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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
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...