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Oracle Asked To Help Low-Income Residents Evicted For Its New Cloud Campus (cio.com)
itwbennett writes: Roughly 100 low-income families were evicted from an apartment complex on the land in Austin, Texas where Oracle plans to build a new 560,000 sq. foot cloud-computing campus. Some of the former tenants of Lakeview Apartments had leases through the end of the year, but were reportedly forced by owner Cypress Real Estate Advisors to move out early. Some have said their security deposits were not returned, and they have had no assistance as they've struggled to find comparably priced housing. Last week, some of those residents gathered near the site of their former home to protest and to appeal to Oracle for assistance.
for Oracle to polish their image which, currently, is pretty bad in the social-and-responsible-enterprise area. Whether they'll really do something - I doubt it.
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
They will be, but it's a non-story and non-case.
Got booted early? Try reading your lease.
Lost your security deposit? Try reading your lease.
Whining because muh poors? Jesus H. Christ on a pogo stick.
Oracle has no duty to help these people. The property owner has no duty to help these people, or to continue offering them housing at low cost rates.
And as for the rest of you, you have no duty to continue working the same job, with no opportunity to advance or change jobs or just fuck off and play Fallout 4 all day every day.
Why? Because this isn't a Glorious Republic of the People, and you're allowed to dispense with your time in property in a manner in which you see fit.
It is truly bizarre to new that in USA, the capitalist centre of the world, so many people scream for special rights to *renters* as if they are owners.... Why does the government interfere with rent control? Every economist will tell you that it's just insane and less to these very situation. If the people need welfare, the government should supply public housing directly.
If the people need welfare, the government should supply public housing directly.
There are multiple empty houses for every man, woman, and child in America, thanks to the mortgage scam. And thanks to the bailout, the banks can afford to not sell those homes for whatever the market can bear, so they are sitting on them and refusing to sell them in order to keep real estate values high and maintain the value of their "investment" (really an elaborate theft from the taxpayer.) So in fact, the government has funded the deliberate ongoing maintenance of the homelessness of the population.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bollocks. Knowingly benefitting from an immoral act is immoral.
so many people scream for special rights to *renters* as if they are owners
There is no fundamental right to exclusive control of land, not even in a capitalist society. If the property owner decides to build housing, and rent out housing, then their customer's lives depend on this relationship, which is in danger of becoming tyrannical or unfairly exploitative, so the property owner automatically cedes certain rights, Even rights that might not be in their best financial interest to lose, and even rights they do not willingly give up.
Actually.... the deedholder or claimholder is just a renter too. The ultimate owner of land is the state government, and in most places, they even charge the current deedholder a rent called property tax to maintain any privileges, and their usage of the land has to be compliant with the law and in the interest of the public (E.g. You cannot just dump hazardous wastes on your land, however you like).
It makes perfect sense, that a government respecting the interest of the public would have reasonable regulation of the government deedholders' subleasing arrangements with members of the public, where people secure their housing / apartment living spaces, or even, where people secure housing for other vital purchases: such as the usage to host the main office of a small business.
Ahh more insults from you, this is becoming common.
Just because a bank is holding onto property does not mean its empty, and nor does it mean it would be affordable to rent for these people needing to find cheap accommodation. Unoccupied properties degrade quickly, so banks will gladly rent them out. The people in this story are renters, so the fact that banks wont sell is meaningless to this discussion.
Plus I really dont think there are 640million empty properties right now in the US ("multiple empty houses for every man, woman and child" is what you said, combined with the current estimated population of 322million). A quick googling shows a recent estimate is only 18.6million, and most of those need significant extra work as they are uninhabitable.
Add to that the fact that acting as a landlord for an extra 3.5million zero or low income people (the estimated number of homeless in the US) puts a huge strain on somebody - were you thinking of forcing the banks to bear this cost? Another thing to consider is that the banks *are* donating empty houses to cities for social housing, but most cities dont want them because it eliminates property taxes on those properties and adds them as a burden to the city.
You also realise that the banks are paying for the bailout, right? To date, the US Federal Reserve has actually made a profit of $63.2Billion on loans totalling $618Billion disbursed under the TARPS and Fannie and Freddie.
Of that $618Billion, the Federal Reserve has seen $681Billion flow back, and thats with about $230Billion in loans yet to be repaid. Puts your "elaborate theft from the taxpayer" comment in a new light, now doesnt it...
https://projects.propublica.or...
http://themindunleashed.org/20...
http://www.businessinsider.com...
"betters"? There are no "betters" you idiot. Poor people are not "worse" or any less capable than anyone else, dumbshit. They just have different priorities.
The wage gap problem exists because of the expanded social safety net not in spite of it.
Do you have any evidence for this other than your neat just-so stories?
As evidence against, I give you history where lack of a social safety net led not to a capitalistic utopia but grinding poverty, and appalling conditions for workers as poverty meant they could not afford to risk a payment by seeking work elsewhere.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
The property owner has no duty to help these people, or to continue offering them housing at low cost rates.
Maybe it's just because I live in a Glorious Republic of the People (i.e. a northeast state), but isn't an agreement to continue offering housing at a stated rate exactly what a signed lease is?
I am not sure I agree with your evidence against. I can argue by some measures the wealth gap is larger than it has ever been.
Over the past 30 years when the wealth gap has exploded, social safety net programs and union power was reduced, not strengthened. If you want to see what wealth inequality looks like under strong social programs, look at the 1960s. In 1963, the top 1% had 35x more wealth than the median family. This is what the social programs after the Great Depression gave us. This disparity grew to 40x by 1983, when our social safety nets started deteriorating. Fast forward to 2013, and the top 1% has 97x more wealth than the median family.
Its really even worse than this, because almost all of the wealth gap has been caused by the top 0.01%. If you look at wealth growth of the top .01%-1%, the growth is pretty flat. It is only the top 0.01%, or about 10,000 families, that are seeing all of this growth.
The great society programs enacted in '64-'65 allowed the US economy to keeping growing after the post-WW2 prosperity faded, and kept inequality from growing significantly for 20 years. Once Reagan started to lower taxes and defeat the unions (without enacting other worker protections) the rise in inequality was inevitable.
We have plenty of evidence that strong social programs help the poor. Just look at Scandinavian countries. All we have evidence of in the US is that social programs can be run poorly. That is a reason to improve and strengthen them, not scuttle them.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke