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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
ORACLE = One Rich Asshole Called Larry Ellison.
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.
Austin may seem like a liberal bastion compared to the rest of Texas, but it's actually still enormously conservative compared to say California.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Well, Oracle is not to blame.
The landlord is to blame if they used illegal means to evict the renters.
If the eviction was legal, well, you do have a problem with the local laws then, wouldn't you say?
Oracle Corp. and Cypress Real Estate Advisors officials did not respond to requests for comment.
because they don't care about "other people's problems," even if they caused them. what they do care about is their money.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
Slashdot is becoming more like AboveTopSecret every day...
mod parent up, or a kitten gets it!
The tenants were notified in June that this was going to happen. They were later notified that no leases would be extended and if the leases expired in September they had to be out by then. People with monthly leases also had to be out by then.
This left some people who had leases until December and a few that just stuck around. The ones with the leases until December are in a court lawsuit currently over the level of inaction the management company provided in not fixes issues and with removal of services.
So what additional protection should they have? I live in Germany and three months is what I can expect for notification.
This sounds well and good, but I see a similar issue around where I live - lots of farmland being converted into subdivisions and shopping centers. What good is the Cloud when there is no food left to eat?
Why is this a problem, you ask? One thing strikes me as interesting - the more farmland we lose, the more our farming becomes concentrated in fewer geographic areas. This means farming is much more susceptible to drought, flooding, etc. This is notably a Bad Thing.
We really should be more involved with our local zoning commissions and other legislative bodies to address property laws - for tenants, landowners, and conversion of property from one type to another.
"There are a dozen opinions on a matter until you know the truth. Then there is only one." - CS Lewis (paraprhase)
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.
If that's true, then the government should file charges against them for housing market manipulation, and forcibly liquidate the properties on their behalf.
You missed the part where the government gave them the money that they're using to operate on since acquiring that real estate. The government is literally doing the exact opposite of what it should do, enabling this behavior instead of stopping it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Was there no other location in all of Austin to build, other than destroying this housing? No empty Texas Instruments factories, no half-constructed unfinished see-through buildings? Nothing that could really use destroying and replacing? No open land?
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...
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Right the rights of owners should usually prevail over renters, although some compromises do need to be made. If you have a year long lease I don't think your land lord should be able to tell you "be out by 6am tomorrow" without you having violated your agreement some way. So there probably has to be some regulator compromise. Which generally everywhere I have ever had reason to know anything about it here in the USA there has been. Usually you have at least 30 days.
On thing the government SHOULD NEVER DO is offer public housing. Public housing is strait up corporate welfare. Its asking you and I to cover the cost of housing a labor force for the 1%ers so they can turn around and pay them what would otherwise be below market rates.
No we need to make employers pay to create the labor pool they need. The answer really isn't minimum wages etc which are difficult to implement in a sufficiently local way to be economically efficient. Maybe a burger flipper should make $15 an hour in the trendiest part of LA but that is crazy in Stockton. The answer is nix the subsidized housing. That way if the employer class wants to be able to get a burger in their high price neighborhood they will have to offer the people who make them enough money to either live nearby or affordably commute there. The alternative is prices and property values in those places will fall because the affluent will actually leave because no services are available.
As you mention the bailouts are the other big problem. Had the banks been forced to liquidate assets to cover their obligations those houses would have hit the market. Real-estate values everywhere would be much much lower and the market would have found a buyer for all those properties. We would have a lot more people housed today if we had let the crisis run its course.
The wage gap problem exists because of the expanded social safety net not in spite of it. Its a combination "Great Society" and inflationary FED policy that has driven it.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
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.
Actually, in many states the lessee has many rights, such as the right to continued used of the property throughout the duration of the lease, the lease holder can not step foot onto their property without proper prior notice, and many other bundled rights... which include, the quick return of security deposits held in a special interest bearing account, or a written and judge signed decree of why the money was not returned.
In this case, unless the residents agreed to something in return for the termination of their leases... such as a relocation amount, even a pittance of one, then they should have read the agreement better, they got all they are going to get.
Here is some Michigan precedence (some context IANAPL, that is a non-practicing lawyer, but went to law school, passed bar, patent bar, etc, but don't practice), when General Motors which had land near an airport, gave up said land for the expansion of the airport, the tenants of the land, and the owners were given money in return for their quick and timely removal from the land. The agreement for the lessees was 6500 dollars if they rented another property, and more if they bought another property. Granted, this was a move by General motors and the county, and the municipal government, and the owners of the airport. General motors owned the land, and rented houses on the land to their employees for ridiculous low rates... think 3 bedroom brick, ranch houses on 2 acre lots, for 250 dollars a month.
This was about 20 years ago, I know it firsthand, because my family worked for GM and at least 2 uncles, and my family were forced to move... we took the buy route, and even though we did not have much money, the relocation fund, and the first time buyers bonus, and other federal assistance, made moving into a newly built and financed house easier and cheaper than renting a new house or apartment. Big difference than living off of Uncle GM and their gracious cheap family housing, but the 12 grand, plus other assistance made the move easier.
Point is this, no one that leases property has the right to remove you from the property, you have secured property rights through the signing of a lease, it is in fact your leased property, within the limits of the lease. You have the right to quiet enjoyment, and the right to do whatever you want while you are there within the constraints of your agreement. As my law professor stated, property is a bundle of sticks, and a lease contains quite a few sticks (rights) to the property.
I would not be surprised if the property owner pulled a fast one, and got them to sign over, or paid them very little, and now they find themselves in a bind. I also presume that many of these people are not fully educated on the matter and the law, and that someone should have explained it to them better, as to what rights they do have, and do not have. And lastly, I presume, that some are old and infirm, and living on fixed incomes, and have no way to move easily, and may even have medical devices in place (oxygen generators, tub and shower handles, special phones or alert systems), which if this is the case, have an even harder time to move.
So, what we need, is an advocate for the lease holders, and Oracle could provide at a minimum that for goodwill and public perception, and may be able to help these people without handing out a single dime of their own money, just the cost of some local attorneys, who also probably want to do something to get their name out their in a positive way... it could be a win / win for everyone, if they start blaming the right people and accepting the responsibility of the right or wrong that has happened, that is a big if, but an easy fix.
I just believe a lot has been lost in translation, and a lot as been lost through the telling and retelling from many different points of view, and flavored by media bias (big company boot poor out of home), just tell oracle and the county, state, and local government to do their job and help the displaced understand what is available to them. Simple and easy.
Fascism, not, Socialism, not, Media piece during holidays that pulls the right heart strings, yes.
you have a _lot_ more social welfare programs than Americans do. Moving is expensive, and rent is going up in America. These are people living paycheck to paycheck. The ones left behind were most likely trying to scrap together the money for a deposit on a new Apartment. There's no gov't programs to help them. They've been largely defunded. They're still there on paper so that folks like yourself can look and see and then blame the people for not being bootstrappy enough though.
I had a rough patch in life (3 family illnesses at once) and I kid you not people told me to go apply for Section 8 so the gov't would pay my mortgage. Section 8 is a program for larger property owners to get subsidies to rent apartment blocks and large groups of houses. Even for the wealthy and well connected it has a multi-year waiting list. But the people telling me that certainly felt better about themselves. They were helping! Plus they didn't need to lift a real finger the help me. You're doing the same thing, more or less. I'll give you props for taking care of your own though. You're right, in Germany I don't think this would happen.
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Dude, Oracle botched the State of Oregon's healthcare website (Cover Oregon, and to the tune of $300m)... no idea if they did anything on the federal one.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
There are multiple empty houses for every man, woman, and child in America
No, there aren't. The house vacancy rate in the US is currently under 2 percent (and falling), which translates to about 1.4 million vacant homes. http://www.census.gov/housing/...
Have you read my blog lately?
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?
Sure it can. A business is like a golem. It's animated by means of the laws written to establish what it is (notably laws of incorporation, otherwise there would be no business and the boss would be personally liable for everything)
So, write different runes in its head and it will do different things, unfailingly. If it acts like a raging asshole with the power of a million people, it's because you WANT it to act like a raging asshole for some reason, or because someone who wants that wrote the laws.
Personally, I'm cool with 'dissolve all the corporations and the rich CEOs can be personally liable for their misdeeds', but writing new laws to animate these golems is also a possible approach.
isn't an agreement to continue offering housing at a stated rate exactly what a signed lease is?
It is quite common for a lease to include a clause detailing how many days notice the landlord must provide the tenant in the event of an eviction involving the sale of the home. 60-day notice is the most common, mostly because this time frame is mandated by the rent control ordinances of many states. Considering how business friendly Texas is, I assume landlords have no problems legally evicting tenants when the property is sold as long as sufficient notice is given.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.
-- some asshole Frenchie
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Oracle? Helping someone who hasn't been forced into a multi-million dollar support contract?
Go on, pull the other leg too!
Unfortunately, the golem figured out that it could make the rune-writers make the runes say what it wanted them to say, and even get them to pretend the golem was a real boy, even a real boy with super powers, and could send them to the corn field if the golem became angry.
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
Except that companies in that era, like GM, Ford, even IBM were companies w/ souls (granted, you wouldn't think that while car shopping). Today's companies had lost that way back in the 90s. Everybody has lost Henry Ford's cliche of 'I make my cars cheap so that my employees can buy my cars'.
Which part of low-income is confusing you?
The part that confused me... is the story has a lady who paid about $720/month in rent at Lakeview Apartments, and Trulia is show a bunch of apartments for rent at or below that price point in Austin, some where there would not even be a change in school district.
I'd definitely say that the property management company (Cypress Real Estate Advisors) is being asses, but that's not Oracle's fault, and neither is it Oracle's fault that the people are incapable of doing a web search. What it's really about is the fact that Oracle is seen to have deep pockets.
Uh, that story you linked to is about the devs who implemented poorly; any database would have crappy performance. As I recall it wasn't Oracle's consulting branch that set up healthcare.gov but some third party. In all fairness how do you blame Oracle?
If you actually own the property (don't have a mortgage)...
It's funny that you don't consider property taxes as an indicator of the state owning your property but you do consider a mortgage as an indicator of a bank owning your property.
Even if you have a mortgage, you are still the actual owner of your property. The bank's only claim to your property is as collateral to secure the loan in the event of your failure to pay it back (plus any other contractually established claims such as your continued maintenance of the property to prevent the devaluation of the security).
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.