Two Miles From Facebook's Headquarters, Working Poor Live In Trailers (mercurynews.com) 520
"The working poor are spilling into Bay Area streets for lack of safe, affordable shelter," report two Silicon Valley newspapers describing a "pop-up neighborhood" that's now banding together, "a small community of blue collar RV dwellers...fighting for the only place they can call home."
The beautifully-illustrated article begins with an interview with a grey-haired woman named Lisa Cosey-Steven: [D]espite steady work and little debt, she trudges back and forth to the office every day from a dark RV trailer, packed floor to ceiling with bags of clothes, pet supplies for her seven dogs, thriller novels and food. Cosey-Stevens, 63, has been parked on the shoulder of Bay Road in East Palo Alto, just about two miles from Facebook headquarters and some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, since June. "No one knows how badly I want out of this," she said during an interview in her trailer. "It's depressing to live like this...."
She's part of an unplanned and impromptu RV park, about 80 people pushed out of apartments and into trailers and the edge of homelessness... Their neighborhood of about 50 RVs lines the eastern end of Bay Road and Tara Street, next to a stretch of salvage yards, warehouses and empty lots guarded by chain link fence. It's just off a thoroughfare for local tech employees and sits adjacent to the site of a new, multi-million dollar youth education center, Epacenter Arts. Several of the aging RVs have large banners draped over the sides, making pleas to the big employers in the area: "SOS -- Facebook, Sobrato, Amazon, Google."
The [RV Families Association of East Palo Alto] has a grand vision for East Palo Alto, a city steeped in activism and landlord-tenant disputes: to get a few acres donated by a major tech company to build an RV park with security, facilities and regular, affordable rent for low-income workers. But first, they're fighting City Hall to keep their homes. A proposed ordinance working its way through city government would ban most RVs from overnight parking on city streets.
"It's not like they're trying to be a nuisance to the city," says the mayor of East Palo Alto. "It's a survival thing. It's a strategy, a tactic to survive for a while."
"We are the working homeless," says a 57-year-old upholsterer and Navy veteran "who moved into his RV after his rent in East Palo Alto doubled to $4,000 a month." Another family lost their Redwood City apartment when their landlord increased the rent from $1,300 to $2,800 a month.
The beautifully-illustrated article begins with an interview with a grey-haired woman named Lisa Cosey-Steven: [D]espite steady work and little debt, she trudges back and forth to the office every day from a dark RV trailer, packed floor to ceiling with bags of clothes, pet supplies for her seven dogs, thriller novels and food. Cosey-Stevens, 63, has been parked on the shoulder of Bay Road in East Palo Alto, just about two miles from Facebook headquarters and some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, since June. "No one knows how badly I want out of this," she said during an interview in her trailer. "It's depressing to live like this...."
She's part of an unplanned and impromptu RV park, about 80 people pushed out of apartments and into trailers and the edge of homelessness... Their neighborhood of about 50 RVs lines the eastern end of Bay Road and Tara Street, next to a stretch of salvage yards, warehouses and empty lots guarded by chain link fence. It's just off a thoroughfare for local tech employees and sits adjacent to the site of a new, multi-million dollar youth education center, Epacenter Arts. Several of the aging RVs have large banners draped over the sides, making pleas to the big employers in the area: "SOS -- Facebook, Sobrato, Amazon, Google."
The [RV Families Association of East Palo Alto] has a grand vision for East Palo Alto, a city steeped in activism and landlord-tenant disputes: to get a few acres donated by a major tech company to build an RV park with security, facilities and regular, affordable rent for low-income workers. But first, they're fighting City Hall to keep their homes. A proposed ordinance working its way through city government would ban most RVs from overnight parking on city streets.
"It's not like they're trying to be a nuisance to the city," says the mayor of East Palo Alto. "It's a survival thing. It's a strategy, a tactic to survive for a while."
"We are the working homeless," says a 57-year-old upholsterer and Navy veteran "who moved into his RV after his rent in East Palo Alto doubled to $4,000 a month." Another family lost their Redwood City apartment when their landlord increased the rent from $1,300 to $2,800 a month.
and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
Well duh, the people that own property continue to vote for no new housing to be built. They do not want their property to depreciate from adding more housing.
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"Let's be honest. If they contributed anything worthwhile to society, they would not be working at Facefook. Just human refuse, that's all."
FIFY
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" If they contributed anything worthwhile to society, they would not be working at Facebook."
Repeated for emphasis.
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While we are at it, let's kill all the retirees. After all, they contribute nothing to the society any more.
Re: and yet (Score:4, Insightful)
Cities in the US have actually abandoned constructing any buildings.
Sorry! Any Rand got her way.
Re: and yet (Score:5, Informative)
Center of empire has moved on to China, which is more economically free than the US and Europe
Free? The economy is less regulated, freedom for capitalists, but not individuals.
True freedom comes from economic security, which means savings for the middle class, or at least a welfare system that allows people to keep their homes and health insurance if they lose their job. Even well-paid professionals in Silicon Valley can feel like serfs.
China is of course struggling with a mass-migration of workers at a speed and scale unprecedented in world history.
50 million new apartments are empty, while millions of migrant workers live in squalid dormitories.
China is improving rapidly, but it is a rough road. And will get worse when the debt bomb explodes.
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Yes it is internal. It is local government debt, not national, that is most worrying. A totally different situation to US or other countries.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/p... [forbes.com]
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Who wants to build a new building and have to offer low cost rents as the city is full of low cost rental places to live?
Who wants to live with poor people? The crime and poverty moving into once good areas?
Needing a top income by one person, two good incomes to rent keeps good parts of a city clean and safe. Investment ready.
Much better to have too few places to rent that are good quality and keep
Re:and yet (Score:4, Informative)
Who wants to live with poor people? The crime and poverty moving into once good areas?
These are not poor people. In Silicon Valley, especially on the western side, there are people making $100k living in RVs and trailers.
A common question at job interviews is whether we provide showers (we do) and laundry machines (we don't, but we provide a take-out service once a week).
The "tax" a city can extract from the more wealth home owners is a plus for that kind of city planning too.
Nope. Not in California. We have Prop 13, which means that young people with families pay far higher property taxes than their older and richer neighbors living in a nearly identical house.
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The problem is the "older and richer neighbors living in a nearly identical house". Stop trying to shape a city with demographics.
Free up land use and let the free market move in.
People who don't want to live in an illegal parked RV will then find homes as that demand for low cost housing exists.
Areas of the city will face huge property taxes changes.
Wealthy areas will stay wealthy and attract on
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When city planning cant plan for long term housing and normal people have to live in an RV they are poor. The problem is the "older and richer neighbors living in a nearly identical house". Stop trying to shape a city with demographics.
Free up land use and let the free market move in.
This is all rather rich... free markets to the rescue....
People who don't want to live in an illegal parked RV will then find homes as that demand for low cost housing exists.
Oh what... so not free markets but actually rich convincing the state to wield its monopoly on violence to artificially protect the rich by keeping the poor down so rich are not inconvenienced by undesirables. Make up your fucking mind.
Re:and yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Hows that gov control with waste in the streets and people living in RV working for decades?
Need another city and state tax to support the poor?
Let the free market build some new housing by removing gov control over the number of new homes.
The free market will fill released land by building homes that will sell in that area.
Wealthy people get nice new homes. Rents will reflect the price the value of a nice area, that's clean and has no crime.
Middle class areas get affordable homes.
Poor areas get rent supported homes.
Wealth keeps the different communities well apart and tech workers will enjoy their new homes.
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Hows that gov control with waste in the streets and people living in RV working for decades?
Need another city and state tax to support the poor?
CA's racist corrupt government *IS* the primary problem. Government is actively standing in the way of the free market solving an acute housing problem.
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The problem is the "older and richer neighbors living in a nearly identical house". Stop trying to shape a city with demographics.
The problem is paying for things with property taxes. They should be paid for with income taxes. California tries to do this, but it still can't kick property taxes completely, which would be the only fair thing to do — on one's first dwelling. Commercial property can still be taxed, second+ homes can still be taxed, vacation homes etc. Any home that the owner or their immediate family occupies less than 50% of the year, that is. And the owner would still only get the taxes off of one residential prop
Superstar cities (Score:3)
That is simply the unstoppable path of the new economy. We are now told that all the jobs have to be in one of the 10 "Superstar" cities in the USA, because good jobs can't exist in a metro area unless there are millions of people there, because they can only find good workers in those 10 cities. But that high pay only goes to the Rock Star employees. Empty the trash? Why should you deserve any more money than someone emptying trash in Kansas? The result is that housing is bought by the people making $150k
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Re:and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
An hour long train ride is not a good substitute for building housing where people actually want to live. I live in Silicon Valley, and we have mile after mile of low-rise sprawl. There is plenty of space to build high density housing in the core area where the jobs are.
Liberals love to criticize Republican tax cuts for the rich, but coastal city zoning regulations contribute as much to income inequality by keeping people of modest means away from the best job opportunities.
Zoning laws and the rise of inequality [theatlantic.com]
Fighting inequality through zoning [washingtonpost.com]
The left is waking up to inequality cause by zoning [fee.org]
When it comes to inequality, liberals need to stop asking "Who can we blame for this problem" and start asking "What can we do to fix this problem."
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There does not seem to be power, water, food, or other public infrastructure to support the working poor in those highly urban areas. This happens in other cities, as well.
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Articles like this make me thankful for living in Oregon; but also quite fearful that the silicon valley bullshit (and people) will migrate north.
$4,000 monthly for an apartment? That is approximating the definition of insanity. There is nothing special about living in SV. You want to work for a fly-by night bullshit firm that is dedicated to stalking users, or selling widgets plenty of other places in the US that can pay a decent salary, but with 1/3 of the cost of living.
Re:and yet (Score:5, Interesting)
My town, a major tourist draw in rural northern Arizona, also has a low-cost housing problem. The place is full of artists and high-end retirees, but there is no low-cost housing for our service army of waitstaff, janitors, medical techs, and cashiers. The spare rooms the plebeians used to rent are now being Air BnBed out of their reach.
Last month, a solution emerged: an Evil Developer staked out a large trailer park on the main highway just outside the city limits in county territory, where it does not require city approval. Though it would handily solve the worker housing problem, local property snobs are reacting as though it's going to be "The Stacks" from Ready Player One.
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Except that the dense housing is very expensive. Some cities are becoming more dense, by building upscale dense apartments. Several newish ones in San Jose, with rents in the $3000/mo and up.
Some of this is that economies of building don't scale that well, a two or three story apartment building is common but the high rises are extremely expensive to build and maintain. You need infrastructure, parking, better mass transit options (and no, uber doesn't count). There seems to be an endless supply of people
Re: and yet (Score:3)
That's pretty much the smallest possible apartment that people can get in NYC. I think 40sqm was the smallest even allowed to be built until a few years ago. At 50sqm, you are taking about a space that is smaller than a 4 person dorm and about 3x the smallest dorm rooms.
Then.... there is the fact that everyone settles for something 2x that at 90sqm. No one wants to live in a space that reminds them of their dormroom. So there is little market for small spaces and builders don't want to risk it. Finally
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In my town, the high density housing that comes out of this mindset ends up being luxury 1 bedroom condominiums starting at 750k. Renovicting people who have been paying decent rents in a duplex or small low rise apartment, and pushing them to things like in TFA which is forming RV shantytowns.
If you want to fix the problem, either build 1k-2k /per month apartments that can fit a family, or houses that arent over 5
Re:and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
In my town, the high density housing that comes out of this mindset ends up being luxury 1 bedroom condominiums starting at 750k. Renovicting people who have been paying decent rents in a duplex or small low rise apartment, and pushing them to things like in TFA which is forming RV shantytowns.
That luxury condo is still soaking up a bunch of the richer tenants from other apartments, leaving those for the less rich. If you build enough of those, the ordinary apartments are going to have plenty of space for everyone who was evicted.
If you want to fix the problem, either build 1k-2k /per month apartments that can fit a family, or houses that arent over 500k.
Asking developers to sell for below cost just isn't going to work. Nobody can build a house for $500k in the Bay Area and nobody will invest $1 million to get a $24k annual rental income, of which $20k goes to property tax and $5k goes to utilities and maintenance (notice how $24k < $25k).
Ban people from owning more than one property in the same regional district is my starting idea.
What do you do for the existing properties they own? And what about those owned by businesses?
Increase the cost of money
That reduces construction of new units, since those are funded by loans too.
don't allow foreigners to purchase land.
Might not make much of a difference in the Bay Area. According to this site [calmatters.org], less than 10% are all cash sales (which is indicative of foreign investment).
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High density housing brings its own problems. Since you are not lacking space and most of these tech companies don't really need to be physically near each other anyway, they should be encouraged to spread out.
Flexible working time and light rail really helps too.
Maybe companies should be required to invest in housing when they open a new campus. If they are spending a billion or two on the campus then some decent homes nearby, with a stipulation that they can only ever be sold for a very reasonable amount
Re:and yet (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a hilarious quote, liberals are the ones actually proposing legislation to fix the problem rather than just giving out tidbits of advice on how to get a real good grip on your bootstraps.
But the right probably sees that legislation as "blaming" because they don't want the people benefitting from the explosion of inequality to stop benefitting - even poor people on the right who are taking the brunt of the damage, but willingly hurt themselves for the sake of stupid-ass culture war horseshit, just as planned by their wealthy masters.
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The tech megacorp cities are closer to libertarian than liberal, but the biggest problem next to pointless geographic income concentration in general is stupid zoning and building regulations that I'm sure most liberals without a vested interest in existing SF real estate would not support.
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Liberals aren't mindlessly against removing all regulations they way conservatives are mindlessly against making any. There's nothing wrong with changing or removing ones that have proven to be stupid and damaging like SF's zoning/building regulations.
Re:and yet (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you work in the city does not mean you should live in it or would want to, you just need to solve the population transport method from satellite towns (residential communities) to the cities.
Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. The reason people move to the surrounding areas is that they can have more space to themselves, like a single family residence with a front and back yard. If you were going to live in an apartment building you might as well do that downtown. That often means a population density which is critically low for public transport. A lot of the solutions are thus hybrids where you drive to a commuter parking attached to public transport and take the bus/tram/rail from there. I've always wondered if this might be an early use for self-driving cars, it works in a limited area with low speed local roads and if you can make cost-efficient 0.2-2 mile rapid-fire pickups it could tip the balance for a lot of people.
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The reason people move to the surrounding areas is that they can have more space to themselves, like a single family residence with a front and back yard.
These are people literally living in RVs. They want to live close, not far away.
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For me, if I have to live in an apartment building it had better not be downtown! That place sucks; bad air, litter on the street, drunks sleeping in your doorway, high crime rates, endless noise, and even worse, hipsters. I'd want to get out of that even without the extra space. Besides, most of the higher paying jobs are NOT in downtown areas in the Bay Area. San Francisco itself seems to have turned into a bedroom community since so many people commute out of it to the less dense and more affordable a
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Also, the cities rarely have schools that are as good as the suburbs. It's certainly that way in Detroit, and Washington DC.
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"The fossil fuellers and car manufacturers are actively conspiring..."
Do you have evidence of this or is it conjecture?
Rent control? (Score:3)
“a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.” [American Economic Review poll of economists, 93+% agreed]
Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state
Seven dogs (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm supposed to feel sorry for someone who has seven dogs? Life choices man. She chose the expense of seven dogs over the expense of non-disgusting housing.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Um.... Dogs are cheap (Score:5, Insightful)
And what's with all the non-stop poor shaming? Is this supposed to make you feel better about abandoning these folks to their miserable fate? Does it? Somewhere in the back of your mind it's gnawing on you, how you're letting fellow Americans live like shit. The Americans who do work you want done.
Bottom line, You want those people to live near where you are so they can cook, clean and fix your plumbing but you'll be damned if you want to pay for them to have an OK life. When people bitch about "gentrification" that's what they're talking about. You know that's messed up, so you do crap like this to try and convince yourself it's their choice. Gives you an out, but like I said, it gnaws on you, doesn't it?
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Poor shaming is unrelated to doing math, working out a budget and understanding priorities ... which apparently this person and you don't understand.
Apparently you'd rather whine then go help this woman understand what she can do to make better choices. Will whining or making better choices serve her better in the long run?
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Re: (Score:3)
If your dog cost you $20/month, you're abusing the dog. Your annual vet visits alone should be more than that.
Re: Seven dogs (Score:4, Insightful)
If you decide your priority is to "care for" 7 dogs over [something else], then why should others have sympathy that you don't have [something else]? You picked 7 dogs because that's what you wanted most.
Re: Seven dogs (Score:5, Insightful)
I guess you missed the part where rent has recently doubled. In other words, she could afford the rent and the dogs just fine and then the rent doubled.
What would you have her do, take the dogs to the landlord's house and shoot them execution style on the front porch?
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Re: (Score:2)
Neither she nor her dogs are dead or starving, whe must have done something right. Meanwhile, do you have multiple bunkers around the world in the case of disaster? You're not guilty of failure to plan for every contingency, are you?
Re: Seven dogs (Score:4, Insightful)
In other words, she could afford the rent and the dogs just fine and then the rent doubled.
Could she? No where in the article does it say her rent doubled. In fact it talks about the rent of other people. Additionally she is 63 years old, close to retirement age. The inside of her RV looks precisely what you would expect from an incredibly poor person, shit and bags piled up absolutely everywhere.
Make no mistake about it, this woman has a mixture of poor life choices and bad luck written all over her. She has been living paycheck to paycheck shouldering an incredible expense she could not afford in a city she clearly could not afford to live in. Mind you she's 100% mobile now, wants out of this life, but still doesn't leave where she's at in search of something suitable ... and she still has dogs she can't afford, so higher brain function is clearly lacking somewhat.
She was always going to end up in an RV. She's prioritised her dogs and living in an expensive city over a suitable financial buffer to get her through her old age. She won't be able to work forever and at that point the dogs are as good as dead.
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If the neighbor on the left sees his rent double, and the neighbor on the right sees her rent double, and the people down the street see their rent double, what is the most likely thing for your rent to do?
In fact, the rent doubling is going on all over that area. Why do you think there's so many people living in RVs that they can organize?
Cause and effect, not fault. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not sure why some are always looking for who to blame, while actively denying the very basic idea of cause and effect.
The ASPCA says the *nationwide* average cost per dog is $1,000-$2,000 / year. Things cost 43% in California, on average, so that's roughly $2,100 / year per dog. Total $15,000 / for the dogs. That's what dogs cost. It's not someone's FAULT, it's just a fact. Dogs need food, vet care, etc. If you spend $15,000/year on dogs, and another $15,000/year on whatever odd choice, you're left with less money to take care of yourself. That's called arithmetic, not fault.
It's funny - just this morning I had a conversation with my daughter, mostly listening to her talk. First she said she wanted all of the toys in the Ryan's Toy Reviews line, now available at Walmart. Next, she said she'd spend ALL of her money on those toys. "But then I couldn't get any other toys", she said. "I want to have money in my gifting cup to buy gifts for my friends", she continued. With me barely saying a word, she quickly reasoned through that she did NOT want to spend all of her money on Ryan toys. Maybe just one, she decided. Maybe one Ryan toy would be good.
My daughter understands the cause and effect of choosing to spend money on one thing means you don't have that money for other things she wants. She's four. Four years old.
Re:Cause and effect, not fault. (Score:4, Interesting)
>"The ASPCA says the *nationwide* average cost per dog is $1,000-$2,000 / year. [...] That's what dogs cost. It's not someone's FAULT, it's just a fact. Dogs need food, vet care, etc."
Cats, too.... they require less food/space, but just higher QUALITY food because they are true carnivores, and usually litter. And if you are NOT spending that much, then it is likely animal abuse because they are NOT being properly cared for. Poor nutrition, poor hygiene, no health care, no space, no parasite control, deplorable conditions, no attention. It is just like those "hoarders" shows- inevitably, they almost always have a bunch of abused pets in the mix.
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The ASPCA says the *nationwide* average cost per dog is $1,000-$2,000 / year.
Average . If the dog needs to visit a vet, that can easily triple. On the one hand, vets take care of beloved pets; on the other, they take advantage of that emotional bond and they gouge you like crazy. I can't see any reason why pet surgery should be more expensive than human surgery.
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Average . If the dog needs to visit a vet, that can easily triple. On the one hand, vets take care of beloved pets; on the other, they take advantage of that emotional bond and they gouge you like crazy. I can't see any reason why pet surgery should be more expensive than human surgery.
Try pricing out what a surgery really costs, and I don't mean just because US hospitals are overcharging... here in Norway we have universal healthcare but there's internal billing so hospitals get refunded per patient, it's not an accurate measure per patient but it says how much a typical surgery costs and it's easy to rack up both thousands and tens of thousands of dollars in costs. It's not the vet's fault that in the vast majority of cases you can put the old dog down and get a new one for far less. Th
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Thank you (Score:3)
Thank you for saying that. I actually get a bit self-conscious about my writing at times, so your post is meaningful to me.
I get self-conscious about errors - I said "things cost 43% in California", missing the word "more". I also often wonder if my logic is clear, if readers will be able to follow my reasoning.
In this instance, I almost posted a follow-up explaining that I meant it's not a moral issue (fault), but an arithmetic issue, a choice. If someone *wanted* to spend a million dollars a year on exoti
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I have no more strategy for caring for stray animals than I do for the bears in the forest or the birds in the sky. And why should I?
Re: Seven dogs (Score:3)
Shy do you assume they are stray/rescue dogs? The article is silent on that.
Every dog she 'rescues' by stuffing them in her 'dark trailer' is a dog that can't be rescued by a family in a traditional home with children that will play with them and likely have s yard for the dogs to play in.
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What is your strategy for caring for stray animals?
Sodium thiopental [wikipedia.org] works well.
Re: Seven dogs (Score:2)
What about her floor-to-ceiling bags of clothes, are we going to pretend they all came from goodwill?
Doesn't this woman know about the rest of America, where her skills could probably provide her (and her 7 dogs) a more conventional lifestyle?
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Know what else is cheaper than non-disgusting housing in Palo Alto? Non-disgusting housing in about 90% of the country that isn't Palo Alto reachable by a motor vehicle such as an RV.
Re:Seven dogs (Score:4, Insightful)
I didn't RTFA, but deplorables aren't deplorable because they're poor. In fact many deplorables are rich. What makes deplorables deplorable is their support for white nationalism and a trashy dogshit racist manchild president.
The government used to build infrastructure (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: The government used to build infrastructure (Score:4, Interesting)
Horseshit.
You made that up - gov't made cheap money available to buyers, and builders like Levit (Levittown) we're happy to drop thousands of nearly identical econo-boxes up to meet the demand. Nowadays, zoning regulation make it very hard to profit from low-end housing - tax subsidies and zoning requirements are the only reason any are built, at a loss, which is made up by the healthy margins McMansions give builders.
You can't just drop a house (Score:5, Interesting)
Zoning regulations are a red herring. The rich got tired of paying for working class Americans to have decent homes. The only reason they had to for a time was post WWII the working class, having just got back from fighting a war, had gained a sense of entitlement. They felt owed something. Also a _lot_ of working age men died in that war, meaning labor shortages. So for a time they were better treated. Those times have passed, and we're back to where we were in the 1920s. Better tech at food production and a few depression era policies (social security & medicare, food stamps, etc) have masked some of that, but even those are under siege.
What I don't get is why is it that confronting all this reality makes Americans so damned uncomfortable? It's not like anyone's gonna tax you to to the max. Odds are you're living paycheck to paycheck like the rest of Americans, and even if you've got a bit of savings it's not enough to matter. When it comes to raising taxes to pay for social programs it's the top 5% who would be the targets. And it's not like they'd lose much in the way of standard of living, what they're really lose is _power_.
That's what you're defending when you post stuff like you did: a group of ultra-wealthy power mongers who's wealth has ceased being material and become raw power.
Re:The government used to build infrastructure (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, city governments heavily subsidize low-density housing for the affluent [strongtowns.org], wasting land on single-family residential homes that could be used for apartments which house more people, bring in more tax revenue per acre, and require less infrastructure per person [strongtowns.org]. Inefficient zoning is why housing is in such short supply and expensive [sightline.org], why cities have so much traffic [economist.com], and why cities have budget problems. [strongtowns.org] It's all a big mess, and government is the problem. Yes, much of it started after WWII [thedailybeast.com], with government-backed mortgages and the mortgage interest deduction, but these subsidies continue to exist to this day.
And property taxes assessed on the value of the land perversely incentivize people to come out in droves to oppose anything that can raise the value of their properties. For example, relaxed height limits, minimum setbacks, maximum floor area ratios, and minimum parking requirements--these things all attract NIMBYs like flies to a feast. It's all one big, fantastic mess.
Re:The government used to build infrastructure (Score:5, Insightful)
Land developers sure as hell aren't going to pay to get that land ready themselves
Utter nonsense. Land developers routinely do all of that prep themselves. They have to follow lots of government rules about how to lay out the streets, what access roads to build, how to build all of the wiring, plumbing and sewer infrastructure, etc., but it's the developers who foot the bill, not the city. As far as I can tell, it has always been that way, too.
Obviously I'm not saying you should feel sorry for the land developers; they make great profits on their investments. But government doesn't do any of this.
The result is massive housing shortages in a lot of places.
Government is the cause of the housing shortages in the bay area, but because of the restrictions it imposes, not because of the things it fails to do. Developers would love to build lots of high density, multi-story housing in the area, but the city councils won't allow it, because they're in the pockets of the long-time residents who love the fact that the house they paid $30K for decades ago is now worth $2M.
Land devs do the prep for high dollar homes (Score:4, Insightful)
Residents don't care about property values. In fact they hate that their homes are "worth" $2M (more like $500k actually) because they can't afford the property taxes and they get forced out of the neighborhoods they spent their lives in.
Nobody really wants to live in a high density multi-story building for very long. I don't think humans are wired for that. You can do that in your early to mid 20s, but when you decide you want kids it's not gonna fly. We're used to having open space. Kids need a place to play. With proper transportation and building that's not really necessary either. But it means more highways, more roads and more infrastructure spending, and that means taxes on the ultra wealthy. It means putting an end to the wealth inequality that's as bad as it was in the 20s now. It means taking all that absurd power the 1%ers have away from them.
The question is, are guys like you gonna like the 1%ers have unlimited power, becoming the new kings? That seems to be the case. I'm not sure why you're doing it, I think you're just "kicking down", e.g. looking down on folks below your social standing to feel better about yourself. There's a saying I've heard before: if nobody's poor then nobody's rich. Thing is, that's an emotional thing, that desire to feel wealthy in the sense that you have more than other folks. It's being exploited to keep working class Americans at each other's throats. It's biting you in the ass. You're having everything taken away from you gradually and that's how the 1%ers are getting away with it. You might die before the worst of it happens (e.g. "I got mine, fuck you" school of economics) but if you're under 55 you won't. Nows the time to stop screwing around and shitting on the poor to make yourself feel better short term and actually solve the problems in your life and mine.
Demand better. Demand a decent life for all Americans. Demand guarantees of that decent life. Remember: you can tell how good a society is by how it treats it's least members.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
Re: Land devs do the prep for high dollar homes (Score:3)
"Nobody really wants to live in a high density multi-story building for very long."
Speak for yourself, my brother. Having lived in all sorts of housing types, I _strongly prefer_ to (and do) live in a highrise building in a dense urban neighborhood. So do many of my friends and colleagues.
If you prefer to live in a suburban crap shack, go for it! Have fun! But please remember there is great diversity of opinion about the best way to live.
we need more unions (Score:2, Interesting)
we need more unions
Re: (Score:3)
>"we need more unions"
No, we need more people willing to relocate to where jobs are more plentiful and housing is far more reasonable (oh, and taxes much lower, to boot). And there are plenty of such places outside of CA.
If the city actually cared, they'd (Score:2)
zone and build RV/Trailer parks on vacant city land.
They live in RVs? Those are the lucky ones (Score:3, Insightful)
America has a growing problem with homeless people with full-time jobs, and it's worse in places like Silicon Valley, where all the tech yuppies have driven up real estate prices. The working class people with RVs are the ones who are doing pretty well as silicon valley has lots of wage-earners in much worse shape than that.
It pains me to admit this, but the fact that America--the wealthiest nation on Earth--has a growing number of homeless people with full-time jobs is perhaps an indication that it's time to admit that capitalism failed, and it did so more or less the way communists predicted, which is more or less the way it failed the last time. Even with its bread lines, the Soviet Union did a better job of providing for the well-being of the population than this.
A better job? (Score:4, Informative)
So, what's the ratio of homeless in the US vs. the people who died in the old Soviet Union when they were doing "a better job of providing for the well-being of the population"?
Re: A better job? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
You forgot to mention that the famines under Communism killed 25 times as many people as the relatively minor famines (by comparison) under the Tsars. Also, the Tsars' economic system was primarily legal serfdom, not anything like free market capitalism. At best a few areas were allowed to follow some market policies in order to industrialize towards the end of the Tsars and those specific small areas had significant positive economic growth.
Re: (Score:3)
>"It pains me to admit this, but the fact that America--the wealthiest nation on Earth--has a growing number of homeless people with full-time jobs is perhaps an indication that it's time to admit that capitalism failed"
That is just nonsense. The "homeless people with full-time jobs" is a small problem located in just certain areas. And it is usually because those people are unwilling to move to other areas where housing is much cheaper and taxes are much lower. That is not to say it is easy to move,
Re:They live in RVs? Those are the lucky ones (Score:4, Insightful)
FTFY. If someone has so little money that they are homeless, they by definition don't have thousands of dollars to move hundreds or thousands of miles away and risk signing for an apartment with no guarantee of a job.
Utterly laughable statement. Capitalism traded human beings for profit for hundreds of years. Capitalism kept coal workers on starvation-level wages while forcing them to rent in company towns while being paid in scrip that could only be used at company stores. Capitalism sees Wal-Mart tell their employees how to apply for state benefits (because they pay so little money) and organizes food donation drives for their own workers so they can eat. Capitalism sees the richest man in the world higher ambulances to sit outside warehouses to treat workers for heat stroke because its cheaper than installing air conditioning.
I could go on all day. But aside from all that, every job that has ever been created has come from demand, or expected demand. Not capitalism. Not "job creators".
You know the population of the Soviet Union increased when Stalin was in power, yes? Despite the country losing almost 30 million people during WWII. You capitalist fundamentalists are more full of shit on capitalism and communism than Birther's are on the subject of birth certificates.
Re: (Score:3)
Fixed that for you.
No. What you've done is try to impose your own view on his commentary without the sheer fucking courtesy of writing it in your own words, while expecting the reader to compare the two texts to see what you've changed.
I didn't. Your use of that approach to critique means I discount your views as idiotic and pointless and didn't bother to try and read them.
Well done.
Lower-Income Peple Have No Representation Here (Score:5, Informative)
The sheer amount of homeless people in this area, which I have been told may be over 22,000 is daunting. The powers that be in this area have generally not been inclusive of the needs of the poor an low-income people.
There are even some 2,000 college students that represent the future of America, who are now stricken with homelessness in this areas.
Whatever was supposed to happen to put a check and balance the asymmetrical, biased political power of the corporate giants and house-flippers who invest in this area--has failed.
I likely am going to be homeless in a few weeks. As a person with a disability, as I look deeper into the resources here in California. What I have found by following the leads has simply been one of the most disheartening things I have witnessed.
I heard was "low-income" housing exists, which honest people with a SSD/SSI income could never afford. The lay of the landscape currently has a 1-5 year waiting list for a place to live. Yet, I have heard that some housing exists for people making as much as $75,000/yr. I checked up on homeless shelters where a homeless person is not even afforded a wall to put their back against. I have read of a shower and wash van, supporting the homeless that only comes to an area once in a week.
[Who would want to sit next to a person who only showered/bathed once in a week?]
In all honesty, as someone who has written proof that I have tried to add my name to the HUD waiting list for a nearly a decade, I am deeply upset. Yes, clearly I am upset for myself, but also for I am upset for the other homeless people, many of which (also) have disabilities.
Box trucks, not trailers you idiot. (Score:3, Informative)
Not all poor (Score:2)
From what I gathered, not all of the people living this way are poor - some are just trying to save a vast amount of money over getting even the cheapest shared apartment they can find...
This is another boon of autonomous cars, which instead of needing to find a safe and legal spot to part, can just drive through the night and have you wake up right next to the gym for a shower and that other S thing.
This is not the dystopia I wanted (Score:2)
How to Really Help (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Establish emergency minimal-level shelters were people can shower/sleep, and wash their clothes.
3. Allow people to sleep in their cars, one car, one night, one block,
4. Require people who buy homes to own then for no less than 5 years or be fined, unless proof of financial hardship, divorce or partner split.
5. Restore Section 8 Housing for people with disabilities.
6. Discourage foreign investors and companies from purchasing homes.
7. Rezone areas to end single-family homes.
8. Make sure that homeless people can vote.
9. Rezone certain industrial and business buildings for shelter use.
10. Require all non-profit charities to abstract their organization or religious presence from their offer of help.
12. Require all California cities and towns to take in a certain percentage of the the homeless people.
13. Vote out the people who only represent rich people.
Why'd single out facebook here? (Score:3)
Last count, Google has over 50,000 employees in the bay area with its campus expanding all the way from Mountain View down into San Jose now. Facebook has under 15,000. Redwood City, 2014 Population: 90,000, just saw the opening of giant 6+ story apartment complexes that increase its population nearly 20% over a few months.
Cisco has over 60,000 employees in its massive 3-city campus at the north end of San Jose.
But the RV campus was previously lining El Camino Real in Palo Alto outside Stanford, it just wound up in East Palo Alto because they got kicked off the Stanford property.
Google, Facebook, and Apple all need their asses kicking for this stupidity of putting tens of thousands of employees into single buildings because it makes for "better creativity". Really? 2 hour commute each way makes people more creative? It makes them earn a ton of money of which they see none because of rent and living costs beyond ridiculous.
2 bed apt within 40 minutes of google is likely to set you back ~$3000/month.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Educashun (Score:2)
Her RV holds all her possessions, and likely has wheels on it... what she needs is to rent a uhaul vehicle with a trailer hitch.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Why does Slashdot have so many anti-capitalism articles. Iâ(TM)m assuming most of us have tech careers and are making at least low six figures. The current system is working for us! Who are these articles supposed to appeal to?
I can't speak for Slashdot or the intentions of their staff. Having said that, not every communication is designed to "appeal to" you. Sometimes, the purpose is to show you a view that you may not already agree with in order to promote thought and discussion.
I'll give an example. Given your comment above, one could ask the question: do you care about the large numbers of people for whom the current system is not working very well? Can you imagine any way(s) to improve things for them that don't require
Re: Socialism? (Score:3)
A person with skills doesn't have to pay $4K/month for a tiny apt in a certain zip code - they can MOVE.
Re: (Score:3)
It's trolling. They're trolling for page views.
Re: (Score:2)
People with the wealth that never to have to live in high crime and near poverty areas like to show how they would make other parts of a city better.
Re: (Score:2)
Uprooting your life and moving is an expensive proposition for anyone who had built a life for themselves over the course of decades. You effectively become trapped as you have family to care for, friends, a life. You can't leave because you can't afford it, and you stay because you can't afford it.
Re: (Score:3)
People move all the time. Once you are down to living in a trailer, it's not that expensive. In an RV, you just start it up and leave.
Re: (Score:2)
Relevant link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/18/12/05/2027200/americans-are-moving-less-than-ever-and-its-bad-for-the-economy [slashdot.org]
Re: Simple solution (Score:2)
The only reason a high tech company has to open an office in Silicon Valley is to snipe employees from competitors, The vast majority could do their job from almost anywhere in America and live like kings, instead of salving away to pay exhorbitant rent and taxes in Silicon Valley.
Re: Not surprising (Score:2)
They relocate to places where state and local gov't give them $48K per worker in tax savings... Amazon HQ2.
Re: stadiums (Score:2)
Housing homeless people in a stadium? Have you been watching Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome again?
Trying to bring back the Roman coliseum?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Enforce parking laws. No more RV camps on streets.
No more tent cities on roads and paths.
Get caught placing trash and waste in the streets? Police get to enforce the law.
Open drug use in the streets? Police.
Crime in the streets? Police and lots of new CCTV to track criminals.
A person is living on the streets? Get them support, medical help, find them another city with the support they need.
That removes the crime, waste, trash, drug use and blocked road problems.
Change zoning rules in poor parts of a city so investment and gentrification can move crime and poverty out of the nice city areas.
New clean, safe buildings near the nice new tech job centres.
Allow more gated communities to ensure investors are safe.
Stop making new building accept a percentage of poor people as part of their approval to build a new building.
Need more housing for the working poor, poor? Set aside areas of the city for poor people and their needs.
Offer tax credits and consider changes to permits to build low cost housing for poor people in city approved areas. Have the city help poor US citizens with rent but only in approved low cost areas.
The world would be a way better place if people like you were aborted prior to birth.