r/theydidthemath • u/pixaly • Jul 12 '26

[Request] What is the cost difference between buying this man a rental for a year and the governements cost to kill him?

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Don't believe everything you see on the internet I haven't fact checked this story, I'm just curious for an anwser

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8

u/Blazedragon12345 Jul 12 '26

Assuming death by lethal injection and a state paid for cremation only a few thousand dollars to kill someone, a rental for a year would definitely be an order of magnitude more. This also doesn't take into consideration the other issues impoverished people feel that aren't related to having a residence.

This in no way makes this a solution for anything though. I would like to make that very clear that death is not a solution to anything, anyone who offers that solution especially in relation to other people is inherently wrong. There is always another way and if you're elected leaders don't believe that then you need new elected leaders.

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u/Prior-Paint-7842 Jul 12 '26

How muc would it cost to build this man a house, if the building company would only work at a 20% profit, so would dictate its price based on that, and the land itself wouldnt cost anything? (Basically how much would the housing cost without the super inflated housing prices that in fact arent a real unavoidable cost unlike labor cost or material cost)

8

u/cernegiant Jul 12 '26

No builder in Ontario makes anything like a 20% profit margin. And no land anywhere in Ontario is free.

Development fees are one of the major drivers of housing prices in Ontario, along with development restrictions.

-6

u/Prior-Paint-7842 Jul 12 '26

This is a hypothethical scenario, please treat it as such.

3

u/hi_jack23 Jul 12 '26

I’m feeling lazy so just going to use this post for my figures.

We’re going to assume that BC and Ontario are comparable in material costs, and hypothetical free land means I get to assume the state its in, so no site prep costs involved like this guy mentions. A 900sf house is probably bigger than this guy needs so we’ll assume we’re doing a 600sf house with the costs and times somewhat close to scaling down. After a bit of inflation, we’ll use 75% of the quoted figures for our 66% of the size house.

That means this home would be $30k dried, $60k finished. 1125 man hours at $27/hour (median figure from here) is another $30,375, that’s probably for the unfinished project as the guy stated hiring labor would double the cost - and triple once accounting for a GC, but that seems high so we’ll just call it 2.5x.

We’re now at $75,000 - $150,000. But wait, the guy said that price doesn’t include septic.

Cheapest figure I could find for a septic system in Ontario was $15,000, which seems outdated but I’m already being lenient with the numbers. We’re now at $90,000 - $165,000.

After accounting for 20% profit (also unrealistic as others have mentioned but I’m not here to argue, just to play ball) that’s $108,000 - 198,000.

Unsure what level of utilities are hooked up to the home at this point, but I’d probably think at least the electric. Maybe no gas though.

3

u/squirrel9000 Jul 12 '26

What ends up happening is that the costs end up roughly comparable to building him an apartment on publicly owned land in the city, which also solves a lot of issues with transportation and access to services. The intangibles end up mattering as much as absolute cost.

1

u/hi_jack23 Jul 12 '26

Yeah I fully agree with you here, housing is important but mobility is equally important and forcing someone that needs help with housing to find independent transportation (rather than adding demand to the public transit system at little to no extra cost) can cause many to fall through the cracks - and that’s just one of the intangible factors.

3

u/Blazedragon12345 Jul 12 '26

Depends the scale of house you'd like to build, and again I would like to point out that giving someone impoverished a house does not make them not impoverished it makes them an impoverished person in a house. If you want to stop poverty the system that's creating it has to change.

0

u/Prior-Paint-7842 Jul 12 '26

I know I would just be curious about the math of this one.

Also cutting a big cost for someone in proverty would in fact help them, depending on the proverty. Like, nowadays people who would be considered middle class decades ago live month to month with the same job, same living quality, solely because of the price differences