This is a cool idea.
This is a cool idea.
This is a cool idea.
You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
"We've given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We've given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing."
So this guy shouldn't be news, this should be the standard, it's scary that the one good guy with enough money to do something like this is the exception and not the norm.
We all evolved to live in tribes; we have to work together as people.
That's why we elected people to help the community with our collected funds. To help govern the distribution of the community effort. Well, that was the idea.
Yo
Idea
What if ALL the houses we build are for reducing homelessness?
At least think about it
Just want to remind everyone that we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a cost of living crisis. Everyone deserves a place to live and we have plenty. The will is the only thing. Fight YIMBY traitors. We can do it!
Do they pay him rent now?
Fight against homelessness shall not be charity driven.
Yes but this is still a good idea in the meantime
I have nothing against "home first" strategy, however when some random millionaire decide without impact study or methodology how to fix the problem it might look like home shelters outside of zones where homeless get their social, work or food access, without lights, water or any usefull public infrastructure.
How good it is depends on the details, of course.
Someone took 99 families off the streets? Wow fuck that asshole, how dare she have enough money to do that. How dare she not give up her home and make it 100 families off the streets, not good enough!
-Half this website, angry 99 families now have a place to live who didn't before this event
The anger isn't (necessarily) for the rich person who housed people. It's for the system who left people homeless in the first place, the system that will put those people back on the streets if they don't pay rent/property taxes/whatever other fee people have to pay to exist, the system where the solution is literally just "have rich people pay their share and almost everything will be fixed" but for some reason the people in charge can't (or don't want to) figure that out.
You conflating anger with the system with anger for people getting houses is disingenuous.
She?
Bold of you to assume their gender identity!
(I need glasses)
He denied their choice to live like they wanted and God intended! What an asshole. Who is he to decide for them?
This website is full of envy is the simple answer. Hate for people who have more, tons of entitlement and the "I totally wouldn't want to be a billionaire!" bullcrap flying around.
the bullshit is that the system left 99 people without homes in the first place
Nice!
Now, it would be good not to rely on good will of some individuals and actually enforce this for all the rich.
But still mad respect for the man.
A lot of people talk about taxing folks like this and then using the money to supply the housing.
The thing is, given the money, few people could pull this off well. The site isn't just being plopped down; from the sound of the article in the comments it's being actively developed as a community with other safeguards and support, by someone who sunk a lot of time into finding out what would work to help people rather than just appear to help.
A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives. It also needs a community that will embrace it - for example it would likely work in the town I grew up in, but the town I work in (and am sadly forced to live in) now would likely drive such a project to failure.
It's a good idea that worked against the odds, and should be celebrated for that alone.
A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives.
Sounds like an opportunity for the local government, and a way to create local jobs.
that sounds an awful lot like communism to me. We can't have that.
Where are they built in relation to necessary services, and what other services are available?
Is there on site support for drugs and mental health issues?
Is anybody's stuff going to be safe there? Or are they dumped out of sight and mind?
You have to 'invest' in preventing the causes of homelessness in the first place, which has proved impossible under capitalism. I doubt corrupt dictatorships of the proletariat such as the Soviet Union did any better.
There's a lot of negativity from armchair experts in this thread but this seems like a genuine case of somebody putting a lot of thought and a lot of effort into actually helping the homeless. It's not just dropping a bunch of tiny houses and saying "job done".
It's deadass exhausting seeing people whinge whenever anything that improves the world happens. Always enough time for criticism, never enough to do something anywhere near as positive IRL.
yep, image has been accurate for a long time now.
It's hard not to be jaded. I bounce between both sides constantly.
Either way, this guy did an incredible thing.
Incredible read, thank you for sharing this
I think most likley that is actually the case. Y'all are masters at the sophist uno card. Cha cha real smooth...how low can you go...Charity is a band aid of tyranny and all those in the hierarchy play their part. Some towns out west that have a bunch of rich people don't have any infrastructure for the poor so the peasants can serve them their cheeseburgers at their local McDonald's. This means the rich need us. It is not altruism but out of necessity, but you can spin anything the way you would like, especially when it's hard to tell rich people what to do.
Yes this.... "What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead." Butttttttt...... "But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you" (Matthew 6:6, ESV)
Rich people love peacocking managing perception and you will lap it up like a loyal dog unaware of your position in the hierarchy. I am not even Christian but raised Christian I suppose.
Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
Are you high? It’s incredibly difficult to follow your wondering logic.
I like this because it is both a good story about an individual helping their community and it is proof individual action alone is not enough to rely on to solve social problems.
Good for him, but this is pretty much an Orphan-Crushing Machine moment.
Haha uhhh gawd.
Now imagine if billionaires did it with their infinite wealth......sad. humanity and capitalism is just cancer.
If we can convince them their dick size is measured by how much charity / benefit they do with their wealth we will solve many of the world's problems overnight
I still don't get why "rich lists" aren't done using tax returns. It's a clear yardstick to compare egos by.
It also has the side effect of encouraging civic contribution via taxes. By the time you're that rich, money is just a score. Make it worthwhile not to dodge taxes, and tax dodging will drop off.
And why were they homeless?
Why were they homeless???
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
millionares($) wouldn't be able to afford multiple yachts, or even so large of a yacht. billionares, those who offshoring wealth makes sense for, are the problem.
not the docter nor lawyer, but the whale.
millionares pay about 48%-49%, at least where im from.
Man, Im starting to think I'm tarded. Something about this isn't letting my brain work, please do more sentences
I see one: he actually did something instead of a council that blows all of the money on meetings
If every billionaire did this and ended homelessness perhaps they would have a point about their wealth hoarding. I won't be holding my breath for this to happen though. Tax the rich!
Sure there are lots of failures to the way we govern ourselves. This shouldn't be a need. The reality is that it is a need and that person did what he could. Have you?
Absolutely. We don’t need kings making decisions like this. The downside is the difficulty in forcing government and the anti-help-anyone segment of our society to spend such taxation correctly to actually help people.
I’m also angry he did a good thing despite the government’s abject failure to tax the rich.
What makes you think Trump's administration will make better use of that money?
Especially because his unilateral decision is optional. Someone got lucky with his choice vs someone was guaranteed an outcome.
This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn't have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn't get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.
Corruption could make that money go to some people's 3rd, 4rd or their relatives houses UNFORTUNATELY . The question here is: what about those who pay a rent???
Corruption already makes most millionaires' and billionaires' money go to that anyway. At least if it's taxed some of it will actually go to toward necessary housing, maybe even frequently enough that it's not newsworthy when it does, the way it is now.
So we're so scared of corruption that (checks notes) we stop even trying for fairness and instead just let rich fucks make all the decisions and hope for the best?
I'm of two minds.
We need to keep these as transitional housing, though, and a feeder into a "starter" unit in proper dense mixed-use: every block (hectare) taken for tiny homes is 3 million cubic meters of space taken from a land budget we're already overdrawn on.
I think thats always the hope that they are first steps of stability to move up. None of the projects like this I've seen have been intended to be life time residence.
There are tiny-home dwellers but they're often highly educated professionals who decide to live Buddhist for a while. Some of them wind up enjoying it.
The better analogy for homeless folks would be living in cars, aka the invisible homeless - is this better than that? Fuck yes. Even if it WAS permanent it's better than that.
Millionaire? Nice. Billionaires should follow suit, but 1000x
(With ~800 billionaires in the US, that's 79,200,000 homes)
That's my takeaway. The positive effect of the charity of this mere millionaire really does a great job showing just how fucking evil billionaires are. So much potential for positive change in the world siphoned into yachts and propaganda
They didn't become billionaires by being charitable.
Quite the contrary. You CAN'T accumulate that much money except by exploiting others, creating issues like homelessness.
How many homes do we actually need?
Funny story, we actually have enough housing for everyone. It just isn't always where people want to live, and corporate landlords would rather leave a space vacant to drive up rents than make all of their inventory available, so there is a shit ton of residential (and commercial) property that is basically abandoned.
The official homeless number for 2024 in the US was 771,480. That's probably just reported and not actual.
Analysts think we’re about 4.5 million homes short of what we would need to a well-functioning housing market. I’m not sure exactly how they’re defining that.
Drive through a small town, and all of your questions will be answered.
This is not a housing problem, it's not a mental health problem, it's a fucking unadulterated greed problem.
Please arm yourselves. The opposition will.
I've heard elsewhere that we already have enough vacant homes being reverse squatted by property management companies to house every homeless person.
Good 😊 What a kind thing to do 😊 Those with lots of money, helping those who don't have👌🏻
Reminds me of what Micheal Sheen did. Wholesome 🥰
Not everyone agrees with this thought but I'm also for allowing unused city parcels to be used for homeless tents and such. My city does everything it can to hide homelessness without addressing any of the underlying issues
Source? Did it actually work? Very cool if so.
If you give a homeless person a home, then by definition, they are no longer homeless.
On a less pedantic note, yes, it should. Some countries (like mine) provide a secure place to live as step one, when helping the homeless. Having somewhere safe to sleep, keep your property, etc. makes all the other steps involved in solving your problems much easier, leading to a better success rate in getting people back on their feet.
Further it enables them to apply for all manners of documents as they have an address to their name. Try getting any sort of document from a bank or governmental branch without an address. Trying to get a passport without address? Nope. No address no ID, no Bank account and mostly no employment anywhere without either of the two.
My city does something like this as part of our homeless program and we're at "net-zero" homeless. It doesn't work on it's own, but the tiny homes give people a stable place to keep their stuff safe and the elements off their bodies, it gives them an address they can use for things like mail and applications, and it gives social workers a place to find them reliably. It's the start of a long process to help them back to their feet.
Being on the streets is also incredibly dangerous. Putting drug users around other drug users as well doesn't keep them off drugs.
Here's one article about it.
https://macleans.ca/society/tiny-homes-fredericton/
I don't remember where I saw this the first time, but it did mention that this had become a thing in a few American cities too (this story was from Fredericton, Canada)
I used to live in a town that did something very similar to this. It sorta worked but mostly did not. But as another commenter pointed out you need more than just homes. Obviously they help a ton but a lot of people need more help than just a roof over their head. Financially, medically, mentally, employment... It's a bigger, more complicated problem.
But it goes without saying that this is a step in the right direction and absolutely better than collectively shrugging our shoulders and walking away.
Housing is the basis for addressing most of those other issues.
This is what I found: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/12-neighbours-founder-transitional-housing-1.7510785
But basically, this is something that works in Finland well enough https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/look-finlands-housing-first-initiative
Spacing looks a bit odd. Would a communal park and then less space between each be better? Not really enough space around each one to be much use beyond a few plant pots anyway.
99 is not nearly enough but it's a start at least
I would say that this particular millionaire did his part to help out. If every millionaire/billionaire spent the same percentage of their wealth on similar projects we would be in pretty good shape as far as homelessness goes.
Don't say this here. The people here don't like charity from rich folk. While I agree it is worthwhile to point out that taxation and good governance is better than rich people charity. these folk are a bit too angry for their own good.
Mm I don't think this is the solution to homelessness. It's not that we don't have enough housing it's that the working class gets pushed down so much and can't work despite wanting to. But I'm not qualified to solve homelessness so who am I to tell them how to spend their money.
There are strategies to
I worked adjacent to some org buying the back lot of a school to convert into this kind of housing for homeless teens; above is what I can recall when reading into the program.
Yeah this is all as a result of late stage capitalism. If we had some free childcare, free healthcare, accessible rehab, job assistance, more green spaces, I'm sure homelessness will go down significantly. But we're doing the opposite of all of this.
It is in the sense that providing houses fixes homelessness. It isn't in the sense that relying on individual charity won't fix the problem as a nation.
We don't really need tiny homes. We need more mid size apartments and more 5 over 1 large apartments. Homelessness wouldn't happen to a lot of people if we had cheap 600$ apartments.
i think there's an area in project zomboid that looks like that
Has he tried paying his employees a good wage and benefits?
He sold his company for eight figures and used that wealth to build these communities for the people most in need, not (just) his (now former) employees.
But even if he was still CEO, the fact remains that it's not just for his employees and pay is still just half the equation: he doesn't control the price of rent, and the real solution is rent control. Otherwise nothing stops landlords from just raising rent higher ans higher once they figure out that employers will just pay their tenants more.
So yes, good pay matters, and we need comprehensive minimum wage laws and worker protection, but we also need rent control. And preferably to banish all landlords to the shadow realm.
Rent control is a stopgap measure. Without enough supply, it doesn't matter how controlled the rent is if your odds of obtaining a unit are miniscule. Adding to the supply as a response to rising rental rates and property prices is the correct way to keep things stable. Which should be the govt's job, but...
Hell yeah we're bringing back shanty towns
When Trudeau's housing accelerator fund gave a wad of cash to Burnaby they increased developer fees by 50k. I dont know where this guy lives but people dont want to live out in the middle of no where with no job.
I knew there would be someone shitting on a noble deed in the comments.
Good start, weird that it's built like a CPU heat sink. Wouldn't it be cheaper to build duplexes or quadplexes? Fewer walls, less insulation per person...
These are tiny homes that are built in a shop and just dropped onto the little concrete pad once they're done. A small crew was able to build them out over time, so I can't say which option exactly is cheaper. One advantage was they were able to move people in as they were built too.
Edit to add a word
Even lower income people want a places they can call their own. Even lower income people prefer not to deal with other people’s noise or stomping or flooded sink. Even lower income people don’t want to deal with a building manager for repairs. Even lower income people want to be able to make choices in their living accommodations.
Plus these are probably all factory built and I see a simple gravel foundation. Cheap and fast to set up, but it’s still a house. Probably much cheaper than full scale houses
probably zoning laws. that's a HUGE part of why we don't just build more apartments in many places. it's why people get so passionate about the "white flight" as it's known and nimbyism. everyone wants to fix homelessness, but in any of the places that one could effectively build community housing it is illegal to make anything that provides housing to more than 1 or 2 families. the people that live there want homelessness to go away, but when it's proposed to build low income housing nearby they freak out and say "poor people and drug addicts? they do crime. low income housing is cool, but not in my backyard".
being poor in america has such a stigma that homeowners consistently vote to ban them from living nearby by banning apartments. to be perfectly honest, I'm just waiting for zoning laws to try and make these tiny homes illegal now that people are building them for the poor.
And building codes. The foundation alone can be the reason. A regular full scale building requires a concrete or piered foundation or slab depend8ng on the area, which is fairly expensive and time consuming. These look like simple gravel foundations, which is fine for that size structure
What !? Sharing a wall with someone else because it's more efficient in terms construction and maintenance costs?! Get outta here you commi!
They look like toilets with a cute small porch
$10k per house per million?
I hope he was a millionaire several times over…
what kind of math? you did 1 million/99?
that’s meaningless… yes, he would have had to spend several million to do this… they’re probably tiny homes..
and hell the whole meme is probably fake
it's real. the 'millionaire' sold a startup for $340m. the homes are in new brunswick and cost $50k ea to build and furnish. the land was $500k. the houses are ~ 240-300 sq ft tiny homes. rent (at the time that source was written) starts at $200.
what kind of math?
Solar powered, too.
How many stories have I seen about billionaires building housing? Zero. Though, to be fair, I've only seen a meme about a millionaire doing so. No verification that it happened.
https://themindcircle.com/millionaire-builds-99-homes-to-reduce-homelessness/
Seems to be true :).
That's awesome. Thanks for the update.
There's someone in Kelowna doing something similar.
i hope it works and contains a forever lease and not just a month to month where the land will be improved by these houses then said millionaire sells the land for a profit and the people living there are screwed yet again.
I hope the opposite: that these are more transitional, with associated services to help people get back on their feet for an eventual move to more standard housing when they are ready
all are good things imho!
A forever lease dude? If that’s in the deal then imma be honest with you and tell you me and my hommies are declaring homelessness and moving to wherever this meme is from. We can rebuild our lives from a point of never paying rent again.
If you have a hatred of hierarchy and a love of nature send me a DM. I'm interviewing people for an intentional community.
The first 5 people that pass the vibe check will get a one dollar, 99 year lease, on .5 acres to call your own. As long as you also partake in fixing/improving central infra.
Oh and one heavy caveat... You gotta be cool with winter. We are in Canada.
I mean that homeownership. i pay prop taxes but own my home. Forgive me. i was pooping and reading and forgot my words. 😂
If it's tiny houses that are barely liveable it's just barely better than nothing
Should've built some low rise apartments to maximise the space and allow for bigger liveability space
Even he might not have been able to. Many cities have such restrictive zoning laws. Single family homes might have been hi only option
idk, I would live there, it looks about the same as my apartment. Detached dwellings are nice if you get a yard to customize but I think you're right, it would be more efficient as apartments because you don't even get a yard with these.
Here is a video showing some of the inside. Looks very livable to me.
I'm chill with rich people as long as some of their money goes to helping people
This is a terrible idea. We are not helpless children, it's our society, we have the right to provide the necessities of life: food, health care, a place to live and a decent job. Capitalism is the sickness: get healthy, go woke.
I think it's easier to make a million dollars and help a fair number of people out than it would be to over throw capitalism.
While helping people out with your millions of dollars you could also advocate for reform. Work with the systems available to make change. Screaming at the walls of Troy won't get you inside.
Nooo!!! Anyone with money is inherently evil! The only way to help the world is to ensure that none of us ever rise above the level of a wage-slave drone! Anyone who even approaches a position where they might be able to make an actual difference must be attacked mercilessly!
This is a showy display promoted to soften negitive opinion of capitalism. We would need "nice rich people" if we made a ethical wage
Show me a single leftist calling to remove the middle class.
I know of a guy who wanted to remove the middle class, but he also wanted to remove the upper and lower class as well so as to create a classless stateless society.
There is no such thing as evil ...... But their is antisocial and managing perception
There's a story about how Bill Gates plans to give away 99% of his wealth in the next 20 years (on causes like eradicating polio, decreasing child mortality, etc) and all the Lemmy comments are "he'll still have a billion dollars" or "he shouldn't have that money to begin with". Can't we appreciate some good in the world?
I dont want to take away the feel good juice but the lack of housing isnt what causes homelessness...
The government should have done that. At least Trump will build homes for the homeless veterans at least. This guy is doing his charitable work. Good for him. Even if it isn't his responsibility just because he's wealthy.
Trump ain’t doing shit
He only just signed an executive order stating as such lol
https://veterans.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=6702
is this a joke? any of those buildings are smaller then the cars they have!
I'm sorry, are the free houses you built for the homeless much larger than that?
They're homeless, not mansionless. A large number of tiny houses is absolutely a fantastic way to help.
Exactly, one of the major hurdles of being unhoused is not having a house. You have to have an address to begin the process of getting assistance in most places.
Considering everything some of them own can fit in a shopping cart, they are mansions.
Look up articles about ADUs (accessory dwelling units). This is a legitimate housing category based on the tiny house fad
If the photo is accurate, those 'homes' are tiny. Barely bigger than a garage compared to the cars next to them.
ETA: yup, as starters for homeless people these are great. I retract my incredulity.
Okay, and? Infinitely better than being on the street. Someone does something nice and people like you still complain.
Sure, I guess as a starter to get off the streets they're definitely better than nothing.
A safe place to sleep, store some shit, shower. Could be better, but sounds great to me.
My garage is bigger than my house and I'm very very happy with my house.
My garage is really not that big. Just that our house is 12 ft by 24 ft...
I think the term "homeless" is really a euphemism that makes it easier for wealthy people to talk about poor people (if you have shelter, food, and are not living paycheck to paycheck you count as wealthy), and it results in misunderstandings about what the real problems are.
Giving a house to someone who lives on the streets is a nice gesture but it doesn't address the underlying problems - unemployment, unemployability, health problems, psychological problems, lack of social support structure, lack of supportive relationships (e.g. friends and family) - you can't just fix someone's life with a building.
It's like a grade-school-level understanding of the problem ("just give the homeless people homes! then they're not homeless anymore! problem solved!"). Without putting in a real effort to support these individuals' lives, to understand and address what put them in that situation in the first place, this is a temporary patch that will end in relapse.
No but it's a start and a damn good one, sometimes just having a space that's safe warm and not exposed to the elements can be a huge help for a lot of people.
It’s still a huge help. You don’t have to solve all of a persons problems to help them with one of their problems.
Arguably the most immediate of their problems, that gets in the way of them addressing ALL of their other problems.
The wealthy do not deserve praise for spending the money they leeched from society to solve problems that could have been paid for by taxes they avoided paying. The wealthy are NOT going to solve society's problems long term, just drag them out so society relies on them instead of solving it themselves.
Inbe4 the starter-home priced housing is bought up, demolished, rebuilt, and sold as luxury housing on the market, as airbnbs, or rentals with no rent control.
He's a millionaire, not a billionaire. Calm down. A millionaire most likely worked hard and earned their wealth. It's billionaires who cheat.