Day: September 24, 2025💾

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How States and Cities Decimated Americans’ Lowest-Cost Housing Option | The Pew Charitable Trusts

How States and Cities Decimated Americans’ Lowest-Cost Housing Option | The Pew Charitable Trusts

Low-cost micro-units, often called single-room occupancies, or SROs, were once a reliable form of housing for the United States’ poorest residents of, and newcomers to, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and many other major U.S. cities. Well into the 20th century, SROs were the least expensive option on the housing market, providing a small room with a shared bathroom and sometimes a shared kitchen for a price that is unimaginable today—as little as $100 to $300 a month (in 2025 dollars).

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, landlords converted thousands of houses, hotels, apartment buildings, and commercial buildings into SROs, and by 1950, SRO units made up about 10% of all rental units in some major cities. But beginning in the mid-1950s, as some politicians and vocal members of the public turned against SROs and the people who lived in them, major cities across the country revised zoning and building codes to force or encourage landlords to eliminate SRO units and to prohibit the development of new ones. Over the next several decades, governments and developers gradually demolished thousands of SROs or converted them to other uses, including boutique hotels for tourists. And as SROs disappeared, homelessness—which had been rare from at least the end of the Great Depression to the late 1970s—exploded nationwide.

Fuera Bush 1952

While the plastics and nitrogen plant in Fuera Bush were a later addition, much of the village today is similar to years past.

Fuera Bush 1952

Thematic Map: Most Popular Automobile Make
Map: Battery Diagram

And then the rain comes ☔

Mostly because of my extreme mental illness and dislike of driving to work, I’ll ride in the rain, and probably get soaked by evening but I’ll take the risk later on as the express bus is no more and the local is so slow.

Tomorrow looks like more serious rain, 🌧️ so I’ll probably drive in tomorrow as I need to go the pharmacy to pick up those special eye drops 👀 that are supposed to make the big snip less painful and speed eye healing after LASIK on Friday. But in the mean time, I’m wearing glasses 👓 which makes me look more like a professional and less of a hillbilly 🧑‍🌾 then I am. I was good, I washed out that most likely unrecycable No. 5 Cottage Cheese container so I have the option of being greenie of the year 💚 and recycling ♻️ that container rather then watch it melt th next time I’m in woods with the grass. Hey, at least with the rain, things won’t be such a fire risk and I can have a big fire. 🔥 I was glancing at all those pallets they had along Erie Boulevard on way to work yesterday in my big jacked up truck, and I was thinking how much fun it would be to burn them as long as I don’t get any of those nails in my 35 inch tires. Went to the overpriced Market 32 in Slingerlands got fresh strawberries 🍓 and bananas 🍌 as I could not see paying $15 for a bag of frozen fruit. Tomorrow I can stop at Walmart or Hannaford. Frozen Maine blueberries 🫐 are always good. 😋 Less plastic then the fresh ones.

Getting used to glasses, 👓 not that I enjoy wearing them, but they work okay. I am getting used to seeing out of them. Hopefully I won’t get too soaked riding in, and if I get soaked riding home, chances are good that I won’t totally melt away, after all I am not that liberal as I own guns 🔫 and burn more plastic and smoke more grass then those people would approve.  And I probably even voted for the Trumpster because I was annoyed that Jill Stein wasn’t on the ballot  and several other Democrats in 2024. The moron in the White’s House hasn’t done anything to protect the second amendment despite his rhetoric. 🔫 Can’t he at least get back the real gun emoji? Especially a hunting rifle emoji? I better get in shower 🚿 and then on my bike 🚲 and head up to Menands to the Assembly Data Center World Headquarters with it’s acres of parking. 🅿️ And listen to more of Hunter S. Thompson’s Rum Diaries. At least now I know the inspiration for Fred Dicker’s persona, I think he’s dead now? Or at least very old and even more decrepit then it was a quarter century ago.

Last night was the big hearing over the 75-acre solar farm proposed for the Albany Pine Bush. ☀️ ChatGPT really took the edge off my testimony. The developer was a nice guy, a biologist and farmer dude who had one of his solar farms burn a few months back – the one on his homestead. Said it wasn’t due to the electrical side of things, but that didn’t give the neighbors much reassurance. I thought I had a temper but did the developer. 😡 His counsel had to calm him down during the hearing when he got mad. My views have evolved on these industrial solar facilities, 🦋 they are definately a rural use as they don’t bring a lot of people on land, but they don’t belong in a full protection area of the Pine Bush. The thing is after attending these hearings, I get all jacked up on emotions, and find it hard to sleep well. 🛏️ It’s all those damn urban problems, why can’t everybody have like 100 acres of land, their own cows and solar panels and burn barrel out back? 🛢️ As Trump says, “Kill All the Cows”. What a drunken moron at the United Nations yesterday. I guess it’s old timers disease, or maybe just the bitterness about the Vietnam War which ended over a half century ago. And maybe it’s a badge of honor to be seriously mentally ill. I still hate all the vinyl siding and asphalt shingles even if I’ve learned a lot about the professed virtues of no maintance materials until their landfilled from all the books 📚 I’ve read on building science. 👷

SVGZ Graphic: Population Born Out of State
Map: Overview Map Piseco-Powley Road