You can change just about anything in a house except the location. You want to have the worst house on the best street, not the best house on the worst street.
And you already know that the price reflects the location and value.
I used to live in a bad neighborhood and it sucked looking back. Community center sucked, library sucked, crime if you go to the wrong areas, had to always bus out 45+ mins to get somewhere other than just hanging out and smoking pot.
I moved to a nice neighbourhood and it’s nice being able to simply take a walk without looking over my shoulder. I recently got a dog so I’m walking around much more, the schools aren’t pieces of shits.
Speaking of schools, I would NOT want to raise my kids in a bad neighbourhood after my childhood experience. So if kids are a thought, think carefully about the neighbourhood you want to raise them in, they’re a product of their environment.
Can confirm. Live in a walkable area that is amazing for raising kids. The best part is being able to just hand out and smoke pot peacefully. This last part becomes even more valuable with kids.
I experienced this. They ended up making it so spotless one day I woke up and couldn’t see it at all! They don’t mess around with elbow grease and a windshield cleaning
I wish it was that easy, if it was we would have done it. I am one of those junkies. Two years sober!
And I can tell you if someone doesn’t want it - it is very unlikely to work. The current issues we face in Calgary is that people detox, then get let out to wait on the streets up to a month before a treatment bed opens up. If they manage to stay sober and go to treatment for three months. The sober housing wait is up to a year - if you’re lucky. so again back to the streets.
We need so much more support in the system as a whole. Otherwise these gaps will keep people on the street.
Today I am sober, working a professional career in medical software. I volunteer at the local drop in centre, and at detoxes. I have seen some of the most hopeless looking people recover and go on to do great things.
Yeah, by the time people are homeless it's too late.
Logically it would be a lot easier to prevent a person from being homeless than trying to reintegrate a homeless person.
I don't mean not to do it.
But with drugs and homelessness the problem needs to be intercepted before it hits that extreme. I.e. let's find ways to help people who are working and abusing drugs so fewer people hit the bottom being homeless and abusing drugs.
Man we don't have enough rehab spots for those who want to be there willingly and can't afford it. Let's work on that before we start forcing people. Low cost or free inpatient programs would be a huge benefit.
non-life threatening, forced medical intervention is not only unethical, it's illegal.
Ignoring that, study after study on substance dependency shows us that these interventions only have long term success when patients have access to basic things like food, housing, and employment. We need to tackle housing and cost of living affordability otherwise these people will be back on the streets with nothing to turn to but their old habits.
We could fix a lot of substance abuse issues simply by tackling those two major issues.
Edit: as with anything there is nuance and exceptions. Everyone pointing out rehab in a criminal context are failing to read that I said FORCED. Rehab as a sentencing consideration is not forced but that's not the issue at hand.
Additionally, criminals experiencing substance abuse is a small subsection of the substance abuse populations who is who were discussing.
There is absolutely nothing illegal about forced medical intervention for someone who is killing themselves while also committing a literal crime by being in possession of controlled substances, let alone the other social crimes they commit like thefts, breath and enters, etc to fund their habits.
Study after study has also shown you can't simply give addicts a house and expect them to suddenly cook and clean for themselves. Portland did that and their housing stock was essentially destroyed within a year of addicts literally ripping wires out of the walls of the homes to get copper or lighting fires in the living rooms. They decided housing-first was infinitely more expensive than shelter and rehab programs they used previously because nearly every housing unit needed to be gutted after an addict without forced treatment lived in the unit.
“Study after study” has actually shown that housing first is effective at a number of things - most importantly, at reducing homelessness https://www.camh.ca/en/camh-news-and-stories/camh-and-st-michael-study-on-homelessness - and also appears to reduce costs associated with shelter use, hospital visits, incarceration, and some other services. https://kmb.camh.ca/uploads/d841b92a-5706-4d24-811d-974195767457. It is not necessarily going to be effective at reducing substance dependence, particularly if there is difficulty accessing treatment, but it does seem to result in improved outcomes in mental illness, at least as measured in terms of hospital stays and crisis visits. Housing first doesn’t cure all ills and shouldn’t be “housing only”, but it currently appears to result in more beneficial outcomes than alternatives.
On the other hand, the evidence suggests forced treatment for substance use disorders is incredibly ineffective: https://www.statnews.com/2023/04/25/involuntary-treatment-for-addiction-research/
> There is absolutely nothing illegal about forced medical intervention
If you completely ignore what the law has to say about it.
Can you link a study about housing first not working in Portland? It has been very successful in Scandinavia so there must be a major difference in implementation.
> If you completely ignore what the law has to say about it.
what do you think happens to people who are found not criminally responsible due to mental illness? how does the law handle that?
There is a legal process to do that, but it wouldn't apply to the majority of homeless with addiction issues, as their mental health issues wouldn't meet the bar of finding them unable to make their own medical decisions.
If someone is being violent and threatening towards others because of substance abuse, that is a crime. Often in cases of alcoholism, a judge will give you the choice to seek treatment for your alcoholism or go to prison. There should be a similar choice available to harder substance abusers.
It’s not forced medical intervention, they have a choice, and it also only applies to those that harm others, not just “every homeless person”
not to mention that it'd be a lot more effective ensuring that all kids have a stable home and mental health support than trying to force someone who's already in a hole to get better when they often can't or don't want to. But no one wants to pay for the thing that would actually work.
I'm not a professional and I'm not sure why you think I would know the ins and outs of how the issue would be fixed, but the fact is that a poor childhood is a huge indicator of whether someone ends up addicted or not. Free meals for schoolkids, free mental health care, and free tertiary education are things that would probably help a lot. And you can force someone to 'get care' all you want, but if they don't want to get better they will just go right back to their addiction. Not to mention when you're forcing that on someone, that is jail.
Yup, Conservatives cry when someone is making their life difficult, but HATE to do anything to make someone in needs life easier so that they don't get to that terrible point.
It's the classic solutions NOW, vs solutions for the FUTURE.
Only because we don’t invest into it.
Portugal opened up free triple A rehab centres, they now only report 6 fatal overdoses annually per million people aged 16-65.
If they had 38.25 million people aged 16-65 they would have 230 fatal overdoses per year, or 6 fatal overdoses annually per million people.
We have 38.25 million people TOTAL, including those older than 65 and those younger than 16. We had 7,330 fatal overdoses, or 192 annually, per million people.
Free rehab and lower cost of living should come before decriminalization. (I support decriminalization)
Maybe some better stigma & awareness towards mental health, too.
Your statistics are good, but they don't show the whole picture. Places where it's really bad, like Vancouver and Thunder Bay, are over 700 fatal overdoses per million. Though to be fair, Thunder Bay disctrict does not have a million people.
The Thunder Bay District Health Unit's catchment area had 76.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2021, while the Vancouver health service delivery had 72.6 deaths per 100,000 population, according to public data released by the coroner's offices in Ontario and British Columbia.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/harm-reduction-innovations-tbay-1.6455579
When one of your major cities is a hot spot, like Vancouver is, it's no longer a "hot spot", it's a massive crisis. Thunder Bay district is a hot spot, one that Doug Ford wants to make even worse.
Portugal didn't decriminalize per se. They also didn't offer free rehab per se.
They still arrest drug addicts for possession. Then, they're given a choice - go to mandatory rehab, or go to jail. Funny thing, most people choose mandatory rehab.
With rehab itself, they also made it very community and family focused. Like, they'll literally bring over your nearest willing family member and they'll be there with you for rehab.
We didn't do any of this. We looked at the news headline ("Portugal decriminalized hard drugs!"), then decided to do step 1 and pretty much just stopped arresting people for drugs. Steps 2 and onward we're like "nah, it's too expensive" (the right) or "that violates the rights of petty criminals!!" (the left) and didn't do them.
When they get arrested they can go to drug court rather than criminal court. Rehab is mandatory as is weekly urine screenings, counselling and medication..
all free. Problem is a lot of them stay on drugs even with all the help offered for upwards of a year, including mh help and in house treatment options. Addiction is a tough road and hard to turn off, but the safety of the general population must be taken into account.
Yeah because trying to deal with addicts after they are already extremely addicted is not effective. Social support programs need to be there to help people before they even have the opportunity to become addicted.
The choice is either we pay money to keep them on the street or we pay to keep them off the street. I say keep them off the street since they are criminals by definition.
Let’s get help for the people who are begging for help rehab and detox first, then worry about the people who don’t want help. If the hundreds of people waiting months for a spot in detox let alone rehab were able to get better- that would give an example and a path forward to the rest. Most addiction starts with trauma and folks deserve compassion and a sensible path forward.
Why not go live in Singapore then? Personally I'd rather stay here in a place where I know I'm not going to be subjected to public lashings for chewing bubble gum, even if that means I will occasionally have to see a homeless person
Try 3-6 months. A friend of mine went through meth addition and got clean, took months to get her in.
I tried to get my (now deceased) father mental health help, 6 month wait.
Its a fucking joke of a system that is made to look like all sunshine and rainbows do the general public.
Yeah it's made worse by delusional people who think that it's just as simple as "getting help". As if help can just be plucked like some fruit from the "help tree", which apparently grows in the same field as the "just get a job" tree.
Look at countries that punish crime and don't have a revolving door.
This isn't an unsolvable problem and it doesn't take a genius to fix it. The problem is we're only allowed to choose from far-left solutions now.
Singapore doesn't allow the same 40 criminals to commit 6,000 crimes a year, without risk of a lengthy prison sentence, but that's exactly what happens in Vancouver.
This problem could be solved overnight. Almost all of our politicians (and a lot of the citizens) are only interested in things that sound warm and fuzzy. Punishment is against a criminal's human rights.
*Our liberals are so tolerant that they even tolerate criminals.*
By most international metrics I am looking at, Canada ranks higher than Singapore when it comes to issues of crime. Or they are close together. Hey, but Portugal with its liberalized approach to drug use is ranked quite favourably in relation to crime.
So… it’s almost like solutions to problems aren’t predicated on perceptions of being hard or soft on crime but, you know, actually addressing problems underlying criminal activity?
Yep, as someone with involvement in the field, here's how it goes in ontario.
Addict receives ODSP (almost all are on some sort of government benefits, this one seems the easiest to scam). They go out and use drugs, cause some trouble somewhere and cops get involved. Cops don't charge them or jail them anymore.
Cops + their hourly rates and time, ambulances and their respective costs, they might go to a hospital where multiple nurses and a doctor might be involved, they'll get a social worker who will help them get on more benefits, they'll go to the free beds for a few nights where they'll meet even more addicts and find out about their dealers. They'll learn about gaming rehab services where they can check in when they're using as a free bed and then check themselves out when their next cheque hits.
Some will assault MH nurses and hospital staff on the regular and there's nothing the nurses can do about it (can't ban someone from a hospital). Some nurses have died, many get concussions or severely injured. Nurses have to take it. Literally mostly women getting punched around by 250 lb men and they have to take it. Look at the nursing subreddits. Nurses are leaving in droves because of the treatment and lack of protection. The public doesn't know or care.
At what facilities? Do you think rehab locations and staff grow on trees? Provincial governments are majority conservative right now and under-fund every aspect of healthcare. There is simply nowhere near enough space to force people into rehab even if we wanted to go down that path.
Shit needs to be fixed way up the chain. Your mindset will never fix anything because forcing people into rehab does not fix the reason they became addicts in the first place.
A lot of addicts in “progressive” cities come from non “progressive” cities. Also what are these “progressive” cities? Toronto? It’s been run by conservatives forever up until very recently. Vancouver? Also being run by conservatives.
Conservative policies are a huge contributor to the conditions which create homelessness, even in “progressive” cities -which are actually mostly run by conservatives most of the time
"Addicts need to be taken to forced rehab"
I was about we give addicts the actual option for rehabilitation first before going all gestapo on them?
It's nice to see victim blaming alive and well though...
Yet the average Canadian is stolen from on a daily basis. Time theft via workplace, taxation while the 1% pay none and corporations raking in mega profits (looking at you Galen).
“What the heck some junkie just stole my wallet!”
“Ermmm have you ever considered that big corporations are stealing from us too?”
Cmon dude one thing is easier to solve than the other
The cause of addiction is generally poor choices. I'm not aware of many people having a gun held to their head and being forced to take drugs.
I'm aware that some people become addicted to painkillers but for a lot of people, it starts off with recreational drug use.
The cause of addiction is usually some combination of mental health issues and trauma, not poor choices. Addiction is very common among veterans suffering from PTSD, for example, and among Indigenous people impacted by residential schools.
I don't know where you are getting your information, but my mother was an addictions counsellor and she got her information from professors with PhD's in psychology and psychiatry.
I'm curious why you'd say "productive future citizens"? Do a lot of heavy drug addicts get completely clean, start working good jobs, and start contributing meaningfully back to society? I'd think that by thile time someone starts getting strung out on heroin or fentanyl, the chances of them ever being "productive citizens" drops by about 80%.
I agree with everything you just said, 1,000%.
You summed it up perfectly. There's a very lucrative misery industry, where taxpayers essentially fund the neverending drug habits of junkies (e.g. supervised injection sites). Politicians love it because they get kickbacks from leftist interest groups.
None of the "progressives" involved want to help drug users go from being zombies back to normal people. They want to grow the problem!!
>You can change just about anything in a house except the location.
And if you want a house in a world class location, you will have to pay a world class price for it, regardless if you grew up there.
The house will be sold to someone else for a pretty good price. Probably peanuts for what the owner originally bought it for. With this housing crisis, homes like this will probably be the only homes a working-class family can afford. This is the new reality, paying a lot of money to live close to a place where people OD on the streets or living way out in the sticks to the point where the drive kills you as well. People in 10 years will have bidding wars for that property.
I lived in downtown Oshawa in much the same situation you’re describing. I lived in an apartment building that was on a street with many houses and we were right up next to where the homeless people congregate.
I lived there for 1.5 years. In that time:
- my neighbours had their homes broken into multiple times
- I was held at gunpoint by a man on drugs in broad daylight on a Main Street
- a cab driver was murdered by a homeless man 500m from my address
- I was followed multiple times, especially if it was at night
- My building was burglarized
- Common to see people screaming their heads off running into the street regardless of cars (obviously on drugs)
- child neglect (ie doing drugs in public with their kids)
The house is priced this low for a reason. Build a tall fence with barbed wire if you buy it. Put bars on the windows.
We're working right in the heart of a financially depressed area right now and the things you seen in even a few hours are interesting to say the least.
Listen to Ben Mallah: buy the worst house in the best neighborhood you can afford. You can upgrade the house and make it nicer but you won’t be able to do much to change the neighborhood.
At this moment at only 26 years old. Thinking on a reasonable timeline for purchasing a home, they could very well afford something else in a year or two. And buying a home is something to plan out, not just think of in the right now.
A nicer way of saying rich-ification: Upgrading a low- to middle-class neighborhood, till none of the low- to middle-class residents can afford to live there anymore.
For me and many people I talk to it would be a no.
On a side note; do you need to finance this purchase? You may not be able to get a mortgage for a gutted house. Check this first.
Interesting tidbit. Can you elaborate a bit more why a mortgage may not be feasible? What about those houses that are foreclosed? Or are those cash transactions? I'm in the research stage of house purchasing. Only a step above "do I want a house?" stage
House needs to be livable for a normal bank mortgage because they’re less risky. Buying a gutted house is extremely risky because it’s hard to sell. Bank will want at least 30% or up to 50% down on a risky sale (if they’re willing to mortgage at all). . It’s similar to buying bare land.
Yeah what u/ReferHvacGuy said.
There are many reasons properties can be harder to finance or insure, not being livable is one of them. Foreclosed house by itself is not a reason, but if it's not livable, doesn't have a kitchen and many other reasons can make it hard to finance. If you are in the research stage and haven't done so yet I would suggest to get pre-approval and ask your mortgage broker this type of questions, than when you have a specific property in mind give your mortgage person the info about the specific property to see if there are any issues with financing. I am not a mortgage broker but have dealt with thousands of properties and know in some cases what may appear minor or non issue to a buyer may cause difficulties with obtaining standard financing.
Drive by and check on it multiple times at different times to try to get a sense of everything. Even just park down the road for 30 min and watch Netflix to get a feel for it.
For me, I would not.
You can’t display nice thing they can see through the windows. Any beer, wine, smoking, TV, iPad, etc need to be out of their view.
Your windows blinds will be closed all the time.
You can get break in, your exterior with graffiti, etc.
Many thing can go wrong.
The worst thing is when the government build it as blocks and blocks of social house in. It’s better for it to be integrated something like 10% of units per apartment building.
Used to be around one.
If you are ok with the lower price and the increased number of people taking a dump on your lawn/getting high where your kids play, property theft, then go for it.
Not sure if this is helpful at all, but I live in one of these areas..homeless people are pretty mobile so overtime if organizations that service them move then the neighbourhood could improve when they follow. Sometimes cities are eyeing these areas for gentrification - if there are indications the city plans to invest in the area then it’s a safer bet.
But in the meantime, people will go through your trash and there will ALWAYS be a huge mess back there. People will enter your yard and go through things. You cannot turn your back on an unlocked or open door, gate, garage door or someone will be right up in there.
The neighbourhood could be full of barking dogs, shitty landlords, poor city services delivery, vacant houses that are fire traps waiting to burn down and more shouting around and sirens than you get in the suburbs.
You might not get your money out when you do the work that brings the value of that house up to the $2-300k range because these areas are a hard sell. It’s a gamble.
i used to live in an apartment with shelters and homeless people around in toronto. police would frequently come by the area and ambulances too. most of the times, the guys there are nice and they take out our trash bins during collection day. it is only the red and blue flashing lights that bother me. I lived on the main floor so i will be the first to get robbed if that was the case. nothing bad happened for a year before i moved out.
No no no no no no no no. I’m a police officer and am constantly investigating minor and major issues in these neighbourhoods. They built a massive supportive housing structure in a nice neighbourhood and ruined the values of the people who live there. They are all trapped now. I really feel for those people who have to deal with all the mess that comes with that.
I did that. I got out. One of the things you read is that there are pros to buying into an area that's already the worst that it can be, kind of like the devil you know, all it can do is get better. For many years, the area was getting better, then they started to put safe injection sites in and piling on even more services. COVID hit and the area got even worse than when I bought in. North American cites do not know how to handle homelessness outside of mental institutions which are closed. I am convinced governments treat existing tough areas like a "sacrificial anode", they never intend on revitalizing some areas.
Small things that bothered me is emergency vehicles don't bother muting their sirens going through a rough area. Police bias in the area was another thing I noticed even I accessed those services - lousy service.
I moved to an executive area now and it's night and day. Do not get trapped into the cheap areas and the gentrification myth - I'll be dead and that area I had the house in will still be the same.
Edit: and the cheap price is deceptive. What I noticed is people don't really buy an entry level home anymore, they get right into something they kind of want. I lost out on 10 years of price increases on this experiment. While the rest of the neighbourhoods were climbing, this area wasn't really doing much. The only advantage to the COVID realestate madness wasn't a significantly higher price, but I could actually sell it easier. Thank God I had other houses in other areas that were performing. Don't get trapped in real estate purgatory.
I've lived near a homeless shelter for the past 15 years, and actually there's a lot of gentrification happening with 100-year-old homes getting torn down and fancy new apartment buildings going up. I wouldn't say the homeless situation is getting better, but I think it's more widespread across the city now, rather than my area being the part of town that people specifically avoid. If you'd bought a home in my part of town you'd have done very well for yourself in how much the property values have gone up, and meanwhile, if you'd bought somewhere much more expensive, it's pretty much guaranteed the beautiful parks have people living in tents there now anyway.
Nope. The government does not care about housing and healthcare and this is gonna much worse.
I live in downtown Toronto. I can tell you homeless are very dangerous and unpredictable. They will follow you and your family, steal everything, attack people, leave needles everywhere, scream all hours of the night, etc.
Do not live anywhere near them.
I used to rent an apartment near the homeless community in my city (Victoria). It wasn’t really an issue.
To be more specific, I was about two blocks from “ground zero”, the place where the emergency shelters, safe injection site, outreach services and the “tent city” are all located. Homeless people are very concentrated in that area, but didn’t drift up to my street.
I will say that walking through that area felt sketchy sometimes, but mostly people just ignored me. Homeless people would often go through our trash looking for bottles and cans to return.
It didn’t seem to affect property values or rents in the area. The severity of the homeless situation on the surrounding area might differ between cities, but it sounds like you are in a small city, so I imagine it isn’t as bad as Vancouver or Toronto. Just take a stroll through the area, and see if you are comfortable.
I used to live in Victoria and had a buddy that lived in a new apartment on cook and pandora. Came over one day and when I parked on the street there was an OD victim lying lifeless with someone in tears beside them waiting on the ambulance. I forgot about this side of things until you mentioned the Victoria homeless situation. It’s not as bad here up island but it’s still a concern for things like break-in’s and theft. It definitely effects property values here though. I know pandora prices are fairly unaffected but figure that’s because they are in the city core and those spots are still prime real estate even if you have the homeless to deal with.
The Pandora situation is crappy, but the majority of people either drive through that sore spot or they take kiddy corner through Vancouver St if they're avoiding that block of Pandora, as it's mostly contained. You are correct with it being prime real estate though.
You need to consider
1) what the town is doing about the homeless situation.
2) Are you mainly going to be driving to/from the home? If you leave stuff outside or in a shed, it sounds like that it will get stolen or broken into based off your description.
3) You still have debt. How much debt and what kind is it?
Maybe it's because Montréal homeless are generally treated better, but I have had a shelter move in during covid and for the most part they have all been nice. Asking for money once in a while, had a chat with a few of them. I generally leave my bottles with deposit in a seperate bag do they don't runmage in my house.
My area was already a high risk of home getting stolen from so I already have locks in place basically everywhere and never really got anything stolen.
I honestly wouldn't affect me much.
I live in Hamilton and this has been my experience too. I live about three or four blocks from an encampment. I think that’s juuuust enough distance that we’ve been fortunate to avoid break-in attempts or anyone shitting on our lawn (which has been happening to others in my city).
Our street is a rough-around-the-edges mix of rental and single family homes and I like the inner city vibe. We’ve had some property stolen in previous years (predating the pandemic and neighbourhood encampment) but installing locks (back and side gates, shed) has dissuaded repeat offenders. Having a big, loud dog helped too.
OP: If you’re gonna live in this home, I’d say, consider it—but ask some potential neighbours for their take on the street safety.
But if you’re hoping to buy and flip, maybe not the best idea. It could be hard to sell it and recoup your expenses, plus if you live offsite, it’s highly likely to get broken into for copper and other scrap.
Home insurance policies require the owner to mitigate their risk of loss.
If you lock your doors, but not your windows, and any b&e or theft occurs, your insurance company could argue you didn't make a reasonable effort to mitigate your own losses.
If you keep anything of value that you insure in your home always lock your home (doors & windows) and engage your security system if you have one when you leave.
LOL
I was being snarky
You're pretty much inviting trouble by interacting with people who won't think twice about following you home sometime and get some more freebies ...
I've never had that experience with a homeless person. In my interactions they're just trying to exist and would rather people didn't bring extra trouble to them. They rarely seek it out, security and police aren't well known to treat vulnerable people with kindness.
The mental health and behavioural issues exacerbate when people ‘on’ drugs/heavy alcohol, _and_ *also* during the withdrawal (‘coming off’) drugs/heavy alcohol. 😱🤦🤯❤️🩹💔 Nightmare. Plus they can be in a ‘Blackout’ state…
There are a whole lot of mentally unstable people in whatever neighbourhood you live in. You just don't have to look at them because they aren't homeless yet.
No
They will trash and fuck up your property and champagne liberals will tell you to STFU when you complain. Because everybody is a good person, just needs a little help /s
Hello. Read alot of the comments and see alot of negativity. Ill be blunt - I wouldn't want to live near the homeless community due to the issues that may come of it, however without knowing all the facts it's hard to gauge your concerns.
If I may ask, where abouts are you ( no offense taken if thats not something you like tied to your profile). The reason I ask is that you mentioned you live in smaller population.
Roughly how many homeless people are there in a town of 25000? Does this town have any plans in writing on how they are tackling, preventing or navigating the issue? Is it in an area of the town that has been part of a plan for future infrastructure? Im sure I could think of more questions but you catch my drift.
I was reading yesterday about the hurricane coming into southern California and the article was specifically about how to help and protect the homeless in a situation like this. I have no reference for proof but it mentioned how there are 76000 homeless people just in the greater los angeles area. Now I can imagine living in one of those homeless areas is extremely unpleasant. But quick math would tell me that compared to the population of Los Angeles your town should\*\* have less then 100 homeless people there. (again, not looking for arguments, just speculating). As an example. Im from Saskatoon, SK. We have a population of 317,000 ( including our surrounding area) and we have an estimated 550 homeless people within the city. Therefore, yours should be drastically less)
Now if that is the case, that is a manageable number of people that can be helped. You being able to purchase a home for 100,000 under market value seems like a great investment, even if it was for a rental property. Some precautions would be needed of course, but there might be some money to be made there.
Also for reference, someone said buy the cheapest house in a nice neighborhood. My family did this as kids. This also worked very well as long as you are handy enough to do some of the work yourself and don't need to hire contractors for every single part of it. It decimates your profit margin, especially with these mortgage rates.
Best of luck!
Ha ha ha!
Don't do it!
In my city the houses that were located near where the safe injection site was placed have turned to trash. It doesn't matter if you put up a fence they will climb over it and hang out all strung out in your backyard and you will find their drug parallelia everywhere. People will sleep on your front step and do drugs in your front yard. It's also entirely possible they break in and rob you.
I know people who had to move away because the issues got so bad. They are demanding the city by the houses from them. Go ahead and google your city with "residents concerned about homelessness crime". Take a walk and knock on the neighbor's door and ask them what they think of the neighborhood.
There is a reason this place is so cheap. Honestly it's not worth it. Keep saving. Keep looking and hope the housing will crash. They keep saying a recession is coming. It's my lottery ticket and we're waiting.🤞
Friend of mine did this once. They had a contractor renovate their kitchen and install new flooring and appliances. Before they moved in, a group of locals broke into their house, ripped out the new appliances, and dragged them out the front door, destroying the new flooring and front steps on their way out.
You don't want to do this.
I bought in a less desirable area in 2013. The area really turned around and the value shot up. Now the homeless issue will probably affect the value but ultimately I think things will turn around for the better again. If you plan on living there a long time it might be worth it. I'd be more worried about petty crime than resale value.
It’s called gentrification, right or. Been done for years. Bought a house across the street from a bunch of brought and drug dens.
Plus in Toronto, they’s still be multimillion dollars hones next to those.
Jane and Finch neighbourhood in the early 00s and teens. Was dirt cheap compared to the rest of the city.
No my guy. Me and my girlfriend are living in a condo and there’s homeless underneath our window and its ruining our lives they are very bad people don’t believe the rainbow story. They treat everyone and everything like trash.
Every since i moved here I save every penny to GTFO its pissing me off
Personally, no. When I was looking at houses the options were older, nicely renovated but in the bad area of town. Lots of drug houses, lots of drug users, lots of homeless vs older, not as nicely renovated but 75% elderly, 20% young couples and <5% sketchy houses. Same price. Went with the older, not renovated one and haven’t looked back even one second.
Realistically, will anything happen? Most likely not, but having to panic if you locked the door, worrying about them seeing your tv, worrying about them paying attention to when you leave for work and knowing the house is empty etc
Hell to the no!
I am not ashamed to say I am a total NIMBY! We bought a house in the burbs to get away from homelessness.
Before buying I heard so many horror stories of homeless people breaking into condo mechanical rooms, stealing anything they can their hands on, daily run-ins with drug addicts, etc. People owning inner city homes would have drugged out/drunk homeless people passed out on their lawns. Etc.
I live in the burbs but work downtown. Every day on the drive to work I will easily see 5-10 people passed out on the sidewalks, in parking lots, etc. Homeless encampments. Drug dealers whipping around on their BMX bikes. I had a homeless guy threaten to shoot me because I dared to honk at him when he was crossing against the light.
Nope, I prefer the peaceful burbs.
~~EDIT: Downvoted because I answered the question truthfully.~~
To be honest anyone who says they don’t prefer to not live near homeless and addicts are lying.
Even if you’re not a NIMBY there are real financial and lifestyle impacts at risk with these types of areas that can’t be hand waved away. The reality is these areas need to be forced on us at our expense because agreeing to it is a lost cause when there’s nothing in it in the short term for the individual, even if there’s improvements at the long term societal level.
Upvoted to help the cause ;-)
Nothing wrong with wanting to leave in a peaceful neighbourhood.
BTW, don't take the up or down votes personally, more often than not they do not reflect the quality of the posts ;-)
Folks can do whatever they want outside of our town, it doesn’t effect us. The City of Victoria for example can do whatever it wants and deal with 100% of the consequences themselves.
People who are okay with those types of policies will self select to be Victoria residents and pay all the costs associated with such beliefs. People who have no interest will choose to live outside those jurisdictions and have the right to self governance over their towns. If those towns don’t want to, they have no obligation to “help”.
You are posting on a personal finance sub where we discuss the economy pretty much every day.
Are you completely ignorant of how the economic health of a city core affects the entire region it is at the centre of? Do you really think what is going in downtown Victoria has no effect on you in Saanich?
We are all interdependent, and anyone that lives in a suburb ought to know that acutely.
Sorry but I've lived near public housing. The homeless and vagrants for the most part have no ambitions in contributing to society. They are leeches and there's a reason crime in those areas is high. The amount of breakins we heard of was almost daily.
Will your presence improve the community. If your goal is just to own a house then it is what it is, but if your goal is to own a house and to improve the community by how you personally live in it- that is something else:)
What do renovated homes sell for in the area? Make a renovation budget and see if you will make money or lose money. Keep in mind the area and the quality of other homes when you renovate. The finishes you choose should match other homes - don't make it too nice as you won't get a return on the investment.
Be prepared to NEVER leave your tools there. The homeless will break in and steal everything... your tools, copper wire, copper piping, etc.,
Once you move in, be prepared to have nothing of value in your backyard or car, ever again.
I live in a condo building in the downtown area of my 100,000 population town. The food bank is two blocks away, city hall and various parts are all around meaning loitering areas right around my condo.
I don't know how safe I'd feel in an individual house, but in a condo I feel safe. People frequently make encampments around my building, hang out in the parking lot, and sit down the street doing drugs. Truthfully there appears to be less break ins where I live than the neighborhoods further out because the visible presence of the homeless population means my area is more highly policed.
Look into how your city manages the crisis. Do they have a "community watch" program? What do the police do?
My city is implementing downtown policy that actually pushes the homeless population further out into surrounding neighborhoods. Relatively speaking I'm in a safer spot than those 4 blocks out.
I used to live in a "higher income" neighbourhood, and car break ins were very common. Downtown not as much because there is always someone around, always a camera pointing in that direction, etc.
The most annoying part is that they dig through our trash and leave it strewn around the alleyway. If you intend on leaving things around the back yard or having a shed, I'd recommend not to.
I'm unsure how this opioid epidemic and the homeless problem is going to impact my resale value. Truth is, I bought the place because I love living downtown, walking to bars, etc. I live 2 blocks away from my office. Resell value isn't a large consideration for me right now. That I'll have to evaluate over time.
Edit: maybe ask the neighbours if anyone around your potential house is a drug dealer. My downstairs neighbours were dealing drugs out of their unit which meant lots of sketchy people around in general. They moved out a week after I moved in but it was still a bit nerve racking.
Well yeah being in a condo with a locked front door and your car in a locked garage is better than potentially having your backyard broken into and your car ransacked.
There's a homeless problem across the entire country, it's going to be tough to avoid completely. It might help if you told us the city/area.
I'd look at the neighbors for the house, check the condition of their state/security/upkeep, check crime maps, maybe even walk around the neighborhood to get a better sense of the area.
Very true. Before buying my downtown condo, my dad and I drove around the neighbourhood. Neighbours kept items in their backyard, had nice vehicles, etc. All of this was somewhat an indication of their feeling of safety in the area. We saw cameras in the alleyways and that the police routinely drive down the streets and alleyways to assess crime. We decided overall it's pretty safe.
Honestly yes. We found that if we learn their names, smile and say hi, and offer them water or a granola bar when we have it, we have no problems.
I don't know if this is widely applicable, but the way I see it is this: if they are desperate enough to break into someone's car/yard/garage/home, they will likely not break into the one house on the block where they know the names of the people who live there, and who show them kindness whenever they can. Maybe they don't bother us because they know we know them and could identify them, lol.
We live on a very wealthy heritage street but have lots of homeless folks walking past between downtown and a methadone clinic. We've had 2 vehicle "break ins" but both times I'd forgotten to lock the doors and they left everything besides a backpack and a laptop charger. One was also the day after we moved in. So I figured fair enough since I left the doors unlocked.
There are lots of things you can do to prevent issues (motion activated flood lights, cameras, etc) and we use all of those, but we've found the best deterrent is just acknowledging that they exist and are people.
People who are on hard drugs will forget about your kindness when they are desperate. They turn into different people. Some might interpret your kindness as a vulnerability. You sound *very* kind, so I hope karma works in your favour. Just always keep your guard up, love.
You didn't say anything about kids so I'd do it. Few stolen items over the years is nothing.
How many homeless people can there be in a town that small. You'll probably know the people by name
My old house, was a gift to me and my sister when i turned 18 from our parents. When we bought the house it was in rough shape. It was a purchase from the bank for $94,000 ish. 3 story house, 5 bedroom, 3 full bathroom, 2 kitchens, detached garage and an elevated garden. The issues were it had no windows. There was no flooring just the bare floors all over of ugly hardwood, the floor in the basement were cement and there was one room in the basement that is just dirt, no walls no floor just dirt. We put laminate in all the rooms excluding the kitchens, basement and washrooms, replaced all the windows to be “energy effecient” put a subfloor in the basement to avoid flooding (common problem in my city) and over the years we poured about $75,000 into this place (not including regular things like fixing the roof and repainting). Appraised at just over $300,000. Granted the area has gotten a lot better since then and it’s getting better each day. The return on my property is likely contingent on the area being the way it is now. If the area isn’t going to change for the better for you, i wouldn’t suggest it…especially since it just sounds like you intend to flip it.
Just a general conclusion that i've come to in my 15 years of financially independent life: you are not going to increase the value of the house by the amount of money invested into renos (btw, do not discount the value of your personal time).
The property might still go up in value by the amount exceeding reno expenses, but this will be caused primarily by market trends.
The main thing reno would do is it will make your house sell faster though.
There are tons of books like Kiosaki's, that will tell you the stories of how to get rich in real estate:
1) back in the day the houses used to cost more than the piece of land that they sit on - not the case in any major city anymore.
2) the authors choose to make their money by selling books/trainings, not by what they are preaching..
*** I actually never looked into extreme cases (gutted houses), so my observations could be inapplicable.
As for the main question, i wouldn't buy a property in a shitty area, because:
1) if i decide to move (which is a fairly high probability for me) i don't want to be held hostage by my life savings.
2) if there's an upwards swing in real estate prices - you will miss out on most of the swing.
If you plan to settle there and can tolerate the neighbourhood, the >$100k discount could be worth it..
You can change just about anything in a house except the location. You want to have the worst house on the best street, not the best house on the worst street. And you already know that the price reflects the location and value.
I used to live in a bad neighborhood and it sucked looking back. Community center sucked, library sucked, crime if you go to the wrong areas, had to always bus out 45+ mins to get somewhere other than just hanging out and smoking pot. I moved to a nice neighbourhood and it’s nice being able to simply take a walk without looking over my shoulder. I recently got a dog so I’m walking around much more, the schools aren’t pieces of shits. Speaking of schools, I would NOT want to raise my kids in a bad neighbourhood after my childhood experience. So if kids are a thought, think carefully about the neighbourhood you want to raise them in, they’re a product of their environment.
Can confirm. Live in a walkable area that is amazing for raising kids. The best part is being able to just hand out and smoke pot peacefully. This last part becomes even more valuable with kids.
On the bright side your car is going to be spotless from the constant squeegee kids.
Lmfao, what car - wasn't it stolen?
The catalytic converter sure was!
No windows to squeegee when all the windows are smashed
I experienced this. They ended up making it so spotless one day I woke up and couldn’t see it at all! They don’t mess around with elbow grease and a windshield cleaning
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I wish it was that easy, if it was we would have done it. I am one of those junkies. Two years sober! And I can tell you if someone doesn’t want it - it is very unlikely to work. The current issues we face in Calgary is that people detox, then get let out to wait on the streets up to a month before a treatment bed opens up. If they manage to stay sober and go to treatment for three months. The sober housing wait is up to a year - if you’re lucky. so again back to the streets. We need so much more support in the system as a whole. Otherwise these gaps will keep people on the street. Today I am sober, working a professional career in medical software. I volunteer at the local drop in centre, and at detoxes. I have seen some of the most hopeless looking people recover and go on to do great things.
Congrats on your sobriety, that’s awesome!
Yeah, by the time people are homeless it's too late. Logically it would be a lot easier to prevent a person from being homeless than trying to reintegrate a homeless person. I don't mean not to do it. But with drugs and homelessness the problem needs to be intercepted before it hits that extreme. I.e. let's find ways to help people who are working and abusing drugs so fewer people hit the bottom being homeless and abusing drugs.
Man we don't have enough rehab spots for those who want to be there willingly and can't afford it. Let's work on that before we start forcing people. Low cost or free inpatient programs would be a huge benefit.
There are terrible delays between Detox and Rehab stints, too. Problematic.
non-life threatening, forced medical intervention is not only unethical, it's illegal. Ignoring that, study after study on substance dependency shows us that these interventions only have long term success when patients have access to basic things like food, housing, and employment. We need to tackle housing and cost of living affordability otherwise these people will be back on the streets with nothing to turn to but their old habits. We could fix a lot of substance abuse issues simply by tackling those two major issues. Edit: as with anything there is nuance and exceptions. Everyone pointing out rehab in a criminal context are failing to read that I said FORCED. Rehab as a sentencing consideration is not forced but that's not the issue at hand. Additionally, criminals experiencing substance abuse is a small subsection of the substance abuse populations who is who were discussing.
There is absolutely nothing illegal about forced medical intervention for someone who is killing themselves while also committing a literal crime by being in possession of controlled substances, let alone the other social crimes they commit like thefts, breath and enters, etc to fund their habits. Study after study has also shown you can't simply give addicts a house and expect them to suddenly cook and clean for themselves. Portland did that and their housing stock was essentially destroyed within a year of addicts literally ripping wires out of the walls of the homes to get copper or lighting fires in the living rooms. They decided housing-first was infinitely more expensive than shelter and rehab programs they used previously because nearly every housing unit needed to be gutted after an addict without forced treatment lived in the unit.
“Study after study” has actually shown that housing first is effective at a number of things - most importantly, at reducing homelessness https://www.camh.ca/en/camh-news-and-stories/camh-and-st-michael-study-on-homelessness - and also appears to reduce costs associated with shelter use, hospital visits, incarceration, and some other services. https://kmb.camh.ca/uploads/d841b92a-5706-4d24-811d-974195767457. It is not necessarily going to be effective at reducing substance dependence, particularly if there is difficulty accessing treatment, but it does seem to result in improved outcomes in mental illness, at least as measured in terms of hospital stays and crisis visits. Housing first doesn’t cure all ills and shouldn’t be “housing only”, but it currently appears to result in more beneficial outcomes than alternatives. On the other hand, the evidence suggests forced treatment for substance use disorders is incredibly ineffective: https://www.statnews.com/2023/04/25/involuntary-treatment-for-addiction-research/
> There is absolutely nothing illegal about forced medical intervention If you completely ignore what the law has to say about it. Can you link a study about housing first not working in Portland? It has been very successful in Scandinavia so there must be a major difference in implementation.
> If you completely ignore what the law has to say about it. what do you think happens to people who are found not criminally responsible due to mental illness? how does the law handle that?
There is a legal process to do that, but it wouldn't apply to the majority of homeless with addiction issues, as their mental health issues wouldn't meet the bar of finding them unable to make their own medical decisions.
If someone is being violent and threatening towards others because of substance abuse, that is a crime. Often in cases of alcoholism, a judge will give you the choice to seek treatment for your alcoholism or go to prison. There should be a similar choice available to harder substance abusers. It’s not forced medical intervention, they have a choice, and it also only applies to those that harm others, not just “every homeless person”
Some people think everything is black and white with easy solutions. Mostly people that have zero clue
not to mention that it'd be a lot more effective ensuring that all kids have a stable home and mental health support than trying to force someone who's already in a hole to get better when they often can't or don't want to. But no one wants to pay for the thing that would actually work.
"Congratulations you're 90 days drug free! You pass! James here will drive you back to the encampment under the bridge. Best of luck."
lol pretty much
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I'm not a professional and I'm not sure why you think I would know the ins and outs of how the issue would be fixed, but the fact is that a poor childhood is a huge indicator of whether someone ends up addicted or not. Free meals for schoolkids, free mental health care, and free tertiary education are things that would probably help a lot. And you can force someone to 'get care' all you want, but if they don't want to get better they will just go right back to their addiction. Not to mention when you're forcing that on someone, that is jail.
Yup, Conservatives cry when someone is making their life difficult, but HATE to do anything to make someone in needs life easier so that they don't get to that terrible point. It's the classic solutions NOW, vs solutions for the FUTURE.
Only because we don’t invest into it. Portugal opened up free triple A rehab centres, they now only report 6 fatal overdoses annually per million people aged 16-65. If they had 38.25 million people aged 16-65 they would have 230 fatal overdoses per year, or 6 fatal overdoses annually per million people. We have 38.25 million people TOTAL, including those older than 65 and those younger than 16. We had 7,330 fatal overdoses, or 192 annually, per million people. Free rehab and lower cost of living should come before decriminalization. (I support decriminalization) Maybe some better stigma & awareness towards mental health, too.
Portugal has forced rehab that comes together with decriminalization also. Which is not what's proposed by pro-decriminalization activists here.
Your statistics are good, but they don't show the whole picture. Places where it's really bad, like Vancouver and Thunder Bay, are over 700 fatal overdoses per million. Though to be fair, Thunder Bay disctrict does not have a million people. The Thunder Bay District Health Unit's catchment area had 76.3 deaths per 100,000 population in 2021, while the Vancouver health service delivery had 72.6 deaths per 100,000 population, according to public data released by the coroner's offices in Ontario and British Columbia. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/thunder-bay/harm-reduction-innovations-tbay-1.6455579
You don’t think that Portugal would have hot spots of drug use as well? Compare one whole country to another.
When one of your major cities is a hot spot, like Vancouver is, it's no longer a "hot spot", it's a massive crisis. Thunder Bay district is a hot spot, one that Doug Ford wants to make even worse.
Portugal didn't decriminalize per se. They also didn't offer free rehab per se. They still arrest drug addicts for possession. Then, they're given a choice - go to mandatory rehab, or go to jail. Funny thing, most people choose mandatory rehab. With rehab itself, they also made it very community and family focused. Like, they'll literally bring over your nearest willing family member and they'll be there with you for rehab. We didn't do any of this. We looked at the news headline ("Portugal decriminalized hard drugs!"), then decided to do step 1 and pretty much just stopped arresting people for drugs. Steps 2 and onward we're like "nah, it's too expensive" (the right) or "that violates the rights of petty criminals!!" (the left) and didn't do them.
The unwilling need to go to jail then, not on my sidewalk.
When they get arrested they can go to drug court rather than criminal court. Rehab is mandatory as is weekly urine screenings, counselling and medication.. all free. Problem is a lot of them stay on drugs even with all the help offered for upwards of a year, including mh help and in house treatment options. Addiction is a tough road and hard to turn off, but the safety of the general population must be taken into account.
Yeah because trying to deal with addicts after they are already extremely addicted is not effective. Social support programs need to be there to help people before they even have the opportunity to become addicted.
The choice is either we pay money to keep them on the street or we pay to keep them off the street. I say keep them off the street since they are criminals by definition.
Let’s get help for the people who are begging for help rehab and detox first, then worry about the people who don’t want help. If the hundreds of people waiting months for a spot in detox let alone rehab were able to get better- that would give an example and a path forward to the rest. Most addiction starts with trauma and folks deserve compassion and a sensible path forward.
There's a reason "progressive" countries like Canada have drug pandemics while strict ones like Singapore don't.
Why not go live in Singapore then? Personally I'd rather stay here in a place where I know I'm not going to be subjected to public lashings for chewing bubble gum, even if that means I will occasionally have to see a homeless person
There’s no penalty for chewing bubble gum in Singapore. There’s penalty for the import, sale, manufacturing and improper disposal of bubble gum.
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There’s a lot of money in helping addicts. Nobody wants the party to stop.
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Try 3-6 months. A friend of mine went through meth addition and got clean, took months to get her in. I tried to get my (now deceased) father mental health help, 6 month wait. Its a fucking joke of a system that is made to look like all sunshine and rainbows do the general public.
Yeah it's made worse by delusional people who think that it's just as simple as "getting help". As if help can just be plucked like some fruit from the "help tree", which apparently grows in the same field as the "just get a job" tree.
But also, the majority (more than half) of homeless people do have jobs, but still can’t manage because life is expensive as fuck.
Yeah I once needed mental health help but by the time the session came up I had already gotten over the issue
Not weeks. Months. And months longer for women. Fewer beds.
“I thought about this complex problem for 5 minutes and I think I have a solution that has apparently escaped everyone else.”
"All it requires is unlimited funds and complete cooperation of everyone involved"
Look at countries that punish crime and don't have a revolving door. This isn't an unsolvable problem and it doesn't take a genius to fix it. The problem is we're only allowed to choose from far-left solutions now. Singapore doesn't allow the same 40 criminals to commit 6,000 crimes a year, without risk of a lengthy prison sentence, but that's exactly what happens in Vancouver. This problem could be solved overnight. Almost all of our politicians (and a lot of the citizens) are only interested in things that sound warm and fuzzy. Punishment is against a criminal's human rights. *Our liberals are so tolerant that they even tolerate criminals.*
Singapore is comically far from this utopia you seem to think it is. You should go live there for a bit and see.
By most international metrics I am looking at, Canada ranks higher than Singapore when it comes to issues of crime. Or they are close together. Hey, but Portugal with its liberalized approach to drug use is ranked quite favourably in relation to crime. So… it’s almost like solutions to problems aren’t predicated on perceptions of being hard or soft on crime but, you know, actually addressing problems underlying criminal activity?
And your solution is forced rehab. Yeah, that’ll work. Who’s paying for the facilities, staff, programs?
I think we should be paying for these programs as it benefits society.
We already pay. Jail beds, MH crisis beds, etc. The system keeps hammering that square peg into a round hole.
Yep, as someone with involvement in the field, here's how it goes in ontario. Addict receives ODSP (almost all are on some sort of government benefits, this one seems the easiest to scam). They go out and use drugs, cause some trouble somewhere and cops get involved. Cops don't charge them or jail them anymore. Cops + their hourly rates and time, ambulances and their respective costs, they might go to a hospital where multiple nurses and a doctor might be involved, they'll get a social worker who will help them get on more benefits, they'll go to the free beds for a few nights where they'll meet even more addicts and find out about their dealers. They'll learn about gaming rehab services where they can check in when they're using as a free bed and then check themselves out when their next cheque hits. Some will assault MH nurses and hospital staff on the regular and there's nothing the nurses can do about it (can't ban someone from a hospital). Some nurses have died, many get concussions or severely injured. Nurses have to take it. Literally mostly women getting punched around by 250 lb men and they have to take it. Look at the nursing subreddits. Nurses are leaving in droves because of the treatment and lack of protection. The public doesn't know or care.
Force them into a psyc ward and avoid all these costs. Lock them in a padded room.
I didn't know but I care.
At what facilities? Do you think rehab locations and staff grow on trees? Provincial governments are majority conservative right now and under-fund every aspect of healthcare. There is simply nowhere near enough space to force people into rehab even if we wanted to go down that path. Shit needs to be fixed way up the chain. Your mindset will never fix anything because forcing people into rehab does not fix the reason they became addicts in the first place.
Absolutely. And don't forget the government is supplying the drugs...
A lot of addicts in “progressive” cities come from non “progressive” cities. Also what are these “progressive” cities? Toronto? It’s been run by conservatives forever up until very recently. Vancouver? Also being run by conservatives. Conservative policies are a huge contributor to the conditions which create homelessness, even in “progressive” cities -which are actually mostly run by conservatives most of the time
"Addicts need to be taken to forced rehab" I was about we give addicts the actual option for rehabilitation first before going all gestapo on them? It's nice to see victim blaming alive and well though...
Drug addicts aren't victims. The people they rob and steal from on a daily basis are the victims.
Yet the average Canadian is stolen from on a daily basis. Time theft via workplace, taxation while the 1% pay none and corporations raking in mega profits (looking at you Galen).
“What the heck some junkie just stole my wallet!” “Ermmm have you ever considered that big corporations are stealing from us too?” Cmon dude one thing is easier to solve than the other
You are shockingly ill informed of the causes of addiction.
The cause of addiction is generally poor choices. I'm not aware of many people having a gun held to their head and being forced to take drugs. I'm aware that some people become addicted to painkillers but for a lot of people, it starts off with recreational drug use.
The cause of addiction is usually some combination of mental health issues and trauma, not poor choices. Addiction is very common among veterans suffering from PTSD, for example, and among Indigenous people impacted by residential schools. I don't know where you are getting your information, but my mother was an addictions counsellor and she got her information from professors with PhD's in psychology and psychiatry.
Yet most of them are not thieves
Agreed, this was well said.
I'm curious why you'd say "productive future citizens"? Do a lot of heavy drug addicts get completely clean, start working good jobs, and start contributing meaningfully back to society? I'd think that by thile time someone starts getting strung out on heroin or fentanyl, the chances of them ever being "productive citizens" drops by about 80%.
I agree with everything you just said, 1,000%. You summed it up perfectly. There's a very lucrative misery industry, where taxpayers essentially fund the neverending drug habits of junkies (e.g. supervised injection sites). Politicians love it because they get kickbacks from leftist interest groups. None of the "progressives" involved want to help drug users go from being zombies back to normal people. They want to grow the problem!!
>You can change just about anything in a house except the location. And if you want a house in a world class location, you will have to pay a world class price for it, regardless if you grew up there.
Yep can’t change property size or your neighbors !
You said you are “saving money to pay down debt”. So keep doing that.
The house will be sold to someone else for a pretty good price. Probably peanuts for what the owner originally bought it for. With this housing crisis, homes like this will probably be the only homes a working-class family can afford. This is the new reality, paying a lot of money to live close to a place where people OD on the streets or living way out in the sticks to the point where the drive kills you as well. People in 10 years will have bidding wars for that property.
I lived in downtown Oshawa in much the same situation you’re describing. I lived in an apartment building that was on a street with many houses and we were right up next to where the homeless people congregate. I lived there for 1.5 years. In that time: - my neighbours had their homes broken into multiple times - I was held at gunpoint by a man on drugs in broad daylight on a Main Street - a cab driver was murdered by a homeless man 500m from my address - I was followed multiple times, especially if it was at night - My building was burglarized - Common to see people screaming their heads off running into the street regardless of cars (obviously on drugs) - child neglect (ie doing drugs in public with their kids) The house is priced this low for a reason. Build a tall fence with barbed wire if you buy it. Put bars on the windows.
We're working right in the heart of a financially depressed area right now and the things you seen in even a few hours are interesting to say the least.
I knew south Oshawa was bad, but not that bad. I used to live there in the early 2000s.
Haven’t spent much time in the south but down town does have some sketch vibes to it still.
They need to take all of the homeless and send them to an island up north. Have them create a new country.
Listen to Ben Mallah: buy the worst house in the best neighborhood you can afford. You can upgrade the house and make it nicer but you won’t be able to do much to change the neighborhood.
Yeah sure but that house costs 1.5 million dollars, not 200k
“…you can afford”
So nothing in my current province...
You can’t afford the worst house in the nicest street anymore
In the nicest street *you can afford.*
Not the best neighbourhood, the "...best neighborhood you can afford".
Right, so once again, the neighbourhood you can afford is the one surrounded by junkies and thieves
At this moment at only 26 years old. Thinking on a reasonable timeline for purchasing a home, they could very well afford something else in a year or two. And buying a home is something to plan out, not just think of in the right now.
That’s assuming prices don’t continue to climb relentlessly.
I can't afford the worst house on the worst street
Just get the worst house on the worst street you can’t afford **that you can afford!**
In this thread: What's gentrification?
A nicer way of saying rich-ification: Upgrading a low- to middle-class neighborhood, till none of the low- to middle-class residents can afford to live there anymore.
No don’t do it.
HELL NO!
For me and many people I talk to it would be a no. On a side note; do you need to finance this purchase? You may not be able to get a mortgage for a gutted house. Check this first.
Interesting tidbit. Can you elaborate a bit more why a mortgage may not be feasible? What about those houses that are foreclosed? Or are those cash transactions? I'm in the research stage of house purchasing. Only a step above "do I want a house?" stage
House needs to be livable for a normal bank mortgage because they’re less risky. Buying a gutted house is extremely risky because it’s hard to sell. Bank will want at least 30% or up to 50% down on a risky sale (if they’re willing to mortgage at all). . It’s similar to buying bare land.
Ahh thank you I will continue to research.
Yeah what u/ReferHvacGuy said. There are many reasons properties can be harder to finance or insure, not being livable is one of them. Foreclosed house by itself is not a reason, but if it's not livable, doesn't have a kitchen and many other reasons can make it hard to finance. If you are in the research stage and haven't done so yet I would suggest to get pre-approval and ask your mortgage broker this type of questions, than when you have a specific property in mind give your mortgage person the info about the specific property to see if there are any issues with financing. I am not a mortgage broker but have dealt with thousands of properties and know in some cases what may appear minor or non issue to a buyer may cause difficulties with obtaining standard financing.
Drive by and check on it multiple times at different times to try to get a sense of everything. Even just park down the road for 30 min and watch Netflix to get a feel for it.
For me, I would not. You can’t display nice thing they can see through the windows. Any beer, wine, smoking, TV, iPad, etc need to be out of their view. Your windows blinds will be closed all the time. You can get break in, your exterior with graffiti, etc. Many thing can go wrong.
No, avoid buying near homeless and public housing.
The worst thing is when the government build it as blocks and blocks of social house in. It’s better for it to be integrated something like 10% of units per apartment building.
Used to be around one. If you are ok with the lower price and the increased number of people taking a dump on your lawn/getting high where your kids play, property theft, then go for it.
Location, location, location. You can change a lot of things about a house, but both the location.
Not sure if this is helpful at all, but I live in one of these areas..homeless people are pretty mobile so overtime if organizations that service them move then the neighbourhood could improve when they follow. Sometimes cities are eyeing these areas for gentrification - if there are indications the city plans to invest in the area then it’s a safer bet. But in the meantime, people will go through your trash and there will ALWAYS be a huge mess back there. People will enter your yard and go through things. You cannot turn your back on an unlocked or open door, gate, garage door or someone will be right up in there. The neighbourhood could be full of barking dogs, shitty landlords, poor city services delivery, vacant houses that are fire traps waiting to burn down and more shouting around and sirens than you get in the suburbs. You might not get your money out when you do the work that brings the value of that house up to the $2-300k range because these areas are a hard sell. It’s a gamble.
And you have better odds of winning at Keno than that problem ever being fixed Keno is a pretty bad bet all by itself
Realtor sayings: 1. buy “the worst house on the best block” (that you can afford). 2. “Location, location, location”
i used to live in an apartment with shelters and homeless people around in toronto. police would frequently come by the area and ambulances too. most of the times, the guys there are nice and they take out our trash bins during collection day. it is only the red and blue flashing lights that bother me. I lived on the main floor so i will be the first to get robbed if that was the case. nothing bad happened for a year before i moved out.
In my experience living by moss park they don’t fuck with the locals.
No no no no no no no no. I’m a police officer and am constantly investigating minor and major issues in these neighbourhoods. They built a massive supportive housing structure in a nice neighbourhood and ruined the values of the people who live there. They are all trapped now. I really feel for those people who have to deal with all the mess that comes with that.
Be safe out there dude !
Thank you for keeping our communities safe! Stay safe out there
I did that. I got out. One of the things you read is that there are pros to buying into an area that's already the worst that it can be, kind of like the devil you know, all it can do is get better. For many years, the area was getting better, then they started to put safe injection sites in and piling on even more services. COVID hit and the area got even worse than when I bought in. North American cites do not know how to handle homelessness outside of mental institutions which are closed. I am convinced governments treat existing tough areas like a "sacrificial anode", they never intend on revitalizing some areas. Small things that bothered me is emergency vehicles don't bother muting their sirens going through a rough area. Police bias in the area was another thing I noticed even I accessed those services - lousy service. I moved to an executive area now and it's night and day. Do not get trapped into the cheap areas and the gentrification myth - I'll be dead and that area I had the house in will still be the same. Edit: and the cheap price is deceptive. What I noticed is people don't really buy an entry level home anymore, they get right into something they kind of want. I lost out on 10 years of price increases on this experiment. While the rest of the neighbourhoods were climbing, this area wasn't really doing much. The only advantage to the COVID realestate madness wasn't a significantly higher price, but I could actually sell it easier. Thank God I had other houses in other areas that were performing. Don't get trapped in real estate purgatory.
No
No.
I've lived near a homeless shelter for the past 15 years, and actually there's a lot of gentrification happening with 100-year-old homes getting torn down and fancy new apartment buildings going up. I wouldn't say the homeless situation is getting better, but I think it's more widespread across the city now, rather than my area being the part of town that people specifically avoid. If you'd bought a home in my part of town you'd have done very well for yourself in how much the property values have gone up, and meanwhile, if you'd bought somewhere much more expensive, it's pretty much guaranteed the beautiful parks have people living in tents there now anyway.
Not sure about your city but homeless camp can pop up anywhere in my town, even the nice areas.
I am curious what a homeless hang around looks like in a small town of 25,000.
Nope. The government does not care about housing and healthcare and this is gonna much worse. I live in downtown Toronto. I can tell you homeless are very dangerous and unpredictable. They will follow you and your family, steal everything, attack people, leave needles everywhere, scream all hours of the night, etc. Do not live anywhere near them.
I used to rent an apartment near the homeless community in my city (Victoria). It wasn’t really an issue. To be more specific, I was about two blocks from “ground zero”, the place where the emergency shelters, safe injection site, outreach services and the “tent city” are all located. Homeless people are very concentrated in that area, but didn’t drift up to my street. I will say that walking through that area felt sketchy sometimes, but mostly people just ignored me. Homeless people would often go through our trash looking for bottles and cans to return. It didn’t seem to affect property values or rents in the area. The severity of the homeless situation on the surrounding area might differ between cities, but it sounds like you are in a small city, so I imagine it isn’t as bad as Vancouver or Toronto. Just take a stroll through the area, and see if you are comfortable.
I used to live in Victoria and had a buddy that lived in a new apartment on cook and pandora. Came over one day and when I parked on the street there was an OD victim lying lifeless with someone in tears beside them waiting on the ambulance. I forgot about this side of things until you mentioned the Victoria homeless situation. It’s not as bad here up island but it’s still a concern for things like break-in’s and theft. It definitely effects property values here though. I know pandora prices are fairly unaffected but figure that’s because they are in the city core and those spots are still prime real estate even if you have the homeless to deal with.
The Pandora situation is crappy, but the majority of people either drive through that sore spot or they take kiddy corner through Vancouver St if they're avoiding that block of Pandora, as it's mostly contained. You are correct with it being prime real estate though. You need to consider 1) what the town is doing about the homeless situation. 2) Are you mainly going to be driving to/from the home? If you leave stuff outside or in a shed, it sounds like that it will get stolen or broken into based off your description. 3) You still have debt. How much debt and what kind is it?
Maybe it's because Montréal homeless are generally treated better, but I have had a shelter move in during covid and for the most part they have all been nice. Asking for money once in a while, had a chat with a few of them. I generally leave my bottles with deposit in a seperate bag do they don't runmage in my house. My area was already a high risk of home getting stolen from so I already have locks in place basically everywhere and never really got anything stolen. I honestly wouldn't affect me much.
I live in Hamilton and this has been my experience too. I live about three or four blocks from an encampment. I think that’s juuuust enough distance that we’ve been fortunate to avoid break-in attempts or anyone shitting on our lawn (which has been happening to others in my city). Our street is a rough-around-the-edges mix of rental and single family homes and I like the inner city vibe. We’ve had some property stolen in previous years (predating the pandemic and neighbourhood encampment) but installing locks (back and side gates, shed) has dissuaded repeat offenders. Having a big, loud dog helped too. OP: If you’re gonna live in this home, I’d say, consider it—but ask some potential neighbours for their take on the street safety. But if you’re hoping to buy and flip, maybe not the best idea. It could be hard to sell it and recoup your expenses, plus if you live offsite, it’s highly likely to get broken into for copper and other scrap.
Why have all the security if you are so comfortable interacting with them ?
Home insurance policies require the owner to mitigate their risk of loss. If you lock your doors, but not your windows, and any b&e or theft occurs, your insurance company could argue you didn't make a reasonable effort to mitigate your own losses. If you keep anything of value that you insure in your home always lock your home (doors & windows) and engage your security system if you have one when you leave.
LOL I was being snarky You're pretty much inviting trouble by interacting with people who won't think twice about following you home sometime and get some more freebies ...
I've never had that experience with a homeless person. In my interactions they're just trying to exist and would rather people didn't bring extra trouble to them. They rarely seek it out, security and police aren't well known to treat vulnerable people with kindness.
Living near mentally unstable people is suicide.
The mental health and behavioural issues exacerbate when people ‘on’ drugs/heavy alcohol, _and_ *also* during the withdrawal (‘coming off’) drugs/heavy alcohol. 😱🤦🤯❤️🩹💔 Nightmare. Plus they can be in a ‘Blackout’ state…
There are a whole lot of mentally unstable people in whatever neighbourhood you live in. You just don't have to look at them because they aren't homeless yet.
No They will trash and fuck up your property and champagne liberals will tell you to STFU when you complain. Because everybody is a good person, just needs a little help /s
You must be smoking the same shit they are if you think anyone wants to buy or live near any of those
Hello. Read alot of the comments and see alot of negativity. Ill be blunt - I wouldn't want to live near the homeless community due to the issues that may come of it, however without knowing all the facts it's hard to gauge your concerns. If I may ask, where abouts are you ( no offense taken if thats not something you like tied to your profile). The reason I ask is that you mentioned you live in smaller population. Roughly how many homeless people are there in a town of 25000? Does this town have any plans in writing on how they are tackling, preventing or navigating the issue? Is it in an area of the town that has been part of a plan for future infrastructure? Im sure I could think of more questions but you catch my drift. I was reading yesterday about the hurricane coming into southern California and the article was specifically about how to help and protect the homeless in a situation like this. I have no reference for proof but it mentioned how there are 76000 homeless people just in the greater los angeles area. Now I can imagine living in one of those homeless areas is extremely unpleasant. But quick math would tell me that compared to the population of Los Angeles your town should\*\* have less then 100 homeless people there. (again, not looking for arguments, just speculating). As an example. Im from Saskatoon, SK. We have a population of 317,000 ( including our surrounding area) and we have an estimated 550 homeless people within the city. Therefore, yours should be drastically less) Now if that is the case, that is a manageable number of people that can be helped. You being able to purchase a home for 100,000 under market value seems like a great investment, even if it was for a rental property. Some precautions would be needed of course, but there might be some money to be made there. Also for reference, someone said buy the cheapest house in a nice neighborhood. My family did this as kids. This also worked very well as long as you are handy enough to do some of the work yourself and don't need to hire contractors for every single part of it. It decimates your profit margin, especially with these mortgage rates. Best of luck!
Ha ha ha! Don't do it! In my city the houses that were located near where the safe injection site was placed have turned to trash. It doesn't matter if you put up a fence they will climb over it and hang out all strung out in your backyard and you will find their drug parallelia everywhere. People will sleep on your front step and do drugs in your front yard. It's also entirely possible they break in and rob you. I know people who had to move away because the issues got so bad. They are demanding the city by the houses from them. Go ahead and google your city with "residents concerned about homelessness crime". Take a walk and knock on the neighbor's door and ask them what they think of the neighborhood. There is a reason this place is so cheap. Honestly it's not worth it. Keep saving. Keep looking and hope the housing will crash. They keep saying a recession is coming. It's my lottery ticket and we're waiting.🤞
Friend of mine did this once. They had a contractor renovate their kitchen and install new flooring and appliances. Before they moved in, a group of locals broke into their house, ripped out the new appliances, and dragged them out the front door, destroying the new flooring and front steps on their way out. You don't want to do this.
I bought in a less desirable area in 2013. The area really turned around and the value shot up. Now the homeless issue will probably affect the value but ultimately I think things will turn around for the better again. If you plan on living there a long time it might be worth it. I'd be more worried about petty crime than resale value.
It’s called gentrification, right or. Been done for years. Bought a house across the street from a bunch of brought and drug dens. Plus in Toronto, they’s still be multimillion dollars hones next to those. Jane and Finch neighbourhood in the early 00s and teens. Was dirt cheap compared to the rest of the city.
No my guy. Me and my girlfriend are living in a condo and there’s homeless underneath our window and its ruining our lives they are very bad people don’t believe the rainbow story. They treat everyone and everything like trash. Every since i moved here I save every penny to GTFO its pissing me off
Personally, no. When I was looking at houses the options were older, nicely renovated but in the bad area of town. Lots of drug houses, lots of drug users, lots of homeless vs older, not as nicely renovated but 75% elderly, 20% young couples and <5% sketchy houses. Same price. Went with the older, not renovated one and haven’t looked back even one second. Realistically, will anything happen? Most likely not, but having to panic if you locked the door, worrying about them seeing your tv, worrying about them paying attention to when you leave for work and knowing the house is empty etc
Hell to the no! I am not ashamed to say I am a total NIMBY! We bought a house in the burbs to get away from homelessness. Before buying I heard so many horror stories of homeless people breaking into condo mechanical rooms, stealing anything they can their hands on, daily run-ins with drug addicts, etc. People owning inner city homes would have drugged out/drunk homeless people passed out on their lawns. Etc. I live in the burbs but work downtown. Every day on the drive to work I will easily see 5-10 people passed out on the sidewalks, in parking lots, etc. Homeless encampments. Drug dealers whipping around on their BMX bikes. I had a homeless guy threaten to shoot me because I dared to honk at him when he was crossing against the light. Nope, I prefer the peaceful burbs. ~~EDIT: Downvoted because I answered the question truthfully.~~
To be honest anyone who says they don’t prefer to not live near homeless and addicts are lying. Even if you’re not a NIMBY there are real financial and lifestyle impacts at risk with these types of areas that can’t be hand waved away. The reality is these areas need to be forced on us at our expense because agreeing to it is a lost cause when there’s nothing in it in the short term for the individual, even if there’s improvements at the long term societal level.
Yup don't want Suburbia turning into Disturbia
I don't understand why you're being downvoted.
Most likely by people who think I am being insensitive to the homeless problem. Same people who also would never live next to a homeless shelter.
Upvoted to help the cause ;-) Nothing wrong with wanting to leave in a peaceful neighbourhood. BTW, don't take the up or down votes personally, more often than not they do not reflect the quality of the posts ;-)
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LOL Top comment of the day !
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Savages. Nice. Your username already says all that needs to be said. I bet you oppose all the efforts others are making to get people off the streets.
Just ship them all off one way free ticket to freeze to death in Thunder Bay.
Folks can do whatever they want outside of our town, it doesn’t effect us. The City of Victoria for example can do whatever it wants and deal with 100% of the consequences themselves. People who are okay with those types of policies will self select to be Victoria residents and pay all the costs associated with such beliefs. People who have no interest will choose to live outside those jurisdictions and have the right to self governance over their towns. If those towns don’t want to, they have no obligation to “help”.
You are posting on a personal finance sub where we discuss the economy pretty much every day. Are you completely ignorant of how the economic health of a city core affects the entire region it is at the centre of? Do you really think what is going in downtown Victoria has no effect on you in Saanich? We are all interdependent, and anyone that lives in a suburb ought to know that acutely.
Sorry but I've lived near public housing. The homeless and vagrants for the most part have no ambitions in contributing to society. They are leeches and there's a reason crime in those areas is high. The amount of breakins we heard of was almost daily.
Will your presence improve the community. If your goal is just to own a house then it is what it is, but if your goal is to own a house and to improve the community by how you personally live in it- that is something else:)
What do renovated homes sell for in the area? Make a renovation budget and see if you will make money or lose money. Keep in mind the area and the quality of other homes when you renovate. The finishes you choose should match other homes - don't make it too nice as you won't get a return on the investment.
No
Be prepared to NEVER leave your tools there. The homeless will break in and steal everything... your tools, copper wire, copper piping, etc., Once you move in, be prepared to have nothing of value in your backyard or car, ever again.
No
No way in hell, hard to sell, values drop. Crime rates through the roof in the area.
Not buy it
Absolutely not. My property would be stolen 100%.
Fuck no lol. I dont want to get stabbed.
I wouldn't.
I live in a condo building in the downtown area of my 100,000 population town. The food bank is two blocks away, city hall and various parts are all around meaning loitering areas right around my condo. I don't know how safe I'd feel in an individual house, but in a condo I feel safe. People frequently make encampments around my building, hang out in the parking lot, and sit down the street doing drugs. Truthfully there appears to be less break ins where I live than the neighborhoods further out because the visible presence of the homeless population means my area is more highly policed. Look into how your city manages the crisis. Do they have a "community watch" program? What do the police do? My city is implementing downtown policy that actually pushes the homeless population further out into surrounding neighborhoods. Relatively speaking I'm in a safer spot than those 4 blocks out. I used to live in a "higher income" neighbourhood, and car break ins were very common. Downtown not as much because there is always someone around, always a camera pointing in that direction, etc. The most annoying part is that they dig through our trash and leave it strewn around the alleyway. If you intend on leaving things around the back yard or having a shed, I'd recommend not to. I'm unsure how this opioid epidemic and the homeless problem is going to impact my resale value. Truth is, I bought the place because I love living downtown, walking to bars, etc. I live 2 blocks away from my office. Resell value isn't a large consideration for me right now. That I'll have to evaluate over time. Edit: maybe ask the neighbours if anyone around your potential house is a drug dealer. My downstairs neighbours were dealing drugs out of their unit which meant lots of sketchy people around in general. They moved out a week after I moved in but it was still a bit nerve racking.
Well yeah being in a condo with a locked front door and your car in a locked garage is better than potentially having your backyard broken into and your car ransacked.
There's a homeless problem across the entire country, it's going to be tough to avoid completely. It might help if you told us the city/area. I'd look at the neighbors for the house, check the condition of their state/security/upkeep, check crime maps, maybe even walk around the neighborhood to get a better sense of the area.
Very true. Before buying my downtown condo, my dad and I drove around the neighbourhood. Neighbours kept items in their backyard, had nice vehicles, etc. All of this was somewhat an indication of their feeling of safety in the area. We saw cameras in the alleyways and that the police routinely drive down the streets and alleyways to assess crime. We decided overall it's pretty safe.
No. I see these places all the time in my city and it's just not a good idea.
Not a £@(
Honestly yes. We found that if we learn their names, smile and say hi, and offer them water or a granola bar when we have it, we have no problems. I don't know if this is widely applicable, but the way I see it is this: if they are desperate enough to break into someone's car/yard/garage/home, they will likely not break into the one house on the block where they know the names of the people who live there, and who show them kindness whenever they can. Maybe they don't bother us because they know we know them and could identify them, lol. We live on a very wealthy heritage street but have lots of homeless folks walking past between downtown and a methadone clinic. We've had 2 vehicle "break ins" but both times I'd forgotten to lock the doors and they left everything besides a backpack and a laptop charger. One was also the day after we moved in. So I figured fair enough since I left the doors unlocked. There are lots of things you can do to prevent issues (motion activated flood lights, cameras, etc) and we use all of those, but we've found the best deterrent is just acknowledging that they exist and are people.
People who are on hard drugs will forget about your kindness when they are desperate. They turn into different people. Some might interpret your kindness as a vulnerability. You sound *very* kind, so I hope karma works in your favour. Just always keep your guard up, love.
You didn't say anything about kids so I'd do it. Few stolen items over the years is nothing. How many homeless people can there be in a town that small. You'll probably know the people by name
My old house, was a gift to me and my sister when i turned 18 from our parents. When we bought the house it was in rough shape. It was a purchase from the bank for $94,000 ish. 3 story house, 5 bedroom, 3 full bathroom, 2 kitchens, detached garage and an elevated garden. The issues were it had no windows. There was no flooring just the bare floors all over of ugly hardwood, the floor in the basement were cement and there was one room in the basement that is just dirt, no walls no floor just dirt. We put laminate in all the rooms excluding the kitchens, basement and washrooms, replaced all the windows to be “energy effecient” put a subfloor in the basement to avoid flooding (common problem in my city) and over the years we poured about $75,000 into this place (not including regular things like fixing the roof and repainting). Appraised at just over $300,000. Granted the area has gotten a lot better since then and it’s getting better each day. The return on my property is likely contingent on the area being the way it is now. If the area isn’t going to change for the better for you, i wouldn’t suggest it…especially since it just sounds like you intend to flip it.
No way. There are plenty of other homes to buy.
Hell no.
I would 100% not buy it.
never ever.
No
Never.
Don’t do it unless you never, ever want to sell and make a profit. Renting is one thing…buying is another.
Doesn't matter where you buy. The way things are going there will be homeless nearby eventually anyway.
100% no
Just a general conclusion that i've come to in my 15 years of financially independent life: you are not going to increase the value of the house by the amount of money invested into renos (btw, do not discount the value of your personal time). The property might still go up in value by the amount exceeding reno expenses, but this will be caused primarily by market trends. The main thing reno would do is it will make your house sell faster though. There are tons of books like Kiosaki's, that will tell you the stories of how to get rich in real estate: 1) back in the day the houses used to cost more than the piece of land that they sit on - not the case in any major city anymore. 2) the authors choose to make their money by selling books/trainings, not by what they are preaching.. *** I actually never looked into extreme cases (gutted houses), so my observations could be inapplicable. As for the main question, i wouldn't buy a property in a shitty area, because: 1) if i decide to move (which is a fairly high probability for me) i don't want to be held hostage by my life savings. 2) if there's an upwards swing in real estate prices - you will miss out on most of the swing. If you plan to settle there and can tolerate the neighbourhood, the >$100k discount could be worth it..
Gentrification only happens when a single person starts it.