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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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