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Amazon To Build Homeless Shelter In Its New Seattle Headquarters (cnn.com)
Amazon is trying to do its part to help the homelessness problem in its hometown of Seattle. The company announced on Wednesday that it would donate more than 47,000 square feet of space within its newest Seattle headquarters building as a permanent location to house homeless people. CNNMoney reports: "Mary's Place does incredible, life-saving work every day for women, children, and families experiencing homelessness in the Seattle community," Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos said in a statement. "We are lucky to count them as neighbors and thrilled to offer them a permanent home within our downtown Seattle headquarters." Amazon is partnering with local nonprofit Mary's Place to create 65 rooms, which will house more than 200 homeless people every night. The new Mary's Place shelter will open in early 2020. It will also have a resource center like those the nonprofit offers in North Seattle and White Center, where 40-plus local nonprofits and volunteers work with staff to help families obtain employment and permanent housing.
5 hobos for the price of 3 (for opening day only). Or is Bezos using them as guinea pigs for manned missions?
"...life-saving work every day for women, children, and families experiencing homelessness..."
Well, at least men got included as long as they support a family. Wouldn't want all of those useless, disposable freeloading homeless men taking up a shelter slot.
Is that what they're calling employee housing nowadays?
I wonder how many of its own employees will take advantage of this.
Amazon could pay a living wage!
amazon is running a company town, just like in days of yore
As a homeless man you're only worth something if there's a family attached to you.
Isn't male privilege great!
Some homeless are that by choice or by some psychological inability to stay put. For others it is the problem of affordability. It only makes sense to offer permanent shelter to the last category — to people, who want a permanent place, but can not pay for it.
Now, why would not Amazon suggest to and outright push those people into jobs at Amazon? Warehouse workers make about $13/hour? And how will these shelters then be different from workers' dormitories?
Personally I don't see anything wrong with it — as long as no one is forced into these shelters, but that's just what might happen, if authorities start picking up homeless pushing them into such facilities to pretty-up the streets. Which would make these people into something unnervingly close to slaves...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Amazon is partnering with local nonprofit Mary's Place to create 65 rooms, which will house more than 200 homeless people every night. The new Mary's Place shelter will open in early 2020.
But this will have no effect on the homeless population until 2020, how does this help the homeless community today?
Ken
Amazon interns will have first hand work experience at packing homeless people into boxes for shipment as robots drag them off the streets.
Didn't trump just make America great again? How can we still have homeless people?
As noted, this won't be available until 2020, just as President Trump is up for re-election, two years after Democrats "take back the congress" in the 2018 mid-term.
Ken
Same for San Francisco. But that probably could be handled by a company out of the valley...
bickerdyke
Of course men. Women have a valuable commodity they can trade for food/shelter/sugar daddy. I see them doing this as a tax write-off. Why not give them jobs? Even if it's a yard worker or garbage picker upper.
Obama kept blaming Bush for seven year, so give trump at least 2-3 years to fix the problems of obama.
200 people every night? Like they have to stand in line every night to get a bed? This is one reason that all the temporary shelter solutions don't work. Every evening, the homeless have to stand in line for the chance at getting a place. And every morning they get tossed back out on the street. And maybe they don't get one, so they have to find a warm doorway quickly. Pretty soon they just say, "Fuck it. Not worth the trouble." And move back under the freeway where they can stake out a (relatively) permanent campsite.
Have gnu, will travel.
I sold my soul to the company store...
Hey Amazon: They need a huge one in Portland Oregon too. I visited once and haven't seen so many homeless people in my life.
What you saw in Portland were the political activists.
We call this an insane asylum. Let's see if Bezos can come up with a workable new way of running something like this. He might surprise us.
Good one, if you got more bombs like that you have a stand-up program going. Maybe try to tie-in a routine around suggesting them paying their company taxes instead of stashing it away into tax havens.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
That used to be popular, at least until the pesky government had to butt in and demand that workers get paid in actual money instead of food, shelter and scrip.
Damn government, ruining the economy!
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
when you got no job, any job is better
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Problem is: in Seattle, Amazon is paying way more than a living wage and even the median wage; both have sharply risen due in part to Amazon. This has been one cause of the sharp increase in homelessness in Seattle (the others being drugs and mental illness).
WAT?!
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
when you got no job, any job is better
Hiring managers are reluctant to hire higher-skilled people for minimum wage jobs because they know that people will leave when a better opportunity comes along. When I was out of work for two years, hiring managers told me I was overqualified for minimum wage jobs and recruiters told me I was unemployable for everything else. I ended up working for a moving company on the weekends for six months until I found another full-time job.
[...] so give trump at least 2-3 years to fix the problems of trump.
FTFY — Who knew that governing was so complicated for a businessman?
I'm not sure why I have to repeat what the other AC said, unless you're just stupid.
I'll give it a try, however. They pay more than the median income, which has caused an increase in expenses.
Surely, you're not stupid enough to think their new HQ is where they have their warehouse, are you? No, you couldn't be that stupid. Hmm... Perhaps you're being intentionally obtuse? No, that would make you a shitbag. You wouldn't be a shitbag, would you?
Anyhow, Reddit is probably more your style. You should go there.
Didn't trump just make America great again? How can we still have homeless people?
If they live at Amazon, they aren't homeless. You see? American is great again, thanks to be big business.
Assuming the previous poster is referring to something real but just phrasing it awkwardly, I know what he is referring to.
Amazon and other tech companies pay more than the region's prior wage options. The employees want to live near work rather than have a 2 hour commute. Landlords raise their rates to somewhere between what the current residents can continue to pay and what the wealthier Amazon (and other) employees are willing to pay for that location. This leads to a glut of people who are unable to afford living where they used to and unwilling to move to more affordable areas.
Considering some of the housing arrangements I had in the past to make unemployment checks and dwindling bank account numbers last long enough to get a new job, I have trouble empathizing with that kind of refusal to search for opportunities.
Slight correction... The government demanded that workers get paid in THEIR scrip instead of companies printing their own...
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Why not give them jobs?
You have a deep misunderstanding of what causes homelessness and why it is such an intractable problem. They are not "just like you and me" except without homes. Most homeless people have mental health issues, substance abuse issues, and are in general very dysfunctional people. If they were employable, then they wouldn't be homeless in the first place.
So that employees, customers and business contacts won't have to experience homeless people first hand.
This is how NYC real estate developers have managed requirements for affordable housing when they build developments targeted at the wealthy. A small, separate entrance with its own elevator to the floors with the few affordable rentals in the building is part of the building.
While I guess it's laudable to gesture by our e-commerce overlords, if they run the homeless people through an invisible side entrance to some otherwise deprecated space they don't use that just happens to be in the same building, it's hard not to think that there's a large amount of cynical motivation. Bezos gets to claim some kind of noble generosity, and Amazon gets a giant tax deduction on dead space in their building.
I can't help but think if it was really meant to do something about homelessness, Bezos would just outright fund a large hotel/dorm like structure that would offer long-term transitional housing for homeless people instead of temporary shelter, the kind of temporary home where they could get mail delivered, make phone calls, create resumes and do job searches, in addition to being fed and having a secure place to live.
Oh, he's close. Just missing things by a few blocks. Down the street from Amazon is the Allen Brain Institute.
Brain. Institute.
Once they take your brain (for science, of course), your only options are either the homeless shelter or politics. The vast majority of people, even after being pithed, would apparently prefer homelessness rather than politics.
There is some hope for mankind.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm fairly sure the workers like that better, considering that it's legal tender in way more areas than just the company store with the insane prices.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Most chronic homelessness is caused by mental illness and addictions. Instead of putting up shelters, why not spend a little extra and reopen public mental hospitals? Before the deinstitutionalization movement in the 70s, states had huge mental health treatment systems in place. Admittedly, part of that was because there was nothing that could be done to treat mental illness before the 50s and the only thing to do was to lock them away. But, we've seen that treatment isn't 100% effective, people relapse, they self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, etc. Why not operate facilities where people who need treatment can be placed until they're stable enough to actually live in the community?
I guess those Night Train Express Dash buttons finally found a home.
Oh boy, I bet Amazon's lawyers and insurance carriers are throwing a tantrum over this. Imagine all that space filled with down and out folks who are going to experience "falls" and other "incidents" due to Amazon's "failure to maintain a safe environment." Seattle has a lot of personal injury lawyers who are going to enjoy a feeding frenzy. What is it they say about "best of intentions"?
This is great for the homeless population, but for those that aren't employed by high-tech. They just can't afford to live in Seattle anymore. Teachers, fire-fighters, police, food service workers, etc can't afford to pay $2000 for a 1bedroom apartment. What we all saw in SanFrancisco/Silicon Valley area, is happening in Seattle.
Hope these high tech workers don't plan on having kids, there will be nobody to teach them. Maybe Amazon can buy Khan Academy and launch Amazon-School. "Alexa, teach my child to read."
Can Amazonians wear trash bags and burlap sacks to work now?
Only if they bought them online.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Bullshit.
No bullshit. There was seven applicants for every job opening when I was out of work for two years. Hiring managers and recruiters would only hire people who had still had a job, writing everyone else off. When I got my full-time job in mid-2011, there was three applicants for every job opening, When hiring managers and recruiters couldn't fill out the head count, they started hiring anyone they could find. I spent the next two years working seven days a week.
. . .we do what we must, because we can. . . .
For the good, of all of us. . .
Well, the ones that own stock. . .
Question is, when will Prime deliver via Amazon Science Portable Hand-held Portal Devices ???
The problem is that a lot of the homeless are mentally ill and can't hold any job.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Yeah, we know. Well, we know that is what you tell us. Only you know if it is the truth.
It's on the Internet, so it must be true.
Discriminating is not "equal opportunity" at all. When nationally 80% of the homeless population is men, having a program which discriminates against men is flat out evil. That you attempt to claim discrimination is fine because "bogey man" makes you evil.
Real numbers show that gender discrimination is not a problem in the workplace. 61% of all college graduates are Women who are _CHOOSING_ not to go into STEM jobs. The graduation numbers have favored women for well over a decade, and were pretty close for the prior 20 years. The wage gap has been debunked so frequently that you must be mentally handicapped to still believe it. That is not a joke. You should seek immediate psychological help and ask the doctor to consider some strong medication (Thorazine) because you simply ignore reality to support a delusion. Worse, using that delusion to discriminate against people.
Your sig makes it perfectly clear that you are a SJW troll.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
What would you choose if your only options were performing labor in exchange for food & shelter or sleeping on the street and begging? And was it government that fixed the abuses with company towns and company stores or was that the genesis of the union movement?
Government also passed laws which mandate "minimum standard of habitation" for rental property. A living space must have all of the modern conveniences or it's illegal to rent on a long-term basis. Such amenities come with a cost. People are homeless because they are priced out of the market. Politicians talk about "affordable housing" but they make it illegal to build and rent cheap, rudimentary shelters. Why not rent out cabins or tents in a campground type setting with communal toilets & showers? Government even evicts people from basic shelters that they built for themselves! "Sorry, you can't live in that plywood cabin you built because it doesn't meet our standards, so we're going to bulldoze it and make you sleep on the street." I think that's absolutely barbaric.
The free market & private charity won't produce a utopia, but the results would certainly be no worse than government "solutions".
But you've always had contracts that forbade overtime and limited you to 40 hours a week. So you were working 5-1/2 hours a day then?
I was working for three contracting agencies during that time. A weekday assignment with the prohibition not to work more than 40 hours a week for that contracting agency. A weekend assignment that could start on Friday night from one of the two other contracting agencies.
Like many of my coworkers today, I work 40 hours for my weekday job and another 40 hours for my side business.
I have played too much Shadowrun to think this can be anything good.
Like, maybe, you come across as an obnoxious twat to every hiring manager you meet?
Nope. I wasn't hired because I wasn't working. Discrimination against the unemployed was a huge problem in 2009-10.
So you mean to say that once employers had hired *literally* everybody else they could tolerate more than they could tolerate you, EVEN YOU were able to find a job? That's great!
When the economy turned around in mid-2011, there was fewer working people looking for jobs and employers had to hire unemployed people to fill out the head counts.
Recruiters saying "you're overqualified for these jobs"
Hiring managers were telling me that I was "overqualified" for their minimum wage jobs. Recruiters were telling me I was "unemployable" for anything else. They were wrong. From 2011 to 2013, I worked seven days a week for 30+ short- and long-term assignments.
Paid a pittance and they still aren't worth it...sucks to be them.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Gotta move them further than that. I suggest the Utah wilderness, far from roads, water sources (or liquor stores).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I think we can handle it.
Men, at least stereotypically, have better survival skills and can live in a tent somewhere while they do temp construction work to afford a shitty apartment where they can then live while they get hired on full-time at a fast-food restaurant.
Some men of course have mental illness and/or addiction and that is relevant.
I think we need more money for men's rehabilitative services...well all aspects of homeless services need more money, but men are more likely to be street addicts or homeless metally ill and that needs to be addressed
Thank you Dave Raggett
'Portlandia' is a documentary.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
That you have to explain. What's communist about ripping off your workers to make yourself even richer?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Problem is: in Seattle, Amazon is paying way more than a living wage and even the median wage; both have sharply risen due in part to Amazon. This has been one cause of the sharp increase in homelessness in Seattle (the others being drugs and mental illness).
So, your theory is: a company paying its employees more causes poverty. Really? That's what you're going with?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Try again. Chicago's main problem is a history of rampant corruption. And Detroit's poverty is largely the result of white flight in the 1970s, which was largely a reaction to race riots. Besides, Detroit didn't turn so strongly Democrat until the late 1980s—significantly after it became relatively poor. If anything, the progressive control was a direct reaction to the city's problems.
Seattle's high number of homeless is largely a result of climate. It is one of the few areas in the country where it almost never gets too cold at night to live out on the streets. As a result of the relatively good weather (though possibly exacerbated by broad availability of various support services), lots of homeless people from other parts of the country end up on the western coast.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Detroit hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1962. Chicago hasn't had a Republican mayor since 1931.
Wrong. That's not what "feminism" is...and it's not what progressive policies are based on.
Well, I'll grant you that if you are a GOPer/Conservative who willfully misrepresents what "feminism" is then your definition is the approved definition from your overlords.
Thank you Dave Raggett
Most of the homeless, including the mentally ill, would be happy to live in free housing, otherwise they wouldn't be going to shelters. Let's not throw up our hands and say "There's nothing to be done for these people short of locking them up!"
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
So, your theory is: a company paying its employees more causes poverty. Really?
No, he said it caused homelessness. If the cost of housing goes up because landlords/sellers can charge more because Amazon pays a premium, and your salary doesn't go up too, eventually you reach a point where you cannot afford to rent or buy a house and you become homeless. Your salary doesn't go down, but the amount of house you can get for that money drops drastically.
He may have put it poorly but there is some truth there.
There's a lot of homelessness in NYC and the overwhelming majority falls into two camps: those with mental issues and those with substance abuse issues. The percentage of able bodied and able minded people (is that a word?) who are homeless is a small.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
Most company towns in the US were built and run by very large corporations. I'm in western PA; there were a lot of those in the area. Company towns are a capitalist problem, not a communist one.
And you could not fake your CV accordingly to the problem?
That would be unethical. If I have done that, it might have compromised my chances of getting a security clearance for my current job.
You could not show yourself on paper as a less qualified person?
I'm not my brother. He was out of work for two years as well. He committed perjury every two weeks by claiming he was looking for work. He was using his unemployment benefits to start a landscaping design business.
The mayor is not the only elected official in a city. In fact, it is arguably the least important.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Repeat the myth, yet again.
When Reagan closed the loonie bins they were already empty as a result of the ACLU making the commitment procedures of the day, illegal. Not that I disagree with the ACLU. When government has the power to use the nut houses as political jails, it does.
Now please ignore this post and go on repeating some more mythology on another thread.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Communism is just scaling the 'company town' to a national level. It's worse.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Or, you know, you commute from farther away, like the rest of us, and look for a job close to where you now have to live.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And the result is: life gets better for everyone. That's what happens when successful companies pay their employees more. Life is not a zero-sum game.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Pray tell - what fucking sort of "minimum wage" jobs are you applying for that they asked for, or reviewed, a CV?
Restaurant, retail and warehouse. I did these jobs before I started my technical career. Keep in mind that there were seven applicants for every job opening in 2009-10.
Starting a business" isn't necessarily a disqualifying circumstance. As long as he:
1) "Looks for work";
2) "Doesn't work full time for his own company, even if it's unpaid";
3) "Declares any income he may receive from such work,";
1) Nope
2) Nope
3) Nope
There's no particular issue with collecting unemployment while you work on starting your own business.
We had an uncle who ran his own landscaping business while his family collected welfare. Cash under the table. Never filed taxes in 30+ years. Lived as well as my father who worked 50 years for three generations of owners.
So you spend forty hours a week writing these shit posts?
Nope. Slashdot keeps me amused while I'm waiting for scripts to get done.
For the "$50/month" in ads you claim to get?
That's free money for something I'm already doing.
Didn't trump just make America great again? How can we still have homeless people?
Because Seattle is a Progressive/Leftist hellhole that drives businesses and jobs away leaving people unemployed & homeless, for which the leftists then promptly blame the businesses and investors instead of their own insane and self-defeating policies.
Seattle got their homelessness problem the old-fashioned way....they *earned* it! As the Progressive controlled cities of Detroit and Chicago so clearly demonstrate, Progressivism kills freedom, jobs, economies, and the dreams of future generations,
Strat
The U.S biggest cities are NYC, LA, Chicago. Mind telling me how is it that the "conservative meccas of business" can't attract more businesses then these progressive hellholes? BTW the reason you hear about homelessness and other social issues in Progressive cities is because unlike the conservative hellholes we prefer to have a discussion about how to help those people instead of criminalizing homelessness so we can throw them in jail or force them out of town
Unfortunately, that seems to be as far as it gets, discussion.
That would be what a rational person would do, but Seattle is home to liberal thinking. If people can't afford to live there, charge the wealthy people building apartments more so you can build affordable housing. Never mind that this means higher building costs and less housing being built.
So the old joke is right?
What's capitalism?
Exploitation of man by man
And communism?
The opposite, of course.
In the end, the systems aren't too different. Here the party nomenclatura screws over the rest of the population, there the fat cats do it. In the end, your chances to get screwed aren't so different in either system.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Yeah the US$ is a total scam. Try a real currency with an actual intrinsic worth like bitcoin, or something stable like gold.
Man, you really need that seminar!
You should visit some slums, you would learn a lot. There are some good ones in south america, india, etc. I don't want to live somewhere where life is so cheap we allow firetrap codeless communities to exist. I'd support doing away with the anti hobo zoning laws that forbid cheap flophouses, or the camping idea.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Performing labor in exchange for food & shelter is slavery. Nothing more, nothing less.
And the only reason corporations don't try it is that they currently even get away with spending less on their workers.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.