The homeowner gets the petite outbuilding free in exchange for an agreement to serve as a landlord for an otherwise homeless family for 5 years. After 5 years, the homeowner gets a tiny house that's been lived in for 5 years and they can do what they want with it.
The living quarters, to be used in your — or your neighbors' — backyard, "would be about 200 square feet, with bunkbeds for the kids and water, sanitation and plumbing."
What sort of homeowner would do this? You would have people — with children — living right next to you in a horribly cramped space and you would be the landlord, with the responsibility to maintain habitable conditions. But you are not an experienced landlord. You may have good intentions and think kindly of the homeless in the abstract, but how would that idealism translate into proximity to real people who are your tenants, whose problems with the living conditions are your problems. Do you think these people will love you, their benefactor? You are the landlord!
But maybe you're thinking: If I can deal with this for 5 years, I'll be able to AirBnB it....
(Rethinking buying a house in Portland.)
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It's like having your very own plabtation with your very own . "servants quarters".
And the best part?
The state pays for it.
How can a liberal not like that?
If it does not have a foundation, a tiny house is a trailer. Think that you can live in a tiny house? Try living in an Airstream for six months.
And after five years you kick their sorry asses out and you have your very own man cave.
Stabbin cabin.
fap house.
Complete with running water, toilet, and electricity.
Honestly.
What's not to like?
The have invented Garage Apartments. These were standard issue house servant's quarters 100 year ago.
A great Althouse (get it?) experiment. You should buy a house, and agree to one of these little houses, then report on the experience day to day.
Suggestion: Drug test your potential tenants (is that allowed?).
The unintended consequences of inviting squatters.
After 5 years, they won't leave.
Drugs
Drugs
Drugs
After 5 years you'd have to pay homeless people to live there.
Without first, last and security you'll likely have to burn it down after five years.
A client rented out a small guest cottage in his backyard to a lovely couple. After he hadn't seen them for a few weeks he went back to check on them a noticed something was piled up in the front window and he couldn't open the front door. Turns out the couple had been illegally cleaning asbestos from job sites and during the day when he wasn't home had been stacking the waste in the cottage, floor to ceiling, in every available square inch.
People suck.
"A great Althouse (get it?) experiment. You should buy a house, and agree to one of these little houses, then report on the experience day to day."
Among the 100 reasons why I wouldn't do this: I would not be able to blog about these people. It would violate my ethics.
That is a breathtakingly whackadoodle idea. Cockamamie! Hare-brained! So ignorant of his actual people operate that only Portland nutjobs could have dreamed it up.
Althouse, those of us who have lived in the PNW for decades keep telling you -- don't do it! Listen to us before it's too late!!
For some reason, I think I recall seeing this covered here at Althouse.
Brenda Konkel, a vocal Madison advocate for the homeless, and her partner, Robert Bloch, are facing potential fines of up to $300 a day if they don’t stop allowing homeless people to sleep and store belongings in lockers on the porch of their North Hancock Street house.
*how actual people operate
Portland is its own insane asylum.
I love the tiny houses idea. I have not seen this talked about before - one in someone's back yard. I have seen the tiny house villages and I think they are a great idea, giving people privacy.
How wonderful that it is being tried. Let the perpetual critics criticize :-)
Hell, why build the little shitting houses? Just force homeowners with more space than they need to give that extra space to the homeless. Portland won't have to pay to build little houses, the poor would be integrated right into middle class families and the poor could take advantage of other extra things the homeowners own.
To calculate extra space, Portland politicians would determine how much space middle class people are allotted.
I thought that in Portland the housing commissar guaranteed every citizen 9 square meters of living space.
I assume you couldn't just borrow and build a tiny rental unit in your back yard outside this program because of zoning regs.
The neighbors, who bought homes in a neighborhood zoned single family, are kind of getting screwed.
Clearly it's not for everybody. You have to have the right temperament to be a landlord. You can't be a pushover, you'll get taken advantage of. Home owner should prepare him/her self to be painted the heartless Scrooge on social media.
Sure there will be problems. Everything has problems. Why not try it?
This gets my third amendment hackles up. These tiny house folks sound like soldiers for social justice to me.
Little boxes made of ticky tacky, and they all look just the same.
Too bad there's no "hilariously bad ideas" tag. Probably not enough ideas both this bad and lending themselves to such humor.
I think the operating principle behind this idea is:
There's a sucker born every minute. Given that fact, nobody should be homeless.
sunsong,
I love the tiny houses idea. I have not seen this talked about before - one in someone else's back yard. I have seen the tiny house villages and I think they are a great idea, giving people privacy,
Fixed it for you.
(Rethinking buying a house in Portland.)
I don't recall ever reading about a visit to Portland on your blog. Have you or Meade been there recently? Or do you just like Portland in the abstract?
"Am I a nice person? Of course I'm a nice person. I've got a family of four living in a shed in my backyard!"
May have missed the evidence in the photographs but I think that those images are all of the single person houses (didn't see any shots of the bathrooms or bunkbeds). Still.
People 'live right next to you' in apartment buildings, and I'd imagine that tenement life is preferable to life on the street. Would hate to be in the situation of having to live in one of the 'backyard houses' but I can see that some homeowners with sufficient land &c (who knows what all rules &c will be put in place-- and, yes, based on what happens here in Eugene, drugs-testing is certain to be a pre-condition) might be inclined to give this a go.
First thing I thought Tcrosse!
Five years is more than enough time for them to pass the law prohibiting the homeowners from evicting such tenants.
I am Laslo.
Compassionate is not the word that comes to mind when people talk about having homeless families live in space 1/5 the size of a singlewide trailer for five years.
KPBS has been running a series on affordable housing in SoCal with an emphasis on Oceanside which is where I live. The main unforeseen consequence was the need to provide the shelter in perpetuity. In other words, once people get used to subsidized housing, they demand subsidized housing -- forever. They adjust their lives around it. The same thing happens in healthcare.
Sure: you can keep a family in a cramped box in the backyard for five years, but you keep ONE girl in the basement for awhile and now you're The bad Guy.
I am Laslo.
I think what you're getting for your 5 years of forbearance is not the tiny house, but a zoning variance that allows you to have a tiny house.
The house itself will likely be completely trashed after 5 years of homeless person TLC and will have to be completely replaced at the homeowners expense...assuming that is permitted.
Moving from Madison to Portland would be like not moving. Too very white and very progressive cities. Maybe try a more "diverse" place than Portland.
It will START out as "voluntary".
There is something very Marie Antoinette about all this.
I visit my hippy local legend musician buddy in Salem/Portland every August for a couple of weeks. It is a completely alternate universe and it's as if nobody ever travels out of that area. Everybody I meet is pleasant. And don't have a car. Or their own house. Or $100.00 in their pocket. I feel like Aristotle Onassis.
And don't get me started on the Guided By Voices fandom. That's just goddamned stupid.
My wife and I love the idea of moving to The Big Island in the abstract. Doesn't mean it's going to happen or would even be a good thing.
Will the sucker, I mean home owner, be liable for actions of the homeless tenants? How about if one them gets hurt somehow on your property?
I can't think of a faster way to convert progs into right wingers than to make them Section 8 landlords.
HGTV has a show called Tiny House Hunters. The people looking for the tiny houses seem to be clinically insane IMO.
I have no sympathy for people who can't find "affordable" housing in the big city hot spots like NYC, Portland, etc. I suggest they move somewhere else that has more economical housing costs.
And what Freeman Hunt said at 8:57AM.
The house itself will likely be completely trashed after 5 years of homeless person TLC and will have to be completely replaced at the homeowners expense...assuming that is permitted.
Of course you can [will be required to] replace the house ... and you'll take on a new homeless family too.
Interesting that the comments on the original article are even more negative than the ones here.
(Rethinking buying a house in Portland.)
Go with Bend - better weather, big enough for coffee, small enough for rivers and trees.
Does the home owner have a thumbs up or down on who moves in?
What if they assign you a half dozen Juggalos?
How many guests can the Juggalos have? For how long? Do you enjoy Insane Clown Posse?
But seriously, housing the homeless is not for sentimental dilletantes who are unaware of the pathologies involved. It's not doing the homeless any favors by warehousing them in inadequate quarters.
" A good war makes sacred almost most any cause. The newer breed wills chaos " . Professor Bloom nailed it.
If you sell the house, do your guest go along with it? It's almost like Portland has reintroduced serfdom.
If one of the homeless kids falls off your roof and it's your fault because you own a ladder, will the homeless people suddenly be living in the main house and you in the stinking shed?
Nearly all homeless people are men, so:
Tiny house village for homeless women approved by Kenton neighborhood
I lived with two other adults in a 60s-era VW van as we traveled through Europe from the Black Sea to Lisbon and again in a 70s-era one as we traveled from Bahia, Brazil to Bariloche, Argentina, Santiago, Chile, Montivideo, Uruguay and beyond. Many years later, we all still have fond memories of the trips.
Can I require my little house tenants to work?
Blogger chickelit said...
My wife and I love the idea of moving to The Big Island in the abstract.
I live on the Big Island.
Medical care is crappy. I won't retire here.
Q: What do you call a neighborhood that is all tiny houses?
A: A trailer park.
The tenants will forget you are their savior when their kids bring home a dog that barks all night, digs holes and shits everywhere except in the holes and you tell them the dog has to go.
I could probably house about 200 homeless people in my barn, but that ain't never going to happen. Where would they shit and piss or bathe?
Imagine what virtue signaling laws will happen in the future. Not sustainable.
Can folks do this w/ rentals that they own rather than the home they live in?
And, at what point do these sorta things overlap w/ a slumlord type operation? Doesn't seem too far off.
I have no sympathy for people who can't find "affordable" housing in the big city hot spots like NYC, Portland, etc. I suggest they move somewhere else that has more economical housing costs.
Mocking the people on these shows, my friend said you'll hear this phrase at least once an episode, "we're redefining success." Haha
I don't think I'm going out on a limb thinking that Portland has extensive tenant protection laws that effectively make THEM the landlords. And imagine trying to sell a house with a homeless shelter in the yard.
It's all fun and games until the tenant with untreated schizophrenia decides your seven year old is a doberman trying to kill him.
Are there really that many homeless families in Portland? I would assume they were all hipster/granola 20 something males.
And, at what point do these sorta things overlap w/ a slumlord type operation? Doesn't seem too far off.
Government sanctioned, therefore they can't be slumlords. Ever seen section 8 housing? Most are pretty slumlordy.
I wonder if the woman with the "No Home for Hate" sign down the street from me will put up one of these houses. But then again people like her are more into showing off their liberal values than actually doing anything about them.
We've had a few formerly homeless women live in our apartments. Their rents were guaranteed and they were properly fed and medicated by the government. Their new homes were in good, safe neighborhoods. They seemed like ideal tenants who had been heavily vetted by our social service workers. Everything was provided, but there were problems. Portland's hipsters and do-gooders are not aware of the vast problems these people suffer from and can't overcome. And the damage they will do to their homes and to their bodies is not good. It is very depressing to be around people who are drug addicted and alcoholic or who are mentally ill. But, if you can stomach that, why would you let the government drop a cheap, ugly, metallic box in your backyard and fill it up with crazy people? The box will be destroyed in a year or two. Your taxes and insurance rates will jump (do you think State Farm will insure your metal box filled with crazy people for nothing?). You will be constantly cleaning up after these people, unclogging their toilets and sinks, etc. This is sad and delusional. The government needs to provide housing that is durable, hygienic and properly policed. A normal family living in suburbia can't do this and shouldn't be shamed into doing this either. Shame on the liberal do-gooders!
If you want more homelessness subsidize it!
Compassionate is not the word that comes to mind when people talk about having homeless families live in space 1/5 the size of a singlewide trailer for five years.
But....they're TINY HOUSES! Just a place to sleep. The rest of the time you can be out hiking, kayaking, or reading at the library.
"Do you think these people will love you, their benefactor?"
And there'll be lots of sanitation issues (think defecation, needles, litter) with these people. But maybe that's to the good if you're into that sort of thing.
Remember, these people became homeless for reasons. The same reasons they'd be bringing to your back yard.
But on the upside, after 5 years that cute little micro house (if it still resembles a building) is all yours. Free and clear. Like visa holders your new tenants would never think of overstaying their allocated time, and the courts in a liberal state will be more than happy to vindicate your property rights over a mere tenant.
Typical yuppie liberal think.
The project will not end well. Squatters, drugs, gangs, violence. Many homeless also have MENTAL PROBLEMS.
Put that all by your kids and your neighbor's kids and see how well it works.
Let Bill Gates do it first.
"Remember, these people became homeless for reasons. The same reasons they'd be bringing to your back yard."
It amuses me to see how the left has no idea of why people are homeless.
I used to take my students to homeless shelters in LA,. The directors told us that 90% of homeless are either psychotic or drug addicts and half of each group is both. Just who you want in your back yard.
I rented one time, years ago, in a large old house that had been chopped up into four apartments. There was a guy upstairs, maybe 30, nice guy, but slow, had a bad ticker as well, lived on disability. He met a homeless couple somehow and they moved into his apartment. Disabled Guy was lonely and he liked having the company, but they weren't supposed to be there. Our landlady would've kicked them right out, but she was out of town for the winter, leaving her son in charge who was like 20 and couldn't give a shit.
Homeless Dude stole a shopping cart and spray-painted it in the parking lot, right next to my truck. Got paint all over the side of my truck. I bitched, of course. Homeless Dude got belligerent, but Disabled Guy apologized, said he'd keep things under control. So I tried to be a nice guy about it and let it go.
Then Homeless Guy drilled a hole in my bedroom ceiling so he could spy on me and my girlfriend. Nice.
Long story short, I made my displeasure crystal clear to Homeless Dude and he decided to pack up his honey bunny and push his newly painted shopping cart on down the road.
On his way out he slashed my tires.
Disabled Guy went back to being lonesome and giving me what I came to think of as "The Look."
Please not Portland, Althouse. Remember also that they drained an entire reservoir because a teenager peed in it. They are completely crazy. Plus no university anything like UW. You think you get hassled in Madison sometimes? In Portland they might burn peace signs on your front lawn.
Someone has already said this but I will repeat it. Imagine what this will do to home values if only one out of 25 homes in your neighborhood adopts this dumb idea.
What could reasonably be done is to change local regulations to encourage operating boarding houses - this was extremely common in the US until the 1950s. Let homeowners more leeway (and lower risk) to rent rooms, etc., and make more efficient use of excess housing capacity.
This will relieve demand for rentals and drive down rents, creating openings for residence hotels and other slum housing, which would then be much more affordable.
No reason to tie this to a rather limited and twee fad for "tiny houses".
" Build tiny houses in people's backyards and rent them out to families with children now living on the street."
Why the backyard? Why not the front yard?
The unintended consequences of inviting squatters.
After 5 years, they won't leave.
That'd be my fear. After hearing horror stories of CA tenant "protections" and how easily somebody can squat on your property and the difficulty in removing them, I'd wonder how easily one could evict the people in OR. I'm assuming not very easily.
" Build tiny houses in people's backyards and rent them out to families with children now living on the street."
Why the backyard? Why not the front yard?
Property values? The homeless might be as tacky as pink flamingos.
But think of the great Thunderbird parties.
Let's say you move to Portland and buy a three bedroom house but you and Meade only occupy one. Selfish!! Homeless people, families, could easily move into the other bedrooms.
You think this hasn't been discussed in Portland? You need to think again.
These 200 square feet units cost $75,000, which comes to $375 per square foot.
That compares to $150/square foot, which is the average sq. foot cost of new residential housing these days.
I wonder why it's so much higher for these tiny houses.
Also:
"This is really just rental housing as any rental housing would be," said joint office director Marc Jolin. "It's a family that is going to be renting, so I don't expect this will be a situation that would cause significant concern for neighborhoods."
One thing the article fails to get into are zoning considerations. In most neighborhoods of most American cities, if you have a single family dwelling on a single family lot, you can't just up and add another house out back and move in some tenants.
Are these tiny houses going to be moved into the backyard of single-family dwellings? They make it sound that way when they write "build tiny houses in people's backyards". But for the many reasons pointed out in the comments, it doesn't really seem very likely that what is supposed to happen here is that Suzie and John Q. Citizen with their lovely two kids and three bedroom ranch are all of a sudden going to have a tiny house in their backyard. It seems more likely that these would go up in the not-so-nice backyards of what is already a multi-family installation (perhaps what people used to call a tenement) and will be managed by an experienced landlord.
I don't think the reporter really got what is going on here.
"Tenants" trashing the little house may be a big worry for a less immediate reason. As landlord, you may very well be responsible for fixing anything they trash. Imagine the city coming after YOU for not maintaining what the city considers a habitable residence. And with the political layering of such a program, I suspect the city, and its inspectors and human services employees will be subjecting the homeowner to more scrutiny than the average slumlord. You're inviting the City of Portland into your life as much or more than any homeless family.
Don't move to Portland. It would mess up the routines of your Eastern and Central time zone readers.
The mayor and city council members should lead the way in this initiative, with homeless chosen at random. Then we'll see how it works out.
>>Let Bill Gates do it first.
First the mayor. Then every homeowner employed by the city.
And, as others have suggested, it will be impossible to evict them, and their "rights" will trump those of the real homeowner.
Only very smart people in government can be this stupid.
The types of homeless who are just down on their luck and only need a hand to get back on their feet will be out in a year. The ones who are crazy, who are addicts and are the ones you don't want in your backyard will be there for at least 5 years.
to make them Section 8 landlords.
I'm sure I've written this before, but it bears repeating.
One of the in-laws does property management in Portland. He had a flat where he accepted a woman with a child under Section 8. The woman was vetted by some NGO do-gooders.
He was a little concerned when extra mattresses showed up at the unit. When they installed the stripper pole, he was finally able to evict them.
I just went out and measured. We could fit 2 20'X10' tiny houses in what is called around here "the terrace" which is the space between the public sidewalk and the curb. Our backyard is already home to what were a bunch of homeless trees. If I put tiny houses in the backyard, I'd have to cut down trees and wouldn't that bring the EcoWarriors down on my case, occupying and chanting "SAVE THE TREES" all night long (which would annoy the fox and owls who migrate through every night)?
I kind of like trees more than people anyway which probably makes me a bad person, not the sort of person who would make a good landlord.
This plan is evidently based on the belief that lack of housing is the main cause of homelessness. However, I have read that the majority of homeless people are either mentally ill or drug or alcohol dependent.
Plus no university anything like UW.
yeah....you could really bring the crazy!! Move to Eugene!!
"I kind of like trees more than people anyway which probably makes me a bad person, not the sort of person who would make a good landlord."
Actually I think that's the sort of person who probably does make a good landlord.
"However, I have read that the majority of homeless people are either mentally ill or drug or alcohol dependent."
Oddly enough, I suspect many of my non-homeless neighbors (many who have advanced degrees and 6-figure incomes) are also mentally ill or drug or alcohol dependent.
What's the smallest house you could comfortably live in? My wife and I would need at least 1500SF if we downsized, with a backyard, we have dogs. Would the tiny house people be allowed to have dogs?
Blogger David53 said...
What's the smallest house you could comfortably live in? My wife and I would need at least 1500SF if we downsized, with a backyard, we have dogs. Would the tiny house people be allowed to have dogs?
Only small ones. Chihuahuas, rat terriers, tea cup poodles.
I came up with a similar plan to end homelessness.
1) Get a job
2) Make money
3) Buy or rent a home or apartment
CRAZY!
"Would the tiny house people be allowed to have dogs?"
That's a good question. While I was out measuring the terrace, I had to pick up some dog doo some dog handler failed to pick up. If we fill up the terrace with tiny houses, where would the dogs goo?
Blogger Meade said...
"However, I have read that the majority of homeless people are either mentally ill or drug or alcohol dependent."
Oddly enough, I suspect many of my non-homeless neighbors (many who have advanced degrees and 6-figure incomes) are also mentally ill or drug or alcohol dependent.
Quite so. Which is why to be so homeless that you need a tiny home in someone else's backyard, you must have used up the good will of all who ever knew you, or be absolutely raving insane, or be there by choice.
The mayor in Seattle has made homelessness his cause. There is a strong rumor that the homeless can walk into REI, and shazamm!!....they have a tent. They then make their way to the margins of I-5, and set up house. When the trash in the tent exceeds the trash outside of the tent, they ask for a new tent.
The abandoned tent remains, and is counted as part of the problem. It's Occupy Wall Street in a much grander scale.
The mayor wants to raise property taxes to solve homelessness. No, I'm not kidding.
And this wasn't just a tiny pile of doo. It was a 2-bagger!
The tiny houses are said to cost $75,000 apiece. You can buy a lot of house in rural America for that price.
"" Build tiny houses in people's backyards and rent them out to families with children now living on the street."
In LA, at least, there are no homeless families with children living on the street.
The city social welfare people find such families within a day of being notified and they are immediately moved into a shelter just for families.
The only exceptions are rare really psychotic people who hide.
This is one more leftist myth about homelessness,
Why not just build a trailer park in the city park? Trees, landscaping is already completed.
Or just put a small AirStream in the back yard. Tenants give you crap, just connect up and haul it to sungsong's front yard. Be a bumpy ride though.
The more fundamental problem is that rents are too high.
There is no place to put the lower class.
The people who live on the street would be elsewhere entirely if it werent that the desired city offers too much income and amenities, so they use unconventional means to obtain a lower cost of living.
""Would the tiny house people be allowed to have dogs?"
Most "homeless" have dogs. They use them to protect their stuff when not at their "spot."
"Tenants give you crap, just connect up and haul [AirStream] to sungsong's front yard."
Sunsong lives in Austin? Weird. I did not know that.
I repeat: Portland is a dark, godless place run by morons. Sunshine is a rarity.
Unless you need a big city, look at Ashland or Bend, OR.
Toxic waste liability could be an issue. Boulder used to rent houses in its open space to people who then set up
Meth labs. Houses and ground were contaminated with horrible chemicals.
Might also have fires when people screw up in tiny kitchens.
What happens to the homeowner's property tax assessment during/after the 5-year occupancy? Would a higher tax consume the economic benefit of the improvement?
Would the city grant a permanent zoning variance to let the homeowner continue to rent the structure? Would there be "rent stabilization" laws enacted, to offset the "unfairness" of one family paying market rent for a tiny house whose 5-year "earn-out" period had expired, while the family in an identical unit next door was paying nothing or nearly so?
Once the State rigs a market, the fun is never done.
The Portlandia episode writes itself. The guilty landlords want to help, they invite the backyard tenants to dinner, watch tv together, let them use the washing machine, give them rides, make them part of the fam. Gradually the landlords are pushed out, the homeless take over the big house and voila, everyone is equal, sort of.
I recommend an area set aside for favelas - a squatter settlement. Those are tiny houses.
@Meade, the late Steve Jobs was said to have had a personal "reality distortion" field. Austin invented the reality distortion field, and made it city-wide. Once in a while reality pokes through, such as when a woman discovered after voting for spending increases in Austin, that she could no longer afford the property taxes and was forced to sell her house and move. But that's pretty rare.
Its been done of course.
Captured well in the "Doctor Zhivago" movie, when the local soviet move the homeless into the Zhivago mansion.
As long as I get to choose the homeless people who get to live in my tiny houses.
If it's a sunsong? Sure — I could see letting a sunsong live in a nice AirStream suspended back up in the Oak trees. We would love to feed seeds to sunsong.
But Big Mike I'd have to have out on the street terrace.
Where we could use muscle.
"Doctor Zhivago"
Same thought.
"Remember, these people became homeless for reasons. The same reasons they'd be bringing to your back yard."
Precisely.
Were you really that invested in moving to Portland? I haven't visited the Portland Ore area in 10 years but it seems to me it wouldn't meet your requirements about commercial deadzones. I remember Lots of warehouses and miles & miles of industrial blight in the Portland area, unless they've redeveloped those areas in the last 10 years. Tacoma Washington, which is an hour North, is somewhat better--less deadzones, but not much. Puget Sound (Tacoma/Seattle) is breathtaking, but it's also surrounded by a heavy industrial/warehouse area, although it is more of a nautical and shipping industrial. In any case, You owe it to yourself to visit the Tacoma/Puget Sound, and of course Portland Ore, areas before making any permanent decisions one way or the other.
In Portland, rent has risen faster than young families can afford. http://www.wweek.com/news/2016/08/19/the-state-of-portland-rental-breakdown/
The cost of buying a home for a young family, as well.
Having kids and grand kids living there I hear the concerns first hand.
This has to be adding to the homeless problem that was already pushing out along the I-205 corridore (tents, tarps, etc in the grassy areas)
A property owner would literally have to be a complete fucking fool to take these terms. I doubt there will be many takers, even in Portland.
Those little sheds look like a great place to warehouse the kids while Mom and Dad
are scoring some meth.
And it is utterly predictable that you won't be able to legally evict the tenant after the 5 years is up.
Ann Althouse said...
"A great Althouse (get it?) experiment. You should buy a house, and agree to one of these little houses, then report on the experience day to day."
Among the 100 reasons why I wouldn't do this: I would not be able to blog about these people. It would violate my ethics.
Althouse !!! You are a lawyer. Put it in the lease, and have them initial it.
What are your 99 other reasons?
I was surprised to find that Portland rents are so high.
Bottom of the market 1br 1ba is over $800.
Baseline for similar is something over $600 in Sacramento, and the employment situation is better there.
It's all fun and games until you are in the backyard deadheading roses and minding your own business and then gotta bust out your not today, motherfucker!
Curious George @ 10:54.
Crazy!
I'm pretty sure that's bigoted, racist, homophobic, Nazi, anti-trans, anti-intersectional, and against the leftwingers on the supreme court. + "That's not who we are."
After 5 years, the homeowner gets a tiny house that's been lived in for 5 years and they can do what they want with it.
Who wants to bet that in 4 years and six months this gets changed?
Yancey Ward: "A property owner would literally have to be a complete fucking fool to take these terms. I doubt there will be many takers, even in Portland."
I've got news for you: eventually all leftist dominated devolve to "that which is not prohibited is mandatory".
Usually right before the Left puts the military in charge of all food production and distribution.
"Oddly enough, I suspect many of my non-homeless neighbors (many who have advanced degrees and 6-figure incomes) are also mentally ill or drug or alcohol dependent."
Hey!
buwaya
Zhivago indeed! Shanghai in the early 1980s was a city without cars and the French and German arrondissements were a museum of lovely mansions all filled to the brim with Chinese. I have not been back but I expect that those mansions are gone, replaced with office towers or commie living blocs. It must have been a lovely city
Amazing that people passing absurd zoning and residency regulations making new housing nigh impossible to construct think that THIS idea will work.
Progressives love the CONCEPT of the poor. But they really, really hate the poor.
"The [Seattle] mayor wants to raise property taxes to solve homelessness. No, I'm not kidding."
Funny (and sad).
I think this is an excellent idea. I think every registered Democrat who owns a home in Portland should be required to participate. Hell, everyone who votes for a Democrat. In a couple years, Oregonians would have our state back.
The Northwest is at risk for a monster earthquake/tsunami. Do not move there, Althouse.
hombre said...
I repeat: Portland is a dark, godless place run by morons. Sunshine is a rarity.
Unless you need a big city, look at Ashland or Bend, OR.
Althouse said that avoiding cold winters was a factor, so I'm not sure if Bend would work. Although I can't figure out why they keep looking at Colorado and Utah - equally frigid as Madison, I would think.
Not only is Portland run by morons, but dreadful ice storms are a problem as well.
damikesc: "Progressives love the CONCEPT of the poor. But they really, really hate the poor."
Progressives hate the middle class even more.
One of the biggest benefits to living in a very rural area with harsh winters (-5 at night, below 32 daytime, snow and ice) is that the homeless don't want to hang out here. They would rather be "homeless" in a nicer environment and where there are more begging and stealing opportunities, with soft touch liberals to sponge off of instead of hard working farmers, cowboys, loggers, construction workers who have not much sympathy for the drug addled, lazy, leeches. Someplace like Portland, San Francisco, Eugene or Eureka.
Those homeless that we do see here are legitimately mentally ill and there are organizations that are available to get them help and off of the street...or dirt roads as the case may be. The bums and hookers....they find greener pastures elsewhere.
"minding your own business and then gotta bust out your not today, motherfucker!"
Guns are much cleaner.
Why I don't live in Phoenix.
Cold weather gets rid of all sorts of varmits.
""The [Seattle] mayor wants to raise property taxes to solve homelessness. No, I'm not kidding.""
Murray must be the stupidest man alive. The idea that spending more on something gets you more of that thing has totally eluded him. It's liberal suckers who've created the homeless problem in Seattle. Without their support most of the homeless would have long since decamped for sunnier climes.
"Hey! "
Hey, I said some, not all.
@spiros:
"Portland's hipsters and do-gooders are not aware of the vast problems these people suffer from and can't overcome. "
This is not true. They are aware, but they don't care. Every day, the hipsters walk 25 ft away, crossing to the other side of the street to get away from the homeless addict screaming obscenities in the park outside the coffee place. They huddle around one table in a deli to avoid the stench of the homeless woman and her garbage who had taken over the other corner. And they only pretend not to notice the guy on the corner in the walking talking cardboard box.
The hipsters prefer to be allowed to get stoned as they walk down the street to their rat infested food truck for Vietnamese, and if this is the price other people pay, what's it to them.
Many years ago, I owned a rental house in an Oregon city, but I had to leave the state for a job opportunity. I had a
an agent manage the property until I could sell it. Turns out the renters were hard core leftists who thought
landlords were all evil capitalists. They decided to become squatters; they stopped paying rent, and they put their garbage in the crawl space under the house. The neighbors were furious. They also left the bathroom window open, so
that ivy vines from the exterior grew throughout the house, embedding themselves in the wall board. After several rentless months, my agent had them evicted. To collect the keys, our agent had to meet the former tenants in a
parking lot (a "neutral space"), where they threw the keys to the agent. I lost a lot of money.
The rent was also quite reasonable for the time.
As long as it's with their own property. Or as Leonard Read used to say, "Anything that's peaceful."
Sigh. As a landlord and one with a social work degree and experience in the field...agree this is ridiculous. Most people think the homeless are that way because no one ever tried to help them, but a segment of the homeless (primarily addicts) have exhausted the good will of friends and family and everyone around them over the years. Yet do-gooder liberals think if only THEY could have a crack at it, if THEY could sit that drug addict down and explain to them the error of their ways, they would have an epiphany.
What sort of homeowner would do this?
The same sort of progressive that would think giving out grocery carts to the homeless constitutes helping them. The same sort of progressive that thinks that we need to have open borders and protect illegal aliens because "Americans won't do jobs like housecleaning and picking crops," so this provides them some much needed sanctuary and housing, just like they provided such housing for other "manual laborers" down South well into the 20th century.
but a segment of the homeless (primarily addicts) have exhausted the good will of friends and family and everyone around them over the years.
I have treated a number of homeless patients, most mentally ill, who had no interest in family and preferred the streets to a home.
One case was a woman who lived at the beach in the bushes. She had family in Laguna Beach and had significant resources of her own if she had used them. She presented with breast cancer and I put her family back in touch with her. By the end of her stay they had visited, been rejected and she was alone again.
Another was a patient at County Hospital my students saw. He lived on the sidewalk in front of a Presbyterian church in Pasadena. He was in the hospital with a badly infected leg. A number of the church members had offered him apartments in the SRO places around LA. Many of these Single Room Occupancy places are built just as homeless shelters. He declined all these offers, telling people he was waiting for a nice furnished one bedroom apartment.
He went back to his sidewalk in front of the church.
The leftist homeless "advocates" are either amazingly naive or participating in a scam.
And when you run out of backyards, you can start stacking the tiny houses into large blocks. This was foreseen in the sci-fi novel "Ready Player One".
Compassionate is not the word that comes to mind when people talk about having homeless families live in space 1/5 the size of a singlewide trailer for five years
Kind of like the people who think giving their old ratty underwear to Goodwill is a form of charity to the poor.
Very likely you would have more than a few "homeless families," consisting of an older man and a couple of younger "daughters" who look nothing alike, subletting the house for $50-100 per half-hour with all sorts of strange men thereafter coming into the backyard to "stay" at the house for a time, and with used condoms and perhaps a few hypodermic needles strewn around the yard.
I just spent thirty minutes in a Walmart waiting for someone to find the Sporting Goods keys, so I could buy a backpack. When the keys were finally discovered, I remarked that I could understand locking up the guns, but why the backpacks? He explained that there is a homeless camp in back of the Walmart, and they are very fond of backpacks. Eugene, OR.
But they'll be different from the tent cities, surrounded by heaps of trash springing up all over Portland...right?
I am the bearer of bad news - Airb&b is outlawed in Portland. You can't use a residence as a short-stay rental in most counties in Oregon unless its an "owner lives on the premises" Bed & Breakfast.
When the new county chairman of Multnomah [Portland] was campaigning the only radio ads I can remember hearing was how much more she was going to do for the homeless. Not a word about the taxpayers.
Will the city council and other city government officials have some of the houses on THEIR back yard and homeless people reside there?
I mean, put up or shut up.
But they never do.
Great potential in this idea. Get the right family in there and you could start your own criminal mini enterprise. The old lady could turn tricks and double as a drug dealer. Younger kids could panhandle and pick pockets during the day while the older ones burgle and pull armed robberies at night. It would quite possible create nuclear families again. I mean what thug or layabout could resist a free cot and a steady piece of ass. He could take over the drug dealing from the old lady so she can devote more time and energy to tricks. Fucking win-win man, some college gradiat shud a thunk of this a long time ago.
ALP said...
Sigh. As a landlord and one with a social work degree and experience in the field...agree this is ridiculous. Most people think the homeless are that way because no one ever tried to help them, but a segment of the homeless (primarily addicts) have exhausted the good will of friends and family and everyone around them over the years. Yet do-gooder liberals think if only THEY could have a crack at it, if THEY could sit that drug addict down and explain to them the error of their ways, they would have an epiphany.
Yep indeedy. I'm 61, have a brother-in-law my age in just that situation. Been in it for years. Currently housed in jail for a drug deal. Not his fault, of course. He was set up. And you know it's true- he swears to it.
Mark: "Kind of like the people who think giving their old ratty underwear to Goodwill is a form of charity to the poor."
And "charge" for that old underwear at the top dollar prices on their taxes!
http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/16/us/clinton-taxes-laid-bare-line-by-line.html
snip: "In previous returns, when Mr. Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas and his wife was a partner in a Little Rock law firm, the Clintons had gone so far as to deduct $2 for underwear donated to charities."
Meade said...
And this wasn't just a tiny pile of doo. It was a 2-bagger!
Uh. Meade, buddy. That wasn't a dog.
"That wasn't a dog."
It was a homeless advocate scouting the terrace, conducting the "Amenability Test."
You passed.
One:
I live in pdx metro
what are you thinking, ann?
You must not realize How.Much.It.Rains here.
Brain-damage level water torture.
Two:
Portland is so generous with this offer! Otherwise there is a snakefest of rules and restrictions on building these units on your property.
This is actually a streamlined way to get a permit, if you are diehard to have one.
Typical PDX madness.
So do you conservatives have any solutions to homelessness? Or do you see that as just another wonderful benefit of the free market?
No wonder George W Bush had to re-brand himself as a "compassionate conservative." Half the time I can't figure out what it is any of you stand for - apart from just some kind of base cruelty.
Most people think the homeless are that way because no one ever tried to help them, but a segment of the homeless (primarily addicts) have exhausted the good will of friends and family and everyone around them over the years.
See, this is what is annoying. You take "a segment" and act like that is the primary issue with homelessness. Other industrialized democracies don't have our levels of homelessness, and on top of that, often treat addiction as the separate issue that it is - a medical one - and way more successfully at that. We don't have a sensible policy for either. Is the ability to shame all these people equally really all that more important to you than just reducing the extent of the problem? Especially now with a supposed real estate developer in the White House, and his retired Brain Surgeon in Chief in charge of Housing?
Hitchens described the problem well. His response to Ayn Rand was to reply, intelligently enough, that insufficient selfishness of the sort she advocated was not what humanity was suffering from. The rest of the commenters here seem to believe that our political system suffers from insufficient cruelty for and shaming of the dispossessed. What a messed up sense of prioritization!
"So do you conservatives have any solutions to homelessness?"
Yep, send them to Mexico. Apparently there has been a labor shortage there for the past 8 years. We could trade our our homeless indigents for their worker indigents. We may have to toss in a draft pick.
So you have commenters above who realize the extent of mental illness among the homeless but leave it at that, as if to say, "serves 'em right!"
Yes, let's not provide better care/coverage/access for the mentally ill and leave them to roam the streets pissing themselves instead.
You people are something else. Straight out of a Dickens novel. American Geezer Scrooge!
"So do you conservatives have any solutions to homelessness?"
Yep, send them..
I mean serious solutions. I know you guys look at the presidency and American leadership as you would a reality tv show, with a game show host, preferably in charge. But some of us can get our entertainment from normal places and don't have to make a mockery of our country to do that.
It's not a serious solution to force them to be like you.
With all the huge money and progressive virtue in San Francisco, you'd think they'd come up with an answer.
The refugees and labor of immigration reform receive preferential treatment. Progressives liberals have a distinctly anti-native outlook, that begins with selective-child and does not end with [class] diversity, and is characterized by redistributive change. End social justice adventurism that is a first-order cause of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change including immigration reform and other violations of human and civil rights.
With all the huge money and progressive virtue in San Francisco, you'd think they'd come up with an answer.
They have. San Francisco has a better time dealing with the homeless than any other American city. Homeless people spend all they can to get to San Francisco, where they know their chance of overcoming it is better there than anywhere else.
But then, the Bay Area has a much better economy than all of your flyover places do.
They don't look down on them.
"So do you conservatives have any solutions to homelessness?"
No, but neither do you "reactionary" liberal progressives. So why are up on such a high horse?
So do you conservatives have any solutions to homelessness? Or do you see that as just another wonderful benefit of the free market?
Mental hospitals that were closed in the 1960s. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" did it.
I am here in San Francisco.
Resident of 30 years. I saw it start, when there were few in 1986, explode under Art Agnos, and cyclically vary ever since.
If homelessness has ever been well-dealt-with here then it has eluded us. The place is full of them today. South of Market and East of Mission there are city blocks after city blocks with sidewalks covered in tents and ad hoc shacks. This is new btw, grown up in the last five years.
Yes indeed, there is more money in being homeless here, and it attracts them. Municipal spending alone runs at @40 a day per, and private/other govt spending much more. Add the potential proceeds of begging and it adds up to real money.
I recall from some ten years ago someone added up the employment of homeless-oriented social services agencies and it was about the same as the estimated number of homeless. Its a big employer here.
And nobody in SF thinks that whatever is being done is "working", not even the leftists. The consensus is that a huge effort is going into a bottomless pit.
So San Francisco welcomes and encourages the homeless, even though there's a shortage of affordable housing. How's that working ?
Toothless
"They have. San Francisco has a better time dealing with the homeless than any other American city. Homeless people spend all they can to get to San Francisco, where they know their chance of overcoming it is better there than anywhere else.
But then, the Bay Area has a much better economy than all of your flyover places do.
They don't look down on them."
This is absurd on so many levels. The homeless problem in SF is a hundred times worse today than it was in the 80s when I was in residence. The streets, as buwaya notes, have become block long camps, the sidewalks filled with tents and makeshift cardboard tents. The locals despise them, hate them with a passion you only reserve for your political opponents and that is a fury to be noted.
You might take a trip out there and have a look. Stroll through SOMA, spend some time in the Tenderloin.
Blogger David said...
Please not Portland, Althouse. I agree! I don't think you will enjoy the people there. A fair number of people moved to NM to get some sun back in their life. I know...knew many of them. They were all quite pleasant until "...my team won." Suddenly, I was a Brown Shirt Nazi. A month earlier they are in my house learning how to make tamales, the next month I can't be their friend because Trump is a rapist and I am a conservitive.
Blogger The Toothless Revolutionary said...
With all the huge money and progressive virtue in San Francisco, you'd think they'd come up with an answer.
They have. San Francisco has a better time dealing with the homeless than any other American city.
The last time I was in SF, I observed a well dressed financial looking type of guy walking hand in had with his hippie boy friend. It was about 8:00 AM. The went out of their way to kick a homeless guy laying on a sidewalk trying to catch some zzzzs. The looks of joy on their face...bastards...
No, but neither do you "reactionary" liberal progressives. So why are up on such a high horse?
I call out your abject apathy about the issue. It's one thing to not have a good solution. Entirely another to basically admit that you don't think it matters.
And stop quoting local goings-on in the town west of Happy Days village and Laverne and Shirley-ville as if whatever happens there means a damn thing elsewhere, let alone in the country at large. I visited Madison WI... once. Nice little town. Just like many/most college towns. And completely oblivious to its own irrelevance. Maybe it's a shame people don't visit it more. Maybe it's a shame it's frozen cold and gray much of the year, with nothing for people to do but to drink, eat cheese and watch bulky guys running into each other at about 20 mph. I'm sure you retirees like it there, and more would too - if it were warmer than Siberia. But no one ever said, "As Wisconsin goes, so goes the nation." Never. Not once. The place is as undistinguished an anomaly as a hangnail on a hedgehog. A no-name politician from Iowa could fart in the wrong direction and it would be more newsworthy. Other than for their funny names and eating habits, Spin-Cycle Priebus, Ham-Sandwich-Wedged-in-the-Colon Walker and the rest of them aren't noteworthy for much of anything, and just as well. I thought the whole point of that "humble, Midwestern" thing was to not presume those plain-spoken ways had much to lead the rest of the nation on. They don't.
Leave Madison alone!
True, Ritmo.
The future is to be found in Stockton CA.
This is absurd on so many levels. The homeless problem in SF is a hundred times worse today than it was in the 80s when I was in residence. The streets, as buwaya notes, have become block long camps, the sidewalks filled with tents and makeshift cardboard tents. The locals despise them, hate them with a passion you only reserve for your political opponents and that is a fury to be noted.
You might take a trip out there and have a look. Stroll through SOMA, spend some time in the Tenderloin.
I must have been to SF a half dozen times before 2014. What you say is false. There is much less of an attitude of "shoving aside" when it comes to their homeless. It's palpable. They don't mind color, they don't judge based on circumstances. Whichever "locals" you're talking to sound like the gentrifiers who want to replace BART with a company Google shuttle.
Whenever you try to come across as less sheltered than the average investor, I know you're lying. Relating to normal people comes about as easily to you as abstract impressionist painting does to Stevie Wonder.
How long until these communities are overrun with crimes by people who feel they are entitled to the posessions of their landlords ?
Ritmo,
You are not a resident. That attitude does not come across as such here. They were once political assets, an emotional trump in the sense of "we are better than you because we care", which Agnos started and various others exploited, but that is past, that seam is mined out. Now they are simply pests no-one knows what to do with.
Forgive me if I find your authority on that sort of thing questionable, buwaya. You seem to have a skewed, sometimes wishfully thinking perspective on a lot of things related to American culture.
As you like Ritmo, but here in the magic land of Queen Califa I have been, and I know it as well as anyone, down to its bones, and into its marrow.
Down to its bones and marrow? Good gosh, you sound like the author of Beowulf!
I realize I forgot to mention another WI politician - Paul Ryan. A guy who gladly benefited from two - count 'em, TWO - government programs before his 30th birthday. That's two more than most people by that age. And now he devotes his life to ending them. A guy devoted to ending the things he benefited from. Gosh, if that's not undistinguished leadership, I don't know what is. But hey, pricing 24 million out of accessible health insurance is just how he spins his definition of "freedom." What a guy. Being able to NOT afford things is what makes Americans free, saith the widows peak from Janesville.
I am writing a novel, a fantasy.
Not Beowulf, but a Filipino one. They too have bones and marrow, and evil eggs and creatures that suck out the life from womens wombs. Very earthy sorts.
Oh shoot! I was going to say, it could be worse - not realizing that balut is as popular in the Philippines as it is in Southeast Asia.
Whatever distressing biology a Dane wants to get into, a Filipino will trump (hah!) with verve and relish. Sometimes literally.
Humperdink said: ""So do you conservatives have any solutions to homelessness?"
Yep, send them...... to Meh Hee Co.
Ritmo responded: "I mean serious solutions."
Yeah, putting the homeless in a shack in the backyard is a serious solution. Only to lib. It masks the problem. The question one needs to ask is why do have so many homeless? Drugs? OK, why do we have so many drug addled human beings? Keep asking the "why" questions until you get to a true cause, then address possible solutions.
Or you could offer the typical commie pinko lib solution .... here's a billion $, that'll do it. Oh, that didn't work? Here's a billion more.
The Lee Kwan Yew solution would be a concentration camp island. Thats what he did in Singapore. And it worked, there are no homeless or out-and-about addicts there, to this day.
He was officially a Socialist at the time, but I dont suppose it matters.
Duterte went several steps further, but he has an enormously larger problem.
For situations like this there are no pleasant solutions.
"What are your 99 other reasons?"
I would hate to be a landlord. I don't like making somebody else's problems very directly my problems. I'm willing to pay my fair share of taxes for social programs. I need my distance and my private space.
OK, why do we have so many drug addled human beings?
Here's an easy and unobvious answer. You hate the FDA (regulation... BAAAAD!) and love the drug companies so much that you let them make a killing off of prescription opioids - so much so that the deaths they've caused now surpass the deaths caused by illicit opioids like heroin. Almost by twice as much.
That's the policy answer. There's a neurobiological explanation but that would be recondite and Republicans hate/deny science anyway so I won't bother with that one.
Or you could offer the typical commie pinko lib solution .... here's a billion $, that'll do it. Oh, that didn't work? Here's a billion more.
Sounds like the right-wing/corporatist/fascist "solution", actually. Here's a billion $ to millionaires. Oh, that didn't work? Here's a few hundred billion more!
Interesting that pharma companies are almost the one mature industry that Trump doesn't kowtow to. Still doesn't mean he'll have the balls to stop the prescription opioid crisis. Why? 1) Because that would involve something called "thinking" about the problem, and 2) He's shoulder-deep in a swamp he's creating to gut agencies and regulatory oversight. So even if the FDA could do more, Trump will hamstring it.
Sooner or later people will figure out what you're up to.
Toothless
What I say is not false, it is demonstrably true. You are a fool who opines on things you know nothing about. It makes you look the fool you are. The locals are the people who must tread these streets to their offices. Walk from the train station to California street and tell me there is not a problem. You think everyone is hopping on Google buses headed south? You really don't get it. You think that train that runs from the peninsula north is empty?
I am out there once a month. Trust me the bums are a huge problem.
I would hate to be a landlord.
Somebody has to do it. And it's a hell of an investment opportunity in parts of the country (apparently not Wisconsin) where the cities are desirable enough to live in that rising property values offset any management hassles through the very easy, big money to be made off it.
Don't you have respect for our president's "occupation?" ;-). Lol.
Even Trump got his humble start as a slumlord. A landlord's got to start somewhere, right?
Lee Kwan Yew was dealing with an out of control opioid crisis, well, actual opium. And he ended it. Brutally.
That may be the only way.
I live in Portland. I have never seen anything like the number or quality of homeless people anywhere else. I'll give the city government points for being willing to try new things (like turning a warehouse into a giant homeless shelter for 400 people...) but they can't "fix" the problem while pretending that being homeless is just about not having a place to stay.
Homeless people, by definition, are bad tenants. Dumping the homeless problem on more people doesn't fix the problem, it makes it a problem for more people.
Another thing is that the homeless people seem to end up in the poorest neighborhoods, like Lents, because the people there don't have the power to keep them out the way the nicer places do.
Landlording is overrated. People do it for retirement income because they have been off the books, or because they can't sell their overpriced crapshacks.
What I say is not false, it is demonstrably true.
I assume by "demonstrably true" you mean not through facts and figures but through anecdotes and the lens of your own vaunted opinions.
"The bums are a 'huge' problem?" Define "huge." Is it trickle-down Trump-speak for whatever the president/speaker wants to scaremonger on?
I'm sure homelessness there has gotten worse since the recession. I'm also sure that you're getting your condescending NIMBYist approach to the problem not from ordinary people (much less from studies) but from your VC friends or others in the financial district. How far is Market Street from California, by chance?
Or you could offer the typical commie pinko lib solution .... here's a billion $, that'll do it. Oh, that didn't work? Here's a billion more.
Sounds like the right-wing/corporatist/fascist "solution", actually. Here's a billion $ to millionaires. Oh, that didn't work? Here's a few hundred billion more!
^^^^^ Why I typically do not engage Ritmo. Lost my head tonight.
I haven't slogged through all the comments so this may be a repeat: The mayor and city council need to be required to sponsor these houses -- you know, to set an example.
Toothless
No, I mean you could travel there and satisfy youself that you were wrong. I have no NIMBY attitude toward the bums in SF because I no longer live there. It is SF's issue not mine. Watch your step if you are cruising those streets; what used to be the obstacle of dog shit may be something else.
Market intersects with California. My office for years was in the market tower building at third and market. Later at 101 california. My lawyers were there until they were shot up by a disgruntled client, killing partners and associates alike. The firm did not last long after that.
^^^^^ Why I typically do not engage Ritmo. Lost my head tonight.
Is Trump's ACA replacement not a big giveaway to millionaires or is it not?
California St begins at Market Street, and its also the start of the California Street cable car that takes you up to Nob Hill and, rarely completed trip, to Van Ness.
A secondary tourist destination vs the main cable car terminal at Market & Powell near Union Square.
I have no NIMBY attitude toward the bums in SF because I no longer live there.
But you used to, right? Even when it wasn't the bien pensant thing to do? Right?
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