, and we are getting service for it vs just paying a bill. And it teaches the most important aspect of civic pride, involvement, it trains the person as a person, as a member of a society.

If any think "but what would they do" just review the long list of natural disasters in past 18 months alone. But how about infrastructure projects? Bridges alone is a huge one.

Low cost housing needs? Ok, send in the corp. to build 100 units.

Lowers cost burden on tax payers in an entire spectrum of ways. Builds better citizens. Hell, create a Foreign Legion within it to make a pathway to citizenship, how about that. Ok, now were even hitting on helping solve illegal immigration.

And if welfare has any persisting duration to it, there you go, welfare is temporary or join the Salvation Army.

It's long confused me how Guards does all this domestic stuff but then has to be ready to jump into combat roles. It's too much. Keep combat formations combat centric.

I was told it will never happen for 2 reasons; (A) it makes too much sense. (B) who makes $ off of it? How's special interest profit from it? They don't. If anything they loose $. It's gotta make some special interest's truckloads of $ for it to have a chance.

I was inspired to this plan when I took my girls fishing at a Depression Lake. Many know the story around here. During Great Depression, sky high unemployment, they provided shovels and wheel barrows and said any who want work, come and get it. No handouts, just fair pay for days work. No plans, just dig. Dig a lake. We'll stop when the need for the work stops. Thousands survived because of it.

We were that intelligent once, why can't we be again?

How did we get so dumb, to pivot to a handout system of systemic poverty, in both $ and character..... Give a fish, feed for a day, teach to fish, feed for a lifetime. How'd we forget this?

James Hamling · Answer

I have seen 1st hand the absolute disaster of trying to "solve" homelessness with just a housing and $ approach.

MN is arguably "THE" most socialist state in the union. Scandinavian Socialism. And with that, some years ago, with failed action after failed action, the powers that be thought the reason all has failed for so long is because it wasn't big enough, grand enough, free enough....

So they went all-out.

We took an entire neighborhood, multiple blocks, bought it all up, plowed it to dirt, and built an entire new built townhome community specifically to test an all out approach for low and no income.

These were not your normal low income housing, they were NICE. They ran with this theory that if give really nice it will change attitudes and actions to live up to that standard.

And it was all but totally free to residents. Were talking mega-millions thrown at it.

The result.....

I kid you not, within days FB and Craigslist lit up with all the assorted furnishings being sold off. Yup, ton's of the residents were stripping the properties. It became a whole thing. You name it, light fixtures, plumbing fixtures, cabinets, c-tops, anything and everything, it was a fire-sale.

So they got that stopped and re-fit all those units. Threw more $ at it.

Next thing the place was trash strewn, graffiti, rampant crime.

It turns out, when you give things away for free, people don't appreciate them. And when you do BIG giveaways, people respond by getting MORE not less lazy, entitled, and they strive not to do more with themself but in how to get more handouts.

The entire experiment was a crowning failure in it's intended result, BUT a fantastic achievement in truly proving the human psychology of how it all actually works.

A system of handouts literally creates dependency. The more handouts the more dependency. Most people seek how to get maximum returns for the least effort.

Yeah, I know, you and I call that common sense but there is a lot of people with their head int he clouds who think human nature is some perfect altruism thing, forgetting the facts of life like war, crime and what not. Reality is humans by nature are nasty, mean, selfish creatures. That civilized nature is learned, not innate. It requires training, nurturing, and reinforcing. It does not come of its own.

The ONLY effective actions is a system of hand-UPS, and sadly so many constantly go to hand-outs pretending their hand-ups.

Self-accountability is the only way.

Stop accepting BS excuses. If your in a wheel chair heck yeah you have legit disabilities. If you feel anxiety at work, sorry NO that is NOT a disability, that's called welcome to reality that life isn't always a comfort ride. Yes, things suck some times, things hurt, growing is painful.

We closed Mental Hospitals because of the perception, dumb. Centralized mental health is a necessity.

We cater to every excuse people hold and then hand them a middle income lifestyle, rewarding their do-nothing desire. Dumb.

Welfare need be for it's original design, 1 step above death. Minimum housing needed, minimum food needed. Welfare was designed to be for survival, it's now morphed into lifestyle. Well DUH, tell a teenager they can work there azz off for $20 or sit and chillax all day for $20, which will they probably do. Duh, just DUH.

We have spent the last couple decades farming generations of human-cats. Now we wonder why there is such a problem.....

Cut all welfare to the absolute bare-bones "survival" level. Then take all that $, and put it towards free trade school for any/all. Put it into apprentice programs. DONE.

That action right there will "solve" 70% of the issues. When living off the system sucks, is not comfortable, doesn't have nice things and your barely surviving BUT every community has ready access to HOW you can rapidly elevate your life in short order.....

It's not complicated.

It's just the will to do the obvious. And we live in the pander-verse now.

I have had panhandler tenants, they were proud of what they did, they bragged of it. All the tax free $ they were getting AND the freebies for everything via the system. They were well into the 6 figures, and had 0 intentions of ever changing a thing. And they were in a "Union" of panhandlers all of which did and lived exactly the same.

That's reality.

That's what the bleeding-heart-core has created.

Generations of selfish, self-centered human-cats...... Professional extortionists of society.

All while the ones actually trying, they get nothing. They get taxed to death, worked to death, barely scrape by, and get to watch the do-nothings living better then they do.

It's really messed up. It's almost as if it's designed to punish those trying, incentivize to just be a cat like everyone else.

Chris Seveney · Answer

I personally do not see real estate having a major impact on resolving homelessness. It is my understanding There are many studies out there where many homeless could actually have a place to live, but choose not to. Tackling mental health issues would have far greater affect on homelessness than more housing.

another question also is, is it even a problem? Percentage of Americans homeless is less than 0.25%. You will never get it to zero. It's at 700,000 out of 325M+

Julie Garner · Answer

Pretty sure Josh meant the OP.  Responses don't address the feedback, but sound like AI-speak.  "I'm sorry, Hal, I can't do that."

Ashish Acharya · Answer

@Mia Sophia

Yes. Real estate investors can help solve the housing crisis by using tax incentives that make affordable housing projects financially viable such as:

• Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) for developing or rehabilitating affordable housing
• Opportunity Zones for deferring or reducing capital gains taxes in low-income communities
• Section 8 and Section 42 housing programs that offer steady income and tax advantages
• Depreciation, cost segregation, and Section 179 deductions to reduce taxable income and reinvest savings

These strategies lower tax liability while encouraging investors to build and maintain more affordable housing.

How Do You See Real Estate Helping Solve Homelessness?

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