Jerry breathed some life into G2A MN Affordable Housing by noting that houses can be purchased for $5,000. And I found this Wiki Small House Movement page.
Then I see that we taxpayers are going to spend more money to heat other people's houses.
MN Heating Assistance Increased This has me wondering again how much house is enough house, and why are we citizens pay personal bills so people can live above their means and often their needs?
A typical story would be the elderly empty nester couple, or the elderly widow who live in a home that is big enough for the family who is no longer there. The home often needs some modernization to be energy efficient, is rather expensive to maintain/heat.
Now I understand that the home is more than just a place to sleep for many people. However is it really the responsibility of the tax payers to subsidized people's nostalgia, or desire for more home than they can afford?
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It's kind of hard to bash people when the price of propane at its highest this year was nearly 3x higher than it was last year and more than 2x the highest price of the last 20 years.
So other than cutting off people's heat, what would you not subsidize someone's oversized home? Who determines what "oversized" is?
Maybe "oversized" can be measured by this indicator.
Housing costs are so much of your income that you can not afford to pay for typical surprise bills. (Ie furnace breaks, plumbing plugs, propane costs surge, etc)
Propane Prices
So let's say that someone needs to buy 200 additional gallons to get through this long cold winter... At the $4 price it looks like it is an additional $800 bill.
Not small change by any means, but nothing compared to other normal homes expenses. Are we going to pay to have the water heaters replaced for folks who can not afford it?
I have no problem floating these folks loans during these times, however I do disagree that our tax dollars should be used to subsidize the choices of these individuals.
Heating Assistance
Another interesting point is that it seems Dayton changed the rules by executive ruling.
$20,000,000 in Additional Welfare
It's because we all envy rich people with their palatial estates.
--Hiram
My friend and I were discussing that yesterday, he said he would pass on that big house until he could afford a butler and maid to care for it.... (hahaha)
To some extent I think you are right though, some where along the lines bigger became better.
"In the United States the average size of new single family homes grew from 1,780 square feet in 1978 to 2,479 square feet in 2007, despite a decrease in the size of the average family. Reasons for this include increased material wealth and prestige."
Now it seems that we think people are entitled to that bigger house, whether they can afford it or not... And no one wants to force that little old lady out her big "family" home just because she is now on a fixed minimal income.
So, why aren't these heating assistance funds loans that need to be paid back?
I sometimes watch HGTV, and I'm absolutely appalled by what some people are paying for single-family homes. I just saw one where the two-small-children family had a budget of $700K, so they bought a "fixer-upper" for $600K and put $95K into the renovation. Who makes that kind of money, with two small kids? Typical "budgets" on these shows are $400k-$1M.
What I don't understand is, where is this taxpayer subsidy you object to?
The specific subsidy in question is the cash we are giving people to heat their homes. (ie welfare who can not afford their household bills)
Another is the home mortgage interest deduction... That may apply better to the expensive homes you have described.
I don't especially object to the home heating emergency assistance; it's a life and death matter and, despite what you hear about conservatives, we don't want poor people to starve in the snowbank. It's a rather small sum, too, for a government "emergency" expenditure. Of course, if the government would get out of the way of US energy development, these poor folks could afford to heat their homes. Government solving problems that government created; typical.
As for the home mortgage deduction, it is probably the prime example of social engineering through the tax code. It should be eliminated, along with every other tax and deduction, along with the IRS itself. The solution is the FAIR tax.
I don't want them to freeze, I just think it should be in the form of loans that need to be paid back. The home can be the collateral...
You're getting ahead of yourself. First you have to get them off the dole and into a work situation, so that they can afford to buy the home. You also need to change the housing laws to permit such low-cost housing to be built. Finally, you need to find a way to target additional individual assistance to these folks to help them acclimate, and to avoid the problems where the neighbors object to their presence. For example, there is a "subsidized housing" area near here. The rate of police calls to this area, per capita, is 12 times what it is for the rest of the city. Something "cultural" is amiss.
That's why a "dormitory" environment may be necessary. Many of these folks find basic "adult / responsible" behaviors challenging.
I don't think making these "loans" is a small initial logical step.
I'm afraid I'm hard pressed to see how your "dormitory" is an improvement over the status quo. Right now we have Cabrini greens and private or public homeless shelters, and all they do, at best, is keep people out of the cold. Nothing is done to aculturate them to a world where they get up and go to work every morning. It's warehousing. And if the shelter and meals come as an "entitlement," with no strings attached, there is no incentive for change. I think it's a sinful waste of human dignity and human capital, except that government has no known conscience to constrain it.
Higher Grounds
That is why this model seems better than what we have seen in the past... Now how do we funnel tax dollars away from the failed models into ones like this?
That really is great. Government puts up most of the money, and private charity runs the operation as a "transitional housing" situation. That is, only under severe circumstances are people allowed to bet there long-term (the disabled, for example), and the unmentioned rule is that all others need to be making "progess" in order to stay in the program. I would assume they would turn no one away on really cold nights, but to stay permanently you have to be sober and (albeit slowly) start looking for work. This arrangement solves that "cart before the horse" tiny house problem. They first need A place to sleep and get their life together, THEN they can get a better place to put that new life in.
How do we get government to stop being the Sugar Daddy enablers of the current dysfunctional system? I don't know, since pointing out the obvious failures doesn't seem enough. Other People's Money (OPM) is like opium.
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