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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30462 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 14, 2023

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You can get a really shitty studio apartment for something like $150 usd a month in a crappy area of Osaka for example.

Yeah that's a good point. We've made shitty housing illegal in the U.S. That Osaka apartment would almost certainly be illegal to rent in the United States. But another factor is that there is no underclass in Japan. It's not worth renting to the underclass in the U.S. for $150/month because the damage they do to your unit will easily exceed that.

That sort of job does not get a roof over your head in most of the US, and certainly not in high cost cities.

It's worth pointing out that Section 8 government housing allows menial wage workers to get a much nicer unit than the equivalent worker in Japan. But, obviously, as a government program there are a million hoops to jump through.

In any case, the drug zombies on the streets of San Francisco aren't capable of holding a job at all.

I wonder when that changed and why? It used to be a viable business and major cities were replete with flophouses and boarding houses and long stay hotels of various qualities.

They were made illegal by ordinance.

There’s still flophouses. I can go on Craigslist right now and find single bedrooms with access to a bathroom for $500/mo in DFW. If I’m willing to compromise and live in a cubicle, or in the far suburbs, or the serious hood, I can get a lower price.

Now I can afford to not do that, but the point is that the code of tenants rights and housing code and the like don’t stop people in four different counties and who knows how many cities from doing it. Somehow the difficulty evicting when people in the market for $500/mo housing predictably have trouble paying rent doesn’t deter people from offering it.

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