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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.
Moving someplace new generally requires a sizable amount of liquid funds to cover moving expenses, deposits, etc., not to mention the costs associated with finding a new job to go to. The working poor don't often have that kind of money on hand to spend.
In many cases, they were there first. This is gentrification on steroids.
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.
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.
Buying a house is cheaper than you think. I don't know your exact situation, but let's just say you're in East Palo Alto.
A 3 bed, 2 bath house in East Palo Alto is $3000 / month minimum to rent, with higher ones at $4000 / month. But it's only $650,000-$800,000 to buy. If you pay 20% down and the interest is 4%, the mortgage payment is only $2500-$3000 / month. Now if you're willing to squeeze a bit and rent out one room for $800 / month let's say, your own cost would only be $1700-2200, cheaper than renting even a 2 bedroom apartment.
Of course, this only makes sense if you really love the place and wants to live there for a long time, but that sounds like the case to me.
How did you benefit from not being on the losing side in WWII or WWI or the Civil War or The War of Independence.
Well, I used to live in Tennessee, so I was on the losing side of the Civil War. As for the others, none of them were preceded by high military spending. Yet we won anyway.
It seems to me that high military spending makes starting wars easy, since you already have the soldiers and weapons ready, so we do it more often, almost always with negative consequences. I don't see how I benefit from that.
Perhaps you will enjoy being a Muslim after the next WW, Sunni or Shia?
How did our meddling in Iraq make that outcome less likely?
As an Ohio transplant to the Bay Area, I can tell you things are certainly more expensive here than in Ohio; the two California cities you are comparing to are irrelevant. It may not be 40%, but it's not 0, either and it is a significant amount. About the only things I don't pay more for here than i did there are my phone plan (nationally priced) and car insurance; and the latter is more the result of California's annual rate reduction law, a younger friend of mine pays more than double what I was paying at his age for a similar vehicle.
The median home value in Tracy is $438,000, averaging $211 per square foot. In Fairfield, where I currently reside, it's $399,800, averaging $220/sq-ft. Cleveland? $59,900, averaging just $48/sq-ft. That roughly falls in line with what I paid for rent there vs what I pay today; I pay 3-1/3x as much rent for 5sq-ft more than I had in Cleveland.
However, I make more than 7x what I made when I lived in Cleveland, but am barely any further ahead financially as a result. If my spending habits and lifestyle haven't changed substantially (they haven't) and things aren't more expensive here, what's the explanation?
Well, I'll tell ya, since I was just back in Cleveland for a week last month and, save for the cost of the hotel room and rental car, I lived for that week, same as I live here, on what I spend on the average day here.
Yes, shit's more expensive in California, doesn't matter the city, than it is in Ohio. Now that you've made me reflect on my recent trip, I see that my 40% figure was way off; it should have been much, much higher.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.