In America's Big Tech Cities, More People Are Now Living In Their Vehicles (cbsnews.com) 281
An anonymous reader quotes CBS MoneyWatch:
The number of people residing in campers and other vehicles surged 46 percent over the past year, a recent homeless census in Seattle's King County, Washington found. The problem is "exploding" in cities with expensive housing markets, including Los Angeles, Portland and San Francisco, according to Governing magazine. The problem of vehicle residency is national in scope, although its impact may be more "acutely felt in urban areas where space is more limited," said Sara Rankin, an assistant professor law at Seattle University and the director of Homeless Rights Advocacy Project, in an email to CBS MoneyWatch.
"Amazon, Microsoft and other big tech companies are in the Seattle area," notes Zero Hedge, adding "It is a region that is supposedly 'prospering', and yet this is going on."
Back in Silicon Valley, one Google employee slept in a truck in Google's parking lot for two years -- allowing him to save at least $48,000 that he would've paid in rent -- though many vehicle-dwellers apparently have non-technical jobs as plumbers, janitors, and even teachers. "A fair number of the 'vehicular homeless' in Silicon Valley are employed but are unable to find affordable housing," reports CBS, citing an AP article last November about "Silicon Valley's car people".
"Lines of RVs can be found near the headquarters of tech heavyweights such as Apple, Google and Hewlett-Packard."
"Amazon, Microsoft and other big tech companies are in the Seattle area," notes Zero Hedge, adding "It is a region that is supposedly 'prospering', and yet this is going on."
Back in Silicon Valley, one Google employee slept in a truck in Google's parking lot for two years -- allowing him to save at least $48,000 that he would've paid in rent -- though many vehicle-dwellers apparently have non-technical jobs as plumbers, janitors, and even teachers. "A fair number of the 'vehicular homeless' in Silicon Valley are employed but are unable to find affordable housing," reports CBS, citing an AP article last November about "Silicon Valley's car people".
"Lines of RVs can be found near the headquarters of tech heavyweights such as Apple, Google and Hewlett-Packard."
Poor in prospering state (Score:2)
TFA says:
Amazon, Microsoft and other big tech companies are in the Seattle area," notes Zero Hedge, adding "It is a region that is supposedly 'prospering', and yet this is going on."
Indeed, economy metrics such as GDP can be good, but people can still live poor in a rich state, because wealthy individuals and big corporations managed to dodge taxes
So much for Remote Work (Score:4, Interesting)
Ironically, the people least allowed to work remotely appear to be those that allow increasing amount of people in other industries to do exactly that. Sure, that website's employees can all be remote and there can be no actual HQ to even speak of, but hell forbid that anyone working for Evil Tech Inc. work anywhere but at HQ where they can be properly monitored and recorded!
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How do you patrol a beat remotely? How do you conduct an orchestra remotely? How do you mug someone remotely?
Drone [digitaltrends.com], robot [engadget.com], robot [philly.com]. Wait, that's about a robot getting mugged ;) But seriously, it's only a matter of time. Battle bots are a thing. With the right one, you could mug someone. Or perhaps just a robotic mobile gun with a hopper on top into which your victim deposits their valuables.
Not everyone has jobs programming. Most jobs have to be done in person.
Service industry jobs have to be done in person. You can't repair someone's washing machine remotely. Yet. But it is inevitable that just as cars are designed to be assembled by robots today, all kinds of things will be designed
Timely article for me (Score:5, Informative)
I'm going to go look at a bus tomorrow. It's cheaper than we paid for a high-top Sprinter and has half the miles. It's only partly about the cheap housing, and partly about fires. If you have to bug out from a fire, it's a lot nicer if you can take your whole house with you. The house we lived in for the last eleven years just burned down (two months after we moved out!) in a small fire in Lake County, CA, which even people living under rocks know is currently massively ablaze. We live in a redwood forest clearing in Albion at the moment...
The plan is to title it as an RV, at which point you don't need any special driver's license to operate it as long as it's under 40' in overall length, bumper to bumper, regardless of whether it's got air brakes or what the GVWR is. RV insurance is also incredibly cheap, while commercial vehicle insurance is credibly expensive.
If you give up fixed addresses, you can essentially make yourself a resident of another state, which has all kinds of advantages. South Dakota is one very popular option, because they have lax requirements for housecar registration, a low tax rate, and cheap registration fees. And you never even have to go there at all in order to accomplish your registration, get mail forwarding, etc. This is only my backup plan, though. I'm in contact with a registration service which claims it can accomplish the title conversion in 2-3 days.
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Get the step-van, and make sure to paint it so it is innocuous.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/i... [kym-cdn.com]
Re:Timely article for me (Score:5, Informative)
I'd love to get an RV. As a consultant I can spend long stretches on the road. But they are "holy fuck are you kidding" expensive in most cases. Who the hell is paying $400,000+ for these things?!
Retirees with way too much money and no desire to do their own conversion. But you can get a 40' (or smaller) bus with less than 200,000 miles for less than $10,000, and you can plausibly convert it for less than $10,000 again. The requirements are minimal (Depending on state, you need approximately a permanently-affixed toilet which is either composting or attached to a black water tank, a sink with fresh and grey water tanks, a cooker, something to sleep on, and not too many seats) and buses are built way better than RVs. School buses in particular are built with safety in mind for obvious reasons; since the 1990s or so, somewhere between most and all of them have integral roll cages built into the bodies. This is not exactly uncommon in transit buses, either.
I've been seeing credible school buses recently taken out of service (meaning recently maintained) sell for around $3000, some with decent tires on them. I've been seeing good-looking transit buses sell for around $10,000. School buses are lighter and slightly cheaper to run; transit buses are built heavier and tend to have at least front air suspension, for a better ride. The air suspension can also be adapted for use leveling the coach. Some of the school buses and many if not most of the transit buses have wheelchair lifts, which are of interest both to the disabled and to people who want help lifting heavy stuff into their bus.
I have a lot more to say about conversion, choosing the right bus etc. but I'm saving it for a blog post, and I am working on a business plan that involves bus conversions but I am not at all planning to share it until I either give up on it or actually move forward on it. The only other thing I'll say now is that if you see rust, run away. There are enough buses to where you don't have to mess with that. Arizona has signaled their plan to spend their Volkswagen settlement money on new, more efficient school buses [abc15.com], so there will soon be absolutely piles of surplus vehicles on the market.
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How good are transit buses on the highway, considering they're usually designed to spend most of their time running between 0 and 30 mph?
It depends on the final gear ratio, and how many gears are unlocked on your transmission. It's not uncommon for transit buses to spend some time on the highway. Anything around 4.11:1 or higher will be fine. Anything with six gears will be fine. Most buses with five gears will be fine, too.
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That's a good question, but a turbo rebuild is a job I would likely do myself. I've done it before. You can get an entire rebuilt engine installed in your bus for $10k, though, even paying someone else to supply the motor and do the job, so no. $10k+ bills are not common. Also, RVs are not emissions tested, and don't require a DPF or even DEF. You're still not allowed to remove that stuff, but you also don't have to retrofit it. In fact, if the bus didn't have DPF originally, you can remove it and sell it t
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Thanks for your time, and I am very sorry to hear about the loss of your home.
Luckily, it's a rental which we don't own, and it had a mortgage so the owners were insured. But thanks for your kind words!
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That integral roll-cage sounds like it would make some conversions more difficult, like were the sides expand out or roof raises, while camping to make for more space.
Sliders may be nice, but they're also sources of leaks. Raising the roof is not meaningfully more difficult with a cage; you just extend the cage. Everything hangs on it, so it actually makes maintaining structural integrity while raising the roof easier. I don't plan to raise the roof, though. I want to keep it low for clearance (trees more than bridges etc.)
One may also want to go with diesel because while the fuel cost more, the MPG is better.
Yes, one absolutely wants diesel. The fuel doesn't cost that much more, and the MPG is vastly better. It's worth mentioning that one absolutely wants
Re: Timely article for me (Score:4, Informative)
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I am my own mechanic. This is why I prefer Cummins. The tools are cheaper and most of the larger engines are wet-sleeve and can be rebuilt in-frame. The 5.9 is native bore, though, so I want an 8.3. Also, a big travel trailer (over 10k gross) requires a noncommercial class A licence; an RV can be operated on a class C regardless of GVWR. Finally, travel trailers are almost universally built like hot garbage compared to buses. They are more prone to leaks because they shake themselves apart as you transport
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Also, hate to double-reply, but let me just say that it is NOT cheaper to buy a trailer and a truck. A decent tow rig costs about $10k used. A decent trailer can cost much more than that; it's a challenge to find a used one that isn't leaking, and the prior owners are not necessarily forthcoming with that kind of information. I am just not interested in travel trailers, I've been down that road already.
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I grew up in a tour bus. I was a straight up bus when my old man bought it. 90s Silver Eagle to be exact. We spent a summer pulling out the seats, installing propane, solar panels and a water system. Back and fourth all over the country every summer after that. We even turned the bottom luggage area into a little garage for the Harley.
He used to say ,"We're playin gypsy" when we had to move every night to avoid getting a ticket, but we had a ton of fun, and it paid for itself in saved rent money. This was i
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I would opt for a Sprinter based B class so I could live in wal-mart parking lot if I wanted. More than two people is not realistic in a class B though.
Just two people might not be realistic, if one of them is me. I'm 6'7" and currently weigh 280lb. Getting up to piss shakes the whole van. You can get leveling jacks, but finding good places to put them on a part-unibody vehicle with a front subframe like a Sprinter is not necessarily realistic. Also, my lady has a tendency to toss and turn in her sleep. Finally, a cab-chassis Sprinter camper costs big, big money. Not as much as an RV, but easily twice as much as a cargo sprinter. We do have a cargo sprinte
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A very typical retirement plan is for people to sell their house, buy an RV, travel for a few years/decades, and when they start to get tired of the nomadic life they buy a condo wherever they find themselves spending time.
If you sell a $1.5m house, a $400k RV isn't a bad deal...
Company town and a company store (Score:2, Insightful)
tired of them (Score:5, Informative)
They need to stop with bullshit around the edges like rent control, legislating where people go to lunch, living wage, etc, and attack the core of the problem which is that people want to live there and the housing stock needs to double.
All these city councils are so preoccupied with "oh, the people living here can't be forced out" or "oh, we don't want to change the neighborhood", etc. Sorry, but you don't get to control everything and act as if you can have some kind of imaginary paradise with high housing prices, affordable costs, good wages, and low density. When you have people coming for the jobs, you have to give somewhere (unless you restrict people moving here which we don't in this country).
I for one side with the people who don't get to vote on these policies, who are trying to start their lives in a new place, and are the future to be invested in. Not the people who are retired, rich, and complacent in the houses they bought 30 years ago because they got lucky on the draw.
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Absolutely. We should get rid of all legislation governing housing density and apartment size. Then we can get the population living in converted drain pipe "coffin homes" like Singapore:
https://www.theguardian.com/ci... [theguardian.com]
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Have a city use it police to move parked RV on.
Clean up the streets removing waste and drug use.
Remove tents.
Want to camp? Want to stay in an RV? Then people have to find a RV park, campgrounds.
A city can then function as a city again.
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Having waste left out in streets, drug use, having to respond to crime starts to get a city a bad reputation.
After a while much better US states with low opera prices, educated populations and police forces are going to become more attractive.
Then the tax rates will have to change as people move to better states and cities, taking their wealth with them.
Parts of the USA will start to offer cle
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You can almost do anything in your Tesla... (Score:4, Funny)
We will very shortly have camping mode [caranddriver.com] in our Teslas as well as gaming... if only there was a toilet mode in the next software update (and electrically tinted windows)...
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Buy a luxury vehicle today, you will need it to live in during your retirement!
Please show your appreciation (Score:3)
Housing prices we're going to normal after the 2007 bubble and the resulting 2008 market crash. Then the politicians and the Federal Reserve decided to fix it through home buyer tax-credits and 0% interest rates. Now house prices are back to record levels. Thank you for fixing the problem of low home prices, low rent, low property taxes, and low home insurance rates. Thank you. *Slow clap*
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Dumb fucks (Score:5, Interesting)
....here's a tip: MOVE.
The entire midsection of the country is facing unemployment levels the lowest they've been in 20 years. Real wages are going up, and the cost of living is HALF (or less) than it is on the coasts.
Find out what REAL "quality of life" means when it's not measured in Starbucks per square mile. Where you can actually see the stars?
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Actually, better: no. Please DON'T move to the midsection of the country. It's terrible here. Much better to live in your car.
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Actually, better: no. Please DON'T move to the midsection of the country. It's terrible here. Much better to live in your car.
Having grown up in the midsection of the country, I would agree. So would all my friends who also moved from the midsection of the country and are now on the coasts.
Feed the Cats (Score:2)
https://www.kiro7.com/news/loc... [kiro7.com]
Note from the article: 2 hours for PD to re
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Cops not harassing consenting adults for what they choose to buy or put into their own bodies? Cops not being greedy and ticketing someone double parking to unload their car after two minutes? Cops not ticketing people who already had the misfortune of their car breaking down? Avoiding high-speed chases that endanger the public, and not confronting people who aren't hurting others?
Sounds what the REST of the country should be doing. Then again, I'm not an authoritarian nannie-stater who thinks that a bu
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Also: organized sports? Let the teams pay for their stadiums themselves or go piss off. Seattle can live without a baseball team. Better to spend the money on people who actually need it, not fat cat sports managers.
Actually, the NFL is the worst offender -- teams threatening to leave unless a city builds them a lavish athletic palace. San Diego did the right thing in telling the Chargers where to stuff it -- let them move to L.A..
I can at least speak for California (Score:4, Interesting)
It all comes down to one problem: Proposition 13.
In a nutshell, Prop 13 artificially lowers property tax to an insane degree, and keeps it artificially low until that property changes hands via sale. What this means in practice is that if you own property in California, you don't want to sell it because until you do it is taxed at a way lower rate than it should be. This means lots of people hold on to their property, which raises the value of property overall. In turn, those who hold on to their property now find their property values skyrocketing because demand is nowhere near supply, and all of their personal wealth gets tied up in said property value. So for them to keep that wealth, the best thing is for as little property as possible to enter the market, to keep their values high. Hence, the NIMBYism you see rampant across California, particularly in SF, LA, SJ, etc.
Barring Prop 13's repeal or a complete collapse of the California economy triggering a wave of panic sellers, property value will continue to inflate as more people and businesses want to operate here but less and less people are willing to sell.
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I lived in Orange County when Prop 13 was passed. It doesn't lower property taxes, but just limits the rate at which they can be increased until you sell the property, whereupon the assessed valuation is marked up to current market for the next owner.
It was passed because at the time property taxes were rising to an insane degree. Now other taxes are rising to an insane degree.
Re:Seize Apple's trillion dollars for housing (Score:5, Informative)
For all Apple's influence in Cupertino, I doubt they could get the city council to approve an apartment complex that size. The NYMBYism out here is pretty intense.
We seem to be building 5-story apartments and condos all over the place these days. I've watched three, or maybe four, high-rise apartments get built in downtown San Jose in the last few years. That's not enough but it's more housing than I've seen be built in years. The question on everyone's lips is traffic. The roads already seem crowded, will this make it worse? I wonder if the new homes will be filled with people who already work here. If so, this will just shorten their commute and traffic will get better. If this lets companies hire more workers, it's going to make traffic much worse.
subsidized housing ? (Score:4, Interesting)
If the companies would put up buildings and subsidize their own workers and then provide shuttle service it could attract qualified workers into very high cost of living areas, while not contributing as much to the local traffic. One problem I did not see mentioned but I've encountered in downtown apartment/condos is parking. I would love to see a building that had apartments, a supermarket, restaurants, a medical facility and maybe a day care/school all combined. No doubt the corps would turn this kind of company district into a for profit trap, but the idea seems solid up front.
Re:subsidized housing ? (Score:5, Informative)
If the companies would put up buildings ...
Many Silicon Valley companies would LOVE to be able to build housing for their employees. Probability of them getting permits to do so: 0%.
Re:subsidized housing ? (Score:5, Funny)
What ever happened to those Google barges? Just set up some floating dormitories and anchor them in S.F. Bay. Maybe just off the beach at the Presidio. Right in you know who's view.
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You can't build those in an earthquake zone, but San Francisco Bay would be an ideal place for barge housing.
This is what happened to the Google Barge: https://www.pressherald.com/20... [pressherald.com]
It wasn't housing, but a product demo site that, like so many other good Google projects, was abandoned before it really got going. But since there is nothing specifically Googlish about the idea of barge apartments, why isn't anyone building these? This would be housing that could easily be moved from place to place as neede
Re:subsidized housing ? (Score:5, Informative)
I would love to see a building that had apartments, a supermarket, restaurants, a medical facility and maybe a day care/school all combined. No doubt the corps would turn this kind of company district into a for profit trap, but the idea seems solid up front.
It's even got a name, coined by architect Paolo Soleri: Arcology [wikipedia.org] . His project Arcosanti [wikipedia.org] broke ground in 1970, and construction continues today. It is not very financially successful, but it doesn't have any mainstream business, either. Arcologies have nonetheless remained a science-fiction trope, as they continue to be seen as a plausible projection of existing trends. Corporations in certain industries regularly build housing for employees, in locations where no such housing exists; less regularly, they build housing where it is simply scarce. However, in the latter case business interests tend to not be located in residential areas, and building the housing separately requires no rezoning — which keeps costs down.
Re: subsidized housing ? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's got an even older name; a company town [wikipedia.org].
They got a bad rep for a number of reasons, like the fact that they gave the company way too much control over workers lives. Companies could set arbitrary prices on goods, charging whatever they wanted. Plus if you got fired you not only lost your job, you also got booted out of your house.
Also if the company went tits up so did the town, which kinda sucked.
Turns out they weren't that great of an idea after all.
Re: subsidized housing ? (Score:4, Informative)
Company Towns still exist in Western Australia especially in the Iron Ore mining region of the Pilbara.
It makes financial sense for companies like Rio Tinto to build housing etc. as the remoteness means it is very, very expensive to fly workers in and out and house them onsite.
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That's a good description of the H-1B program also. If you lose your job, you get booted out of the country. How's that for modern day slavery?
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Companies could set arbitrary prices on goods, charging whatever they wanted. ... Turns out they weren't that great of an idea after all.
Maybe I'm older than I think. Don't y'all remember this phrase? Link [youtu.be] "I owe my soul to the company store" at 0:51
... based on life in coal mines
The line, "You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt," came from a letter ... Another ... from their father, a coal miner, who would say, "I can't afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store."
Sixteen Tons" is a song
I'm sure, just like Wal*Mart, they've always got the lowest price.
Link: [bloomberg.com] Regulators forced "Mr
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you load 16 tons.. what do you get?
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You also were paid in 'company scrip', money that could only be spent at the company store to purchase the shovels etc. needed for the mining. At inflated prices of course.
Company scrip was not legal tender and most countries ( in NZ it was the Wages Protection Act 1880~) enacted laws requiring payment in legal tender so that a modicum of competition could be allowed. Or at least envisioned.
See the movie Matewan (1987) for an example of a company town, based on historical events.
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No, a company town is a town built by and owned by one business, to house its workers in the middle of nowhere. That's why it's coercive. If an arcology is built in a dense existing urban area, people can choose to live there.
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It's even got a name, coined by architect Paolo Soleri: Arcology [wikipedia.org] . n.
The place to build one of these should have been downtown Tokyo, not whatever empty spot in central Arizona where Paolo Soleri and a band of hippies could buy cheap land.
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They did that in Canada (Mississauga). Condo apartment blocks have communal concrete underground car parks - mainly to protect cars from the cold. In the downtown city, other Condo units are built on top of Metro stations and shopping malls. Metro stations link together so you don't need a car or to even go outside.
In Trondheim, Norway, there is a place called Solsiden which does what you suggest. There are supermarkets on the ground levels, a shopping mall with hairdressers and shops. You don't need a car.
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We have one of these too, called Minneapolis.
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If the companies would put up buildings and subsidize their own workers ...
I'd much rather companies just paid me a higher salary and let me figure out where I want to live. For that matter, I'd rather they gave me a higher salary and got their nose out of my health care too.
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The weather is nice enough too, so you can live in an RV all year around. Only old timers remember snow in Silicon Valley. Nice outdoor weather and lots of affordable restaurants means you can take a quick walk if you don't feel like cooking in your RV.
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Because there are more people that there are properties. Those who have a home cannot trade up to something bigger because that would involve a longer commute, paying more in property taxes (set at 1% of purchase price - $500,000 home = $5000/year). So they upgrade and extend their homes. That pushes up the prices further. Then there are property speculators from China who want an "investment". If anyone sells up, they move out of state and push prices up elsewhere.
Some areas are too dangerous too live in,
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Re:Seize Apple's trillion dollars for housing (Score:5, Informative)
The housing problem is 100% due to NIMBYism. People that are already here can vote, and benefit from rising housing values. People that don't live here, but want to, don't get a vote. So the politicians represent the wishes of the voters and block new housing construction.
The "traffic problems" is a totally backwards excuse. As people are forced further and further out into the exburbs, their commutes become longer and traffic gets worse. At rush hour, figure two hours from Gilroy to Mountain View. More high-rise housing in the core of Silicon Valley would be a great relief to traffic congestion.
Some economic analyses have concluded that "progressive" restrictions on growth and housing contribute to inequality as much as regressive conservative tax cuts. The rich see their million dollar houses soar in value, while the poor are squeezed out of economic opportunities.
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It's funny when people oppose a project because the developer isn't building enough parking, then they oppose it because of the traffic all that parking will bring. Seriously, you can't make this up!
Re: Seize Apple's trillion dollars for housing (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Seize Apple's trillion dollars for housing (Score:5, Insightful)
Building campuses, offices and business parks brings in tax revenue. Building family homes costs tax revenue for schools, community hospitals and police departments. Thus the existing residents don't want further growth especially when they have a fixed income and property tax.
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The dumbest thing they do is prevent building housing, but allow building office space.
Nope. That is the smartest thing to do. It pushes up demand for housing, while constricting supply, thus driving up prices. I am a property owner in San Jose, and the value of my house has quintupled since I bought it 20 years ago.
Development policies based on localized greed are not in the best interests of America, or low income people, or humanity, but they are certainly in the best interests of the property owners that vote for them.
Re: Seize Apple's trillion dollars for housing (Score:2)
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Then we shall say, it is the most selfish thing to do.
But nonetheless, that is the entire motivation for those anti-housing laws. They are dreamed up by people who own existing housing in an area, clothed in whatever "environmental" swill they think will appeal to simpletons, and passed by reflex action.
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Democracy doesn't work that way. In theory, all citizens should be treated equally. But residents can vote themselves privileges that are not extended to future residents. Using permitting restrictions and zoning regulations to inflate the price of housing is one way. Tax laws like Prop 13 are another way. In California, two families living in adjacent identical houses can pay vastly different tax rates. New residents sometimes pay 300 or 400% more than incumbent residents, who are usually wealthier.
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I take 50 minutes to get from East San Jose to Santa Clara, a trip of 14 miles. If I go on a Sunday it's less than 15 minutes, 12 if I don't hit any stop lights.
Just a whole lot more people on the roads in San Jose than there were even 5 years ago. The only real difference between San Jose and "real" urban traffic is the rush hour is only bad for a few short periods a day. People who can pick when they travel don't have too many problems. But the worst traffic is when parents are picking up kids and then ru
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Build 50 stories underground and 5 above - oh wait, earthquakes.
Actually, the safest place to be in an earthquake is a man-made underground structure. The most dangerous place to be is in a natural cave.
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Yeah, seizing assets of gainful corporations in the name of entitlements won't drive businesses out of the united states or anything.
How about we leave the fantasy land schemes behind for a while?
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Better yet, make them turn their space ship campus into apartments.
The renters would still bitch about there not being anywhere to plug in their 1975 model headphones.
"Duh...wazzat blue teeth thing?"
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there is PLENTY of property (rental and for-purchase) available... except they are in "undesirable" parts of town, along a major highway, tucked in an area with lots of low-income/no-income tenants, etc.
Yeah, the thing is, those areas are undesirable because they are shitty places to live. I lived in Bernal Heights (in SF) and my IROC got stolen because it's up the hill from an outright ghetto. The ghetto itself is right next to the highway, which means you have all kinds of pollution to deal with, including noise pollution (which has been proven to have actual health effects.)
Those options are always fewer and those prices are affected by supply-and-demand economics, but to believe nothing reasonably affordable exists is truly misleading. Want proof? Just check the property values of properties in "slums" and "dangerous hoods"
Oh yeah, that's just where I want to live. In a shithole where I will get jacked regularly. Why did no one think of this before?!?1
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You know what IROC stands for? Italian Retard Out Cruising.
You know what it stood for when I bought it? $500 in cash. And it was a phenomenal runner that got a then-impressive ~25 MPG on the freeway. The L98 350 Chevy with tuned port injection was the LS motor of its day.
Granted, the car was a bit of a pile, and the front end would start to lift off at high speeds, but it was still worth every penny. One is not permitted to travel that quickly on public roads in America in any case.
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The right-wing party line was something like ...
So housing shortages in the SF Bay Area are caused by the "right-wing"? Who knew?
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Hitler is why we have a housing shortage. Elect an albino Hispanic native american with XYQZ chromosomes that identifies as an RV. Anything else means millions will die from pollution, rising sea levels, and STRAWS!
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What is needed is a completely decentralized revolution of labor without meeting places (or indeed, meetings) or leaders. And the basis, of course, must be strong crypto. You must be able to know that the person you're communicating with today is the same you were communicating with yesterday.
We need an app for that
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I think Alibaba is working on one. It's very secure. All the best crypto America can conceive.
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Fuck no. No conspiracies required, right in your fucking face activism. Not happy, tell them to fuck off. Your political representative not representing you, drop them a line telling them you will campaign against them at the next election. A corporation fucking with your democracy, well, fuck with their marketing caimpagns, forums and reviews. Talk politics with your friends and neighbours, it is a corporate PR=B$ lie that it is bad to discuss politics, don't discuss politics and it can kill you and yours,
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It seems big money and globalists corporations are already scared to hell by the election of an unsanctioned potus. Just look at the utterings of their press whores.
Now what we need is an unsanctioned POTUS who has a coherent strategy of his/her own. Nominations, anyone?
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No, no, no. What you need is a government that you aren't afraid of. I thought freedom of speech and assembly was a big deal for Americans...
Yeah, but how do we get from here to there? Because right now, our votes don't count, and even where they do, they don't all count the same.
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The working class is completely disorganized...
Bread and Circuses; nothing new here.
Re:This isn't Monopoly (Score:4, Insightful)
Occupy Wall Street was shut down by a coordinated effort between the FBI and local law enforcement
Nope. OWS faded away because they had no organization or leadership, no coherent goals or objectives, and were completely ineffective at catalyzing change or allying with existing politicians or electing new politicians.
Contrast OWS with another organization formed around the same time: The Tea Party. Both were created in reaction to the financial crisis and the bank bailout. But the Tea Party didn't fade away. They were organized. They had coherent, specific, and realistic goals. They formed alliances and endorsed politicians. The ejected incumbents, and elected a tidal wave of new representatives.
OWS has faded away, and may someday merit a small footnote in a history book.
The Tea Party has revolutionized American politics, and is now running the country.
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The tea party is funded and controlled by a few billionaires...
Yes, it was disgraceful how the Koch brothers were able to just buy the presidency for Jeb Bush.
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Both the Rs and Ds are gibbering away about their favorite apocalypses right now while still being wholly owned by major lobbyists. It's time for a new party.
I would like to see one built around not denying science - any of the disciplines - while at the same time letting engineers build the discoveries science makes, this being what motivates us to spend money on it.
Re: "Monopoly" Is A Model Of Capitalism... (Score:2)
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I've never seen a car, not even a camoer, with a shower ort bath.
Truck campers can have a shower. Conversions can have a shower. However, a common approach is to get a gym membership. This not only gets you a place to shit and shower, but also includes access to gym equipment, and maybe even a pool.
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They had this problem in medieval Europe. That was solved by an plague outbreaks. Then the shortage of workers gave the peasants the upper hand in demanding better working conditions. If they weren't treated with respect they would simply leave the landowner and go elsewhere.
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Well fucking move to Sweden then. I'm sick of whining fucks that think the US is shit. Go the fuck on then to paradise in Europe. I lived there for years and it's got more than it's share of problems. And that was in the 80s, I can imagine what it's becoming with the Jihad moving in.
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As it is zoning laws and construction codes keep the number of houses limited. Doo goodnick liberal subsidized housing laws give crappy houses to people that would otherwise be blighting the neighborhoods of upper middle class liberals. We need to abolish zoning laws, construction codes and section 8 housing to fix the problem.
I was with you until you started ranting. Yes, relax zoning laws and make it easier to build new homes. Doing so will only reduce the price of housing (that pesky supply and demand thing). If rich gentry move in, they had to move from somewhere and now a house in that somewhere is available.
The second order effect is that if you start building more housing, you might also drive up demand ("Yay, more SF apartments, I can think of moving there now!"). I don't know which effect will dominate. Personally, I'd l
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California personal property tax is why Arizona, which has only one natural lake, has the nation's largest number of small boat registrations.