POVERTY IS A FEATURE NOT A BUG

I don’t think anybody thinks that.
- Not explicitly, maybe, but implicitly, absolutely, and in multiple ways:
  Supporting the system that creates one over the other
  Having 'bootstrap' attitudes about the poor
  Worrying about property value over utilization
  Complaining about the homeless rather than the lack of action on housing
  Voting against people who run on public housing
  In so, so many ways, people say they prefer the latter over the former. Usually just with the caveat that the homeless people also be invisible.
  
  Maybe we should institute a tax on underutilized land in metro areas.
  
  I wonder who is doing this voting? Oh, it's people who live in the areas we can't afford to live in. And capitalists add lobbying power to those voters selfish interests.
- In the United States at least, your local government's public hearings for new housing developments kinda begs to differ.
  People will demand the homeless be eliminated from their area while simultaneously opposing development of housing or shelters for the homeless in their area.
  So maybe you're right though: they don't hate the apartments more, they simply can't make up their mind on which they hate more.
  
  I agree but want to say everyone jumps to homeless. There are a ton of normal people that are suffering from high rent, lack of options, etc. We need to think about way more than homeless.
  
  So it sounds like zoning laws are the problem?
  
  I think it’s more so that people don’t want an apartment complex built in their backyard, not that they are opposed to them being built in an area where there is proper infrastructure
- It's not far off what many think. Many think apartments are, oh so many adjectives, dirty, poor, unsanitary, inhumane, cruel, unusual, etc.
  
  Who is “many”? Do you have surveys and data to support this?
- Sure they do. Look at all of the posts from my neighbors on Facebook and Nextdoor every time a developer tries to build an apartment building instead of a single family home in our neighborhood.
- We're not building homes, we're not focussing on density. But apparently our elected officials have no problem letting people set up shanty towns. Where do you think the priorities lay?
  
  What do you mean we’re not building homes? I have plenty of homes and apartments being built in my city that cater to lots of strata of incomes.

The world will never recover until poverty is seen not as a character flaw, but as a failure of society itself to provide for the most vulnerable.
- They wouldn't be vulnerable if they just overcame their own biology and lifetime of trauma. Its that simple, they arent trying hard enough.
  
  What do you mean by "overcame their own biology"?
  
  Also historical and/or generational poverty.
  
  I get your point, and while there is certainly a subset of people who are suffering through no fault of their own, there are plenty of people who are lazy and/or made terrible decisions. Lumping them all together like you are doesn't help the situation. Those who want help should absolutely be helped. Those who don't should not be allowed to ruin it for the rest of us.
- My freaking God. I volunteered at a local charity org a bit this summer and one of the first things they told us in orientation was that "most people think that poverty is about what people lack. But it's actually a mindset." That pissed me the heck off not gonna lie.
  
  Was it a religious charity org? Those ones are often condescending assholes like that..
  
  Yeah, you should have told the homeless charity you just joined the truth about homelessness!
- That's the ticket. The most hardworking people I've ever met are also some of the poorest.

I hate how when there is any picture of Soviet blocks it's always shot in autumn or winter when it's overcast. I live in an ex Soviet country and when these bad boys are maintained they can outperform new apartments, be it in functionality, amenities or price.
- always shot in autumn or winter when it’s overcast.
  To me this adds a lot to the charm. I'd love to live there (at least for some time)!
- Kruschev housing outperforms new apartments? That's the opposite of what we see of Russia in North America.
- I am simply not believing that 50 year old apartment blocks are outperforming new ones by any metric.
  I'm glad you're happy and there are plenty of 100+ year old homes in my country that are just fine but they are not outperforming anything.
  
  Even communism aside, this is actually not uncommon. One of the advances we've made in construction is knowing how to save even more money, making the right sacrifices and meeting the minimum bars of code compliance, to maximize our margins.
  
  Here in Finland a lot of new apartment blocks have very small apartments. Three rooms and a kitchen crammed into 60 m² (650 sq ft) are not uncommon. That means bedrooms that can fit a double bed and nothing else, and kitchens built into the side of the living room. Older blocks by contrast have much more spacious apartments. The condo I bought in a building built in the 1970s is three rooms and kitchen in 80 m² (860 sq ft). The condo goes through the building, so windows on two sides. The kitchen is its own separate space. Bathroom and toilet are two separate rooms. (The building is not a proper commie block, though. Or “Soviet cube” as they’re called in Finnish. We were never Soviet, but we took some inspiration from their cheap building styles.)
  
  Tons of large buildings are older than you'd think. Hell, a lot of large buildings don't even get serious structural inspections until they're 40+ years old!
  It was one of many contributing factors to the Champlain Towers South building collapsing in the US in Florida. No communism or Soviet corner cutting. Just good ol' fashioned American ineptitude. That building was undergoing some work so they could raise prices. It wasn't a low class building nor did many people think it was too old to invest in.
  What OP said is extremely likely to be true: Those buildings are competative.
  
  It's less a matter of technical capability and more one of cost. It's not like people didn't know how to build good, efficient homes before. It was just expensive.
  
  yes they are, they outperform american's cardboard house

I'd gladly live in one of those apartments in the first picture if it meant that everyone could have a home
- I’d gladly walk my ass out to the wilderness rather than live in an apartment block, but at least then there’d be an extra spot.
  
  The nice thing is in an anarchist society you could do just that, and no one would stop you
  I'd personally prefer to be surrounded by people
- bruh...
  
  You believe that housing is not a basic human right, yet you say to me, "bruh..."
  Just gonna pre-emptively block your bootlicking ass
- If everyone thought like this, everyone would have a home.
  And 50 or so people would own all of the rest of the land and do nothing with it because we're too fucking stupid to realize that a system that wants us all to live in 50m² micro apartments is a load of shit, and strung together by a greedy few.
  There is enough land for us all to live comfortably, but a fraction of a percent don't want anyone to use most of the land for anything useful so hey let's just give up and take almost-squalor because at least it not squalor!
  Fuck both these pictures.
  
  "Land-usage" is such a narrow-minded way to think about the implicit wants and needs of society. You sound like you've never been to actual cities, or never got your head far enough out of your arse to actually experience one.
  North American suburban sprawl already proves that "enough land for us all to live comfortably" is a terrible way to live sociable lives and drains the economy due to massive swathes of those lands being used for roads and the maintenance of said roads.
  I implore you to take a trip to almost any European city, and see for yourself what actual "comfortable living" for most people looks like.
  
  You make dense housing like these apartments because it is the most practical way to house everybody quickly. Once you take care of the immediate problem, homelessness, you can continue to expand and build nicer, bigger housing for everyone.
  What's more important, that we have enough resources to house everyone, but there are still people forced to live on the streets or the fact that you don't like the inconvenience of living in an apartment because it's too small for you even in the short term? Guess that makes you one of the greedy few that can't see past their own problems to think of their community.
  Fuck you doubly.
  
  What if we made the commie block apartments 140 m² each?

The USSR didn't do much good but those apartment buildings are definitely good. I used to live in a soviet apartment building and the funny thing about that was that every wall was a load bearing wall since all of them could hold up everything. They were thick as hell and fully concrete.
- Every wall was a wall and not a cardboard decoration of a wall
  FTFY. Not all of them were load-bearing, mind you, they were just proper walls made of wall.
  
  I'd say those were made from at least 3 walls worth of wall.
  
  Appartments in panel buildings have load bearing walls inside.
- Okay, I just went from "eh, commie blocks are gross but better than tents" to "fuck all the other apartments, bring on the commie blocks". Buildings in the US are built so ridiculously cheaply that in a lot of lower-rent buildings you can hear everything.
  
  Commie blocks do have some issues like absolutely awful electrical wiring or lack of insulation but a lot of ex soviet countries renovate those buildings which leaves no downsides.
- I find brutalism beautiful. Wish we could have more of it in my country but solid concrete, especially preformed, performs poorly under shear.
  It's gotten so "brutalist" is almost synonymous with "earthquake-prone".
- How soundproof were they? I’m in an apartment with shitty drywall and sometimes I hear my neighbors fart.
  
  As far as I knew I never even had neighbors or I at least never heard any.
  
  I'm living in a soviet-built tenement block, and the only time I've heard anything from a neighbour is when the guy living above me dropped a bowling ball.
  
  Not from Eastern Europe, but from India. Most buildings are made from bricks. Good enough to block most of the sound from adjacent apartment.
  In fact, some builders started using drywalls and there has been a pushback because drywall is considered poor quality material by people here. Which it absolutely is when the country has 4 months of monsoon every year. Drywall doesn't play well with moisture, does it?
  https://thelogicalindian.com/exclusive/krishnaraj-rao-lodha-builders/
- that every wall was a load bearing wall since all of them could hold up everything.
  It seems you lived in panel building. There are limitations to it like you should not add horisontal chases becaue it reduces load capacity or can't replan appartment because it will be destruction of load bearong wall. So wiring better be done in factory-made in-wall concrete tubes.

Don't worry, they've outlawed homelessness. Problem solved!
- Literally though. And there's a whole practice of hostile architecture that makes it harder and more uncomfortable to be homeless.
  
  The point of hostile architecture isn't to solve homelessness, just to send them to the next block/town over (not saying you don't understand that, just pointing it out).
- Make it unconstitutional for a municipality to let anyone go unhoused? Based, love it.

This is kinda like saying we need more farms to solve hunger.
The cost of housing is very detached from supply. For rentals, companies bought up housing and just jacked up the price, because renters are a semi captive client base.
New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.
Even for home buyers, they’re facing a major up hill battle going against existing home owners who have access to the capital of their current homes, and even worse corporate home buyers.
This isn’t to say supply isn’t an issue and we can ignore it, but we need to stop housing from just being an investment vehicle. Otherwise we’re just going to get garbage housing at prices no one can afford.
- it's not detached from supply at all, single house zoning and mandatory minimum parking make for a whole lot of trouble in the US
  
  Again I’m not saying supply isn’t an issue, and zoning is def a major problem in many states. But if the issue was only supply, rent would be growing more or less in line with the population not at the astronomical rate that it is.
  
  When Vanguard and Blackrock own half of the supply, then it's not a free market. Also, you said it's not detached from supply at all, but then proceeded to list reasons detached from supply that affect cost.
- New construction sometimes doesn’t even help, when developers knocks down an old affordable 12 unit apartment building and build a luxury 36 unit building, you’ve created -12 units of affordable housing.
  The argument I hear against this is that the 36 people who move into the luxury apartments moved from somewhere, and so 36 other apartments become available. The reduced demand for the vacated apartments then drives their prices down.
  Of course, housing as a market is super distorted for a bunch of reasons so this effect is muddled. But I think it would be a net negative to fully disregard supply and demand in a market-based economy and preserve 12 affordable units in favor of 36 luxury ones.
  Largely agree with all your other points though.
  
  I get that argument and I think there’s some merit to it since like you said this whole thing is muddled. But the counter point is often those vacated units are in another town or city. So in the way overly simplified scenario, if 36 “programmers” move to the city, the vacated units through out the country don’t help the “bus drivers” who are tied to the area.
  Again we largely agree, I just wanted to illustrate even the simple assumptions like building more is good isn’t always that straight forward in this fucked up system.
  
  The obvious and immediate flaw with the 36 people moving into luxury apartments is, that's not usually how luxury apartments work. Particularly in certain markets, it's more and more common for luxury housing to be temporary homes, vacation homes that are turned into investments the rest of the year, e.g. air BNB. So a lot of the time, you get 36 regular homes destroyed, for 12 luxury apartments that get bought up by either people or companies that either then rent them out or keep them empty most of the year, with no increase in available housing.
  
  Rich people don't really move into these luxury apartment. They buy it as an investment, use it as a holiday home, etc.

I don't think: "ah, buildings again. I'd rather live in camps featuring trash scent."
- The bottom picture also has a high rise apartment building in the background.
  
  Except it's owned by rent oligopolist.
- The communist housing blocks are also not super high on my list of "why I don't want to live in a communist dictatorship"
  
  Imagine we could take care of the poor while at the same time not revert to a totalitarian dictatorship. Like if we could do both?
  That's complete nonsense though, obviously. We get either to take care of the poor and go full Stalin or not and not. /s

I understand the point. But France has done this and ended up with giant ghettos filled with si much crime that no emergency services whatsoever go there anymore.
In the US, they built giant housing projects like this where poverty was concentrated and the same thing happened. Crime installed itself in those projects and these neighbourhoods became dangerous ghettos.
Picture 1 is not the solution you think you want.
The condo building where I live is not so big. And it was built with 25% dedicated to social housing where poor families and underpaid workers can live comfortably in an apartment unit as big as my condo unit, which I paid nearly $400k CAD, for the price of about $650 CAD per month. This allows them to integrate with everyone else and live with everyone else and near where all the jobs are.
- This is absolutely correct. Concentrating poverty is something that happens in most counties, but is very detrimental to society at large. Wikipedia has a decent article to get a toe in the water: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_poverty
- they built giant housing projects like this where poverty was concentrated
  Maybe this is because 30-story humant colony in the middle of nowhere without public transit will always be ghetto no matter who lives there.

Capitalism has you thinking that these are our only options
- For big cities, density is key.
  
  Moscow, built mostly 9-story housing, not more than 16-story in the end of USSR. Density is not height.
- The other options are, sadly, hours away.

I don't get people that have such a visceral reaction to apartments (the horror). What they write is frankly hilarious how they think. Right up there with what they write about transit (ohhh noooo) and electric stoves [sobbing noises].
- There's a pretty big spectrum though. On the one hand you have people in suburbs or in-city suburbs complaining about not building the occasional apartment building, essentially because they're scared of poor people, but then on the other hand you have people living in dense desirable mid sized cities watching them get manhattanized and have their relatively dense yet still pleasant row houses get torn to build rows of ugly skyscrapers that block sunlight from even reaching street level.
  The shift of housing from being predominantly individually owned to being parts of major buildings has also come along with the corporatization of real estate, where individuals have less choice, less freedom, and are in many many cases, are being actively exploited by for profit landlords and real estate developers.
  Yes, we need to density and build more apartments but people on the left these days who I normally agree with are so laser focused on building housing at all costs that they don't even realize that they're racing to the bottom. By today's standards Jane Jacobs, basically the founder of the entire modern urbanism movement, would be a NIMBY just because she advocated for making sure that cities remain livable rather than just building at all costs.
  Let's build way more low and mid rise apartment buildings, and let's build way more transit so that cities other than just the major ones are livable without a car, let's ban airbnb, and let's severely tax real estate and landlord profits to prevent them from hoarding supply. And yeah we're gonna have to build some high rises, but let's not pretend like replacing all of our individual housing with towers is universally a great thing.
  
  You're showing exactly what I said.
  apartment building, essentially because they're scared of poor people
  Fake association that people in apartments are poor. Don't know if you hold that idea, but you're repeating it
  ugly skyscrapers
  You've now defined them as ugly and thus undesirable.
  individuals have less choice, less freedom
  Now you say apartments are against freeeeeddooomm lol.
  actively exploited
  As if you can't own a condo.
  Or if we increase apartments builds then there will be actual competition. Instead of the current scarcity. Basic supply and demand.
  building housing at all costs
  Not like we have a mf housing crisis. Noooo.
  making sure that cities remain livable rather than just building at all costs.
  Now you suggest that building apartments makes things unlivable! The very place people live is somehow unlivable. Or that apartments inherently make the surrounding area undesirable.
  Yeah. Visceral reaction to apartments. Peace.
- Fucking tell me about it. The best part is how they try to justify how they are only focused on themselves by shit like calling apartments "inhumane." JFC, living in an apartment is not inhumane. Living on the street is inhumane.

never fails to amaze me how "progressive" types do a complete 180 as soon as someone mentions solving the homeless problem by giving them homes
edit: i rest my case
- I don't think "progressives" have any issue with housing the homeless. The issue is where.
  Go to a conservative (or indeed any) neighbourhood and tell them you'll be building 200 apartments nearby to house rough sleepers, see how that goes down.
  Most homeless are invisible to us anyway. They hold down jobs, they have gym memberships, they just sleep in their car, or on a mate's sofa every so often. Nobody would have a problem with them moving in nearby.
  It's the aggressive beggars, addicts, and shitting in shop doorways (and these three are the same person) that nobody wants anywhere near them. These are who most people think of when they hear the word "homeless". Most of them need more treatment than just a roof. We don't have enough of that either.
  I've no issue with my taxes helping all these people. I'm happy to pay tax to reduce the chances of me personally being robbed by somebody in desperate poverty.
  
  I think fears about the homeless robbing you are massively overblown. I've been panhandled hundreds of times, and the worst response I've ever gotten is a dirty look.
  I also think that the people shitting on public, etc. are more likely to be mentally ill than addicted (although they could be both). The reason is that Drugs Are Really Expensive. Also, I'm not aware of any addiction that causes you to shit in public, but it's easy to find mental illnesses that would.
- The left leaning rich progressives are all hypocrites when it comes to investing, money, housing, tech, jobs, waste, emissions, and more.
  Who knew the people who have the most to gain from capitalism would be so willing to also suck the dick of it for their own personal gain. Imagine that.
- Creating the projects by concentrating poverty into towers of terror is no better than having skid rows.
- you cant give a home to everybody smartass

Yeah, but I didn't have to pay anything for those people to live in tents. I keep my money out of their lazy hands.
/s, deeply, if it isn't obv.
- /s
  And for those unaware, the cost of homelessness does exist, and it is quite high. We pay for it through emergency services (police, doctors, ambulance, hospital beds), waste removal services, etc.
  The problem needs fixed, and part of the solution is commie blocks unironically.
  
  You are forgetting the cost of building "asshole design" infrastructure, like spikes under bridges, instead of building affordable housing.
  
  Very much so. Legal system, downtown areas, medical care… all face expenses of one sort or other, and those get passed on to the consumer and taxpayer. But a lot of people that don’t have to deal with the homeless because they live in a poor and/or rural area, or are incredibly hostile to homeless, that it’s fine for them to push the indirect tax onto areas that don’t have that demographic.

Pretty sure that’s just NIMBYs.

- hardly
  
  The empire is doing great. The people? Ehh not so much.

Who is this society guy? He sounds stupid

Uh, the billionaires don't see that. Even the millionaires can avoid seeing that.

What is this trying to say???
- That low income housing is good but people like when homeless people suffer.
  
  Or that people living in block housing is preferable to some living in suburbs and some being homeless.
  
  That's a bad take.
- Of course people would rather homeless people have housing instead of living in tent cities everywhere. But they also don’t have any desire to pay for it when it comes time to do something and of course make moral arguments against the homeless.
  These are two different groups of people
  The first, who are on board with state housing projects, are the common people who still have empathy for their fellow people
  The second, who are totally on board with homelessness because the housing projects are "too expensive", belong to the political and economic elite
  
  I don’t think it fails, but it does come from a specific cultural perspective.
  Those are “ugly Soviet buildings” built by the government. That already communicates cost and the unwillingness to bear it in the US.
  
  It's also forgetting that a significant portion of homeless people are homeless by choice, or are homeless for reasons that just providing housing won't resolve.
  People have this idea that all homeless people are just regular people who experienced hard times, but that's just a minority. Most homeless are mentally ill people who won't take their meds or drug addicts who aren't willing to quit.
  It sucks, and they shouldn't have to live on the streets, but you can't force people to change.
- https://invisiblepeople.tv/capitalism-and-classism-increase-homelessness/
- I think it's a confused message. Not the best meme.
  But the basic idea is that homelessness is caused by people preferring houses ("urban sprawl") rather than apartment complexes.
  
  It assumes you can recognize Soviet housing block, designed to quickly house as many people as possible. It has nothing to do with a preference for houses over apartments.
  If you look through the rest of the photos in the source article, ask if living like they do is worse than homeless in a tent.
  
  This makes the most sense to me so far
- It's trying to say that low income housing is the solution to homelessness.
  It's wrong, but that's the point it's trying to make.
  
  No, not really. But it's easy to read that into it.
- seems like it's trying to imply that homeless people are homeless because houses are too expensive.
  as if the guys in the bottom pic could afford a department in the top picture, but have to live in a tent because housing is expensive.
  I think what the meme does say is that OP is mentally 12.
  
  The top is meant to represent the socialist solution to homelessness. These are socialist block apartments built to ensure that everyone had housing because homelessness was a huge problem. They were functional, but because they were built to functionally address a need quickly, they weren't large or luxurious. They were built to last and the rent levels were controlled at a low rate if the people didn't outright own the place themselves.
  The bottom picture is the liberal solution to homelessness. Apartments suck, fuck the homeless, jack up the rent prices. The convenience of the few is prioritized over the needs of the many.
  Funny how someone who is mentally 12 could put this together, but you couldn't be bothered.

Not sure why or from where this quote comes from. In germany and poland we have many such apartment houses that are very affordable
- It comes from America, where capitalist simps preach the virtues of idiots who buy companies and act like it makes them paragons of humanity.
  
  Where living in such apartments would be hell because they'd expect them to be built out of sticks and cardboard, as it is common in the USA. Someone sneezes in the south end on the 2nd floor, the guy on the 12th floor north end goes bless you.
  Buildings in Europe are built from proper building materials, concrete, steel, glass, and bricks. Not cardboard and sticks and paper. Hence living in them is actually much nicer than one used to US buildings would expect.

What are you talking about dude? Those are homes with doors, locks, heat, and a bed. Compared to a tent?

The presence of picture 1 in no way prevents the presence of picture 2.
- It does if there's enough of them?
  
  No the people who own pictire one can and have shown they are willing too let them sit and rot rather than lower rent
- Public/social housing (presumably what's being proposed here) sure as hell would beat tent cities. Who the hell wants to stay in a tent rather than an actual home? Housing co-ops work if you've already got some amount of money, too.
- I'm having trouble telling the difference between the two.

To be fair new social housing looks like this:

Not enough trees and first batch was mostly single-room(as in one bedroom, one kitchen, one toilet and one bathroom in appartment), but better than humant colony.
- The murals are a nice touch, let's see how the white paint looks in 50 years though.
  
  As in 50 years or 50 years without any maintanance and in complete neglect.

I really like russian appartement complexs, there is always green surrounding the buildings...I hate russia though
- I'm from eastern Europe and those green spaces are usually not very well managed. And they also end up looking kinda sad when you live there.
  Rusty playgrounds, plants not managed and growing all over the place in a not very aesthetically pleasing way, completely destroyed or very quickly patched up walkways.
  I do think it's still better than the American suburbs, but it could be so so much better if cities invested more into making these areas enjoyable to be in.
  
  I do think it's still better than the American suburbs, but it could be so so much better if cities invested more into making these areas enjoyable to be in.
  Agreed. If anything is mismanaged it will be shitty, if something was mismanaged for 30 years and did not fall on itself, then it was built good.
- I hate russia though
  You probably hate Putin instead.

Right, well even though San Diego might have state park beach front property, we shouldn't have a tent city filling it up. This quickly becomes unhygienic, and crime rises, among other issues.
- Yes, you should have a tent city filling up. San Diego is just like every other city in North America. We're seeing the endgame of late stage capitalism. Rampant homelessness, at the risk of being redundant, is a feature of capitalism, not a bug. There is only so much money in circulation and most working class people have none of it.

Is this really even a meme? Just seems like some random slice of depression.

this confused me
- Whenever there is a major affordability housing project, it usually gets shut down by its area residents who get to have a say. They'll often say things like how it's unsightly because it blocks their views or overshadows their detached homes. Which in turn decreases their own house value. There are plethora of reasons, but I believe that is the one OP is making. NIMBY in other words. Alternatively, OP may be making comments about how government housing projects is socialism/communism and some people are rejecting simply on that basis.
  Lack of supply in housing is a severe crisis in certain regions, like Toronto for example, which is now rated as the #1 housing bubble in the world according to some banks with the biggest reason being lack of supply. There's an estimated shortage of nearly 6 million homes for the Canadian population, most of which is around Toronto. The rapid housing prices is in turn making homelessness spike up.
  Indirectly, but effectively, the local population is saying they'd rather have tents pitched near their homes rather than an affordable apartment near by.

Aren’t these basically the same picture? Like the second photo has a literal apartment building on the right of the background
- Imagine thinking living in an apartment with heat, water, furniture, dishwasher, clothes washer, electricity, all the amenities, is the same as living in a tent. Exactly what the meme says: brainwashed society.
  
  I’m just saying the two are part of the same picture, both literally and metaphorically. Often when people go against these they point to the homeless in cities. I get and agree with the point, I just don’t agree with the presentation; maybe some similar picture for the bottom in a suburb would do

This more because of the local planning in a lot of western countries. Authoritarian countries force housing through much easier
- China has 300m homeless people though?
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9326182
  
  Depending on how one defines homelessness, China has either a very tiny homeless population or an extremely large one. Compared to other countries, there very few vagrants: people living on the streets of China's cities without means of support. But if one counts the people who migrated to cities without a legal permit (hukou), work as day laborers without job security or a company dormitory, and live in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions on the edge of cities, there are nearly 300 million homeless
  The source of your source
  
  300 million homeless in China? What the hell, that's like almost the entire population of the US.
  
  Yeah no. There is no way 20% of the Chinese population is homeless. Your source is a US government website, I'm sure they're not biased about China.
- I think what they're trying to say in thr meme is that the building is government funded. In the US, we also a made some government funded buildings, "projects" but it did not go very well (combination of bad optics, and supposedly bad funding) . So the US basically said fuck public funding for housing, the free market will fix everything. And instead of the "ugly" buildings that Russia has (the idea pushed onto Americans) , we ended up with a large number of unhoused people because of spiraling out of control housing costs
  
  The US uses vouchers, but they are underfunded (years long wait lists) and not accepted in many places. Some of the places that do accept them have similar issues to housing projects.
  
  There is only the illusion of a market. Construction codes and lack of construction sites prevent that there is a surplus that drives down costs.

Literally to whom does this apply? Get in touch with reality.
- I am always highly amused by uninformed opinions on the Internet.
  Here is a news report from this week regarding Portuguese middle-class families that just started to live in tents due to high housing costs: https://sicnoticias.pt/pais/2023-09-18-Todos-os-dias-chega-mais-gente-crise-na-habitacao-empurra-familias-para-tendas-4917d440
  Get in touch with reality.
- Many people in the USA

Totally true!

Honestly I'd take homeless any time of the year over the culture that is fostered in those Russian type block houses. It's far worse.
- Have you ever lived in one? I do, it's actually really nice people. In mine, there's basically 2 big groups: families with young children and the elderly.

Oh good, more edgy agenda posts
- What's edgy about it?
  
  The high rises are have right angles. I'm guessing that's those are the edgy bits
  
  Making sure people have ample access to basic human rights such as shelter is pretty extreme

More like "This doesn't exist, we're going to deal with it just one minute" 🤗

No. The only bigger problem I have with the first image is permanence; the situation in the second picture is easier to clean up.

Whats with all the soviet propaganda in lemmy memes?
- Housing homeless is Soviet?
  
  No, many countries do it right. But the meme implies this. Top picture is commie blocks, bottom picture is what you see in some western countries that do not get their social policies right. And the whole statement is a straw man as homelessness is not related to capitalism alone. This is typical propaganda.
- Lemmy is run by left wingers

I hate both of them equally and with a vile passion. Having to share walls with other families is just as inhumane. I don't know why "Urban Sprawl" is such a looked down upon term. I'd much rather cities start as a central hub, and then urban sprawl outwards with minor hubs surrounding them every 100 miles or so.
This whole -- either everyone has to be packed like sardines, or everyone has to have 5 acres per house crap is annoying. Give the nation some medium density housing. We have the fucking internet now, half the people can work from home. You don't need to be walking-distance from everything.
- Yes, occasionally hearing your neighbors is just as inhumane as having no shelter, water and heating.
  
  You've obviously never actually lived in one of these places. They regularly have infestations, dirty water, and no heating due to the types of people they house and the "affordable" nature of them which generally causes lack of upkeep once built. Which can be, yes -- just as inhumane as living in a tent.
  In addition, it removes the potential for ownership away from the people living there, in an effort to rent-seek and make sure they own nothing for as long as they live.
- With "Urban Sprawl," reliable public transit, and working from home, we could each nurture our personal green space and drastically cut emissions. I'm all for it.
  
  If you have urban sprawl, you're not having reliable public transport. You need density to make it work.
- Nobody is saying this stupid strawman you are arguing! If the kitchen is on fire and the trashcan is full, what do you do first? Do you take out the trash first because you can't live in such a wretched state?
  Your vile passion is just thinly veiled narcissism. You can get your just desserts after we take care of major societal problems affecting the wider community. POOR YOU.
  
  It's literally the argument in the image. That the bottom image is "worse to look at"...what are you on about?
  I'm simply commenting on a third option that people regularly complain about looking at, "Urban Sprawl". There's no strawman here - you should really learn what that word means. I live comfortably in a medium sized neighborhood. I don't have to deal with the sights of either of these images at all... there's no "poor you" because I'm...not complaining. I'm offering a third option to a 2-choices fallacy presented in the OP.
- How is it inhumane? Have you only ever lived in apartments made of paper walls?
  
  Have...you sat there and thought about what you're asking? What "affordable housing" complexes do you know that aren't made out of paper walls? That's the "affordable" part.
- What you seems to be describing is Single-Family Housing. True medium density is actually really compact, using lots for more efficient housing and including public green space.

North Korea have more births than South Korea, having half of population. Capitalism is a demographic failure.
- Yeah because people have few activities they can do for leisure compared to "the west", so sex it is.
  Not having money/access to contraceptives probably doesn't help either
  
  So having activities for leisure and money is a problem? Cause demography is the capitalistic problem. It consumes a population to produce leisures and money?
- They also have an infant mortality rate of 17 per 1000 vs 2.5 per 1000 in South Korea. I don't think counting births is super useful here.
  
  Infant mortality doesn't change the numbers a lot. North Korea have a much better demography than South Korea. Modern capitalism destroy the populations the embrace it.

As someone who lives in a former communist country, I can tell you that “commie blocks” most definitely don't fix homelessness.
- As someone who's from a former Communist country, the downfall of communism was met with a dramatic rise in homelessness.
  But you probably shouldn't trust a random person on lemmy saying "as someone from Communist country", this info easily verifiable with a web search.
  Here's the first link I get searching "homelessness after communism":
  https://journal.culanth.org/index.php/ca/article/view/ca29.1.03/277
  
  I agree, the fall of the Soviet Union caused a sharp rising in homelessness. I disagree that Khrushchevkas are the solution for homelessness.
  
  Because the commies put all homeless people into jails you dunce!

oh no you've been a victim of misinformation oh dear 🙄
- Oh no I hate sharing good affordable housing with many other people, how could the damn socialists do this to us 😭
  
  I know right? It'd be downright awful.

there's no worse/better they're both worse

What a stupid snivelling American sophomoric bullshit opinion.
The bottom problem is drug addiction, not capitalism.
The top photo isn't about what it's like to fucking look at , it's about what it's like to live in.
And I can tell you that there is plenty of crime there.
- Sir, this is Lemmy.ml
  I don't know what else you were expecting
- What a stupid sniveling fascist freshman bullshit opinion
  Material Conditions lead them to that drug abuse
  Capitalism made those material conditions literally unavoidable
  Crime is easier to deal with when you live inside of four walls with a roof and a locking door as opposed to a motherfucking tent.
  I know you dont give a fuck, but your arguments are DUMBBB. Are you being purposely disingenuous or are you just stupid?
  
  Material Conditions lead them to that drug abuse
  This is how I know you have exactly zero life experience, and clearly never given the topic more than a moments thought.
  You call me dumb - but are you seriously saying that the only reason people become substance abusers is because of poverty?
  Think about that for just thirty seconds.

The tents might actually have a better heat isolation xD

Stupidity at its purest form: vote for socialism and leftism, and then when it destroys your city, call it capitalism. You guys come stragiht out of a comic book.
It's 100% a coincidence that more leftist cities have bigger homelessness problems. You deserve this. You voted for this. Enjoy!
And hey, I don't give two shits. I'm laughing at you.
- Thats funny because I live in a country that is significantly more left leaning than the US and yet our poverty and homelessness is significantly lower than yours.
  Oh and it would help if you stop blaming each other for the problems in your country and start looking at the ones actually making the decisions to be responsible for them as well.
  
  Your country is not perfect and has its problems. I went to many European countries and saw the beggers everywhere. So spare me the bullshit. Besides, it's a fact that the US leftist states have bigger homelessness problems.

Now i can work for myself and earn for a better home, but under communism id most likely have to live in a building like top picture
- Mmm, irony
- Now i can work for myself and earn for a better home
  "I'm winning at the capitalist crapshoot, so everyone else must be as well"
  
  i don't care about people who don't care about themselves