You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
“We’ve given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We’ve given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing.”
So this guy shouldn’t be news, this should be the standard, it’s scary that the one good guy with enough money to do something like this is the exception and not the norm.
We all evolved to live in tribes; we have to work together as people.
That’s why we elected people to help the community with our collected funds. To help govern the distribution of the community effort. Well, that was the idea.
Do they pay him rent now?
Just want to remind everyone that we don’t have a housing shortage, we have a cost of living crisis. Everyone deserves a place to live and we have plenty. The will is the only thing. Fight YIMBY traitors. We can do it!
Not sure what you’re talking about, but here in the UK we need over 4m houses to be built to house the current population. That’s quite a lot for a country of 68m.
Ahaha! Wtf is this shit? Bloody think tanks…
Well, can you provide some context to your +4m new houses figure?
Then we can discuss where the difference comes from.
Do you guys have room for that?
There’s loads of space. We just need to mow down terraced houses and get rid of aristocracy, which owns 40% of land in England.
Anyone has room for that if it’s not built in the style of American suburbs.
Someone took 99 families off the streets? Wow fuck that asshole, how dare she have enough money to do that. How dare she not give up her home and make it 100 families off the streets, not good enough!
-Half this website, angry 99 families now have a place to live who didn’t before this event
The anger isn’t (necessarily) for the rich person who housed people. It’s for the system who left people homeless in the first place, the system that will put those people back on the streets if they don’t pay rent/property taxes/whatever other fee people have to pay to exist, the system where the solution is literally just “have rich people pay their share and almost everything will be fixed” but for some reason the people in charge can’t (or don’t want to) figure that out.
You conflating anger with the system with anger for people getting houses is disingenuous.
He denied their choice to live like they wanted and God intended! What an asshole. Who is he to decide for them?
This website is full of envy is the simple answer. Hate for people who have more, tons of entitlement and the “I totally wouldn’t want to be a billionaire!” bullcrap flying around.
the bullshit is that the system left 99 people without homes in the first place
A lot of people talk about taxing folks like this and then using the money to supply the housing.
The thing is, given the money, few people could pull this off well. The site isn’t just being plopped down; from the sound of the article in the comments it’s being actively developed as a community with other safeguards and support, by someone who sunk a lot of time into finding out what would work to help people rather than just appear to help.
A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives. It also needs a community that will embrace it - for example it would likely work in the town I grew up in, but the town I work in (and am sadly forced to live in) now would likely drive such a project to failure.
It’s a good idea that worked against the odds, and should be celebrated for that alone.
A scheme like this is hard to replicate because, in addition to money, it needs a core team with a clear vision and the time to really make it a focus of their lives.
Sounds like an opportunity for the local government, and a way to create local jobs.
Where are they built in relation to necessary services, and what other services are available?
Is there on site support for drugs and mental health issues?
Is anybody’s stuff going to be safe there? Or are they dumped out of sight and mind?
You have to ‘invest’ in preventing the causes of homelessness in the first place, which has proved impossible under capitalism. I doubt corrupt dictatorships of the proletariat such as the Soviet Union did any better.
that sounds an awful lot like communism to me. We can’t have that.
There’s a lot of negativity from armchair experts in this thread but this seems like a genuine case of somebody putting a lot of thought and a lot of effort into actually helping the homeless. It’s not just dropping a bunch of tiny houses and saying “job done”.
It’s deadass exhausting seeing people whinge whenever anything that improves the world happens. Always enough time for criticism, never enough to do something anywhere near as positive IRL.
Incredible read, thank you for sharing this
I think most likley that is actually the case. Y’all are masters at the sophist uno card. Cha cha real smooth…how low can you go…Charity is a band aid of tyranny and all those in the hierarchy play their part. Some towns out west that have a bunch of rich people don’t have any infrastructure for the poor so the peasants can serve them their cheeseburgers at their local McDonald’s. This means the rich need us. It is not altruism but out of necessity, but you can spin anything the way you would like, especially when it’s hard to tell rich people what to do.
Yes this… “What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” Butttttttt… “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (Matthew 6:6, ESV)
Rich people love peacocking managing perception and you will lap it up like a loyal dog unaware of your position in the hierarchy. I am not even Christian but raised Christian I suppose.
I like this because it is both a good story about an individual helping their community and it is proof individual action alone is not enough to rely on to solve social problems.
Good 😊 What a kind thing to do 😊 Those with lots of money, helping those who don’t have👌🏻
Reminds me of what Micheal Sheen did. Wholesome 🥰
Now imagine if billionaires did it with their infinite wealth…sad. humanity and capitalism is just cancer.
If we can convince them their dick size is measured by how much charity / benefit they do with their wealth we will solve many of the world’s problems overnight
I still don’t get why “rich lists” aren’t done using tax returns. It’s a clear yardstick to compare egos by.
It also has the side effect of encouraging civic contribution via taxes. By the time you’re that rich, money is just a score. Make it worthwhile not to dodge taxes, and tax dodging will drop off.
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
millionares($) wouldn’t be able to afford multiple yachts, or even so large of a yacht. billionares, those who offshoring wealth makes sense for, are the problem.
not the docter nor lawyer, but the whale.
millionares pay about 48%-49%, at least where im from.
Man, Im starting to think I’m tarded. Something about this isn’t letting my brain work, please do more sentences
People are downvoting because “retarded” is increasingly considered a slur or hateful term (just providing context, do with that what you will)
Did anyone say that it was better this way? He could just go buy another yatch instead.
No one is saying it’s better for rich people to independently spend money on charity pet projects. Appropriate taxation is better but this was still a good way for him to spend his money, it’s still good for him to help his community (he could have just spent that money on a yacht)
Dont let perfection be the enemy of better
This is a variation on the saying “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good”. Which means don’t reject good things just because they aren’t perfect. Perfect is an ideal that doesn’t exist, and good is still worth celebrating.
In this case, the commenter is saying that perfect would be better taxation and government programs that provide this service to the people. But a private citizen helping people with their private wealth still helps people. That’s a good thing even if it’s not the perfect ideal solution
Personally I am a huge advocate of the “don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” mentality :) hope this helps and I hope you have a good day!
I probably shouldn’t have said that. I’m gonna double down though a little and say I’m not out here to hurt anyone or make anyone feel hurt, I’m just trying to add voice to my writing. Sort of a tension cutting tool. Some of my favorite people are tarded, like my wife. She’s a pilot now.
Joking aside though, I appreciate the effort of you ELI5ing this to me, and I should have been more direct. I just don’t get why this guy commented this when what he’s commenting on essentially said the same thing. I’m just more surprised that almost the same amount of people upvoted both. They’re both valid in the same way.
If you carefully read the negatives and positives he’s saying kinda the opposite of the first guy :)
I see no reason to believe that letting this guy make unilateral decisions is somehow better than taxing him appropriately and using the revenue to build public housing.
“I don’t believe letting them just spend their money this way is better than doing it with taxes”
And then even more simplified (obviously loosing nuance)
“I don’t think this is as good as doing this with taxes”
Dude, you are just a gem.
I’ve been drinking a bit tonight, and I’m going to look at this tomorrow. I imagine that it’s all going to flow together nicely, but it’s never going to be as nice as you’ve been.
Thank you, and just be proud of how kind you are. I’m astonished currently. I’ll see you tomorrow, and we’ll get to the bottom of this:)
Lol, I really appreciate that. Drink some water and rest well man!
This statement might be true, but we’re not taxing him. Should he just donate his money to the government?
I don’t even think you can do that.
I see one: he actually did something instead of a council that blows all of the money on meetings
Sure there are lots of failures to the way we govern ourselves. This shouldn’t be a need. The reality is that it is a need and that person did what he could. Have you?
Absolutely. We don’t need kings making decisions like this. The downside is the difficulty in forcing government and the anti-help-anyone segment of our society to spend such taxation correctly to actually help people.
I’m also angry he did a good thing despite the government’s abject failure to tax the rich.
If every billionaire did this and ended homelessness perhaps they would have a point about their wealth hoarding. I won’t be holding my breath for this to happen though. Tax the rich!
What makes you think Trump’s administration will make better use of that money?
This is obviously way better, come on. Why involve middle men in something like this? Add more layers and it becomes less efficient. Less of the money goes to helping people and it gets spread around to different agencies, or even worse goes to government contractors who can charge ridiculous rates because they know someone and didn’t have to compete for the contract. I worked at a place once where we got a couple hundred thousand dollars for a useless study because if the money didn’t get used it would make their budget smaller for next year. That kind of thing happens all the time.
I’m of two minds.
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shitty bungalows are what is killing infrastructure costs and perpetuating urban sprawl. We have a generous home in a hyper-dense housing area and - thanks to triple paned windows and concrete - no claustrophobia.
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tiny homes for people returning from homelessness may be a good idea. The unfair concerns are mitigated by very repairable units separated from neighbours.
We need to keep these as transitional housing, though, and a feeder into a “starter” unit in proper dense mixed-use: every block (hectare) taken for tiny homes is 3 million cubic meters of space taken from a land budget we’re already overdrawn on.
I think thats always the hope that they are first steps of stability to move up. None of the projects like this I’ve seen have been intended to be life time residence.
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Source? Did it actually work? Very cool if so.
Here’s one article about it.
https://macleans.ca/society/tiny-homes-fredericton/
I don’t remember where I saw this the first time, but it did mention that this had become a thing in a few American cities too (this story was from Fredericton, Canada)
My city does something like this as part of our homeless program and we’re at “net-zero” homeless. It doesn’t work on it’s own, but the tiny homes give people a stable place to keep their stuff safe and the elements off their bodies, it gives them an address they can use for things like mail and applications, and it gives social workers a place to find them reliably. It’s the start of a long process to help them back to their feet.
Being on the streets is also incredibly dangerous. Putting drug users around other drug users as well doesn’t keep them off drugs.
I used to live in a town that did something very similar to this. It sorta worked but mostly did not. But as another commenter pointed out you need more than just homes. Obviously they help a ton but a lot of people need more help than just a roof over their head. Financially, medically, mentally, employment… It’s a bigger, more complicated problem.
But it goes without saying that this is a step in the right direction and absolutely better than collectively shrugging our shoulders and walking away.
Housing is the basis for addressing most of those other issues.
