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More Than One-Third of Schoolchildren Are Homeless In Shadow of Silicon Valley (theguardian.com)
Alastair Gee writes via The Guardian about Palo Alto's problem with homeless children. Palo Alto is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, yet "slightly more than one-third of students (1,147 children) are defined as homeless here, mostly sharing homes with other families because their parents cannot afford one of their own, and also living in RVs and shelters." From the report: The circumstances of the crisis are striking. Little more than a strip of asphalt separates East Palo Alto from tony Palo Alto, with its startups, venture capitalists, Craftsman homes and Whole Foods. East Palo Alto has traditionally been a center for African American and Latino communities. Its suburban houses are clustered on flat land by the bay, sometimes with no sidewalks and few trees, but residents say the town boasts a strong sense of cohesion. Yet as in the rest of Silicon Valley, the technology economy is drawing new inhabitants and businesses -- the Facebook headquarters is within Ravenswood's catchment area -- and contributing to dislocation as well as the tax base. "Now you have Caucasians moving back into the community, you have Facebookers and Googlers and Yahooers," said Pastor Paul Bains, a local leader. "That's what's driven the cost back up. Before, houses were rarely over $500,000. And now, can you find one under $750,000? You probably could, but it's a rare find." Several homeless families whose children attend local schools told the Guardian that they had considered moving to cheaper real estate markets, such as the agricultural Central Valley, but there were no jobs there. One man shares a single room with three children, in a house where three other families each have a room. Another woman lives with her partner and five children in a converted garage. Even teachers are not immune to such difficulties. Ten of the staff who work on early education programs -- one-third of the total -- commute two or more hours each way a day because they cannot find housing they can afford.
The country is falling apart.
Why do poor people continue to stay there? People with money can barely afford to live there, so what chance do they have? Move to Iowa, work on a farm or something.
...a valley is a low point geographically. It doesn't have a shadow.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
I'm sure if they agreed to become slaves, the rich Palo Alto people would be happy to give them a home. Freedom doesn't fill your belly or keep you warm at night.
So they do have homes, even if they aren't necessarily the most comfortable ones. That's a big difference from not having any sort of a home at all, which is what homelessness really is.
I mean, where does this sort of they-have-homes-but-they're-"homeless" mindset stop?
What if a single family lives in a house, but there are only 4 bedrooms and there are 5 kids, with some of the kids sharing a room? Are the kids who have to share a room considered "bedroomless" under this strange definition of the term?
If a home only has 2 bathrooms, but more than 2 occupants, does that mean that whoever lives there is "bathroomless" because they have to share the 2 bathrooms?
"Even teachers are not immune to such difficulties. "
Teachers are paid very poorly, notably in California.The summary makes it sound like they could normally afford high priced property which they absolutely cannot.
East Palo Alto is a shithole with a lot of Latino gang and drug activity. Of course things aren't going well there, they haven't been going well for decades.
Living conditions there are awful. There are plenty of jobs in other cities and you get to have a whole house! I figure I'd have to make three times what I make now to live in Silicon Valley. Nope.
I'm sharing my home with a friend who decided to get a job in a new area until she can buy another house. I knew I was poor because I don't make very much money and fall under the poverty line. Does this mean I'm homeless too?
Are the kids who have to share a room considered "bedroomless" under this strange definition of the term?
Yes, but only if they're not "Caucasians".
"mostly sharing homes with other families because their parents cannot afford one of their own"
Those children aren't homeless.
If they really want to pump the numbers, they can define "homeless" to include kids living in apartments or sharing a bedroom.
That just means that their reporting is useless.
The valley was a nice place to live back when aerospace was king and fruit orchards stretched as far as the eye could see. Now I hate it when work requires me to go 'home' to visit the mothership. Those of you living in million dollar condos built over toxic landfill sites have no clue how lovely it was before it became smog city USA.
In most places, the Chavez family would be an exception. But in the school district that includes East Palo Alto, located amid the extraordinary wealth generated by the tech industry, their plight is not uncommon.
Remarkably, slightly more than one-third of students – or 1,147 children – are defined as homeless here, ...
Palo Alto Unified School District does NOT include East Palo Alto which is in the Ravenswood City School District. There are not one-third homeless children in the Palo Alto schools, as the submitter would have you believe.
I heard a piece on NPR (which unfortunately I can't find a link for), that observed if you paid over $500k for your house 20 years ago, your house appreciated more than 100%, and if you paid less than $200k, it only appreciated 25%. Further analysis discussed that the great preponderance of such houses were on the coasts, and that affordability in those communities is a real problem . They also correlated the house price with how the people voted, noting that Trump voters were more likely to have houses in the $100k-$200k range rather than the $500k range, and that was presumed to be part of the dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.
Now putting these stories together, -I- come to the conclusion that high cost areas such as Silicon Valley are much more likely to support abstract notions of income redistribution, with the sense that "I have mine, so now I can feel bad about income inequality."
"sharing homes" doesn't mean "splitting rent", it means "crashing until you get thrown out because you can't pay rent." or "crashing until the landlord realizes there are 8 people living in a 2 bedroom apartment". You just happen to be such a pompous, entitled ass that you can't envision sharing homes as anything other than you and your buddies in college splitting rent. Go fuck yourself.
R moving into the whitehouse. So, as is tradition, 'homelessness' just became a much bigger problem.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Where I'm from, those children would be wards of the state; any parents "not providing adequate food, medical care, or shelter" get their kids taken away, and are charged with Neglect. As to the 'shelter' part, that's entirely up to the CPS caseworker, and if they don't feel that it's adequate to have two siblings sharing a room, that's enough probable cause to take the children and open an investigation (in that order.) A whole family in one room? Never.
Go ahead, ask me how I know. I had no idea Cali was more lax on stuff like that than Wyoming.
How are those liberal housing policies working out for you?
$500,000
My house cost an order of fucking magnitude less!
So they do have homes, even if they aren't necessarily the most comfortable ones. That's a big difference from not having any sort of a home at all, which is what homelessness really is.
TFA mentioned that some share actual houses, others are living in RVs and shelters. I guess you could call an RV a permanent home, maybe. As homes go, it's pretty close to bottom of the barrel in the US today. Living in a shelter, yeah, I'd call that homeless. Beats camping in a freeway interchange but not by much.
It would be better if they broke those out into separate categories. Maybe there's a report with more details instead of a article in a newspaper.
Bottom line, there are some very poor people in this valley. No kidding, there are poor people everywhere. In a generous, compassionate world, we would do something for them (hey, how about removing zoning rules which make it hard to build houses?). Let's also not forget that a RV is a castle compared to a shack made of scrap like the shantytowns 400 miles from here in Mexico.
That's always the problem with these sorts of statistics. Whoever is crunching the numbers is doing so with an agenda and comes up with something that strains credulity. They're just going for shock value, not attempting to convey any useful information. Ultimately it detracts from the real problem. Housing throughout the bay area is, in fact, incredibly expensive. It strains the budgets of pretty much everyone who isn't bringing home six figures, and even 100k isn't enough to afford a nice place. To get even a small condo, you need a couple people making fairly high salaries. The situation in the bay area is not sustainable, but I fail to see how a shock headline claiming 1/3 of school children are living under bridges in cardboard boxes does anything to change that.
They are discussing students, so they are likely using the definition of homelessness found within the McKinney-Vento Act. For more info see: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/ecd/homelessness_definition.pdf
I was homeless when I went to college.
Drive through EPA, and then re-evaluate. Just because you can't imagine that level of poverty doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
Has become a joke of it former self. Now 20 something amateurs compete for lying to the investors best in return of being named kings to their little companies and have a chance to strike it rich. It's just an old boys club. Anybody else can go fuck themselves. There has been no new value created in the valley for too long. For the good of everybody, the insanity must stop!
The wealth gap is to large and no matter how one sees it it is dangerous. I once lived in an area that was well off but bordered a ghetto. I warned people that between 12/15 and Christmas day they had best not be out and about. A certain pre Christmas rage would build up in the poor area and armed robberies and the like would jump up too much in that two week period. Simply shopping or sitting in a restaurant or bar, or even being tied up in traffic became an opportunity for being a crime victim. Sometimes some horrible racist incident would occur and people would fear riots. If it happened on a Monday or Tuesday one could predict that the troubles would break out on Friday or Saturday as pay checks would enable alcohol to be purchased and the weekend would be the time to riot. Certain things are predictable and when the rich are too rich and the poor are too poor violence tends to break out.
I have lived in an RV for the past 15 years. I lived in an RV for 3 years in the 70s. The first two were only 21 feet in length. I have a nice 36 foot motor home the I live in now. I have never paid a dime for any city property taxes. It just breaks my heart that I was never indentured to a bank for 30 years paying for a regular home and then indentured to a city for my entire life paying property taxes. It has been tough, but I have managed to tough it out. It has especially been a burden watching my huge bank account grow and grow.
Another 4chan alt right fag posts on Slashdot. Fuck you Trump whore.
Don't forget Peter Thiel. I heard he recently sold his Mission District mansion, so maybe he can take the homeless schoolchildren in and have a ready supply for his blood infusions.
Oh, and he's also a Bilderberger, for real.
You are welcome on my lawn.
>> Ten of the staff who work on early education programs -- one-third of the total -- commute two or more hours each way a day because they cannot find housing they can afford.
Bullshit. Here's your solution: move to San Jose, then commute 45 minutes to work. Here's some listings for rooms and apartments starting at just $500 if you're too fucking lazy to use one of the hundreds of "find an apartment" web sites.
https://www.trulia.com/for_ren...
Even better would be for them to find a way to make the move to San Jose, and then get a job they are qualified for locally. If enough did that, the affluent citizens of Palo Alto will find themselves freaking out that there are no longer any people to prepare or serve their meals when they eat out, sell them their overpriced coffees, clean their buildings, take care of their lawns, etc.
Oops! You fuckers just drove away the majority of your labor pool.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Shit, we'd have to sterilize half the corporations in the Western hemisphere! Corporations are people, right?
It's the usual size vs distance tradeoff. For a given amount of money, you can have a big house far away, or a small apartment close by. Or a fraction of one if you're willing to give up your personal space, which is less of a practical option if you have kids.
Whoever is crunching the numbers is doing so
How To Lie with Statistics should be required reading in high school.
given that Act doesn't classify sharing a home with others as homeless it would seem that is not what they are using. living with others would be classified as "at risk of homeslessness"
Prioncess Lea's MOM has now died!
(1) Sharing a home with another family is not what I consider homeless. (2) Living in an RV is not what I consider homeless.
My state defines homeless as not having one's own permanent personal space at a residence. So, sleeping on a friend's couch, as many women do, qualifies as homeless. Of course, the PSAs in my state show a young, good-looking woman, with a dog, living under a bridge. No-one talks about the variety of shelters available for women, they're the victim too, and because they've got tits, it's our job to save them.
reinstate child labor. let the market decide. we need to get the government off the backs of the American people. It's the libertarian thing to do.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
...in 5, 4, 3, 2...
OK, they aren't TOTALLY illiterate but they can't define "homeless", so, mostly.
> 20 something amateurs compete for lying ... It's just an old boys club
I'm confused. Is it kids or is it old boys? Or are the 20 year old amateurs old?
How come nobody in the media mentions the pressure created by new millionaires, mostly chinese, that come with millions of corruption dollars in their luggage and buy properties by the handful. In Miami there was a bill that demanded that foreign buyers (notably russian mafia and latin america polliticians) had to demonstrate the money they would use to buy properties had to come from demonstrated licit sources.
Why do poor people continue to stay there?
Probably because they have job and leaving it to find work elsewhere is a huge risk without financial resources to cover the gap. However the article is defining "homelessness" as those families who share a home with another. This is not homelessness but a what a smart, resourceful person without financial means does when the housing prices are so high. Since the article mentions that many of the teachers are also sharing houses it seems that the teachers themselves are "homeless" too given the article's clearly wrong definition of the word.
Why do they "live" in such an expensive area? #TimeToMove
From the article: "One man shares a single room with three children, in a house where three other families each have a room." So it's not "4 bedrooms and 5 kids" (which would indicate maybe seven people across four bedrooms), more like a minimum of 11 people across three bedrooms (given if the other rooms are single parents with a single child). If it's the "American average" (two parents, two kids), then it's 16 people in 3 bedrooms. That's 3x "population density" of your example.
:"A homeless person is an individual without permanent housing who may live on the streets; stay in a shelter, mission, single room occupancy facilities, abandoned building or vehicle; or in any other unstable or non-permanent situation." This study seems to be going off the "without permanent housing"; making the assumption 16+ people in a "single family" house isn't supposed to be permanent. The families mentioned living in RVs are also not in permanent housing.
The official definition is
Yet in a way, this is a "first-world" or "modern day" definition, since only 100 years ago (or even today in other countries) population density like this isn't out of the norm.
Most of these people are in housing situations that qualify for local government assisted eviction, and possibly fines and other issues for the 'owning' family.
I am not sure on the particular zoning but many cities have limitations on the occupancy of housing, before even including the fire code and other regulations that most assuredly could see these people put on the street, because that prevents the possibility of them all dying in a fire by instead giving them a long and drawn out death in the cold cold uncaring world out on the streets.
Also unmentioned by Mr. Rancho above: Sacramento has a *HUGE* homeless population, and unlike the mentioned examples from East Palo Alto, we are talking about people living in Shanty towns along the rivers. Probably a number having froze to death in the past week as temperatures dipped into the 20s (I had a half an inch of ice on top of a pond in my back year this morning, so you can imagine what that is doing to people living without heat under minimal shelter and in the high humidty environment of Sacramento county, especially along the rivers.
Things here are getting bad and will only get worse thanks to the apathy of the citizens, local government (more concerned with a Stadium than its non-wealthy consitutents) and law enforcement.
Housing costs appear to be collateral damage when UGB's are not increased adequately.
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=12300
What a terrible article. Sharing rooms does not make one homeless and East Palo Alto is not Palo Alto, it's two different cities with different demographics and different rules. A big chunk of East Palo Alto is under rent control, so those people will be paying rent that's far below market price for years to come. I wonder how many of them are sharing rooms because it's a good source of income and not because they can't afford it.
By that same definition a work camp would be a home. You know where you throw and contain the homeless and send work details to pick them up to carry out the required duties and then compulsorily return them at the end of the work day, so they can receive their food ration and retire to their cells to rest for the next days duties. Those that don't work get half rations. Once they have paid off their accrued debts they can pay for their release from the work camp, if they can prove they have a place to go. You can call it the America is number 1 solution.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
stop having kids you cannot afford in a world that's already overpopulated
Unfortunately pretty much everyone uses bogus statistics because it benefits them to have shock value to the casual viewer. To make it worse, it also benefits news sites to publish these statistics because they will have high click-through thus you should never believe any statistic that benefits the surveyor even if they describe their methodology.
My dad's family lived in a SoCal chicken coop when he was very young. His father was employed digging potatoes. Poor people are not a new phenomenon. In the end, it doesn't matter all that much whether we call them homeless or poor, unless you're trying to make a better headline.
We're always going to have poor people, but I don't necessarily think this is a terrible thing, nor by any mean something that can be "fixed". What's most important is making sure that people have opportunities to pull themselves out of poverty. My grandparents had literally nothing when they first immigrated, and eventually both had small businesses of their own. My father and mother took over one of the businesses and grew it over a lifetime of hard work. I started out poor early in my career, just barely able to sustain myself, and am starting my own business as well now. The American dream isn't getting rich quick. It's simply moving ahead in the race, and we need to make sure that's still possible. Unfortunately, that seems to be getting harder to do.
We need to ensure that people can take chances, educate themselves, learn new trades, move to better areas where needed. Some of this probably requires some government help, and some of it needs the government to get out of people's way. Some of it is making sure our social safety net is firmly in place so that trying and failing isn't fatal, without making it so comfortable that people just give up and let others support them. I wish I had better or more specific answers than that, though, as talk is cheap. But I guess you have to start somewhere, and we need to figure out how to fix this situation.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
And, as a Democrat, I ashamed to say he is not wrong. I am sure residents of Palo Alto would rather have some manufacturing jobs than our "great values". We need to fire demagogues and elect someone who will make people love California and trust us to govern on federal level.
The $500k homes are expensive because they're on prime real estate. The $100k-$200k homes are for the large part identical to the $500k homes, they're just in less desirable locations.
There is plenty of open land in the U.S. You can always build more cheap homes in less desirable locations (unless your city has done something like silly like created no-build open space preserves in all possible surrounding areas where new housing could've been built to ease demand). That's why they don't appreciate much - there's always more supply being created to meet growing demand. But aside from the formation of a new city, you can't create new prime real estate. Its supply is fixed, while demand is increasing. So its value appreciates a lot faster.
These California cities block the building of high density housing, that leads to the shortage of affordable housing. Those expensive tiny houses will lose value when the high rises go up. Trump builds high rises. People will have affordable housing, and those who managed to spend the big bucks on little houses will lose money on the sale, or get to live in the shadows of skyscrapers. If property owners are lucky they will get a large enough price to sell off the land to the development company so they can leave.
Actually it does for schoolchildren... and even the the third page of the above link clearly states that, with the fourth page clearly stating "at risk of homelessness" as not existing for the schoolchildren.
They are not home-owners, so they are homeless.
This doesn't follow. I rented for the longest time but I was never considered homeless while I was renting. My Granddad lived in a house with an ungodly number of siblings around the time of WW2 - he wasn't considered homeless. Living in a house with lots of other people can actually be quite appealing *if* you get along with those people. Okay, you don't get a lot of privacy but you'll never be short of company.
I don't need a lot of space to live. I'm happy with a bed or couch and somewhere to use my laptop (as long as no-one steals it).
Or just south of the peninsula. I once went rent shopping for a low cost place only to find that it was borderline better than a prison complex. It even had bars on the window.
There are RVs that are palaces compared to that standard.
3 kids, 5 kids... JFC! Stop cranking out babies!
Sorry, but it's not like you need them to help with the farming, and it's not like you don't have birth control options.
Stop. Having. Fucking. Babies.
- ------ Go 'til ya know.
I had a half an inch of ice on top of a pond in my back year this morning, so you can imagine what that is doing to people living without heat under minimal shelter
Exactly nothing if they had anything like a sleeping bag or blanket. Or are all the homeless nude too? Not from what I have seen. Homeless people easily survive a lot lower temperatures than the "upper 20s".
How To Lie with Statistics should be required reading in high school.
We had some of that in my school. We were taught how advertisements could be deceiving. We had some instruction on how to make a good argument, and how to recognize poor ones, essentially good debate tactics. What I don't recall ever being taught so explicitly though is how our own government could be lying to us. While we were taught that advertising could be deceiving this was never applied to news or any other medium outside advertising.
I do remember how in history classes those "other" governments lied to the people but in the USA that never seemed to happen.
I remember taking a college history class where we came to the part about WWII. The professor, a doctorate in history no less, told us about the "evil" public schools in Nazi Germany feeding schoolchildren propaganda in their lessons. The next week we were taught how after the war the UK created their own public schools and this professor told us how great it was that these children got an education. I raised my hand and asked what kept the UK schools from giving the children propaganda like the Nazi schools did. He didn't have an answer.
I had my suspicions about how governments should not run schools. I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
4 families in a 4 bedroom house is not a home. It's at best, a roof and the constant fear of eviction when the city finds out. Fire and housing codes exist for a reason, and that living arrangement is blatantly against the law in every state and US territory.
"Now you have Caucasians moving back into the community" oh shit, it's whitey's fault.
I grew up in the bay area before the tech boom. During the 1st tech boom all the fuckheads bitched about these new people moving in and ruining it for everyone else. San Francisco was never a poor city, but thanks to the 1st boom and subsequent tech growth it's value has grown and so has the cost of living there. When I was a kid, Palo Alto was where all the poor trash lived, PS racist pastor whitey lived there too. Same with San Jose. It's garbage, in fact, I don't care who lives there now in my mind anyone from there is garbage.
This idea that somehow the prosperous are responsible for the poor is fucking absurd. This conflating the fact that there are kids who are poor in close proximity to a group of people who are better off is nonsense.
Hey guys, I live kitty corner to a building with condos worth at least a million each, I'm just renting my apartment that thanks to rent control is way undervalued, pity me. I understand that my situation is tenuous and I am working to resolved that. Why didn't they.
And this whole "think about the children" angle is bullshit. Why does no one blame the parents who decided to have children they obviously couldn't afford. Personal responsibility isn't a thing anymore?
OK folks, if you're willing to live 5 to a garage or whatever that's fine, but how about keeping this to yourselves eh? As someone who doesn't live in a ridiculously overpriced area with a bunch of kids I can't afford, I'd rather the ruling class doesn't get the idea in their heads that this kind of living standard should be the new norm. Thanks.
I have zero sympathy for those unwilling to relocate. I came from a shitty situation and poverty. At 20 I had been held back twice [in elementary school] for BS religious reasons in school (don't believe in God, they held me back because they failed me on mandatory religious classes), had moved several times, had no real support at home and was having a step parent outright steal from me. My step mom forced me into dropping out of community college to take up employment at a grocery store. Short of this she was threatening to put me out on the street. She was abusive to the point I finally just walked out one day with no place to live in one of the most expensive cities on the east coast to live. I couldn't afford a room let alone rent.
What do you do? You reach out to people for support, work to find better employment opportunities, save, and relocate to a place where you can actually be independent. It's called charity and work, not government welfare. I ended up sleeping on a couch thanks to a friend of a friend for many months while I saved what little money I was making. I was doing a little contract work and living in Massachusetts. This meant that I was making almost nothing because the government was stealing a significant chunk of my income while threatening to steal even more if I didn't get health insurance. Health insurance that cost me half of what I was making.
I ended up moving to New Jersey after meeting one of the most wonderful people I've ever met. We were doing fine in New Jersey- but ultimately New Hampshire was a freer most cost effective place to do business. I helped him, my significant other, shutter one of his two businesses and we moved up to New Hampshire. We've got twice the home we could have afforded in New Jersey. I may never have finished school, but I'm not dumb and working a good job basically self-employed.
The biggest problem is the government. We don't need hand outs. We need the government to stop stealing what little money we're making. My income would literally have doubled if the government didn't force down stupid and needless taxes/health care/and other garbage. Don't get me wrong. I think it's important to get health insurance. However when you are utilizing it as a wealth redistribution program for the wealthy you can't possibly justify your actions. Forcing people who can't really afford to get health insurance to get health insurance doesn't really help them. It hurts them. I was depleted of the financials I needed to survive just in case I got sick. Well, I did get sick and I couldn't afford to get to a doctor that would take the shitty health insurance that was forced on me (it was a 40 minute car ride). When I did they told me my health insurance wasn't accepted. I CONFIRMED that they took it before making the appointment. Thing is government mandated insurance is such crap that doctors stopped accepting it. I had to arrange to go to a different doctor then and I didn't have a means of transpiration!
What we need to do is end mandatory car insurance (New Hampshire doesn't require it), end vehicular registration (little more than a tax), end drivers licenses (there is this thing in the constitution called the right to travel, and taking someone’s wheels away interferes with ones actual ability to do that in more than 50% of this country), end the government indoctrination programs (ie public 'schooling'), get rid of the guards on the boarder, get rid of social security (which is just stealing from the youth who will NEVER get it that are being made to pay into it now), get rid of mandatory health insurance, get rid of the state police, minimize the military, end licensing and let the open market figure it out (if you've ever used earlier eBay you'd realize reviews and ratings of businesses can do a better job at keeping people safe than government licenses which can't really do that anyway and whose real objectives tend to revolve around limiting competition and similar), and end 95% of the taxes. The majority of people would be brought ou
My dad's family lived in a SoCal chicken coop when he was very young. His father was employed digging potatoes.
Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in chicken coop! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us!
"More Than One-Third of Schoolchildren Are Homeless In Shadow of Silicon Valley"
Since only 1.3% of the school children in the country live in Silicon Valley, I guess you could technically argue the other 98.7% are homeless there.
Stop trying to rent in very expensive areas. ... in a wealthy area.
If the rent is too high don't stay in that part of the USA. As a few people have suggested move to a cheaper part of the USA.
If your offering a service or help make a product expect to bus or car in for hours from a lower cost area.
A service job will not cover the cost of a home, daily travel, school, food, medical
People with good jobs in a wealthy area can cover their costs, save and enjoy holidays and ensure really good educational standards.
Get a better education or trade to apply for a better job that can cover local costs or move to another part of the USA with much lower rent.
Most normal nations have gov workers who see that homes are not crowded and that all is within set standards. That addresses and student lists match other local employment or unemployment paperwork, tax records or support payments per home.
With any level of advanced city, state and federal bureaucracy such issues should never exist in any advanced nation. A home in the name of its owner, or a renter should have the funds to cover their rent, payments and still have an income to cover related costs.
If not what are they doing? An illegal income? An income thats too low and they have help with the rent from unlisted people or something? How many unlisted people?
Who are they and what are they doing in that home?
Why would any city, state or federal gov allow that people who cant cover their rent to sign for a home and cover the payments with unknown payments? Just create a database of all home owners, renters and their average taxation, costs and declared incomes.
Start looking for averages and cross reference with state, city and federal statistics. Have a local bureaucracy walk the streets and note homes that don't add up as one or two incomes and average rents or bank repayments. Do they have an extra job they have not been taxed on? Or is the home full of random extra people not paying tax who help with the rent? Who are they and what does the state and federal gov know about them?
If a home cant cover an average rent on their declared wage, who else is in the home and why?
Once each home gets renters or owners who can afford to live in an area quality of life returns to normal for that area.
Normal city and nation building issues like traffic congestion, internet speeds, quality education, road repair, sports, parks can then be considered.
Sort out the population so people can afford the local lifestyle or get the long term support they need in nice lower rent areas of a city.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
4 families in a 4 bedroom house is not a home. It's at best, a roof and the constant fear of eviction when the city finds out. Fire and housing codes exist for a reason, and that living arrangement is blatantly against the law in every state and US territory.
There is also this pesky thing called legitimacy. Law doesn't exist in a vacuum. People are not just going to go die or starve or migrate to a distant place just because government decries something illegal. State is to blame for failure to properly address pervasive underlying conditions responsible for these problems. Very little evidence exists to suggest they sufficiently give a fuck so I offer very little sympathy as a result.
As for "codes exist for a reason" .. each must be judged on merit not blanket assertions and empty catch phrases. Four families living in a 4 bedroom house in CA is actually a massive upgrade in every conceivable dimension relative to current living conditions of billions.
At 750k a house those families living in 1 room still are living in a room more expensive than my 80k house. Move dumb asses. Maybe when I make enough money to pay close to a million for a house I'll buy one in California. Until then I will stay here in my nice, roomy, warm, charming, cheap ass house that I can afford.
And sad.
Liar.
"The next week we were taught how after the war the UK created their own public schools and this professor told us how great it was that these children got an education."
The Elementary Education Act of 1880 provided for compulsory Education with Government funding, when Private funding didn't suffice. All this was in place decades before the Nazis. I won't argue about the Propaganda part; that is true of _every_ School System, even the Private ones. (Catechism for Catholics comes to mind.)
"I had my suspicions about how governments should not run schools."
The reason _why_ Governments made a Policy of Public Education, is that Private Education was a miserable failure, except for the Rich, when minimal Literacy was needed for the expanding Industrial Revolution.
" I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence."
Liar.
Link here:
http://reason.com/archives/2016/10/01/yes-in-my-backyard
The ratio of new jobs to new building permits is 8:1.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Strict definition homelessness:
Lacking basic shelter one can claim as recurring occupancy; sleeping outdoors or in temporary accommodation provided as a charity on a daily or weekly basis; living in a vehicle or structure lacking running water or bathroom facilities. I think fewer people meet this definition.
Non-normative homelessness: Having recurring but possibly unstable occupancy in a dwelling but in a manner not meeting normative standards for living arrangements associated with your demographic in your society. I would throw a family of 3+ people sharing a single room with bathroom facilities shared by unrelated people as meeting this kind of criteria of homelessness in the United States and would suspect it is a larger number than strict homelessness listed above.
There's all kinds of ways to define homelessness, but I would call single families sharing a room in a house designed for single family occupancy to be at least substandard if not a kind of homelessness since its clearly not desirable to them. I can't think of any family who lives in a house or typical apartment who would choose to share a typical 2000 sq ft house with other families.
I do think some of the subtext of this discussion is kind of disturbing -- "they're not suffering enough to be called homeless" or "they're making stupid decisions and deserve this outcome".
I feel it is first important to establish I'm a Northern Californian liberal. While I'm from North of SF what's happening in Silicon Valley is effecting where I live and causing the same problems, albeit on a lesser scale. I also agree with many posters that the parent article is stupid in it's framing of people as homeless who are not.
With that said, I am so sick and tired of our Left wing leadership wanting to "perserve our communities". The scenarios described in the article arent acceptable even if they arent describing true homelessness as they are literally describing suburban ghettos. Working people suffer so property owners can enjoy some bygone fantasy of a community that now only serves the needs of the afluent. Silicon Valley should be all skyscrapers (thus increasing housing availability and reducing costs for potential home owners or renters) and it is only people who could care less about the working class that want to "perserve" an environment that is no longer sustainable without the oppression of those who sell them their food. With property values what they are erecting a 30 story building on any city block within 50 miles of Google or Apple headquarters would be massively profitable for the developer and if done in a widespread manner, would make housing far more affordable for all. It's only bullshit city planning that is standing in the way of solving the less afluents problems in these areas.
The Left failed to deliver for the Rust Belt and we got Trump. Heaven help us if California goes that direction and with our bullshit leadership it just might.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
One thing is sure, wherever you call a home is a mediocre shit hole thanks to you being in it. Just letting you know.
" I lost my suspicions with that history professor's stunned silence."
Liar.
Oh, were you in the classroom with me? I doubt it.
You may have a point with the existence of public schools prior to WWII but there is no doubt that UK built more schools, extended the years that children had to attend, and imposed greater central controls on schools after the war.
Of greater importance is that the public schools will give great praise to "our" schools but those "other" schools are bad, even though there are much more similarities than differences. Even in a free nation the desire to use public schools as a means to spread propaganda is always present. You can call private schools a failure all you like but they inevitably excel over public schools. The reason is simple, private schools must compete for students while public schools do not.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
More like one poor Neighbourhood with a tiny population somewhere in Silicon Valley.
Way to go Slashdot editors
You would think that of all businesses, high tech software might enable its workers to work remotely from another part of the country, and sidestep the inevitable housing price bubbles.
No, but she is.
So I'm living at my uncle's house until my parents get a job. And that is at some close distance to rich people. Did those rich people cause my parents to be out of a job? Did they made my uncle's house small? What is the point of this emotional but thoughtless text?
I work in a Pacifica intermediate school about 50 minutes away from Palo Alto. For the entire San Francisco Bay area houses have been selling for $200,000 dollars over asking, and there is reported to be a growth in the supply of "high end" San Francisco apartments. The janitor and two of the ladies I work with have all moved 20, 25 and 30 miles away from their $20 dollar an hour jobs with sort of affordable health care. My 23 year old son is living at home and commuting 40+ miles to college. The class I work in is very small but one student has missed 2 weeks as the parents moved twice after November 30th.
The thing that puzzles me is what is the economy of scale that forces tech firms like Google and Apple to all pile into one small geographic area and bid aggressively for the freshly educated with specialized resumes?
Some of these firms use commuter buses to allow their employees to live in various towns on the San Francisco Peninsula. Firms like Apple and Google have central campuses. These firms are reported to have a huge inward cash flow. One of the outward local cash flows are employee wages and bonuses and new employee payments to move new employees into the Bay Area. Is this enough to drive the Bay area real estate market into very high rents, very high prices and very aggressive construction of high end housing to the detriment of low end rents and housing?
Diseconomy one: Longer drives for high expertise people as their expertise and experience make them the high pay first choice for boards of directors who want to save their challenged organization..
Diseconomy two: More kids of baby boomer families driving long distances to college due to college apartment rent increases.
Diseconomy three: More miles per driver and more drivers on the road resulting in widespread congestion.
Diseconomy four: People cannot move between homes because real estate fix-up and resell businessmen buy the used property, do repairs and resell for top dollar. The result is every house on the market is "newly remodelled and pristine in and out" for about $200,000 more.
One diseconomy happening is more and more people are driving longer commutes. There is a group of high expertise people. Their increasing experience and expertise results in high pay but the next organization that can afford their expertise is further away. An example is my wife. Sixteen years ago my wife, was a specialized non profit executive director and she started with a 12 mile commute to San Mateo. The next job was 35 miles to Berkeley, the next job after that is 45 to 55 miles.
Another diseconomy is the kids of the baby boomers now own a car and frequently drive. My son can't handle $1000 per month for a bed in a shared house. So he will try to drive 42 miles from home to college and a late night food job.
On the story of kids being homeless. I know definitely one student whose family has moved 5 or 6 times in the last few years. For other kids, easily 30% or 40% the home or apartment is a fragile relationship and the families are hanging on. Like for myself, just a little crack in the economic continuity and we would be in free fall. Out of town. Out of sight. A lifetime become carloads of stuff taken to the dump. Brave brave new world.
Your analysis would be beautiful, except that in reality, those who silicon valley and who claim to care the most about people, really don't. As a whole, you give very little to charity, minimize tax personal tax burden, and are very, very comfortable with the notion that your special snowflake tech jobs DESERVE 3x more pay than those who serve others. The corporations of silicon valley are notorious for talking the talk about social justice, but then surprisingly absent when it comes time to pay for it. I am looking at your Apple and Google.
So, I bet that you are very supportive about measures that address income inequality....just so long as it does not personally affect you. So, can you please cut the bullshit, SJW crap about how much you care. By all measures you don't. Having a "bad" feeling is nowhere near the same as actually doing something. Please, grow up or shut up.
Btw: Here is my supporting evidence.
Bay Area near bottom of nation charitable giving from SF Chronicle: http://www.sfgate.com/business...
Silicon Valley does not social give: http://www.sanjoseinside.com/2...
Lastly, there are numerous of these showing that conservatives are far more generous than liberals: https://www.rt.com/usa/193952-...
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
just read the 4th page. I see no such reference that says it does not apply to schoolchildren. please quote the section as somehow I must be seeing a different reference to you.
Do you think homeless people went from living in a house then straight to the streets? One of the middle steps are getting help from others, temporarily staying at friends.
A home is not only the building a family lives in, it is also the family environment that allows a family to grow properly, with kids having their own rooms, a garden to play, enough room so as that adults can exercise their hobbies, a living room, a guest room to have some friends over etc.
A family split into two parts, the parents living in a tent or a car and the kids in another household is homeless. They are not shelter-less in any way.
While the definition of 'homeless' has been 'without a roof' for a long time, we also have to consider the environment kids grow up.
We blamed the Soviet Union for forcing families to share homes. Now in the great US of A, families are also forced to share homes.
In American movies, families are usually shown to own a great house, with lots of rooms, a big garden, a garage, two cars or more, in a beautiful neighbourhood. It is the American dream, which crony capitalism, corporatism and globalization are slowly but steadily destroying.
What in the hell is "tony Palo Alto"?
Yes, I looked up the word and it's the first time in my 63 years that I ever heard of it. Is it a west coast thing?
Sounds absolutely silly if you ask me.
In the land of $4500 a month rent for a crackhouse that is currently on fire what do they expect? People are living in VANS in the office parking lot.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
More than One-Third of Schoolchildren Are Homeless In SHITHOLE of Silicon Valley.
There.... fixed it for ya
Excuse me? Could you be a little more specific? How about some examples? How are they lying? How is their agenda disqualifying, compared to say, yours? or the trolls in this thread poking fun at homeless plight? Shock value? I'm not shocked, these statistics are similar to what you find many places. They use commonly accepted definitions, what is the problem here?
Are you just ignorant?
Please I'm really interested in your detailed take down of these statistical liars. You've prevented no evidence yet other than *your* shallow opinion. Because on the surface, it looks to me, that you may be the one detached from reality, that you don't understand "what normal is" to ~20%+ of the US population who live a precarious existence.
I know a lot of homeless people that aren't actually homeless. I thank the gift of marriage for that. I have come to understand what it is like when you don't have a home base, but instead rely on the kindness of friends, the obligations of family, or the awkward and shitty situations you come to accept as normal. And frankly it is usually difficult for me to sympathize with those in these situations. They could do more... And then I see the results of this hellish experience on kids. It is not pretty. They are essentially condemned with high probability to further populate the underclass. The dregs, who don't know any better than benefits, petty crime, and shitty behavior. They spread their disease of shittyness throughout our schools, communities, and culture. They fill our prisons. They consume our benefits. The major root cause these systemic social problems are so obvious and yet we chose to do nothing about it. We mock people who care. We gripe about the costs. As if our society isn't worth it. Such is a nation/culture in terminal decline.
Well good thing you can reach some a far-reaching conclusion from such a naive binary analysis. Lol good lord.
you don't think you could have a tiny bit more bigoted with your ignorant BS?
come on.
im sure you could if you tried.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
In states that have sales tax. Which is not all of them.
Actually having an RV is nothing like having a home, as it is illegal to camp in your RV just anywhere outside of a campground, plus the lack of running water and basic sanitation (how long is your black water tank going to last before it's full, not like you can legally dump that anywhere). This means the police can force you to move when ever they want and nothing is there to stop them from confiscating your RV if they find you to be a nuisance.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
Sure there are RV's that are palaces. They cost about the same as a palace too. Those are not the RV's homeless people would have.
Sorry, teleporters just kill you and then make a copy. A perfect, soul-less copy.
If you cannot afford to raise your child, THEN STOP HAVING CHILDREN. Yeah, won't prevent them all, yes something might have caused them to be "homeless" but, you know good and well that some people, have children because the women won't keep their legs together, and the men are horndogs. (hope by including BOTH sexes, the "women's rights" types won't be completely offended, not that I care)
What do you mean even teachers? Teachers are horribly underpaid!
When most people hear the word 'homeless' they imagine people living outdoors, maybe spending some nights in homeless shelters, but the majority of 'homeless' children described in this report have home to return to, they are just sharing their home with another family...
Is a 30 year-old living in his parents house 'homeless'? By the standards of this report the answer is 'yes', but to most people the answer is 'no'.
Ken
Most countries define a difference between homeless and roofless, at that.
Homeless would be termed as a person that doesn't have a permanent home, roofless without a permanent roof.
Keywords being permanent.
My friend was homeless despite hopping between his parents, his friends and his girlfriends house pretty much every couple days for about 2 years.
A lot of people live exclusively in hotel rooms by choice because they travel a lot and don't see the point in wasting money on an empty home. (some do this and rent their home out, but some don't bother with the risks associated with that, even with insurance)
Or, as mentioned, via some home on wheels in various styles. (or even boat! Still technically homeless in lots of areas)
RVs, campers, caravans, whatever you want to call them, some places class this as homeless.
It's simply a "unable to address this residence" because it isn't permanent or lacks addressing because the owner (ie. hotel, RV park) refuses to assign semi-permanent residence or post boxes.
But because homelessness is associated with poverty, scum, drunks and junkies, it gives a bad image.
There's people worth multiple millions that live in caravans not far from me simply because they CAN. (one of them a friend of my mothers, owns a business, not even poor in the slightest)
Not everyone wants a mansion with 15 empty, cold lifeless rooms. Some don't even want more than a standard 8'x16-20' camper van. I've seen AND designed some impressive small spaces for such dimensions. (to toot my own horn, as they say)
This is mainly an image driven in to people by the housing industry because they want you to buy their shit houses they mass-produced in a year that will begin to fall apart in 5-7 years. Equally the mortgage and insurance industries. They don't want land being taken up by grass and portable homes. (even though they could make money off them! Which some companies do offer now.)
Equally house-sharing, I've seen far happier families that share houses with family and extended family than the former isolated style that is more popular here in the west.
I dunno, something tells me, it's... it's almost like humans are sociable creatures that evolved with socializing in mind. (someone tell my brain, noisy stupid people get out!)
tl;dr: Most of it comes down to being unable to give addresses to these places. That's what defines homelessness in most countries.
It is like a steakhouse where each item on the plate is a separate food, and saying "Steak is only 5% of the food we sell". No, you sell steak, and everything else on the plate is part of the Steak Dinner. They aren't there for the Mash Potatoes or the Ice Tea you're drinking.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I was homeless when I went to college.
I lived with 12 guys in a five-bedroom Victorian house when I was in college. Rent was cheap at $200 per person. But everyone had to pay $500 in unclaimed long distance phone calls every month. It worked out quite well until the city decided that three garbage cans per household was enough when we put seven trash cans. No one wanted to pay for dumpster service. We had 300+ people at our moving out party. Good times!
I would say it makes sense that the media highlight problems that they believe are going to be exacerbated by a president over ones they're fairly confident will not be. In fact, the media tends to highlight problems that are likely to be changed by a president over status quo ones. It's not unreasonable, but it is why sometimes an issue lingers out of sight for a long time. Hence, one reason 'issue candidates' run on fixing them - in no small part to raise media attention/awareness of their issue.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
As long as you have access to a full hook-up, there is nothing really wrong with an RV, depending upon the circumstance. With kids, far from ideal. For one or two people (especially in an area without harsh winters), it can be just fine.
Some of us want to live in an RV once we can retire and get the kids to move out.
"-1 Troll" is the apparently the same as "-1 I disagree with you."
I have I earn 50K a year and I can't buy a home. not when they start at $200k for a 900 sq ft condo plus hoa fees.
And that is a 30 year old home.
I suggest you look around. get out of rural america and watch how fast prices go up. if there were jobs there I could live out there but jobs are not located in rural america.
See, this is the thing. In America, we think that we must own property to live. This is not necessarily the norm, even in developed countries.
In particular, we hold onto the idea of owning a property because we think renting is a money pit. But as a homeowner, owning a home is an expense. Whatever it might accrue in appreciation, it gets sunk in repair and maintenance. Not to mention that it is really hard to turn a home into liquid assets for you have to have money for closing costs for a sale.
There have been real cases of people that cannot sell their homes (be them by bad times or bad financial planning) because they do not have the capital to kick off and complete the selling transaction.
Owning a property is a luxury (one that I'm engaging at the cost of my cash flow, and one that I doubt its wisdom regularly), not a requirement to live a good life.
If you can rent a place of your liking for you and/or your family, sure you won't own the place, and you might lose more money in 20-30 years. But it gives you flexibility without sacrificing your savings and cash flow up front.
Owning a home should be seen as one of the many options, not as "THE ONE AND OMFG ONLY" option.
You say most countries, got a citation?
seriously? i thought illegals were doing those jobs. americans wouldn't deign to perform that work.
I was under the impression that there were places where no "full hook-up" is available for miles for months at a time. For example, a campground can close for the season.
Well, "Over 33% of schoolchildren in East Palo Alto school district have no legal residence" isn't quite as catchy as a headline. But East Palo Alto is in the "shadow of Silicon Valley" and having no legal residence essentially means you're homeless, so it's not inaccurate.
dom
If liberalism is supposed to protect us from inequalities and poverty, why is it so prevalent and bad in a state that has been continuously run by liberals?
R moving into the whitehouse. So, as is tradition, 'homelessness' just became a much bigger problem.
Oh yeah, the people living in this Artist's Colony were so much better off under President
Obama and Governor Brown's more permissive leadership.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Maybe there would be fewer poor kids if fewer poor people HAD kids.
But stupidity is self-propagating.
Sometimes people do go from homed to homeless in one step.
Sometimes it happens in steps.
The fact that this occupies a continuum rather than a binary status makes it more difficult to classify homeless vs homed as well as provide and (more importantly) justify services to them. There's a whole contingent of people who think that sleeping in a room under a roof == homed. Sleeping indoors in a situation where a person lacks stability and can be un-homed again at someone else's desire is not homed....not necessarily homeless, either.
There are multiple issues.
Housing supply
Housing cost
Housing stability/security.
I tend to think that public studios, like a small version of UK Council Housing, would help at least get people roofs over their heads for a sliding-scale cost, looking at it as a public good (e.g., homelessness is bad for many reasons, at least one of which involves epidemiological and other public health concerns). Once people have at least some stability, they can start building something - but lots of mentally ill homeless are too fragile to do that.
"Truth is what works" -- William James "It works!!" -- o-dark-AM comment
I'm sure your backwards policies had nothing to do with it, fuckwads.
Ever notice that all of the areas of the country that have been dominated by liberal rule for the last 30-50 years have the largest numbers of homeless, crime, etc.
Always works for other people who couldn't afford to live in the area right?
How big and how nice should this morally imperative condo be?
Yet in a way, this is a "first-world" or "modern day" definition, since only 100 years ago (or even today in other countries) population density like this isn't out of the norm.
Indeed. My mom grew up with 5 people and 2 rooms; I grew up with 4 people and 8 rooms.
Based on what 'they believe' and 'they're fairly confident will not be', the very definition of bias.
Particularly when it hasn't be true historically.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"You may have a point with the existence of public schools prior to WWII but there is no doubt that UK built more schools, extended the years that children had to attend, and imposed greater central controls on schools after the war."
As did most other modern nations. You made a blanket claim with no exceptions that the UK created their own Public Schools _after_ WWII, or so your "professor, a doctorate in history no less" informed you, and you have apparently believed it ever since, unquestionably until now. What was it that you said about Propaganda? Ever hear of the "Big Lie"? You are lousy at it.
I still think that you are a Liar, and that you made the whole thing up, including your "professor", because of your hatred for "Public Education". Why this is, I don't know, unless it was because it may have utterly failed _you_, in more ways than one.
"You can call private schools a failure all you like but they inevitably excel over public schools."
I call them a failure because they _failed_, they inevitably did not excel. They were not up to the task two centuries back, and they are not up to it now. I noted that there were and are exceptions; like those schools for the Rich, (Which curiously enough, are actually and historically called "Public Schools" in Britain...), but we have Public Education pretty much Worldwide, because most People, perhaps you are an exception, aren't rich. And I bet, after much diligent searching, that you won't find a single Modern country that is predominantly Private Schooled. Socialist or Capitalist, Religious or Atheistic, Rural or Industrialized, it doesn't matter. But go right ahead and search. Find a National Education System where Private Schooling didn't fail. You could use the Education.
TL;DR:
I iz a libertarian from a hard life and I was too dumb to figure out financial aid and no one helped me so NO ONE needs gov't help, and I'm gonna go live somwhere where I don't have to pay taxes to ensure that no one else has to endure what I did. Fuck you, I've got mine!
I don't think it's the density that makes them "homeless", it's the fact that it's temporary.
For example, let's say my brother loses his job and can't pay the rent, so they stay with me until he finds a new job. You might not consider them to be "homeless", because they have a place to sleep and store their possessions. However, none of us think that him living in my guest room is a permanent situation. Thus, the housing is temporary, making my brother's family "homeless".
dom
Predicting the future actions of another person is not the very definition of bias. They can be accurate or not, but in general its required to do anything involving a second party. And usually it is based on beliefs - ideally grounded in reality.
I mean, whatever else you want to say about him, Trump has not had a problem with making people homeless to achieve his larger aims. So, is it crazy to assume he will continue to in the future?
Your ad here. Ask me how!
By the standards of this author, all college students are homeless.
Shouldn't we do something about college student homelessness?
Read that back, with a mental flip of who is on what side?
Do you see how wrong you are? It's not often that someone basically writes: 'white is black, when my side does it'. You just did.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'