- A guaranteed-basic-income program in Austin gave people $1,000 a month for a year.
- Most of the participants spent the no-strings-attached cash on housing, a study found.
- Participants who said they could afford a balanced meal also increased by 17%.
A guaranteed-basic-income plan in one of Texas’ largest cities reduced rates of housing insecurity. But some Texas lawmakers are not happy.
Austin was the first city in Texas to launch a tax-payer-funded guaranteed-income program when the Austin Guaranteed Income Pilot kicked off in May 2022. The program served 135 low-income families, each receiving $1,000 monthly. Funding for 85 families came from the City of Austin, while philanthropic donations funded the other 50.
The program was billed as a means to boost people out of poverty and help them afford housing. “We know that if we trust people to make the right decisions for themselves and their families, it leads to better outcomes,” the city says on its website. “It leads to better jobs, increased savings, food security, housing security.”
While the program ended in August 2023, a new study from the Urban Institute, a Washington, DC, think tank, found that the city’s program did, in fact, help its participants pay for housing and food. On average, program participants reported spending more than half of the cash they received on housing, the report said.
The sad thing is that high cost of housing is entirely unnecessary exploitation anyway. Just pass a law that transfers all house and land ownership into collective hands and erases all dept based on houses. I bet the vast majority of people would vote for it lol.
Who’s collective hands?
I Holland we have woning bouw organisaties That are BY law obliged to offer services and structured management, checked by impartial state department and who can be relieved of function (transfering the properties to another organization or splitting them up etcetera). Yes, needs to be overview, laws and such. Maybe even subsidies for new buildings.
But NO PROFIT ANYWHERE.
Not for public basic housing. Come on, do we really wanna admit RUZZIA and CHINA beat us on this?
Yeah, but there’s a difference between a local housing authority, and what that guy is suggesting, which appears to be “the state now owns all property, including stuff I’ve already paid for”.
The only people that would vote for that are people that don’t vote.
I’m all for the government taking the role of building new houses everywhere, in vast numbers in order to stabilise and eventually reduce prices. We used to have this in the UK, they were called council houses and the local government rented them out at reasonable prices. Then Maggie Thatcher Milk Snatcher got in power and sold them all off, under the guise of letting people buy the property they were renting. This isn’t a bad idea in itself, but there was another edge to that sword. No more properties would be allowed to be build with the proceeds. In effect it became a state sell-off. It’s been fucked ever since.
No, it would BE BOUGHT by government at fair price (they know the fair price, just look your houses tax bill)
Or built by them.
And then rented out with a certain maximum rental price per Sq Mt like 10$ so 50sq m (500sq ft) = 500$/month
Most importantly, they would be obliged to make it Energy efficient by their contract with the state so much lower electric and heating bill, maybe even topped off with solar, would be small percentage of a new building but cut costs for actual people.
Not saying it’s perfect in Holland (they have shortages because no new land available to build new social housing projects), but it sure works!
I kept it deliberately vague, but the main idea is democracy and public accountability, and that we need to take certain things out of corporate hands. Because it only optimizes for profit and not for social benefit or the nation’s benefit. Basically all the fundamental needs of the people need to become a kind of guaranteed basic right - food water shelter education and communication. And there could be multiple different models.
There are widespread and established neoliberal myths now that only “private” institutions can work efficiently and unbiased. Definitely based on Thatcher, Reagan, Kohl, and then perpetrated by the “third way” leftists that declared democracy as an inefficient tool to order society.
But you can establish institutions with more useful motivations and that are more intelligent to withstand things like shortages. With things like healthcare you actually do want less efficiency, e.g. in a pandemic.
Right now it seems unthinkable, but with the climate and other crisis looming it might become feasible. At least if we have the actual ideology “at the ready”.
Yeah, surely nothing could go wrong with that plan.
Ever been to public housing? There’s a reason it’s usually shitty, and that’s because the people who live there don’t own it, so they have no reason to care for it because they could be moved somewhere else at any time.
The same is true of a lot of average apartment buildings, especially college housing, but they are rigourously maintained by staff.
Public housing in the US is rarely funded enough or maintained properly. It’s almost a cliche in the US, municipalities purposely underfund public programs so they fail, to encourage privatization.
This might sound surprising, but that’s because people are paying for it, and there are consequences for trashing the place (forfeiting deposit etc.)
I’m talking about state owned public housing, which is almost always a catastrophe. And that’s not just because of lack of funding, but because the people who live there have no sense of ownership, and suffer little to no consequences if they don’t keep it in shape.
State owned public housing has worked all around the world. Council houses in the UK for example looked good and helped lots of people get houses, and didn’t really get associated with poor people until Thatcher and her shitty policies. In Finland, like a third of their housing is public housing and they’ve managed to essentially eliminate homelessness this way.
I mean… it’s probably better than homeless, especially in cold climates, I’ll give you that. But it’s not great, neither here nor in Europe.
Having a sense of ownership is an important factor in motivating people to take care of their place of residence. Plenty of renters trash their apartments too.
And plenty of home owning people trash their homes, too. I think it’s just how some people are with their shelter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ . Check out the show Hoarders, for example.
Meanwhile, plenty of renters take care of their place because it’s where they live. I take care of my rented apartment more than my fucking landlord does, and he supposedly owns it. It’s supposed to be his only job to call people to fix things when I bring it up or point out an issue while it’s still small, yet it still is a coin toss whether someone will show up or not. I don’t think the categories are so easily placed.
Yes, and I’m sure not all people who live in public housing trash their apartments, but it seems to be more common there than with renters, and more common with renters than with homeowners. And it seems to me that perhaps it’s a matter of appreciation — the less you have to work for something, the less you tend to appreciate having it.
For instance, a lot of people only start appreciating being in good health once they’ve gone and ruined it, they don’t start exercising until they’re already overweight, they don’t appreciate having a job until they’re unemployed, etc.
Please note that this is NOT an argument against housing homeless people — it’s only an argument against the idea that some sort of collective action would somehow be able to do the most justice to the most people. That is rarely, if ever, the case. If history shows anything, it’s that the larger the collective action, the more injustice it tends to cause, regardless of intention.
Like others said, specific examples of failures are “anecdotal” and you’d need to look at this scientifically and account for variables. Propaganda and neoliberal ideology makes this very difficult for the US.
Well, in that case, assuming that collectivizing housing will solve the issue is just as erroneous as assuming it won’t, isn’t it.
Not exactly. Saying something cannot work can be disproven by showing a single example of it working. There are plenty.
What I am trying to say is that housing should not be run for the sole pursuit of profit. People should own their own house, should own and manage an apartment block collectively, or have institutions that “own” and manage housing not for profit but for social and global benefit. But Individuals or corporations shouldn’t be allowed to own other peoples houses for profit. Or land for that matter. At least not as “capital”.
So you can “own” your own house and keep it for your children but you’re more like a steward, you can’t rent it out or own the housing of lots of people. It would cease to become a commodity and be much cheaper then.
That’s very radical and faces many potential problems but you can’t say it’s erroneous proposition. What you’d need are scientific studies that compare different models in different countries and account for all the variables including political corruption to sabotage public housing. And what benefits can be shown.
I don’t propose state socialism because that kind of total concentration of all economic power was shown to be very corrupt. But we need better models because right now wealth inequality is so vast than most housing is being bought off and concentrated for the 0.1% - which is very similar to state socialism too!
Saying something cannot work can be disproven by showing a single example of it working.
But something working in a single instance does not automatically prove it will work in all instances (see: Prisoner’s Dilemma, Efficient Market Paradox)
Yes, collectivized housing CAN work. Private housing cooperatives, for instance (which is what you seem to be describing) DO exist and are a decent alternative for sustainable homeownership. They probably won’t solve the homeless crisis, however.
My point was/is not to argue and collectivized approaches to housing in principle, but only against the idea that there exists some sort of “one size fits all” approach that will do everyone justice. That is simply not the case, regardless of how much some people want it to be true.
Well any discussion about this is good because right now the acceptable ideology and mainstream discussion about this is overwhelmingly one sided. There is no resistance to insane wealth concentration.
I have the feeling that UBI is doomed to fail if the basic necessities of live will continue to be owned and run for profit. Give people $1000 bucks more and the prices will increase because “they” own and control everything.
So maybe there should be two economies: One socialist for the necessities to live a prosperous life (not luxurious or consumerist) and one for all the rest. The first one should be sustainable and some kind of circular economy where everything is build to last and be repaired and recycled, the other is free market made for competition to innovate and create new products and services.
There are two types of UBI supporters- Those that want UBI on top of the targeted welfare program, and those that want UBI to replace targeted welfare programs. If UBI was ever implemented, which kind of UBI supporter do you think the republicans and moderate dems would be?
Depends on the lobbyists and whoever is paying the media organizations. If companies realize they have more people to sell to they might lobby to have the former, and the majority of all beliefs are coming from medias spin on things. In theory, you could get Republicans who support UBI by simply getting a few lobbyists, and an anti UBI democratic candidate and poof, Republicans would swear by it. If you have the Republicans and the non moderate Dems, it could pass. Then once in place I imagine both companies and citizens would realize they don’t want to vote it away.
The ones that would use it as an excuse to get rid of targeted welfare before not having enough votes to continue UBI.
Thatchers plan would have worked if and only when:
LAND IS PROVIDED FOR NEW PROJECTS (destination plan on national provincial and local level)
ALL INCOME FROM RENT TO BUY (or similar) IS SPEND ON NEW PROJECTS
ALL PROJECTS ARE GUARANTEED BY THE BUILDER (no excess costs for any reason : sign your profitable contract but then you are obliged to deliver exactly what is promised or you’ll never get another gov project again)
Is the problem with housing really supply, or is it that it’s an unregulated monopoly where land owners are allowed to leverage their monopoly for uncapped profit?
“In completely unrelated news, average rent prices in the Austin area have soared by $1,100 dollars over the past year.”
The good part about UBI is that this doesn’t happen. There was a study from an African UBI program that showed no inflation at all in the village they provided funds to.
Maybe in a national version of UBI where you can’t easily move somewhere cheaper this would be more of a risk, but that just makes it more profitable to build more houses, and increasing the supply brings the price down again.
I don’t think the African village had Chinese megacorps snatching up available real estate for rent squatting. Although I might be wrong. I do feel that its an extremely different scenario than in the US however.
Austin housing prices decreased
Paul Bettencourt sounds like a horrible person. I hope his life is as nice as he is.
Denver seems to be leading America with a lot of these good things. Upfront labor wage policies, marijuana, this. Looking at those mountains is also a plus.
Lots of progress towards helping folks. That Progressive politics in action - we will take your hungry, your tired, your sick.
So the money went straight to the pocket of landlords. Cool.
You can’t give ordinary people money and not increase taxes on the rich. Otherwise it just becomes a wealth transfer from the state to rich people.
I’d rather transfer it to them indirectly like this than directly like we’ve been doing…
I prefer to do things right. I’m not against giving people money directly. But after historic tax cuts, it does seem like the government is just rubbing in our faces that our future is to become serfs in a techno-feudal nightmare.
There isn’t really a “correct” way to distribute wealth though. Just different trade offs. At least in a UBI system the poor get to touch it first. It allows for nice things like heating in the winter.
Ugh, we’re not heading for serfdom, that would suppose they still need workers tied to the land or factory in the future. Once a few more breakthroughs happen (It’ll be 10 years away until suddenly it happens 50 years from now) Automation will make even their normal support staff extraneous. At that point they might keep some security around, and maybe some slaves as a statement. Everyone else just gets cut off. Oh it will sound reasonable and it’ll take a couple decades once it really gets going but that’s where Automation is heading if we let the wealthy elite “own” it. They’ll make excuses about lazy poor people and how they can’t keep people on as charity and they can’t keep making food that people can’t afford to buy… There’s absolutely nothing in history that makes me think they wouldn’t just remove the majority of humans from the planet if they could get away with it. They’ve proven time and again they don’t value people as humans. Just as little labor widgets they can fiddle with.
I’d disagree that there isn’t a “correct” way to do it. Basically if the money stays with working class people, it’s good. If it just is absorbed by the richest people, it’s bad.
I didn’t say we were moving towards serfdom per se, probably only for a small amount of time. But we are surely moving towards techno-feudalism. Where rent-seeking is the primary form of wealth extraction, moving from profits being the primary one.
That’s definitely the unfortunate part. The good thing here is that this not only stimulates the economy, it does so by improving the lives of people who really need it. When we hand the PPP loans, that money went straight into the pockets of people who didn’t need it. It was mostly grift. This is the opposite.
Yes, while I’m all in favor of measures to reduce the disparity in wealth, I think this is a net positive in the short term.
Agreed!
Yep let’s give it straight to the rich, just like the Dead Kennedys said.
Efficiency and progress is ours once more Now that we have the neutron bomb It’s nice and quick and clean and gets things done Away with excess enemy But no less value to property No sense in war but perfect sense at home
Well, at least some people who needed it got housing along the way.
So the money went straight to the pocket of landlords. Cool
Ya screw them for not wanting to be out on the street! /s
Nice one bro
What… how do you think I’m blaming the individuals who got the cash? I would do the same if I were them, I don’t have a choice other than spending all my money on necessities. But isn’t that fucked? There will be less and less jobs, and the state will just keep giving measly amounts of money to us until we all become serfs. Working a month a year for the privilege of earning enough from the state for subsistence. While the rich become richer and richer until we are separate species and AI and robots advance far enough they REALLY don’t need us. Then what?
When people can afford houses, they stop being homeless… Amazing
When will humans learn to attack the problem and not the victim of the problem?
Texas figured this out? Texas? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts.
Just because Austin is the capital, you really shouldn’t confuse it with Texas. Austin isn’t Texas.
Source: I am a former Austinite and one of the long time lobbyists for this program. I started harassing my contacts in 2015.
there’s a lot of ‘texas’ in austin. it’s inescapable. plenty of ‘good ol boys’ around, they’re just outnumbered in the city itself.
Sure, but that applies to everywhere, even California. Don’t forget that California was very red and even gave us the Reagans. It was the progressive cities that turned that state around. Texas is in a similar situation, unless young progressives decide to abandon the fight and move elsewhere.
Prop 187 was what turned California around. We’re about to see the same biting of the Republicans on their butts again with Prop 22.
Austin isn’t Texas
I hear this a lot and it’s tiring. Last I checked it is. We’re all happy there’s a place in Texas that attracts progressiveness and youth. But… come on.
There’s been a literal political war between the cities and the state for years. It used to be Austin vs Texas, but Houston and San Antonio have also joined in. Don’t underestimate the impact a stubborn town with money can have. Look at Jackson, Wyoming. That county has stubbornly kept up the abortion fight, using every trick in the book.
Great. We’re all rooting for that. Maybe one day I won’t feel the need to drive around Texas on my next road trip. Until then I wish Austin, Texas all the best.
BTW, If you really did try to jump start this program in Austin, I think it’s great. Thank you.
I think “Texas” is scaring and confusing the shit out of the rest of the US right now and we’re not sure how to take it.
I did. I’m trying to be nonchalant about it since most of what I did was talk the ears off of people and put people in contact with others, but I can literally trace a line from it to an Yahoo group email I sent, and I’ve been freaking out a bit. I doubt the TXLege will let it get much further, but the proof is there.
If the program had an impact in a town as expensive as Austin, imagine what it could do to a more rural community. Everyone is full MAGA until they see that starving to death and/or being homeless doesn’t have to be a constant threat.
Frankly if the aliens invade my plan is to give them Texas so they’ll leave the rest of the world alone. Though… plot twist… I think they already did take Texas…
Let’s find out if they can continue it without other states funding their existence.
*gestures to Rafael theodore Cruz at the airport
Texas didn’t fund shit, Austin did. The government of Texas is actively hostile to the city of Austin.
To all the people saying “hur dur it’s just giving money to landlords”:
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No it’s not. People who would not have had housing were able to have it. If you think that’s a bad thing because some landlords got paid in the process, you seriously need to have your moral compass checked.
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To those explicitly linking this to the idea (which is often cited but never backed up with evidence) that landlords (and mysteriously no other segment of the economy) will medically capture 110% of the value of any possible UBI program: This is not the evidence you’ve been lacking. The money wasn’t given to everyone as it would be in a universal basic income program. It was given to people who were struggling. Of fucking course people who were homeless or near homeless spent the money on rent. The fact that people who become able to afford housing mostly choose to spend their money on housing just tells you how much people value having a place to live. It says nothing about how money would flow in a full scale system.
Has your rent gone up, ever? Thats what’s gonna happen with a UBI. Your landleech thinks you can pay more, so he can charge more.
Meanwhile government (nationalized) housing programs actually work and are cost efficient.
Rent went up 7 percent this year across my state, and it’s already out of control to the point people are paying 4500 a month for a tiny one bedroom in the main city.
Don’t think everyone getting a thousand extra bucks is going to change that drastically. And anyway, if landlords do do that, put in a rent cap in addition.
Then your bills will rise instead. Whoever can cash in - will do so. It is extremely naive to think it won’t become a wealth transfer from the state (taxpayers) to the rich and corpos, like corporate welfare.
Rent price caps are something, but stopgaps aren’t what we should aim for.
You seem to willingly not wrap your head around the fact I’m not berating UBI because I prioritize the economy over the people like a conservative, fearmongering about inflation etc., but because UBI is prioritizing the economy over the people itself by rejecting the far more effective solution of nationalizing necessities (e.g. housing, utilities) and cutting out the profiteering middle men entirely instead of paying them on the grounds that it’s scary socialism.
Market solutions don’t work on problems that are inherent to capitalism. I wish you could see that.
Has your rent gone up, ever? Thats what’s gonna happen with a UBI.
You haven’t said anything to establish a connection between your question and your statement. You’re using the structure of a rational argument but your only evidence is “trust me bro”. Fuck that and fuck you for trying to use sophistry.
My evidence is supply and demand, if it works, then that is what will happen with UBI. Market based solutions do not work for problems inherent to capitalism itself.
If it proofs anything its that when the poor are given free money people prioritize having a stable, healthy lifestyle.
Should be pretty standard if they want a society worth of peoples contributions.
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I had no idea there were so many people who were against a UBI on Lemmy. I’m honestly surprised.
This isn’t UBI though. It’s welfare. It just proves that people will use welfare support responsibly. A real test of UBI would be to give everyone in a community, not just a small pool of low income families the same amount (among other things). That ain’t going to happen.
Fine, then people here are anti-welfare. Either way, it’s a surprisingly conservative attitude.
I agree but some of the arguments here have a hint of truth in them such as the whole landlord thing. I think a lot of folk are wary of anything that sounds UBI related because it boils everything down to ‘one simple fix’. Programs like this work, but they’re only one piece in the puzzle such as taking housing off the market, higher taxes on the wealthy etc. I know you know this stuff. The UBI crowd takes theses studies and uses them to say ‘UBI works’ or ‘UBI can work’ even though it’s not UBI.
The UBI crowd takes theses studies and uses them to say ‘UBI works’ or ‘UBI can work’ even though it’s not UBI.
That’s a bit disengenuous. Of course people acknowledge that economic policy is difficult to experiment with.
People serious about UBI talk about phasing it in over a long period of time, in lieu of “experiments”. For example in Australia we already have refundable tax rebates (I’m sure everyone has these I just don’t know what they’re called), all you’d have to do would be to introduce a $1,000 refundable tax rebate and increase that by $1,000 each year until you get to a reasonable UBI. If, along the way the data showed deleterious effects then you could correct or discontinue.
It’s been done at a town level before, with the same results
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2020/2/19/21112570/universal-basic-income-ubi-map
I feel somewhat against it simply because I don’t think it’s necessary once you make a certain point of money. Do people making six figures really need an extra 10% or less on top of that?
No, they don’t, but I think the idea is that the process of factually verifying someone’s actual income isn’t worth the waste of just giving it to them anyway.
Means testing has been shown to cost significantly more. That’s why I’m a fan of universal programs and not welfare programs (like the one in this study).
I would argue someone making six figures getting 10% more will have a big impact still. Give everyone the benefit, even billionaires. Using your argument, the billionaire won’t care about getting an extra $1,000 - that’s nothing to them. But no one feels “cheated” because you arbitrarily put the limit, and you know no one else is cheating the system because there is no system to cheat!
Paying for universal programs would require changing our tax structure, which I’m also supportive of.
That’s a good point. I hadn’t considered about testing costs and people feeling cheated and people actually cheating.
I didn’t feel strongly against it and I’m willing to change my mind, and you brought up some good points.
It does sound like a good idea tbh.
For an anecdotal example, when I was in my 20s I worked with an old lady at a fish market who had to strictly regulate the number of hours she worked in a year because she couldn’t afford to make above a certain amount of money. If she went into the next higher tax bracket, she would’ve been kicked off her social security, and regardless of how many hours she worked, wouldn’t be able to make up for the lost money.
Another interesting benefit I’ve heard of from a similar study that gave everybody above a certain age in a town $1,000 a month, but was focused on the impact to the labor pool, was that almost everybody continued to work except for in two categories: pregnant women and high-school students. This coincided with an increase in the average grades of high-school students, the number of kids who graduated, and the number of kids who continued on to college. The theory was that the kids who would normally have to work to help put food on the table were instead able to focus on their studies.
It not that people are against everyone having the basics, it is that it mathematically makes no sense. As soon as you give everyone this money, not just a small trial you’ll see that it is immediately eaten in inflation, rent etc.
Much better is to make the first $1000 dollars not necessary. Free staple foods, free healthcare, free low tier usage on utilities, free local public transport.
But there’s no difference between giving someone $1000 for food and providing that food for free.
Either way the food is paid for by someone, whether the government hands over the check and then passes out the food, adding a layer of inefficiency, or the government hands out the check and the people buy the food, offering freedom of choice.
Giving people $1000 means they can spend it specifically on the things they need. They might need to pay off a healthcare debt with that $1000 far more than they need low tier usage on their utilities.
I think a better idea that universal basic income is universal basic services. Give everyone equal access to healthcare, food, housing, etc. Not jobs, though. Giving everyone a job leads to creating jobs that don’t need to exist just to make sure everyone has work. The USSR had guaranteed employment and that got to where you’d have to go through three different clerks at the supermarket to buy a pound of meat.
That would require an entire reworking of our economic system, whereas giving everyone $1000 a month would not.
I’ve been a proponent for UBI for a long time however after reading your comments I agree with you.
In reality, I’ve advocated for UBI because I feel the govt should provide these basic services. However in reality UBI does just seem like a means to an end.
We really should just redefine what “utilities” are (including internet, phone, public transit tickets, etc) and then provide basic access to utilities for free.
You’re surprised that people who are far enough to the right to support genocide would oppose UBI?
There’s a lot of effort to deny any previous UBI experiment as having even been done. Heck the top reply to your comment here denies this is even a UBI experiment. The line is usually the only way to do the experiment is to do it and that’s the Socialisms so we can’t ever know, sorry poors.
Well, since the “U” in UBI stands for “universal”, and since the group of people who received this money were selected because they were very poor, then this is not a UBI experiment. This is just a welfare program.
Still could be considered an experiment just with a control factor being “the poors”
It makes sense…I think the FOSS/anti-big tech world brings together a weird mix of far-left socialists and also libertarian types (hence the anti UBI sentiment)
Plus lemmy has just as many shills and bots as reddit, that or it is the ultimate echo chamber, since you can ser pretty much copy paste answers on any controversial topics. The last one seems to be “LLMs are not real AI” (which, they are. Just not AGI)
IDK, I’m a leftist, and am skeptical about UBI because it’s more of a free-market approach to solving a problems, rather than just directly solving problems. I.e. the government could just build more and better homeless housing, and expand section 8 to cover more of the cost and more people. I’m a bit afraid UBI would be used as an excuse to cut social programs, in a similar way that school vouchers are used to cut spending on education and leave families paying for what the vouchers don’t cover.
Bingo. A UBI is attractive because the people that keep the economy rolling are nearly completely unable to access what the economy produces. Why are we trying to keep this broken mess limping along with a UBI? The economy is designed to produce poverty and a UBI will do very little to change that fact.
I’d prefer decommodification of housing but UBI is probably a step in the right direction.
I’ve been surprised and super disappointed by a lot of the views I’ve been seeing in Lemmy comments lately. Anti homeless, judging addiction, fairly socially conservative, buying into the whole retail theft narrative, and the worst has been the misogyny framed as “realism” or some shit.
I don’t know, it’s not for me.
What is the retail theft narrative ?
The “narrative” is that theft hurts stores and stealing from stores in low-income areas causes them to close which leads to food deserts
I’ve always found people have the most shit opinions if it’s a post popular on Lemmy.world
I’m new to lemmy overall are there some places with better political discourse on here?
I’ve been lazy on Lemmy and just stopped searching for new lemmyverses after I hopped off reddit. But I really doubt you’re gonna find good political discourse on the Internet. I’m really disappointed everywhere I turn and I’d rather participate in real life action than argue during the few free hours I have.
Just pay attention to the instances the comments come from. This account is federated with .world and I am always seeing the most awful takes on here and it seems like most of the time it comes from users there.
I have another account not federated with .world, but it is with pretty much everything else. There’s fewer comments (rarely over 100) but it’s usually actual discussion and not revolving around anti-humanitarian practices.
It’s not a guarantee, but it seems very very high.
Was this rental housing or save-for-a-down-payment housing?
Yes, as a homeowner, I am plenty aware $12k will not cover a down payment in a lot of places. Maybe this gave some of these families the boost they need, or tipped them over the threshold they needed.
This is one of mine. I started lobbying for it in 2015 when even all in our group looked at me like I’m crazy. Not so crazy now, am I?
Before anyone asks, Austin is very much so a small town in some ways. Many tech folk moved in for the dot-com boom and never left because we fell in love with the town. We also stayed friends and we communicate often, even as we all moved on to do bigger and better things. Sometimes, all it takes is an e-mail thread to make change.
If there is a pot hole on the street, and the city isn’t fixing it, organize a few people. You might find that someone in your community has the tools you need, and someone else has left over materials.
