Wall Street Unlocks Profits from Distress with Rental Revolution - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-12-20/wall-street-unlocks-profits-from-distress-with-rental-revolution.html <comment><USER2> _It's yet to be seen to what extent national landlords, with easy access to capital and loans, can keep outbidding first-time homebuyers, depriving families of the opportunity to build wealth, and what their impact on rents will be._

This is an insane comment, for the reasons Matt Yglesias discusses in _The Rent is Too Damn High_ and, to a lesser extent, here: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/26/housing_isn_t...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/04/26/housing_isn_t_an_investment_but_land_is.html) . Over the long term buying versus renting should ideally be revenue neutral, and whether or not you can "build wealth" via a house depends in large part on where the house is. Someone who bought a house 30 years in San Francisco or the west side of L.A. has made a lot of money. Someone who bought in the greater Detroit area hasn't.

The myth that buying a house is a key to unlocking wealth needs to be addressed and yet is too often propagated by journalists.

EDIT: See also this: [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/the_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2011/05/the_rent_isnt_too_damn_high.html) .

<comment><USER3> Well, the 'myth' has merit. Let's apply common sense.

You buy a smallish house in a suburb and pay $1000/month for you mortgage. $900 of that goes directly to equity.

At the end of the year, if you home retains its value, you have over $10,000 in equity.

If you pay the same amount for rent, you have nothing to show for it. And oftentimes rent for an equivalent house is actually more than the mortgage + tax payments.

So, which is better $10,000 or $0?

The volatility of the last few years has complicated this a bit (people going underwater, for example), and I don't think people should see a home as a vehicle for getting rich, but it is generally a nice value store.

Plus, there are HUGE advantages for people invested in the area to own their property. It is more stable for them (they can't be kicked out), they are more likely to invest in the value of their area (volunteerism, making sure local politicians take care of the parks, reporting crime, that kind of thing).

Edit: Let me point out that yes, these numbers are made up and don't accurately reflect reality. I did not use a mortgage calculator or anything (I thought that would be obvious) but the underlying idea that I was trying to convey holds....if you are spending x dollars and are able to store any portion of that in something that holds some value it is better than spending x dollars and not storing any of that value. So, even if only $10 of every $1000 spent on the mortgage goes into equity, it is better than $0 if you rent.

<comment><USER4> Your math only works if you're near the end of your mortgage life. At the beginning, nearly every penny of your mortgage payment goes to interest, which is front-loaded.

For most Americans, who move around fairly often, they will never come close to paying off a mortgage and the only equity they will ever own will be what they bought with their down payment plus whatever they get on the margin if the value of the house goes up.

If you, say, live in a house for five years and then move, then you basically rented the house from the bank for five years. Except that unlike a renter you also assumed the (upside and downside) risk of home value change, and assumed the cost of taxes, maintenance, etc. Plus you tied up a large sum of money in a down payment.

This may be worth it if you want to bet that home prices will go up in the next five years. It also may be worth it because mortgage interest, unlike regular rent, is deductible from your taxes, which is perhaps the most obscenely regressive thing in the tax code.

<comment><USER3> Even if 99% goes to interest, $10 is still better than $0.

<comment><USER5> As long as you ignore the many thousands of dollars you paid in transaction costs to get the place. And potentially the many thousands you pay in opportunity cost if the house keeps you from moving when you otherwise would.

<comment><USER6> And don't forget the opportunity cost of having the money for your down payment locked into an asset and not earning returns in other investments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7>
        "In October, Bloomberg reported that a hedge fund,
        Magnetar Capital LLC, had quietly bought 1 out of every 11
        homes in the Ohio town of Huber Heights and then pushed
        for property-tax cuts that would have blown a hole in the
        school district's budget."

That's quite a short-sighted move that makes a quick buck now, but lowers home value in the long term. In areas where there are a lot of single family residences, there is usually also demand for better schools. When the schools worsen, so do property values.

Furthermore, this is setting things up for changes in landlord-tenant laws. The level of lobbying power and expertise in tenancy laws they are going to accumulate is going to make them a formidable foe for tenants rights groups to fight against.

I fully expect this to get pretty ugly long term.

<comment><USER8> >That's quite a short-sighted move that makes a quick buck now, but lowers home value in the long term. In areas where there are a lot of single family residences, there is usually also demand for better schools. When the schools worsen, so do property values.

This is part of the reason why this trend is so terrible. The Hedge Funds do not care about long term investments or the long term health of the neighborhood. You squeeze as much money out of your investment as you can and then get out of it before the day of reckoning comes. It's the stock market mindset applied to every single assert class.

<comment><USER9> > It's the stock market mindset applied to every single assert class.

This is an excellent phrase to describe this phenomenon (and probably many others).

<comment><AUTHOR> Wall Street also bets on other basic commodities like food and oil, which drive up their prices.

If two parties want to sell each other stocks bonds (asset classes likely purchased by deep pocketed, sophisticated investors), and the asset blows up, fine. Both parties can afford to take the hit. But where those assets are basic essentials, it's just downright slimy.

Oil: [http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/les-leopold-how- wall-...](http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/05/les-leopold-how-wall-street- drives-up-gas-prices.html)

Food: [http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/23/goldman...](http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/23/goldman- sachs-agm-drive-food-prices-up)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Interestingly, I bought a house to rent in 2011, with cash and fixed it up and filled it. This year, I have spent more than six months trying to get financing on it from the major commercial banks. I am closing soon, but it was a MAJOR hassle.

What I have found, There is a near conspiracy level arraignment between banks to completely undervalue the properties, give higher interest rates, require a greater stake, and lower the borrowers acceptable debt-to-income ratio. I had three appraisals come in, the bank appraisals were all manipulated and internally inconsistent, and LOW. The independent appraisal I had done came in rationally.

When I was house hunting (both in 2009 and 2011), my wife and I would break into the empty foreclosed homes to tour them and inspect them for damage. No one, realtors or bankers, would ever respond to calls regarding the properties, no offers were ever responded to by the banks. All of these properties in our neighborhood were eventually sold, and to big investor groups. They are now predominantly rentals. Our experiences at the time showed what we perceived to be a fixed market where the realtors were holding out to sell to their friends. Now we realize that they were holding out for the institutional buyers.

<comment><USER11> I would believe this even if I hadn't 100% seen this for myself, except that I have.

As a side note, realtors are the absolute scum of the earth. Worse than lawyers.

Apologies in advance to any lawyers.

<comment><USER7> Real estate agents aren't the problem. My mom is a real estate agent and I've known a lot of real estate agents in my life. The absolute scum of the earth in this industry are actually the members of the Board of Realtors that represent the individual agents across the country and rig everything like a cartel. It's a licensed procession with a lot of political influence nationwide, which gives them immense protection from market forces that would have drive the percentage they earn from sales down years ago.

Any shitty experiences you've had with real estate agents are probably better explained by Hanlon's Razor. There are a few exceptional real estate agents, but my experience has been that real estate is a profession for those incompetent at everything else. When they say prices are going to keep going up and that it's a great investment, they usually actually believe that fully. They have bought whole hog into the idea that real estate is the best investment and that prices keep going up. You can't even work as an agent if you don't really believe that since that is the only condition in the market that is really in your interest as a broker since it's the condition where liquidity is highest, and liquidity is the best thing for brokers. If you don't harbor that believe you either stay out of the market/profession entirely or you enter the speculative side of the market, buying low and selling high.

Those who can do, those who can't do anything, broker real estate.

FWIW, this largely applies to residential real estate. In commercial real estate, the brokers are a lot more like the banksters promoting a kleptocracy.

<comment><USER11> Overwhelmingly agree. This is exactly my experience. I know the Board of Realtors has been a huge problem, but (as you've touched on) the talent pool of people within who could change things is nonexistent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This article is super interesting and potentially highly political, although Bloomberg does well to neutralize the issue behind straight business reporting.

Related, I am interested in the following questions and am looking to do some research in the new year to investigate:

1\. How much is paid in home loan interest to banks annually. 2\. How much of this bank income is paid in interest to (a) savers, (b) other issuers of debt 3\. How much of this bank income is paid in dividends to bank owners. 4\. How much of this bank income is paid in salaries to bank staff. 5\. How long the average home owner spends working for the above three categories in their quest for home ownership (I look at this as a form of indenture).

Following this article, I will also be looking at the question of how much in rental income is paid to financial institutions.

I am also interested in the relationship between bank lending and house price increases, ie as banks lend more, do they understand how this affects future business, ie an increase in lending of 10%, leads to house price rises of x%, leading to an increase in bank income of y%.

I guess there must be such models out there?

Any sources of data / reading would be much appreciated!

<comment><USER13> Most mortgage pushers don't hold the note and promptly sell them off. Commissions and fees vary quite a bit around 2 to 5 percent of loan size. So "most people lending money" are playing a commission game on how fast they can sell and turn around and loan the money again.

Dude who pushes / approves loans in the modern system does not equal dude who holds the note.

You might find thehousingbubbleblog.com or zerohedge to be interesting reading although it takes a bit of study to understand whats going on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> (1) America's elite creates a housing bubble (2) America's elite forecloses on the residents (3) America's elite buys the houses at low cost, then rents them back to the residents.

That's a nice racket.

<comment><USER15> You forgot a few steps:

(1b) American taxpayers bailout insolvent securities firms whose whole business is supposedly predicated on competent risk assessment as a core skill yet totally ignored best practices to threaten the entire economy.

(1c) Pays themselves handsome commissions.

(3 addendum) buys the houses at a low cost made so by the bubble they created _with the bailout money of the taxpayers!!!!!_

(4b) destroys communities, defunds schools, further atomizes and disorganizes the modern American society

<comment><USER7> Yup, they are giving out mortgages with all that free/cheap money, unfortunately they are only giving it out to themselves.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I don't see a way of fighting back other than rent control. The damage is done. Rent is beyond ridiculous. Oh yea, there's no bank loyalty anymore. There all thieving bastards. Shop around for the best interest rates(I know there dismal). Look at the fees their charging--close your account if necessary. I've noticed people stay with the same banks, and Insurance companies for years? Out of some kind of loyalty? When it comes to making money, and investments; some investments are more moral than others. If you are a thieving Landlord(meaning you are gouging your tenants) I honestly don't know how you sleep at all--

P.S. If you live in a detached "mother in law unit" in San Anselmo, CA.; you have rent control. Look into it. If your Landlord has been overcharging you take them to court and get all your over payments back.

</comment><comment><USER17> Central banks central plan the interest rate, so credit ( new money ) becomes artificially cheap. Then they investment companies buy up the foreclosures homes and rent them back to the previous owners. In that system you will newer be free, but a slave to the system, always trying to keep up just to stay afloat above the surface. I minor form of debt slavery if you will.

The FED is as federal as FEDEX it's privately owned by the big banks. You can read more on how it was created over here: [http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm](http://www.bigeye.com/griffin.htm)

</comment><comment><USER18> This is really, really old news, and the headline is, if not exaggerated, entirely premature.

Yes, some companies have been buying single family houses by the truckload and turning them into rentals, but whether the model can be successful on such a wide scale remains to be seen. There are a number of major challenges, and the treatment of the publicly-traded companies in this space makes it clear that investors are well aware of them.

One of the companies mentioned in the article, American Homes 4 Rent, is publicly-traded[1] and raised far less in its IPO than it had intended in its original prospectus[2]. Similar companies, Silver Bay Realty Trust and American Residential Properties, are also publicly-traded[3][4] and currently trade well below their IPO prices.

Another company mentioned in the article, Colony Capital LLC, operates its rental venture through Colony American Homes, which pulled its IPO earlier this year[5].

Turning single family homes into rentals on such a large scale may prove to be a wildly successful business, and some of the issues raised by this article, such as the impact on the housing market, are worth discussing, but it's a shame that the article sports a baitlink title and gives the impression that there's no risk to the investors playing in this space.

[1] [http://www.google.com/finance?q=amh](http://www.google.com/finance?q=amh)

[2] [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-31/american- homes-4-re...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-31/american-homes-4-rent- raises-705-9-million-in-u-s-ipo.html)

[3] [http://www.google.com/finance?q=sby](http://www.google.com/finance?q=sby)

[4] [http://www.google.com/finance?q=arpi](http://www.google.com/finance?q=arpi)

[5] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/05/us- colonyamericanh...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/05/us- colonyamericanhomes-ipo-idUSBRE95411O20130605)

</comment><comment><USER19> Relevant infographic on Blackstone (largest owner of rental homes) which summarizes some of the key aspects of the investments: [http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-12-20/blackstones...](http://www.bloomberg.com/infographics/2013-12-20/blackstones- big-bet-on-rental-homes.html)

</comment><comment><USER20> Pension funds are restricted in the UK to only be able to invest in commercial properties. There seems to be a conflict of interest here, where banks can make it hard for normal people to buy residential property while there investment arm is able to easily buy. That is one very scary situation to be in.

<comment><USER21> > _banks can make it hard for normal people to buy residential property while > there investment arm is able to easily buy_

Under the Volcker rule, banks don't have an investment arm. That's why the article is about Blackstone and Colony, rather than Bank of America or Wells Fargo.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> My question is, what next? What other industries and/or markets can and will Wall Street do this to now? This is greed at its finest. Especially the property taxes comment in Ohio.

<comment><USER15> Next on the agenda is the carve up and sell up public properties and concessions. Every where, every thing must be commoditized for the profit of the few at the cost of the many!

Postal services, education, national parks, government agencies turned "public-private." Water, utilities, roads, policing, emergency services! Rights and freedoms! The sky's the limit my friends!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> That's it, even rents are going to go through the roof now. Earlier it was housing as an investment that meant people had to look for rental homes since the investors had crowded out and outbid actual end users; now this. Housing needs to be made a basic right.

</comment><comment><USER24> Renting is disparaged in the U.S. because of the assumption that anyone who can own a house, will. It's actually not a great economic move unless you plan on living in a place for over 10 years. Commissions and repairs will eat you, unless the price/rent ratio is really out of whack.

On one hand, I viscerally hate that this is happening. It's shitty that the financiers (through wacky adjustable-rate mortgages, pump-and-dump games against the housing market, etc.) have taken communities and houses away from people. The "American dream" game is pretty rigged. On the other, I'm not surprised.

Wasn't Blackstone the pinnacle of prestige in private equity, though? I can't imagine them retaining that after going all in on the new suburban slumlord game.

<comment><USER25> More than half of families with incomes below the median family income in the US buy. Meanwhile, rental is the dominant form of residency in the most expensive areas of the US; for instance, fewer than a third of Manhattanites own.

How does one reconcile this with the idea that rental is disparaged as a practice of the lower income classes?</comment></comment>


How We Made Github Fast (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/blog/530-how-we-made-github-fast

<comment><USER2> This blog post blew my mind. I generally thought of GitHub as being in the front-end business, but maybe they're really in the back-end business?

Is this sort of complexity common? I'm not saying I think it's bad, as I am sure it's all there for a good reason, but it just seems like _so many_ services to bounce through before a web page is even served.

<comment><USER3> In a production environment, at scale, this is a relatively uncomplex example, I think. At any rate I've seen significantly more complicated multi-service architectures for what would also have been called a "front-end" business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Now, that scrambled my brains. Uncomplex? I thought this was pretty complicated and that mojombo was a scalability God (and he may be).

Could you point me to more complex examples?

<comment><USER4> This is why it's helpful to work in a big, successful company before founding your startup. You get a sense of the scale and complexity of problems that actually have real users, and practice dealing with those problems. If you stay long enough, you also get a sense of the trade-offs involved, and which complexities are accidental vs. which are inherent.

Of course, when you actually go to found the company, you should forget all that scalability nonsense and start with the simplest system possible. However, it's worth having an image in your head about how the system will evolve and what the appropriate response to various scalability challenges is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Ok! Now, make the website fast! I use GitHub for my documentation(wiki) and issue/bug tracker, and it takes ages to load those pages. I wanted to complain about it.. wrote a long feedback message, and it took 2mins to post it and then I saw the error GitHub page. How ironic.. The feedback system is too slow to post my feedback about the site being slow.

But, to be fair, it's not always like that. I guess that they had lots of trouble on our server recently and we've just been badlucky.

<comment><USER6> Where are you located (geographically)?

We have a couple developers more or less dedicated to performance at this point, and we're moderately satisfied with server response time for most areas of the site (the issue tracker is a notable exception -- we're working on that).

I ask about your location because we also have some latency issues as you move further away from the US east coast (Wash. DC) datacenter. We're working on that also.

Would you mind maybe submitting the output of `ping github.com' and any other pages you find intolerably slow at <http://support.github.com/> ? If that's too slow just dump stuff here I guess.

<comment><USER7> In London, and just about any page loads much slower than I'd want/expect. Not like there's a better alternative out there, but 2-4 second page loads can be a bit frustrating at times.

<comment><USER6> Can you dump some ping times? 2-4s is waaaay outside of what I'd expect the average response time to be.

<comment><USER7> Ping times seem to be alright — about 120 ms on average. The 2-4s I was referring to are the resource load times I see for the main HTML in the Safari dev pane.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Nitpick: It's "GitHub", not "Github". Also note the date: _20 Oct 2009_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Added the date to the title. Sorry about that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> What does he mean by "bare metal"? I've heard of attempts by Oracle to run directly on hardware, without an OS; does the same exist with mySQL and nginx? Or is he simply meaning not-a-VM?

<comment><USER6> "Bare metal" as in "not-a-VM", yeah.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is an older post, but it's a high quality one to read.

</comment><comment><USER11> Page did not respond in a timely fashion. Check our status site for alerts.

Either you found a page that took too long to render or we're getting more requests right now than we can handle.

You can try refreshing the page, the problem may be temporary. Learn how to deal with GitHub outages and other access problems.

</comment><comment><USER12> What surprised me was that they were using 15k rpm drives over SSD's for database lookups. Any idea why?

<comment><USER13> Asked them about this recently and the answer was that the io wasn't a problem. Better bang for their buck elsewhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Can someone explain how you do mysql replication via DRBD?

</comment><comment><USER15> (2009)

</comment><comment><USER16> "...The Aristocrats!"</comment>


Rate our startup:  Lifegamed - <AUTHOR> http://www.lifegamed.com

<comment><USER2> I took a second or two at the landing page and was unable to see an example game without signing up for an account. Perhaps you could provide a peek at an example game without requiring a signup?

<comment><USER3> Right. Without signing up, there's no way I can get any indication of what this is really like. So, I didn't sign up.

Why do I need to sign up to create a game anyway? Couldn't I go through the process and then sign-up to save it? That way, I could play with the interface and get an idea of what I'm actually signing up for.

<comment><AUTHOR> Totally agree that this needs re-doing. One way we were thinking of doing this is by putting the active games closer to the top, and letting people look at some of the tasks being accomplished.

<comment><USER3> One thing you could do in 5 minutes is put a screenshot of what a logged-in user will see when looking at one of their games. At least then there would be something a visitor could interact with. I was curious what percent of the home page a visitor could interact with, so I added up all the things you could possibly click and whether a visitor could get anywhere with them. Turns out a visitor can interact with 0% of your home page. There is not a single thing a visitor can click on your home page that doesn't take them to a log-in screen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is an interesting concept that I think needs more structure. It suffers the same problem that FourSquare did initially, there's nothing stopping people from gaming the system. It's also not obvious what you're supposed to do or how it works. The same framework could be simplified and used to allow people to make leaderboards for whatever they want. That could be interesting and is a concept people would easily grasp. You could also have games where people submit photos or videos or whatever the game requires and have others vote on them, which would be the score. Just some ideas that I had while perusing the site. I can see that there's value here but it hasn't been unlocked yet. Also, how would you monetize this?

<comment><AUTHOR> We wrestled with the structure issue - giving people the freedom to build takes away the ease of conveying what it is. As far as gaming the system, we envision 3 levels of proof: honor system if it's a game between you and your friends, photos and video as the next layer up, and ultimately assigning "superplayers" to referee and approve certain tasks. Revenue model one of: let people charge to play the games they create, let people resell virtual items or currency, or allow commercially sponsored games.

<comment><USER4> I think charging people to create games and letting anyone play for free is probably preferable to letting people charge users. Virtual currency is a great way to do this although you may consider doing it inside Facebook to accelerate that process. Making your own currency is tough unless you plug into a platform like Viximo. Commercial sponsors for content requires pretty enormous scale to be viable, the first 2 are probably better options.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is our beta release of Lifegamed, a platform that lets you make games out of everyday activities. Our initial web-based release lets any user create a game, define the points, define the characters, define virtual items, and much more.

Ultimately, we want to distill all of the many game mechanics out there and put them in users' hands to see what kinds of games they create for themselves and their friends.

</comment><comment><USER5> Is this like 4square?

<comment><AUTHOR> Partly! We see it as extracting some of the mechanics of 4square, some of the mechanics of WOW, etc, and then letting people build their own games.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Let's talk release notes - <AUTHOR> What's your experience with release notes?<p>Do you find them valuable? Tips and tricks. Great examples of release notes. What do you hate? <comment><USER2> I find them invaluable as a programmer who also has to maintain systems. It gives me a rough idea if upgrading software and libraries should be relatively painless or a long endeavor. I like Apache Solr's release notes because they're well sectioned. A giant, unorganized change-log, while better than nothing, is not ideal.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the most positive thing happened to you if not for COVID19? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> My wife has had some time off since the shelter in place went in effect, and two of our adult children moved back in with us before COVID-19 flared up so we've got to spend some casual time with them and have been working together really well.

It's made it a lot easier on all of us because aside from food all of our expenses went down and so far we're able to keep up with bills without too much stress.

Honestly, my wife and I enjoy having them here. We have plenty of room and they're both fun to hang out with. It's my daughter and her son, so they're step-siblings. Both of them were pretty young when we got together so they grew up together and have a lot of the same friends, and they get along great. So it's pretty cool to see them getting to spend some time together too, and they're making the best of it.

And we live in a pretty great spot. We have lots of public land and a very low population density, and it's just starting to get really nice outside here, so for us, life has been pretty good so far.

I know that probably sounds strange to some. And I know we're far from over this, but so far things have been good for and we're all looking for the positive in this and focusing on that.

And we're all being careful. And so are our neighbors. I'm pretty impressed with them. We live in a very conservative area but no one is (or very few are) dismissing this here. So that's positive too.

I've been working at home for around 25 years so for me not much has changed in regards to that and I suppose that has made it a lot easier for me than most others. Even my wife said she's "missing work".

And, it's a lot quieter outside now. The nearest "Highway" is a two lane road about two miles from our place and I can usually hear trucks roaring on it during the day, but not much now. Hardly at all in fact.

A few days ago I went outside to mow our yard and it was just perfect out. It was so quiet that I just couldn't fire up the mower and disturb the peace, and I think all my neighbors felt the same. Not one of them had a mower or leaf blower or tractor running all day long, or the next day either. That was really remarkable.

I have no idea what's to come, but there has been some positive things to focus on for those who have the luxury to try and I've been able to do that so far.</comment>


The Homeless Crisis Is Getting Worse in America's Richest Cities - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-11-20/the-homeless-crisis-is-getting-worse-in-america-s-richest-cities <comment><USER3> Long-time Seattle resident here who volunteered for several years in the homeless community. Homelessness has always been a _thing_ in Seattle, but has definitely become a much larger issue in the past five years.

I'll spare my thoughts on any number of reasons as to why we got here as a city, but will say I think we are doing a terrible disservice to actually finding a solution by lumping "anyone who doesn't have a home" into the "homeless crisis."

There are so many nuanced issues across a variety of problems here. There are drug abuse issues, mental health issues, physical health issues, cost of living issues, etc., and not to mention the varying cocktail of comorbidity, that to bulk "people without permanent housing" all under the umbrella of "homeless crisis" is not going to get us anywhere. Trying to assist the single mother with children who lives in her car because she lost her job is a VASTLY different issue than trying to assist the drug addict sitting in an alley passed out in their own feces. But at the end of the day, they're both human beings, and it breaks my heart that either of them are in that situation.

Several separate issues, that need to be subdivided and approached in distinct ways if any progress is to be made on any of them. Smaller, subdivided problems should feel more solvable, too.

Unfortunately, a lot of the solutions are expensive and frankly politically toxic. Despite Seattle's deep blue on most things, suddenly we get very "every person for themselves" the second homelessness has a price tag.

<comment> crooked-v > suddenly we get very "every person for themselves" the second homelessness > has a price tag.

A confounding factor involved here is that many government strategies for dealing with the homeless are endless money pits without noticeable results. I think a lot of people would be more comfortable with their tax dollars going to that purpose if they didn't feel like nothing was actually happening from it.

<comment><USER4> > endless money pits

The reason they are money pits is because they aren't something that will be solved by a city or even a state. Any attempt to solve the problem locally in a "humane" way has a high risk of just attracting more folks in the same circumstance to the area.

The most effective way for a city or state to "solve" the local homeless problem is to simply pay for one-way bus tickets to somewhere else. But that doesn't solve the actual problem.

Homelessness is a systemic problem that can only be meaningly addressed in a humane way by the federal government.

<comment><USER5> I'd be interested to hear how homelessness can be meaningfully addressed in a humane way by the federal government (especially if it is constitutional).

<comment><USER6> Simple. Put a ceiling on rents. Allow no-one to own more than one home and insist they live in the one they own. In the UK we have a "bedroom tax" but it is aimed at the poor, not the rich as it should be. Make it illegal to discriminate against anyone based on their income source or the state of their health. Build housing exclusively for low-income occupants instead of throwing everything onto the insidious property market. Ban property markets altogether and replace them with government-regulated allocation. No. Thought not. No-one is really serious about solving the world housing crisis. So long as politicians rely on the comfortable middle-class for their survival nothing will change.

<comment><USER7> This is so illogical.

For one, who is going to build these properties for low-income people only? Costs will be almost the same, profits will be way less. So why would a developer bother?

In fact, the recent change to require a higher percentage of low income units in new structures has killed the pipeline for new building starts.

Even if it seems counterproductive to the goal of helping low income people, historically new building starts have always been aspirational. Which makes sense - everyone wants a new car, but if you have little money you are better off getting a reliable used car. It is exactly the same for housing. When someone moves into a new condo that opens up a unit (and lowers the price incrementally) for someone who has less to spend.

Would it make sense to force carmakers to build cheap cars that only low- income people are eligible to buy?

<comment><USER6> You're thinking purely within a capitalist framework. There is no capitalist solution to this problem. The solution is unprofitable. I encourage you to think outside this framework as humanity itself is at stake not just profits.

<comment><USER8> Capitolist solutions exist to this problem, democracy keeps voting them down.

Remove the majority of zoning, and the free market will solve the housing problem quite quickly.

Sure houses will be up next to each other, and they'll be smaller, and the yards will cost even more than they do now, but housing will be affordable.

<comment><USER9> > Remove the majority of zoning

Sure, factories with toxic waste in residential neighborhoods are a great idea!

> Sure houses will be up next to each other

And we learned nothing from the massive urban fires othe 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries apparently.

All these onerous regulations you whinge about exist because thousands of people DIED from the conditions they outlaw.

<comment><USER8> Majority of the rules, not all.

Remove set backs, get rid of minimum yard requirements, loosen height restrictions.

The rest of the world has houses right next to each other, as do America's most prosperous cities.

Manhattan, the dense parts of SF, Boston, Chicago, etc.

The regulations about minimum grass and 4 foot of set back and no more than 1 or 2 stories, have nothing to do with fire regs and everything to do with long disproven ideas about suburban design that hark back to 1950s ideals.

Visit a modern dense city, Tokyo and London don't have massive fire outbreaks (sprinklers and modern fire codes still work even at density), but they do have an insane about of economic activity in the dense neighborhoods.

Want to solve the housing crisis and get people off the streets? Dump 50% more houses on to the market, heck have cities subsidize their construction if need be, and watch housing prices plummet. Watch mass transit become the life blood of a city, and watch entire new types of jobs become available. (People in NYC may be annoyed at bike messengers, but it is a job created by density!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I will go to my grave not understanding why this is so complex and difficult for people to understand and politicians to fix.

Wages are stagnant, save for a handful of sectors, in which they're growing quickly. Housing prices are rising due to limited supply and backward policies towards new construction. Inequality therefore expands exponentially, creating a city of haves-and-have nots.

Either reduce inequality through taxes and social re-distribution programs, or build more housing supply. Preferably both.

<comment><USER11> I mean, I think you're missing a key factor here: politicians require money to be elected. The poor (the folks most affected by these issues) don't have the money to donate. The rich (the ones you propose taxing) do. Thus, the only ones who can get elected are catering to an audience that does not want this problems solved in this way (and indeed, one could argue, does not care to have it solved at all).

Until the problem of money in politics gets fixed, your "simple" problem is largely unfixable.

<comment><USER12> In a properly-operating democracy, politicians require _votes_ to be elected; money helps, but isn't sufficient.

The 1% may have 50% (or more) of the money, but they only have 1% of the votes. The 99% (or rather, those members of the 99% who vote as if they're in the 1%) need to exert their power at the polling booth.

<comment><USER13> The 1% own the media companies which are happy to tell you what a winner looks like, and there is a general belief that voting with your heart is inferior to voting for a probable winner.

<comment><USER14> The latter problem would be solved with approval voting at least [https://ncase.me/ballot/](https://ncase.me/ballot/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> In the late 1980s I attended a talk at a political gathering in San Francisco. The speaker asked the audience members to think about the scores of homeless people they saw walking to the event. The speaker then made a statement that I'll never forget:

"This is what a modern depression looks like."

When most people think of a Depression, the image that comes to mind is black- and-white photos of mobs of people standing in bread lines.

What if 1930s-style depressions are no longer possible? Central banks intervene in every crisis no matter how small, handing out freebies to banks and financial institutions. However, these groups can only spend so much money on themselves. A little gets spent on frivolous crap like vacations, boats, and watches, a lot gets spent on ridiculous startup ideas and other terrible speculations, and the vast majority gets parked in the stock and bond markets where it grows and grows with each new infusion of fake money.

What if modern central banking has made a repeat of the Great Depression impossible?

Consider the possibility that the US has been in the modern equivalent of a Depression since the 1980s. It doesn't feel like a Depression because most people have housing and jobs, and GDP goes up. But focusing on these metrics ignores three very annoying pieces of information:

1\. wages have been flat for many years

2\. inflation for essential goods/services (housing, health care, child care) has outpaces inflation year after year

3\. the homeless problem just keeps getting worse

</comment><comment><USER16> I stayed a night in LA a few weeks ago at an AirBNB in a condo in a prime location near Little Tokyo and can't stop thinking that society would be better off if this condo were owned and occupied by a family instead of being basically a for-profit hotel.

I don't know how to stop this de facto rezoning except by imposing huge taxes on housing that is not the owner's primary residence and closing all the loopholes that come along with that. This would free up more properties for people to own as a primary residence, and AirBNB users et al could still rent out rooms in their primary residence.

It doesn't solve actual homelessness, the solution for that seems to be build more housing.

<comment><USER17> It's ironic considering that DTLA of all Los Angeles sub markets is the one with virtually no zoning restrictions and has some of the highest numbers of construction cranes in the nation.

But before we all go onto AirBnB rampage, have you looked at any available properties in that zip code? The schools are complete garbage (an elementary school kid was recently stabbed by a homeless drug addict), the crime rate is high, public transport is next to non-existent, and there's feces of various origins in the plain view on the sidewalk.

Downtown LA officials have been trying to revitalize the neighborhood by expanding the convention center, permitting more hotel rooms, making business rent cheap and attracting more visitors like yourself, not pitching the neighborhood that's adjacent to Skid Row to a suburban nuclear family with 2.2 kids.

<comment><USER16> I don't know about the schools there, but imagine if families instead of rentals occupied the condos—I bet the schools would shape up real fast. I admittedly haven't researched/thought about how to fix schools, but getting parents raging seems obvious to start.

<comment><USER17> School financing flows through property taxes, and they're the same whether the property is occupied by a family, childless couple, an absentee out-of- town owner or an investor.

Schools currently enjoy 100% of the money with nowhere near 100% of load, which in theory should result in smaller classes and excellent teacher-to- student ratios.

In reality though LA Unified School District has been cutting so many sweet pension deals to the previous employees (and current retirees) that most of that money is appropriated by pension funds long before the current employees (or kids) see any of it.

Combined with decreased enrollment across the board (people intent on having kids and large families tend to move _out_ of LA more than they move _into_ LA) and increased life expectancy of most retirees, things are not exactly looking bright for parents considering LA Unified for their education needs.

<comment><USER16> Just read an article about it from June, what a tough problem! No amount of complaining from parents can make enough pension money appear. Thanks for writing about it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> My favourite Richard Branson quote: «Clients do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the clients.»

The same goes for cities. For a city, the inhabitants come first. Take care of the inhabitants, and the inhabitants will take care of business. Ensure inhabitants have a safe place to live and give them higher education, and the inhabitants will give a return on the investment.

</comment><comment><USER19> I hang out in an area of Denver where they can't seem to build $500,000/2,500 a mo. condos fast enough, and a couple blocks full of homeless people sleep 1/4 miles away. A coffee shop I visit at had its portapotties taken over by a homeless band who informed us they were sleeping there and we should donate. Turned out they were also smoking crack. So far it seems the city's plan is to keep pushing them around the city - Denver is privatizing alleys, for instance. I imagine that at some point the food missions will be moved towards Sun Valley, Valverde, Commerce City, North Aurora or the like.

In Eugene it was a more intense issue. I swear the two cities have equal communities despite the populations differing by an order of magnitude. Bands of homeless people rove the streets with bicycles with trailers, collecting recycling to fund their lives at the insane meth/bicycle thievery park downtown. My girlfriend's daughter took out the trash and said "there's a guy in the dumpster".

Clearly a lot of people need psychological services and job counseling - <USER2> they were in homes, they could not sustain them. Given that the US doesn't even seem to be likely to devote proper care of our aging relatives in residential care over the next 30 years, it seems unlikely.

</comment><comment><USER20> Living in Amsterdam, it is very rare to encounter homeless people or panhandlers. It wasn't always this way -- so I really credit the policy designers. They build these really cute social housing centers for a range of subsidized apartments -- and always include a petting zoo in the middle because, I guess, it saves money in the end. Doing nothing is way more expensive.

<comment><USER21> When I was in Amsterdam a few years ago I faced pretty aggressive panhandling / scamming; it was that fine line between panhandling and robbery. On the way from central station to my airbnb, I had someone try to follow me and get my address. Another night I had someone waiting outside of my place.

I live in Denver, Colorado and although we have a huge homeless population, I've never had a problem with them. It's mostly just people sitting around asking for money, but I've never been followed or aggressively approached like I have in European cities (Italy was awful).

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> For most of industrialized history in the West, poor people lived crammed in tenements and multi-family apartments where they didn't get much beyond a room. This is still the case in much of the developing world.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that spacious living spaces for everyone in every city simply isn't tenable? It worked for a couple decades, but that was a different time and these cities were different places.

</comment><comment><USER23> Gentrification and skyrocketing rents are clearly creating a crisis in many cities that impact people who need housing most. Families, elderly, those with chronic illness, etc. They need housing, and the government should prioritize this population.

The problem is, these articles and homeless advocates never differentiate this sympathetic population from the hardcore drug users, aggressive panhandlers, and people engaged in theft and violent crime. I don't blame local neighbors from opposing shelters that attract this element. My city recently relocated a shelter to a new neighborhood and surprise surprise, street crime, used needles, prostitution, and everything you might expect from this group showing up en masse followed.

There are also lifestyle street people who enjoy the lifestyle for the freedom it offers. Do they deserve services and free apartments? They're there by choice. You can see videos all over YouTube celebrating this lifestyle: [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFAu5dzHq3BJvZsO58N8fXA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCFAu5dzHq3BJvZsO58N8fXA)

</comment><comment><USER24> I was walking through Manhattan on Sunday along Broadway north of Union Square Park and I saw at least 2-3 homeless or panhandlers _per block_ along the way. I was directly asked for money a few times as well.

I grew up in NYC. I spent high school and college in Manhattan. This is the worst I have seen it. There is no cushion for people living on the margins of society anymore. Not here, at least. When I was a kid, my mother was able to raise three of us on her one paltry salary. Good luck doing that on several salaries now.

And as someone with a good income and two earner household, I can't help but feel that I am one recession away from struggle. I don't have a home my parents will leave to me in flyover country that I can retreat to if shit hits the fan.

<comment><USER25> > I grew up in NYC. I spent high school and college in Manhattan. This is the > worst I have seen it.

What up, Astoria native (then Stuyvesant then Columbia) checking in. The current level of (visible) homelessness in NYC is _nothing_ compared to NYC in the early 2000s, let alone the 90s. Even in the late 90s the parts of upper Manhattan I frequented had burned out car husks and people shooting up in the streets. Hell, when I was in school you couldn't walk through Morningside or Riverside park without tripping over homeless people. Manhattan is downright bucolic compared to they way it used to be. The state of things isn't perfect, now, but it is orders of magnitude better than it used to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> "Houston, the fourth-most-populous city in the nation, has cut its homeless population in half since 2011, in part by creating more housing for them."

<comment><USER27> Houston is also in Texas, which has habitable land area greater than most countries.

Toronto is kind of stuck at the moment because if we want to build more housing, we have to bulldoze the Oak Ridges Moraine, which we can't do because it's critical to our water supply (though conservative governments often try). So our only option, like many cities, is to build up. Which is expensive and requires expensive maintenance. Which nobody wants to pay for to give to people who are unlikely to contribute back (debatable).

<comment><USER28> Houston also doesn't have zoning laws, though having lots of land helps with that.

<comment><USER29> Houston has deed restrictions, which effectively work the same as zoning.

There is zero land available for you to live in a safe neighborhood near downtown. All new housing is located in dangerous areas. You _ABSOLUTELY MUST_ use a car to get around unless you want to risk being assaulted, robbed, or worse.

The homeless population in Houston is out of control and has gotten worse in parts of town.

Vehicle break-ins, burglary, rapes, and armed robbery are completely out of control. The only actually safe places in the entire city are Jewish neighborhoods such as Rice Village. The police are absolutely useless and crime is _VASTLY_ under-reported. Police hung up on me multiple times and lost my reports each time after I was a victim of a hit-and-run, burglarized vehicle three times, my apartment door was kicked in, and my apartment was burglarized. My neighbor's guns were stolen from his truck and his apartment was burglarized. He was a Houston police officer at the time. Everywhere I lived the same things happened REGULARLY. My neighbor was a wheelchair bound young woman and her door was kicked in around noon, 6 feet across the hallway from the leasing office. All of these places I mention are in gated communities. I lived in three apartments less than a mile off the tram red line over three years.

Houston is a living hell for law abiding citizens. Not only is it incredibly criminal, ALL infrastructure is CRUMBLING and there is trash literally everywhere aside from Rice Village and River Oaks. Utterly disgusting.

Police and landlords have told me: "It's just a big city, crime happens. We can't do anything about it, just have insurance." (i.e., socialize the cost of having criminals around while doing NOTHING to reduce criminality). People who think like this deserve everything they get when it backfires on them. Maybe they enjoy being repeatedly raped like a form of Stockholm Syndrome. I, for one, do not enjoy being raped of my hard work and time by criminals or living under the constant threat of my hard work, time, and life being robbed from me. If you live in Houston and don't constantly carry a fully loaded handgun, you are taking your life in your hands.

Screw that. I don't want to live in a literal hell. Such is life in Houston.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyMY2JnVUDE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyMY2JnVUDE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj3XO3HopsM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xj3XO3HopsM)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0diH5fNLYmU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0diH5fNLYmU)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gctMJhFezE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gctMJhFezE)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZQDwXT71_E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZQDwXT71_E)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> In San Francisco is equally bad. In the morning @7am you see so many people sleeping on sidewalks like sardines, it's pretty sad considering it's a rich city.

<comment><USER31> Equally bad compared to what? As an SF resident I would argue SF has one of the worst homeless situations in the country - not necessarily in terms of overall numbers (LA/NY have more), but in terms of what I see as severe mental health issues and drug use among many (but not all) homeless people I see here.

<comment><USER32> I remember being impressed by how many apparently high-functioning homeless people I saw out near Venice in LA a few years ago. I managed to avoid Skid Row, I guess that's where you'd go to see SF-style homelessness but in a more... integrated? boxed-in? tolerated? style.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Orange County, CA is not a city per se, but a runoff river trail that leads to the ocean quickly became a community of homeless. When the tent area was finally disbanded (1), here are the stats:

– 700 - 1,000 homeless

– 215 tons of trash or debris

– 1,165 pounds of hazardous waste, including human and pet feces

– 5,115 needles

– 1,000 stolen bikes (2)

(1) [https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/01/see-before-and- after-p...](https://www.ocregister.com/2018/03/01/see-before-and-after-photos- of-the-santa-ana-river-trail-with-homeless-people-gone-and-trash-cleaned-up/)

(2) [https://www.ocregister.com/2017/11/16/a-half-loaded-gun- an-u...](https://www.ocregister.com/2017/11/16/a-half-loaded-gun-an- underground-bunker-and-1000-hidden-bikes-found-at-fountain-valley-homeless- camp/)

</comment><comment><USER34> 100% of the public parks and ~80% of the remaining greenspace in downtown Portland has become permanent homeless camps. Anywhere there is a 5x5ft patch of grass there is a tent.

</comment><comment><USER35> I've known a few people who might have ended up homeless, at least for a while, without their family or friend support systems. 'Society' just assumes everybody has that support I guess.

</comment><comment><USER36> I think part of the problem is that there is a certain percentage of homeless people that are just completely irredeemable.

Anyone that's spent some time riding on the NYC subway can attest to this. No matter how much money you throw at them, they will keep begging or acting crazy.

Short of locking them up, what do you do with those people?

<comment><USER37> Irredeemable? Have they committed some awful moral transgression? Certainly some people are chronically incapable of looking after themselves, but please avoid such prejudicial language.

<comment><USER36> I'm talking about the people who will never be functioning members of society, no matter how much support we give them (monetary or otherwise).

If you don't understand what I mean you haven't met enough homeless people.

<comment><USER37> I have met plenty of homeless people, and yuor objection is not responsive to the criticism I made.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The US spends far more now on social welfare than it did in the 1950s, 60s or 70s.

Social assistance to drug addicts concentrated in neighourhoods where a disproportionate number reside, combined with reluctance to institutionalize them, or otherwise force them to stop doing drugs, creates ghettos where drug abuse predominates, that perpetuate drug use lifestyles.

From the other end, restrictions on housing construction, like zoning by-laws, and limitations on private property rights, like rent control, lead to housing scarcity, which pushes more people to the margins where they are more likely fall through the cracks.

</comment><comment><USER39> homelessness is the societal manifestation of the lower end of the bell curve. period. anyone who's interacted with homeless people knows this. yes there are exceptions, and no they do not make up the bulk of the distribution.

putting your hand in the sand and blaming "slow wage growth" or some other secondary factor instead of pointing out the obvious is a disservice to those people. and before you call me harsh, know that I mean this in the complete opposite way: acknowledging the problem with pragmatism is the first step toward its resolution.

<comment><USER40> being a serf is the societal manifestation of the lower end of the bell curve. period. anyone who's interacted with peasants knows this. yes there are serfs who fell out of wealthy families, and no they do not make up the bulk of the distribution.

putting your hand in the sand and blaming "aggressive royal taxation" or some other secondary factor instead of pointing out the obvious is a disservice to the peasantry. and before you call me uncouth, know that I mean this in the complete opposite way: acknowledging the problem with honor is the first step towards its resolution.

<comment><USER39> not sure what point you where trying to make with this analogy. hierarchies are an emergent property of every self-assembling structure -- we all started from the same unicellular organisms after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> A big part of the problem is the use of Revenue Management Software to set prices. This obviously ends up working like a cartel.

I note that:

-Even when nation wide vacancies were at their highest in 30 years, rental price rose.

-Even as home prices plummeted, rental price rose.

-Rent has risen 30% _nation_ wide just since 2013 so zoning an limits on building can't be the main cause.

[https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf](https://www.census.gov/housing/hvs/files/currenthvspress.pdf)

<comment><USER32> I've never heard of Revenue Management Software. What effect does it have exactly?

If you own some apartments, wouldn't you just check the local advertised prices and set your prices similarly, possibly also using whatever your social network of landlords can tell you?

<comment><USER42> RMS is what airlines use to price tickets and have done almost since the automated calculating computer was invented. Use of that kind of software has spread to all kinds of industries.

Large rental property management companies absolutely use RMS. You can see it in action if you go to the rental sites for a large apartment development (if you want one in real life, search for "Thorton Place Apartments" in Seattle). Every possible amenity or detail about the apartment is factored into the overall rent, including which direction it faces, floor, whether it's recently been painted, along with how many of this particular type or in this building are left over, and then your particulars like how long of a lease you want, whether you're bringing a pet[0], and even what employer you work for.

That all gets crunched and a number falls out that sometimes has a relationship to what the glossy marketing copy also had printed on it. Rents for each unit can and will vary day-by-day as apartments are rented and notices handed in.

0 - Thorton Place doesn't do it but another apartment building in Lake City absolutely does bump up the base rent by around $17 if you pick "with pet" versus "without pet," in addition to lumping in a $45 "pet rent" fee.

<comment><USER43> Yeah, I see this on cruise ship cabins now too. There are different classes, but the cabin pricing varies a decent amount within each class based on all kinds of minor factors. Midships vs forward or after, close to elevator, what's above / below you, size of balcony, adjoining room, pullout couch, obstructed view, etc, etc. Kind of annoying in that you used to be able to "get lucky", but it's more efficient in a competitive market (which cruising definitely is) to be able to select exactly what you want and only pay for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> The only way to fix the housing crisis is to build more houses. It isn't rocket science, but every conversation or debate about this issue seems to go on and on in every direction without people actually facing this fact. The same people who vote to increase taxes to fix homelessness will simultaneously vote down every new housing project. Just seems so bizarre to me.

<comment><USER45> You can build them all day long, but then you have to have people who can live in them and pay for the cost of building that house, either through mortgages or taxes to the government.

And we all know how well the public housing projects went and still go to this day...

<comment><USER38> Prices always reach their market clearing level. More housing == lower prices, when all other factors are controlled for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> We can build companies that will change minds of voters but we can't provide homes to those who can't afford them. Mind blown.

</comment><comment><USER47> I believe a key fact that's ignored is that the cities where this is happening are the most hospitable. Above freezing all year, plenty of areas to setup camp that are protected by the city, and poor enforcement for street crimes (there's no money in jailing a homeless person unless they're committing a felony). Homelessness in Seattle is much worse than New York for a number of reasons, but the fact that camping outside in New York during winter would kill you helps work the numbers a bit too. If it's too cold to be outside, you'll opt for a homeless shelter where you're required to follow rules that inevitably help you to get back on your feet.

</comment><comment><USER48> Just paying for housing is a surprisingly cost effective and simple solution that is empirically backed as more cost effective and better outcomes for the individuals involved in nearly every study.

Housing first, then figure out what support looks like for other issues.

<comment><USER49> You can't just throw a house at someone and expect everything to be alright. You need to give these people support to return to functioning lives. A lot of those free houses would end up trashed.

</comment></comment><comment> reading-at-work > It's not bad everywhere. Houston, the fourth-most-populous city in the > nation, has cut its homeless population in half since 2011, in part by > creating more housing for them. That's dampened the effect of rising rents, > Zillow found.

This seems like a quick and practical solution that would provide effective assistance while more nuanced factors like mental health are debated about. Why aren't more cities increasing the housing supply given the obvious benefits of doing so?

<comment><USER50> In part because building housing in places like San Francisco and NYC is incredibly expensive. Trying to house people with the least means in the most expensive corners of the planet doesn't make a lot of sense to be frank about it.

Houston may be more of a middle ground in terms of building cost and access to land.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> i remember cases where some guy tried to build tiny homes for the homeless in LA and the government shut him down. I know here in another part of the county, there was some land freed up for new development but a preservation society sued to prevent development unless certain conditions were met. Less housing ending up happening as they could demolish everything. Government is getting in the way of cheap housing.

</comment><comment><USER52> Homeless hacker chiming in. Throw away acct for pseudo anonymity. I been homeless in LA for 2 years now. Previously, I worked as a developer for 15 years. The closest I ever got to touching "success" was that one time standing before the porcelain King in the Men's Room right next to Bezos at Amazon. It's rather surreal to see where I am now and think that I once pissed into the same hole in the ground as the Richest Man on Earth. c'est la vie.

This whole article is just Liberal hand wringing bullshit. Every reply in this thread is just more Liberal Do-Gooder handing wringing bullshit. Not a single one of you here understand what it's really like to be ejected from the Economy and forced to live as a leper underneath Metropolis among the Morlocks in Tent City, and not a single one of you have a realistic idea to "solve" the problem of homelessness in society. But you'll think you know it all, and that if only your dumb idea XYZ was adopted, it would be the silver bullet to solve a pathologically non-linear societal system of thousands and millions of discontinuous variables.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it." ― Upton Sinclair

"Homelessness" isn't a "problem" that can be solved and wrapped up with a pretty red bow because you all are Sinclair's man in the street. You all are the problem. The phenomenon of homelessness is not an effect--it's a consequence. It is not a disease in itself, it is the symptom of a much greater syndrome. How can you begin to solve a "problem" when you haven't even identified the root of the problem?

Look around you. What's happening isn't rocket brain surgery. This shit is just Malcolm X's proverbial "chickens coming home to roost." America is sick. It's dying. Your society is decaying. Your cities are slums, your economy is fake, fewer and fewer fat cat asshole thieves scheme to take bigger and bigger slices of the diminishing pie for themselves, all the while inviting in every illiterate 3rd World "Shitholer" peasant illegal immigrant to take the resources of your Native Born neighbor. Your Govt is literally being run by elderly senile cartoon characters who are too busy squabbling over WWF wrestling plot minutia while the real power--the Deep State and the Military Industrial Complex continues business as usual and is radar phased locked onto expanding more and more Wars fighting for Israel and for Tyrants of Oil Fiefdoms, damn the consequences, and damn the American boys dying for it. Your Financial Industry of empty suits only care about kicking the can and off- shoring and out sourcing every last warm body that can be replaced by a Drone in order to shave operating costs to earn their myopic bonus for inflating their revenue by .0001% and priming the pump of their stock price through even more corporate buy backs. Your economy was blown the fuck up 10 years ago, and the Federal Reserve inflated the money supply by printing tens of trillions of fiat to soak up housing and all property to prop up already outrageous astronomical prices.

Why am I and 500,000 Americans homeless while 500,000 houses sit empty across America? Oh yeah, that's right, those houses are "investment vehicles" which must be protected because muh Free Markets, and because God forbid any policies resembling a Nationalized Socialism take root in America and blow away the illusion that a self-coherent Capitalism even exists. Meanwhile, We The People are depreciating assets and "not economically viable."

Here's why. If you hate Trump, just wait until you see the next cartoon character we meme into the Presidency. You may be baffled "why is the Alt- Right smarter than us and why do they keep winning against all fake odds?" The answer has been staring you in the face the whole time. Next time, there's going to be a guy running for President and he's going to hit all of notes and promise the right things to fix everything and punish everyone who deserves it, and his name will be something like "Adolf" and me and 70 million voters are going to elect him and then maybe you'll sit down and seriously challenge your whole reality and everything you thought you knew and ask yourself "how did we end up here?"

It might make you feel better to just ignore what I'm saying by discounting it as "oh that guy is mentally ill, that's why he's homeless to begin with, just ignore the crazy man and keep being apathetic and don't try to do anything and leave it for the Govt to Do Something About It."

But don't feel bad for me. I feel bad for you. Because I have enjoyed a head start prepping for the coming systemic collapse that is going to rip America apart to its foundations and shovel dirt over the grave of our little 242 year long "Grand Experiement." I know how Extended Involuntary Urban Camping, I know how to live off canned food and the bare minimum of resources, I know how to steal water and electricity and whatever else I need, I know how to live little better than an animal with no consciousness about "next week" or "next month", because I live in the day-to-day. I have learned it's survival of the fittest. You have not. One day soon you'll wake up and your Soylent fridge will be empty, your Googley Bus won't be there, your Googleplex will be empty and picked apart by tweakers for scrap metal and everything you thought was a permanent fixture of Civilization will be gone. I'll be fine. I didn't need the majority of that shit anyways. Your mind will be blown when you see how little you truly Need to get by just to survive.

As for my future, I don't waste my time with such a luxury. Chop wood, carry water--that's Zen. I hate the entire Computing Industry by the way. Yes, you too. Why would I want to get back into the Hamster Wheel? Why would I want to rejoing being part of the problem again? Programming Blinken Light bullshit for bullshitters does not interest me in the slightest anymore. This industry has changed since I remember it in the Dotcom era. I no longer recognize it. The only "fun" I find these days in programming is in leveling up in Reverse Engineering to break as much software as I can and attack it as broadly and as devestating as possible with the explicit goal of dumping 0days to put as many of you out of business as I can and try real hard to roll Computing Inc as far back into the pre-Internet Dark Ages of the 1960's and 1970's as I can.

<comment><USER43> Not going to lie, this was genuinely thought-provoking. I'm curious about a few things though:

1\. The second part of your comment makes it sound like you're homeless by choice, but the beginning makes it sound like you've just fallen on some very rough times. I'd like to hear more about your story and how you came to be where you are.

2\. The middle part of your comment about Trump and what comes next really does concern me. I think we're at a crossroads right now, but I'm a lot less convinced than you that we're going to go down the wrong road. If I look back at points in America's history like the Civil War, Great Depression, World War II, Vietnam, etc, this doesn't seem like we're at our most dysfunctional. We managed to pass through those eras without societal collapse. Doesn't mean we will this time, but what makes you so sure we won't?

3\. The final couple paragraphs of your comment remind me of what I've read of stoicism. I commend you for realizing how little of our modern creature comforts are truly necessary, and being willing to honestly weigh them against their costs, both to you and to broader society. But you seem convinced that those who currently live a more "normal" existence will be paralyzed and helpless in the event of societal collapse. Why can't they adapt if you have?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Fix the high price of housing. Expensive places push more people into homelessness. Sure, services are still needed but by fixing housing you'll make the biggest dent and do good for the most people. We need to upzone the near ring suburbs of these cities at the very minimum.

</comment><comment><USER54> This is a very old problem. In 1879, Henry George called it the paradox of progress and poverty. Prosperity causes land values to go up, and this inevitably creates a class of winners and losers. Some of the losers can't afford rent at all.

</comment><comment><USER55> You mean, in the bluest cities?

<comment><USER56> All dense cities are blue. When you live next to an immigrant neighbor with a radically different lifestyle, and you two become friends, you start adopting some blue political leanings. Compound that with density.

Over the past 10 years I frequently visited some suburbs near Ogden, Utah (I lived there before). 10 years ago there were _no_ homeless panhandling anywhere outside of downtown SLC. Now, they're not only in Salt Lake City and Ogden - I see them in the tiny towns of Clinton, of West Point, outside of Walmarts in extremely red, extremely religious, extremely suburban areas. All while the state's official story is how they've "eradicated" [1] homelessness. The visual record, just driving in all these places, does not support that. It looks like what they've done is eliminate shelters, spread people out over the whole state (sometimes by force via operation Rio Grande), then introduced new "numbers" showing how great they've done.

Observing Utah is when it first began to dawn on me how national of an issue homelessness is.

[1] [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/27/utah- homeles...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/27/utah-homeless- shelters-housing-first)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> The majority of people in society have a herd mentality. Thinking patterns such as one adopts the social norms and never questions them. These people observe homeless, subconsciously consider them outsiders, and treat them as not part of the herd with disconnecting from the problem belonging to everyone. Nothing will change until people stop seeking to blame Government or the Rich. Everyone has to take the blame for something to get done. I personally think everyone has become sociopaths to some degree compared to previous generations when it comes to people down on their luck.

</comment><comment><USER58> The homeless problem _always_ gets worse when a population grows, like most problems.

Even if you hold the homeless % constant, the problem got worse.

<comment><USER59> References requested.

<comment><USER58> References? It's rather simple and obvious math.

If your city's population doubles, and the homeless portion started at 1%, and ended at 1%, your number of homeless people on the streets doubled.

We like to focus on per-capita figures/%ages because they can make us feel good about ourselves. Except the problems you see on the street are not constant when their incidence %age stays constant, as the population grows. For them to stay constant, the %age must shrink in proportion to the growth, which is practically impossible.

Growth applies to everything, including your problems.

<comment><USER59> Actually I was referring to the homelessness increasing as population increases.

The periods of most rapid population growth in the US were the decade of the 1810s, with a subsequent peak in the 1850s. In the 20th century, the peak decades were the 1900s and 1910s (21% each), then the 1960s (18%). Rates of growth have fallen consistently since the 1960s, with the exception of the decade of 2000 - 2009.

As I've posted elsewhere in this thread, use of the term "homelessness" took off in the 1980s, during a period of modest population growth, by historical standards.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_State...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_States)

See also: [https://tradingeconomics.com/united- states/population](https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/population)

<comment><USER58> Ok, I was not referring to the _rate_ increasing. I am simply stating that the rate doesn't have to increase for the homeless problem to grow, because it grows in absolute numbers with the population.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> To the barricades!

</comment><comment><USER61> I fairly often comment on the topic of homelessness. I am routinely told on HN that the high cost of housing is unrelated to the rise in homelessness. This article states otherwise and I quoted it here: [https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the- clear-c...](https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2018/11/the-clear- connection-between-housing.html)

Some things I routinely talk about:

This country tore down up to 80 percent of SROs over the course of a couple of decades, probably because the Baby Boomers didn't need that kind of dirt cheap housing when they came of age. We never rebuilt.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy)

[https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall- of-...](https://www.citylab.com/equity/2018/02/the-rise-and-fall-of-the- american-sro/553946/)

The American concept of "proper housing" is rooted in the housing boom that followed soldiers coming back home from WW2 and most of our current policies, financing mechanisms, etc are rooted in that era. The default expectation was that it was housing for a nuclear family and we are still being haunted by the ghost of those expectations, though they don't really serve us well anymore for a variety of reasons.

So when people talk about the need for "affordable housing," most people seem to hear _government subsidized housing_ , _The Projects_ , and _poverty housing_. I'm not sure how to get around that. It absolutely isn't what I mean.

I mean we need to develop demographically appropriate housing, such as SROs that a single person working at Taco Bell could afford. We also need that housing to be viable without a car. The reality that you basically _need_ a car to get around in large parts of the US and the cheapest housing typically requires a car is part of the problem here.

For most Americans, housing is their single largest expense and a car is their second largest. This is in the process of changing as Millenials give push back against such expectations, but it is still largely the norm here.

I don't know of any good terms that already exist for trying to make such distinctions. They might need to be invented.

So, first, we need a variety of housing options that effectively and appropriately serve lifestyles other than _nuclear family with kids, a full time homemaker and a primary breadwinner_. We currently are trying to force- fit people into such housing who don't live that way. For example, we assume that the answer for single young people is to rent a place designed for a family and then get enough roommates to fill up all the bedrooms and make the place affordable.

And this is a nightmare option for many people. Rooming with total strangers is inherently problematic.

Second, we need housing that doesn't de facto assume that you own a car and have a driver's license and all that. We need housing that serves people who don't want to have a car or who can't do that for some reason, whether cost or age or disability.

I don't really know of terms in common usage for either of those concepts. Those are some of the things I have in mind when I talk about a need for "affordable housing," but it isn't what other people _hear_ when I say that. They hear "Craptastic slums that no one wants to live in and no one wants in their neighborhood" or they hear "socialism where we just hand people homes they can't afford" or something. And that's absolutely not what I am going for.

<comment><USER62> I don't know why you are _vilifying_ government housing, it is very obviously the solution. Housing initiatives have always been a target for budgetary looting by politicians looking to solidify their legacy with more glamorous and superficial endeavors, but properly managed they are the only way for affordable housing to happen in cities that are already grossly affordable even for full time workers.

The market will never fix this, either. Why should a developer spend money to build something and wait far longer (if ever) to recoup their initial investment from affordable rental rates, when they can just price right along with the market and be out of the red sooner? Real estate booms and crashes, no one wants to wait for their goose to lay its first egg a decade after the local real estate market cools off. The market always favors the most rapid turn around on investment, and in cities like SF where tech companies gladly hand 22 year olds more money than they've ever seen, the quickest and safest buck for a developer are these cheap, fast, luxury builds that can command rents at the top of the market because the units smell like new paint.

The current favorite strategy among local governments is to offer developers large tax incentives to tack on a small percentage of low income units along with the luxury build. It is hardly even a half measure, as the rest of the luxury build will surge the rest of the local real estate market. Instead of offering tax incentives to attract luxury developers, local governments should instead let the market dictate what level of luxury building will be profitable, and focus on building low income municipal housing that is properly managed, and it's budget protected from raiding. Maybe something modern, and modular such that a family unit can be cheaply reconfigured into studios as demand dictates. In my city, the downtown YMCA has low income apartments in the dozen or so floors above the recreation facilities, and it works to keep these residents off the streets and employed.

<comment><USER61> I'm not vilifying anything. I'm just saying that I don't have any convenient phrases that handily sum up the kinds of things I intend and using the phrase "affordable housing" means something to other people that I'm not intending. I keep saying "affordable housing" and it keeps going bad places and I'm realizing that it does so because it is not the right expression to communicate what I have in mind.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Since this a crazy hard problem that won't be solved in a comments section, how about playing with a completely silly idea instead:

> Outlaw rental housing - force everyone to own their residence

The people we're most interested in helping are those pushed out by rising rents. Rents can't rise if they don't exist. New migrants can't drive rent up if rent doesn't exist - to the contrary, they would be increasing property value for all residents.

I'm confident we can make this work, people.

<comment><USER26> so instead of rent you pay interest, various property taxes, and hoa, maintenance, or property management. Most of which are still subject to inflation and price/wage disparity.

a better high level discussion would be how to reform the policy goal of owning housing as saving mechanism and store of personal wealth, since it can't be both a great investment for the prior generation and affordable to the next one at the same time (if wages are stagnant)</comment></comment>


VC Seed Funding is Dead, Long Live VC Seed Funding - <AUTHOR> http://www.bothsidesofthetable.com/2009/10/18/vc-seed-funding-is-dead-long-live-vc-seed-funding/ <comment><USER2> Another excellent article from this blog. I've now added this blog to my RSS feed. Every article I've found in there has been a must-read (I'm about 5 articles into it now).

</comment><comment><USER3> Consistently excellent posts from a serial-entrepreneur-turned-VC who gives sound practical advice for early-stage companies weighing a broad variety of company strategies and funding options (not just VC). Highly informative for founders.</comment>


Ask HN: How do you document your code at work? - <AUTHOR> This has been different at literally every company I've worked at, and it's never been good.
Specifically curious about how internal technical/code/product documentation is written and maintained.
If you like the internal documentation at your company: what's so great about it? <comment><USER2> Every new feature at TrueCar requires extensive documentation. A lot of our libs are open source so they need good docs. Here is an example of our UI component library's docs:

[https://www.truecar.com/battery- pack/introduction](https://www.truecar.com/battery-pack/introduction)

<comment><USER3> how to make sure code and doc are in sync? who reviews doc changes?

<comment><USER4> I often get these questions from agile people (not saying you're or aren't) and my answer is always: the same code reviews that ensure there aren't code smells. Lack of documentation is a code smell to me.

To be clear, if docs are just translating to English what the code is already expressing then they are bad. They should be high level, explaining odd cases, etc. If they go out of sync, you fix them because your future ability to understand the code depends on it.

I've had PR's rejected because they only added comments saying that "they will get out of sync". I've had documentation projects canceled because "they will get out of sync". It makes me really sad when a new hire struggles to understand basic things in our code base. </rant>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I guess putting detailed comments within the code are the best form of documentation.

The flow of code and detailed comments about it right there in the flow help the readability of code. Also it's easier to change the comments when code changes because its all there in a single file. Makes reviews easier.</comment>


Ask HN: When is the full list of Startup School speakers going to be announced? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> The full list is here: [http://blog.ycombinator.com/last-day-to-apply-for- startup-sc...](http://blog.ycombinator.com/last-day-to-apply-for-startup- school)

Speakers:

Ron Conway Founder and Special Advisor, SV Angel

Jim Goetz Partner, Sequoia Capital

Reid Hoffman Founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn

Jan Koum Founder and CEO, WhatsApp

Andrew Mason Founder, Detour and Groupon

Eric Migicovsky Founder and CEO, Pebble

Hosain Rahman Founder and CEO, Jawbone

Danae Ringelmann Founder and Chief Development Officer, Indiegogo

Emmett Shear Founder and CEO, Twitch

Michelle Zatlyn Founder, CloudFlare</comment>


Hedge fund robots crushed human rivals in 2014 - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/102306617

<comment><USER2> "The biggest gains came at funds that practiced a "trend following" strategy. Those managers—who use computer models to bet on price movements in either direction and often perform best when clear patterns emerge over several months"

This is headed for 2008 all over again because we've learned nothing. These algorithms rack up consistent wins for years on end, the markets rise and rise, everyone gets bonuses and all is great. Then the market turns on a dime, all the computer algorithms break at once because chaos theory takes over and your trend algorithms are useless. Liquidity disappears in an instant and the the federal reserve steps in and gives away free money to the banks until the banks become solvent again. This will continue until the parasite kills the host.

<comment><USER3> Algos didn't cause the '08 crash. The '08 crash was caused by a lot of bad bets on the housing market. 100% of those bets were made by humans chatting on Bloomberg or over the telephone.

Edit: No, child posts, you cannot make the leap that trend following algos are the same thing as modeling MBS risk (which isn't an algo...).

<comment><USER4> Garbage in Garbage out. Algos directly caused the '08 crash (lot's of things where indirectly responsible though). Software Algorithms designed to model risks did not take into account a down economy which systemically undervalued risks leading to lots of over leveraged institutions to fail. Arguably, many of the people writing the software where instructed to 'tweak' their models to the point of uselessness.

One of the major failing of modern statistics instruction is 6+ sigma events don't look like 1-5 sigma events. Case in point global death totals per second probably fit a very well defined curve, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki where well outside that curve.

<comment><USER5> This is a misattribution. It's like saying "The nails caused the building to collapse". The people using the tools are to blame, not the tools themselves. The ratings agencies gave incorrect ratings to mortgage backed securities, humans made assumptions based on greed and individual home buyers made poor purchasing decisions.

The flash crash was the result of bad algorithms, the tools acting on their own without significant human guidance or erroneous input. But that was a relatively minor event that temporarily affected professional market makers. Something like that could happen again, with a much larger impact. But the 2008 crash was not it, and wasn't related or even similar.

It is difficult to predict 6+ sigma events, but humans as a whole are no better at it than algorithms are. There were plenty of people who saw things that others didn't and made big short bets against the housing market. The problem there is that everyone else didn't listen to them. Eventually we can improve statistics to catch more outliers. Good luck improving human nature to get people to listen to predictions that go against the herd.

<comment><USER6> Full-on agreement with what you're saying here.

And if someone really wants to place blame, it's pretty tough to ignore the regulatory and interest rate changes that created the environment that allowed it all to happen. But again, like you said, good luck improving human nature.

Banks have shown themselves to be pretty irresponsible with (practically) free credit though. That's a mistake we shouldn't repeat again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _So-called managed futures funds — which trade the futures contracts of stocks, bonds, currencies and commodities — gained an average of 15.2 percent last year, according to Societe Generale unit Newedge._

This probably isn't obvious to people outside of the trading world, but Newedge is a massive futures broker. This article is basically a puff piece quoting a big futures broker telling you how great it is to trade futures. I wouldn't read too much more into it than that.

<comment><USER8> It's reported by CNBC, which almost exclusively puts out puff opinion pieces when its not reporting financial results.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "...beating most gut-driven human managers and dramatically recovering most of their losses from 2011, 2012 and 2013..."

[http://xkcd.com/904/](http://xkcd.com/904/)

</comment><comment><USER10> So they "crushed" other hedge funds? They returned 15.2%(1). You know what, boring old VTSAX returned 12.6%(2). Given the risk involved, VTSAX was a much better play. Ugh, hedge funds are suuuuuuuch a rip off.

(1) Don't know if this includes fees (2) Don't know if this includes dividends

<comment><USER11> I would guess the 15.2% does not include fees and the 12.6% does not include dividends. Probably even closer after that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Overheard just earlier:

"Financial markets used to be about getting money into productive enterprises, not out of them"

Right on. Let all the leveraged bots and algos devour each other. Sooner or later "real economy" will decouple anyway. And with the savings of millions of individuals, pension funds and insurance corporations ping-ponging between botnets, the _real_ "hedge" will be to remain liquid and competetive _outside_ this hodgepodge when it all inevitably ends up belly-up.

<comment><USER13> There are definitely things wrong with financial markets, but automated trading is not one of them. Just like anything else, using computers to be more efficient is a _good_ thing. Are you going to complain about Amazon and wait for 'real retail' to decouple?

The problem with modern financial markets is that they have become quite _abstract_. Finance is maths, which means it's code, which means you start abstracting away from the implementation to get to a high level. Just because it's not immediately clear to a layperson what's going on, doesn't mean it's not useful or _real_.

Imagine what would happen for most programmers if you tried to explain to a layperson what you do.

"I'm a developer"

"Oh, you make websites?"

"Well, uh, no, you see, I make tools for making it easier to make websites"

"Oh, like what?"

"Um, well I make a compiler for turning one language into another"

"Why?"

"Well, when you make a website, you have to do all this _stuff_ , but, well, you could do less stuff, just more clever, and then it's easier and you don't have to worry about for loops and such"

"What's a for loop?"

"Oh that doesn't matter. But now we can use a monadic map instead, which is much easier, developers don't want to write loops, map is better. But Javascript is a bit fiddly, so now I've written another language, so you can write in that, and then you run my tool, and then you get Javascript, so the browsers can understand it."

"Oh, so the browser only runs Javascript?"

"Yes. Well no. Actually most of them run some kind of JIT compiler, which turns javascript into another language, and then they run that"

"So your language becomes another language which becomes another language? Why not just write the other one?"

"Well, because that's not really what we want to do, it's awkward, and inefficient, and bug-prone..."

"But your language isn't a real thing? No-one's actually using it? My computer never gets it, never runs it, never understands it? Shouldn't you be doing _real_ development?"

<comment><USER14> It's easier: just like CEOs delegate certain tasks to underlings, developers delegate certain tasks to compilers and tools. So writing vanilla JS is like CEO cleaning own office and doing accounting. Possible, might be enjoined, but generally inefficient and annoying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> These are interesting links, but 15 submissions in 15 minutes is way overdoing it.

<comment><USER16> See that's why humans won't last long, can't even compute a little 7311 word data stream in 900 seconds. So invest in robots, ok? Robots are disruptive and future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Trend following futures models typically have a very high variance in returns, so yielding above market returns in 1 year out of 4 is not significant or meaningful.

</comment><comment><USER18> Two Sigma is hiring javascript developers to build open source research systems (the tools used by the quants to build the AIs): [http://beakernotebook.com/careers](http://beakernotebook.com/careers)

</comment><comment><USER19> So apart from the first 6, they did as the DOW or less, which is not so impressive. Or is it?

<comment><USER20> depends on the sharpe ratio.

You can flip a coin every year. Heads; double your money, tails; lose your bet. You can easily win 3 years in a row (12.5% chance), but getting 800% return on that risk is literally worthless in the long run, as the chance of winning or losing is equal.

<comment><USER19> What I meant is... Those 'huge benefits of algorithmic hedge funds' depend on the number of algorithmic hedge funds: if there are enough of them, you will probably get some with outstanding results every year, won't you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "Nothing new under the sun" as we are used to say. Think is.. what will happen when even the small companies have enough processing powers and knowledge to implement such system. What value would any currency have. Scary to think...

</comment><comment><USER22> But do the robots get bonuses...? I think not.

<comment><USER20> the people who build the "robots" (Algorithms, or trading systems are a more applicable name) do.

<comment><USER22> Quite. So it isn't really robots versus humans, but one algorithm versus another, the humans are using a method too.</comment></comment></comment>