Slashdot Mirror
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.
...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
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?
Living conditions there are awful. There are plenty of jobs in other cities and you get to have a whole house!
I just read an article (sadly, I can't remember where) talking about this. One of the differences today from yesteryear is people don't move to where the jobs are as much as they did in the past. That's odd because we're, on a whole, much wealthier than we were before 1900, when it was pretty common to pack up all your belongings in a wagon, abandon your land, and move west. Or have a mass migration from farms to cities throughout most of the 20th century.
Well, I assume it was common. I actually don't have any numbers to back that up. Maybe that's nostalgia talking.
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'
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.
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.
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.
>> 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.
When I see what people other countries are doing to get away leaving California should be trivial. People are walking out of Syria with nothing more than what they own. If life in SV is that bad, leave.
If you know how to weld, swing a hammer or have any skilled trade training you can probably filter all across the US. Local shops are hiring high schoolers with training before they graduate.
I was an engineer in Silicon Valley and couldn't afford to live in Palo Alto. Why the fuck would any poor person choose to settle in such a high priced area?
Heck, I got out because I couldn't afford the housing and moved East to the cheaper places.
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+
I've never received a single dollar from the government. I just pay, pay, pay my taxes. Nothing ever changes.
Did you get paved roads? Judges in courthouses? Airports? Bridges? Fire department? An army, navy, marines, air force, coast guard?
A county hospital? Sewers? Clean water? And the EPA to keep it clean? National, state, and local parks? Etc., etc., etc.
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.
It's not that the home is 30 years old, it's that he still can't afford it. Why don't you take your own advice, you ignorant prick?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There is a whole lot of stuff in between "$200k for a 900 sq ft condo plus hoa fees", and "rural america".
Maybe you should look around some more.
The poster is posting on a network originally developed with taxpayer money. He's just another whack job libertarian Freeman on the land type.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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.
Or there are degrees of homelessnes, as there are degrees of joblessness. If you're an engineer with a PhD working part time as a janitor, you will be counted on U6 unemployment stats because you are taking a shit job outside of your career field.
If you have to sleep on your friends floor while your kids crowd onto the couch because your other choice is waiting in line at a shelter, you might consider your family to be home-less as well.
Close to 45% of US citizens do not pay federal or state income taxes.
About 40% of households do not pay income tax. But they do pay sales tax, excise tax (on gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol), social security taxes, medicare taxes, etc.
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.
Don't have a car?
I don't, but I still have stuff delivered, which comes along roads, and I still buy things in shops, which are stocked by vehicles driven on roads.
Don't have lawsuits?
Nope, but I still benefit in many ways from living in a society governed by the rule of law.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
20% of $650,000 is $130,000. If you have that much spare cash lying around, you don't count as poor by most metrics.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
All right... all right...
But apart from paved roads and judges in courthouses and airports and bridges and fire department and army and navy and marines and air force and coast guard and a county hospital and sewers and clean water and the EPA and national, state, and local parks... What has the government done for us?
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.
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?
libertarians don't believe in those things.
they are the epitome of the "freedumb" loving conservative:
Joe Conservative wakes up in the morning and goes to the bathroom. He flushes his toilet and brushes his teeth, mindful that each flush & brush costs him about 43 cents to his privatized water provider. His wacky, liberal neighbor keeps badgering the company to disclose how clean and safe their water is, but no one ever finds out. Just to be safe, Joe Conservative boils his drinking water.
Joe steps outside and coughs–the pollution is especially bad today, but the smokiest cars are the cheapest ones, so everyone buys ‘em. Joe Conservative checks to make sure he has enough toll money for the 3 different private roads he must drive to work. There is no public transportation, so traffic is backed up and his 10 mile commute takes an hour.
On the way, he drops his 12 year old daughter off at the clothing factory she works at. Paying for kids to go to private school until they’re 18 is a luxury, and Joe needs the extra income coming in. Times are hard and there’re no social safety nets.
He gets to work 5 minutes late and misses the call for Christian prayer, and is immediately docked by his employer. He is not feeling well today, but has no health insurance, since neither his employer nor his government provide it, and paying for it himself is really expensive, since he has a precondition. He just hopes for the best.
Joe’s workday is 12 hours long, because there is no regulation over working hours, and Joe will lose his job if he complains or unionizes. Today is an especially bad day. Joe’s manager demands that he work until midnight, a 16 hour day. Joe does, knowing that he’ll lose his job if he does not.
Finally, after midnight, Joe gets to pick up his daughter and go home. His daughter shows him the deep cut she got on the industrial sewing machine today. Joe is outraged and asks why she doesn’t have metal mesh gloves or other protection. She says the company will not provide it and she’ll have to pay for it out of her own pocket. Joe looks at the wound and decides they’ll use an over the counter disinfectant and bandages until it heals. She’ll have a scar, but getting stitches at the emergency room is expensive.
His daughter also complains that the manager made suggestive overtures towards her. Joe counsels her to be a “good girl” and not rock the boat, or she’ll get fired and they’ll be out the income.
His daughter says she can’t wait until she’s 18 so she can vote for change or go to the Iraq War.
They get home and there’s a message from his elderly father who can’t afford to pay his medical or heating bills. Joe can hear him coughing and shivering.
Joe turns on the radio and the top story is a proposal in Congress to raise the voting age to 25. A rare liberal opinionator states that it’s an attempt to keep power out of the hands of working class Americans. The conservative host immediately quashes him, calling him “a utopian idealist,” and agreeing that people aren’t mature enough to make good choices until they’re at least 25.
Joe chuckles at the wine-swilling, cheese eating liberal egghead and thinks, “Thank God I live in America where I have freedom!”
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
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.