The Big City; Save the Flophouses (1996)

https://archive.is/ggxry

I imagine they’re all gone now. A great example of the free market creating a niche product that was useful and affordable to its customers and the government regulating it out of existence. I’m sure there were abuses by owners but the system worked for the majority.

A few years after this, a documentary was made about some of the men still living at the Sunshine (mentioned in the first paragraph): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0m2FaC8GUs

Are these types of accommodations popular among tech people working in startups? I imagine if you are spending multiple days in a row at the office (or offices across multiple cities) it doesn't make sense to pay rent on a location you never use. I remember reading an article of a Google employee that lived in a box truck in the parking lot.

Your daily reminder that urbanism leads only to more misery. Dense cities will never have cheaper housing. And it will only get worse and worse as the density continues to grow.

And we know that the misery won out when people pose it like this:

> If you can't afford a home up to our standards, better that you should be homeless?

The third option is to LIVE IN CHEAPER PLACES. The US has 1.1 housing units per household. We literally have more homes than families! And this doesn't change much if we assume that illegal immigrants are undercounted.

The whole housing policy must focus on making MORE locations feasible, not trying to strangle the democracy with bike lanes.