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Two Miles From Facebook's Headquarters, Working Poor Live In Trailers (mercurynews.com)
"The working poor are spilling into Bay Area streets for lack of safe, affordable shelter," report two Silicon Valley newspapers describing a "pop-up neighborhood" that's now banding together, "a small community of blue collar RV dwellers...fighting for the only place they can call home."
The beautifully-illustrated article begins with an interview with a grey-haired woman named Lisa Cosey-Steven: [D]espite steady work and little debt, she trudges back and forth to the office every day from a dark RV trailer, packed floor to ceiling with bags of clothes, pet supplies for her seven dogs, thriller novels and food. Cosey-Stevens, 63, has been parked on the shoulder of Bay Road in East Palo Alto, just about two miles from Facebook headquarters and some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, since June. "No one knows how badly I want out of this," she said during an interview in her trailer. "It's depressing to live like this...."
She's part of an unplanned and impromptu RV park, about 80 people pushed out of apartments and into trailers and the edge of homelessness... Their neighborhood of about 50 RVs lines the eastern end of Bay Road and Tara Street, next to a stretch of salvage yards, warehouses and empty lots guarded by chain link fence. It's just off a thoroughfare for local tech employees and sits adjacent to the site of a new, multi-million dollar youth education center, Epacenter Arts. Several of the aging RVs have large banners draped over the sides, making pleas to the big employers in the area: "SOS -- Facebook, Sobrato, Amazon, Google."
The [RV Families Association of East Palo Alto] has a grand vision for East Palo Alto, a city steeped in activism and landlord-tenant disputes: to get a few acres donated by a major tech company to build an RV park with security, facilities and regular, affordable rent for low-income workers. But first, they're fighting City Hall to keep their homes. A proposed ordinance working its way through city government would ban most RVs from overnight parking on city streets.
"It's not like they're trying to be a nuisance to the city," says the mayor of East Palo Alto. "It's a survival thing. It's a strategy, a tactic to survive for a while."
"We are the working homeless," says a 57-year-old upholsterer and Navy veteran "who moved into his RV after his rent in East Palo Alto doubled to $4,000 a month." Another family lost their Redwood City apartment when their landlord increased the rent from $1,300 to $2,800 a month.
The beautifully-illustrated article begins with an interview with a grey-haired woman named Lisa Cosey-Steven: [D]espite steady work and little debt, she trudges back and forth to the office every day from a dark RV trailer, packed floor to ceiling with bags of clothes, pet supplies for her seven dogs, thriller novels and food. Cosey-Stevens, 63, has been parked on the shoulder of Bay Road in East Palo Alto, just about two miles from Facebook headquarters and some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, since June. "No one knows how badly I want out of this," she said during an interview in her trailer. "It's depressing to live like this...."
She's part of an unplanned and impromptu RV park, about 80 people pushed out of apartments and into trailers and the edge of homelessness... Their neighborhood of about 50 RVs lines the eastern end of Bay Road and Tara Street, next to a stretch of salvage yards, warehouses and empty lots guarded by chain link fence. It's just off a thoroughfare for local tech employees and sits adjacent to the site of a new, multi-million dollar youth education center, Epacenter Arts. Several of the aging RVs have large banners draped over the sides, making pleas to the big employers in the area: "SOS -- Facebook, Sobrato, Amazon, Google."
The [RV Families Association of East Palo Alto] has a grand vision for East Palo Alto, a city steeped in activism and landlord-tenant disputes: to get a few acres donated by a major tech company to build an RV park with security, facilities and regular, affordable rent for low-income workers. But first, they're fighting City Hall to keep their homes. A proposed ordinance working its way through city government would ban most RVs from overnight parking on city streets.
"It's not like they're trying to be a nuisance to the city," says the mayor of East Palo Alto. "It's a survival thing. It's a strategy, a tactic to survive for a while."
"We are the working homeless," says a 57-year-old upholsterer and Navy veteran "who moved into his RV after his rent in East Palo Alto doubled to $4,000 a month." Another family lost their Redwood City apartment when their landlord increased the rent from $1,300 to $2,800 a month.
And yet cities continue to build new office buildings without building enough places for people to live, then wonder why there aren't enough places for people to live. When more people come without enough places to live, that will drive prices up: that is how supply and demand works.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm supposed to feel sorry for someone who has seven dogs? Life choices man. She chose the expense of seven dogs over the expense of non-disgusting housing.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
...but that's their fault because they're far too lazy to pay for an education.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
They need to move out as it depresses real estate prices around FB HQ (told to me by an FB employee).
Force Silicon Valley companies to move to other parts of the country at gun point.
and prep land for developers. That's the expensive part of building homes, not throwing up a frame and some wiring/plumbing around it. Folks don't realize how heavily the US Government subsidized their lives in the 50s, 60s and 70s. The just took all that for granted. Land developers sure as hell aren't going to pay to get that land ready themselves, and since the government ain't paying anymore it's just not getting done. The result is massive housing shortages in a lot of places.
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I lived in the E. Bay for 24 years before returning to the East Coast.
Its certainly a shame that their rents went up, however PA about as prime a real estate setting as SF.
Maybe if they tried moving a little further South they'd find it just a bit more economical?
I'm sure someone will whine that 'Hey, they shouldn't be forced to move..' or some such.
Property ownership is pretty onerous in CA, and the past decade of the recession caused millions to lose their houses, everything.
Now its flipped, and people are finally no longer underwater, and we;re supposed to feel sorry yet again for people complaining about how they can't live outside their means...
Humans
we need more unions
Why does Slashdot have so many anti-capitalism articles. Iâ(TM)m assuming most of us have tech careers and are making at least low six figures. The current system is working for us! Who are these articles supposed to appeal to?
I can't speak for Slashdot or the intentions of their staff. Having said that, not every communication is designed to "appeal to" you. Sometimes, the purpose is to show you a view that you may not already agree with in order to promote thought and discussion.
I'll give an example. Given your comment above, one could ask the question: do you care about the large numbers of people for whom the current system is not working very well? Can you imagine any way(s) to improve things for them that don't require sacrificing the situation you enjoy?
astroturfing of a total twat?
It's trolling. They're trolling for page views.
The current system isn't working for you, you just don't realize it because you have your head in the clouds and can't see all the people you're stepping on. A 100k salary means you could retire after 3 years of working and have enough money invested to live in the cheapest parts of the country for the rest of your long life. Or are you planning on working for the rest of your life in order to buy things which you use in a no-winner race to make yourself feel more important than other people?
As long as tech companies continue to claim they're trying to improve the world, we should see stories like this.
cities are always able to find enough money to buy new stadiums for the wealthy but avoid assisting homeless and working class (Atlanta tore down a 20 year old stadium and assisted with building a new stadium because the owner wanted it - the old stadium was good enough as a sports stadium for another 30 years or it could have been repurposed as a homeless shelter)
Bay Area poverty is making less than $100k/year. I bought my SoCal house 20 years ago for $170k. See the math here? Facebook, Sobrato, Amazon, and Google drove out everyone but the almost 1%.
Working doing what? Can they do the same job somewhere with a lower cost of living? If all the janitorial staff, baristas and other miscellaneous labor moved out of the SF area, it wouldn't be that nice a place to live anymore. At some point, as the general labor pool starts to leave, supply vs demand will start to push pay rates up to where the workers can afford the cost of living. Problem solved. But that raises the question: Who leave first?
Every place that has undergone an increase in wealth has attracted an excess of laborers, all hoping to cash in on some of it. And as such, they are all underbidding each other for the menial jobs. The first person to move on to a cheaper town will always think that they might have landed one of the higher paying jobs. And so they stay. And more arrive.
Have gnu, will travel.
zone and build RV/Trailer parks on vacant city land.
Maybe the current system is working for you and me, but shouldn't we strive to improve the conditions of all mankind?
I for one am not in a position where I can say that I earned everything I have. I was just born quite smart and reading and learning was a fun activity for me. My wife thinks actually doing sports is fun, while I tend to disagree (and look the part). So I got some good genes for being smart and some bad genes for not liking sports. Should someone with different luck just be punished for that? There is only so much you can do to improve yourself, because you'll simply not achieve the levels of someone with the genetic predisposition.
Do I deserve my salary? Probably yes, because there are not many people, who can do what I do. Does my wife deserve to be paid a fifth of what I get? She's a very good nurse, and probably her job is more important than mine, since I'm just there so some banks stay in business, while she's saving human lives on a daily basis.
So yes, the system works for me. Is it therefore a good system? Absolutely not!
it is tough to make a decent living. You could not pay me to move to places like California, Florida, Oregon, New York or Washington State or DC. Heck I would be more likely to go to Detroit. Even if you do make 6 figures your working poor. 3-4k for an apartment, horrific taxes, crime, crowds, etc? But then people have made their choices so i guess they have to live with them.
;)
Protesting to get help from the government will never be able to do anything except create more misery and expecting help which at best will be temporary from big tech is foolish. As is saying oh I have to live here i don't have a choice.
The moment you don't think your choices matter, your situation is the fault of others, can only be fixed by others is a huge trap.
I know many hate to hear it but Independence, Personal Responsibility, Work Ethic are the only ways out of the trap these individuals are in.
I know no one wants to hear that but it is the truth. And I am not rich, this year is the first year I have even come close to making 6 figures.
Just my 2 cents
Virtue signalling? Political correctness.
People with the wealth that never to have to live in high crime and near poverty areas like to show how they would make other parts of a city better.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Amazing that this gets downvoted to -1 Troll. He's 100% correct.
America has a growing problem with homeless people with full-time jobs, and it's worse in places like Silicon Valley, where all the tech yuppies have driven up real estate prices. The working class people with RVs are the ones who are doing pretty well as silicon valley has lots of wage-earners in much worse shape than that.
It pains me to admit this, but the fact that America--the wealthiest nation on Earth--has a growing number of homeless people with full-time jobs is perhaps an indication that it's time to admit that capitalism failed, and it did so more or less the way communists predicted, which is more or less the way it failed the last time. Even with its bread lines, the Soviet Union did a better job of providing for the well-being of the population than this.
It isn't anti-capitalism, but the problem with businesses lack of morals. More specifically silicon valley. The arrival of wall street being involved really changed things
The politicians in the SF Bay area don't care about anyone but the rich. There also hasn't been any new Section 8 housing in nearly 10 years.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
I live in a trailer on 200 acres (15 miles from a major city) that I saved to buy in cash and I'm 10x happier than everyone I know up to their eyeballs in debt to live in their shoddy suburban McMansions. It's fantastic.
A person with skills doesn't have to pay $4K/month for a tiny apt in a certain zip code - they can MOVE.
Ken
So, what's the ratio of homeless in the US vs. the people who died in the old Soviet Union when they were doing "a better job of providing for the well-being of the population"?
They relocate to places where state and local gov't give them $48K per worker in tax savings... Amazon HQ2.
Ken
Absolutely. I would love to live on a trailer on 200 acres! Plus this twat in the article ... anyone that lives in an RV with seven dogs, clearly doesn't make logical or educated decisions!
Not sure why some are always looking for who to blame, while actively denying the very basic idea of cause and effect.
The ASPCA says the *nationwide* average cost per dog is $1,000-$2,000 / year. Things cost 43% in California, on average, so that's roughly $2,100 / year per dog. Total $15,000 / for the dogs. That's what dogs cost. It's not someone's FAULT, it's just a fact. Dogs need food, vet care, etc. If you spend $15,000/year on dogs, and another $15,000/year on whatever odd choice, you're left with less money to take care of yourself. That's called arithmetic, not fault.
It's funny - just this morning I had a conversation with my daughter, mostly listening to her talk. First she said she wanted all of the toys in the Ryan's Toy Reviews line, now available at Walmart. Next, she said she'd spend ALL of her money on those toys. "But then I couldn't get any other toys", she said. "I want to have money in my gifting cup to buy gifts for my friends", she continued. With me barely saying a word, she quickly reasoned through that she did NOT want to spend all of her money on Ryan toys. Maybe just one, she decided. Maybe one Ryan toy would be good.
My daughter understands the cause and effect of choosing to spend money on one thing means you don't have that money for other things she wants. She's four. Four years old.
Enforce parking laws. No more RV camps on streets.
No more tent cities on roads and paths.
Get caught placing trash and waste in the streets? Police get to enforce the law.
Open drug use in the streets? Police.
Crime in the streets? Police and lots of new CCTV to track criminals.
A person is living on the streets? Get them support, medical help, find them another city with the support they need.
That removes the crime, waste, trash, drug use and blocked road problems.
Change zoning rules in poor parts of a city so investment and gentrification can move crime and poverty out of the nice city areas.
New clean, safe buildings near the nice new tech job centres.
Allow more gated communities to ensure investors are safe.
Stop making new building accept a percentage of poor people as part of their approval to build a new building.
Need more housing for the working poor, poor? Set aside areas of the city for poor people and their needs.
Offer tax credits and consider changes to permits to build low cost housing for poor people in city approved areas. Have the city help poor US citizens with rent but only in approved low cost areas.
Test each US citizen for citizenship and their wealth. Look after the poor US citizens using city funds. Don't use city funds on people with wealth.
No city spending and no city services for illegal migrants.
The city can then look after more poor US citizens with less need for more tax spending.
Less new taxes makes the safe and clean city attract for investment again.
The city becomes great again.
No more moving poor people into middle class and wealthy areas with the city paying rent to change the "demographics" of once safe and clean wealthy areas.
That will create very seperate nice areas for the wealthy and their tech jobs. For the poor to have clean and spacious housing in a very different part of a city they can afford.
Approve some malls, shops and parks. With new police to cover all parks and malls. Consumers spending money and people enjoying recreation again without crime, trash on streets, open drug use.
Everyone is happy. Low cost housing is ready for the working poor. The wealthy are safe and productive in their part of the city.
Add in a low cost transport system to get the poor to their jobs on time every shift.
Allow better city planning so private bus services can move skilled workers from good housing areas to good jobs.
Skilled works can then enjoy their bus commute only every seeing nice parts of a city.
That will attract more skilled workers fleeing other cities with crime, trash, waste, taxes, tent cities, a RV problem and ever more new city and state taxes.
The type of cities that ban employee cafeterias and have new taxes will become less attractive.
Find new police who can enforce laws about trash, waste, crime, drug use, have the ability to move on a RV.
Clean up every city.
Watch as investment returns. Housing supply meets demand again as city planning is done on the wealth of an area, not "demographics" and political considerations.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The sheer amount of homeless people in this area, which I have been told may be over 22,000 is daunting. The powers that be in this area have generally not been inclusive of the needs of the poor an low-income people.
There are even some 2,000 college students that represent the future of America, who are now stricken with homelessness in this areas.
Whatever was supposed to happen to put a check and balance the asymmetrical, biased political power of the corporate giants and house-flippers who invest in this area--has failed.
I likely am going to be homeless in a few weeks. As a person with a disability, as I look deeper into the resources here in California. What I have found by following the leads has simply been one of the most disheartening things I have witnessed.
I heard was "low-income" housing exists, which honest people with a SSD/SSI income could never afford. The lay of the landscape currently has a 1-5 year waiting list for a place to live. Yet, I have heard that some housing exists for people making as much as $75,000/yr. I checked up on homeless shelters where a homeless person is not even afforded a wall to put their back against. I have read of a shower and wash van, supporting the homeless that only comes to an area once in a week.
[Who would want to sit next to a person who only showered/bathed once in a week?]
In all honesty, as someone who has written proof that I have tried to add my name to the HUD waiting list for a nearly a decade, I am deeply upset. Yes, clearly I am upset for myself, but also for I am upset for the other homeless people, many of which (also) have disabilities.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
It does not matter how "much" you make. People who make $40,000 are wealthier than many in silicon valley.
you buy dry food in bulk and put them down if they get sick. Also, if you're a 63 year old woman living in a trailer you need a lot of dogs for protection. She could ditch every one of those dogs and wouldn't have the extra $2k/mo it takes to rent a tiny, dumpy apartment.
And what's with all the non-stop poor shaming? Is this supposed to make you feel better about abandoning these folks to their miserable fate? Does it? Somewhere in the back of your mind it's gnawing on you, how you're letting fellow Americans live like shit. The Americans who do work you want done.
Bottom line, You want those people to live near where you are so they can cook, clean and fix your plumbing but you'll be damned if you want to pay for them to have an OK life. When people bitch about "gentrification" that's what they're talking about. You know that's messed up, so you do crap like this to try and convince yourself it's their choice. Gives you an out, but like I said, it gnaws on you, doesn't it?
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It's an imperfect system but also happens to be far superior to all the alternatives. There is no perfect system.
I for one wouldn't mind living in a travel trailer aka an RV. Some are very comfy. What the people in the story are living in, on the streets of San Jose and surrounding cities, are old refurbed box trucks. Think Uhaul rentals kind of trucks. No windows, one door and zero light or air. And did I mention cold? Cold. No insulation or sound proofing. Some people pay monthly rent to live in these squalid conditions. They shower at work or the gym. Now THAT's not a life.
I can't speak for others, but I have a tech career and I make decent money, and the system works for me precisely because I don't live or work in Silicon Valley.
That is simply the unstoppable path of the new economy. We are now told that all the jobs have to be in one of the 10 "Superstar" cities in the USA, because good jobs can't exist in a metro area unless there are millions of people there, because they can only find good workers in those 10 cities. But that high pay only goes to the Rock Star employees. Empty the trash? Why should you deserve any more money than someone emptying trash in Kansas? The result is that housing is bought by the people making $150k and up, and no one really wants to live like they do in Tokyo or Hong Kong, in small apartments in high-rise buildings, so they block that from happening without realizing that this puts $12/hour workers on the streets, or makes them commute 3 hours a day.
I'm reminded there is a British law enforcing minimum housing standards for dogs. Yes, there are several reasons for people losing a fixed dwelling, and possibly, additional reasons in "capitalism will provide" USA but it's time for her to take responsibility for her life: Firstly, seven dogs in a trailer (probably all day) isn't healthy for her, or for them. She should be punished for forcing them into that lifestyle. Then there's the poor health attributed to trailer parks, although poverty may have a part in that. Secondly, if she has a mobile home, then moving is easy: Get it towed and railroaded to another town. The difficult part will be finding a job. I say "you are your last job" but mental health and keeping the family together (her dogs) require sacrifice, in this case, her job. If she's earning crowded-city dollars but not paying crowded-city rent, she can afford to do all this.
Yeah! "Working Poor"? Obviously they're not working hard enough. Whatever... we still need people to shovel coal into the boilers.
you need the land graded, roads built, water, gas and electric lines run. You need police and fire departments. In otherwords, infrastructure. That's not billions, that's trillions of dollars in land development that was all done on the gov't's dime.
Zoning regulations are a red herring. The rich got tired of paying for working class Americans to have decent homes. The only reason they had to for a time was post WWII the working class, having just got back from fighting a war, had gained a sense of entitlement. They felt owed something. Also a _lot_ of working age men died in that war, meaning labor shortages. So for a time they were better treated. Those times have passed, and we're back to where we were in the 1920s. Better tech at food production and a few depression era policies (social security & medicare, food stamps, etc) have masked some of that, but even those are under siege.
What I don't get is why is it that confronting all this reality makes Americans so damned uncomfortable? It's not like anyone's gonna tax you to to the max. Odds are you're living paycheck to paycheck like the rest of Americans, and even if you've got a bit of savings it's not enough to matter. When it comes to raising taxes to pay for social programs it's the top 5% who would be the targets. And it's not like they'd lose much in the way of standard of living, what they're really lose is _power_.
That's what you're defending when you post stuff like you did: a group of ultra-wealthy power mongers who's wealth has ceased being material and become raw power.
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how can they live with themselves living so close to IMPORTANT people. these poor people should be ashamed of themselves.
From what I gathered, not all of the people living this way are poor - some are just trying to save a vast amount of money over getting even the cheapest shared apartment they can find...
This is another boon of autonomous cars, which instead of needing to find a safe and legal spot to part, can just drive through the night and have you wake up right next to the gym for a shower and that other S thing.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What progressives? This is corporate America.
That particular person is not the exemplar this article should have used. Sorry but if you have seven dogs you lose any right to claim poor victim. Call me an asshole but that's what I think.
If you grew up in poverty it's a struggle and you may not see clues that you could go to college or pass the google interview if you studied. That's like thinking that you're ridiculously better than everyone around you including people you may look up to.
Then even if you think you can go to college because people tell you that you're smart, you get good grades, etc. You might not get good advice about how to go to college, how to pay for it, what classes to take.
Think of how many people must have signed up for college watching the commercials on springer. A bunch of them would have done good for themselves at a real college or trade school or even free online classes.
I was in San Jose a few months ago and I knew about the homeless problem in Silicon Valley and I made it a point to look for the homeless camps. I saw them under highway bridges and along the sides of the roads. A friend of my told me there's a YouTube channel devoted on how to live on the streets in cars, vans, and RVs. These people were already suffering even though many have jobs. No doubt the horrible air quality that hit the city from the fires up north had a huge negative impact on their health. There is plenty of space to build dense cheap housing in the area, but the political will is not there or is being blocked for profit. I think the tv series "Silicon Valley" nailed it's hypocrisy with all the tech bro startups saying the wanted to "make the world a better place." Yeah, well making the world a better place starts at home.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Isn't this the way CA in particular has always been? Nice places next to "trash" with people owning nice places using their influence to have "trash" removed or otherwise obscured from view.
Nothing unusual except breathtaking extent to which CA governments have deliberately schemed to unnecessarily cause more "trash" to be generated than is customary.
By piling on enough costs and red tape they are able to deliberately retard the fruits of natural market demand for more housing by imposing regulatory policy/zoning restrictions necessary to accommodate higher density dwellings in the name of keeping nice places nice and away from undesirables.
What people should be doing instead of complaining about housing costs is organizing to vote the rich bums out and make them pay. Failing that staging good old fashion organized large scale protests on a continuous persistent basis. Those with "nice places" hate nothing more than undesirable "trash" annoying them each and every goddamn day until they get the message.
I modded it up, but SJW Slashdot is blind to truth and instead just sees the "boo-fucking-hoo" and forces it to -1 Troll. I sure miss the Rob Malda days of Slashdot. Today's Slashdot is nothing like the Slashdot of my college years.
which is why the average price of a home is north of $200k but Median income's around $67k/yr.
Residents don't care about property values. In fact they hate that their homes are "worth" $2M (more like $500k actually) because they can't afford the property taxes and they get forced out of the neighborhoods they spent their lives in.
Nobody really wants to live in a high density multi-story building for very long. I don't think humans are wired for that. You can do that in your early to mid 20s, but when you decide you want kids it's not gonna fly. We're used to having open space. Kids need a place to play. With proper transportation and building that's not really necessary either. But it means more highways, more roads and more infrastructure spending, and that means taxes on the ultra wealthy. It means putting an end to the wealth inequality that's as bad as it was in the 20s now. It means taking all that absurd power the 1%ers have away from them.
The question is, are guys like you gonna like the 1%ers have unlimited power, becoming the new kings? That seems to be the case. I'm not sure why you're doing it, I think you're just "kicking down", e.g. looking down on folks below your social standing to feel better about yourself. There's a saying I've heard before: if nobody's poor then nobody's rich. Thing is, that's an emotional thing, that desire to feel wealthy in the sense that you have more than other folks. It's being exploited to keep working class Americans at each other's throats. It's biting you in the ass. You're having everything taken away from you gradually and that's how the 1%ers are getting away with it. You might die before the worst of it happens (e.g. "I got mine, fuck you" school of economics) but if you're under 55 you won't. Nows the time to stop screwing around and shitting on the poor to make yourself feel better short term and actually solve the problems in your life and mine.
Demand better. Demand a decent life for all Americans. Demand guarantees of that decent life. Remember: you can tell how good a society is by how it treats it's least members.
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ok, so now when everyone camping illegally is in jail (which is very expensive / unaffordable in itself)...
now what...
"Nope. Not in California. We have Prop 13, which means that young people with families pay far higher property taxes than their older and richer neighbors living in a nearly identical house."
Two issues.
1) California VOTED that proposition in.
2) That Prop is a variable WHY housing is so expensive in CA.
If your property taxes were not capped, folks couldn't afford those 750k homes + the annual property tax on them.
If CA ever votes to remove Prop 13, a mass exodus would take place and the CA housing market will implode.
Finally, that law went into effect in 1978. FORTY f*cking years ago. Want to take a guess how old those " older, richer neighbors " were when it went into effect ?
Yup. They were the young people with families.
As you get older, uncapped property taxes keep going up and up. Eventually, even after the home is paid for, your taxes exceed what your monthly mortgage payment was. At some point you can't afford to live there any longer.
1. Decriminalize homelessness.
2. Establish emergency minimal-level shelters were people can shower/sleep, and wash their clothes.
3. Allow people to sleep in their cars, one car, one night, one block,
4. Require people who buy homes to own then for no less than 5 years or be fined, unless proof of financial hardship, divorce or partner split.
5. Restore Section 8 Housing for people with disabilities.
6. Discourage foreign investors and companies from purchasing homes.
7. Rezone areas to end single-family homes.
8. Make sure that homeless people can vote.
9. Rezone certain industrial and business buildings for shelter use.
10. Require all non-profit charities to abstract their organization or religious presence from their offer of help.
12. Require all California cities and towns to take in a certain percentage of the the homeless people.
13. Vote out the people who only represent rich people.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
There are several million illegal aliens in California..
Deport them (as should have been done long ago). Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of apartments (if not at least a million) will free up.
Problem solved. Wages for low skilled American workers would also go up at the same time too without all the competition from illegals..
You'd solve both problems at once!
The city has a task force that clears the homeless tent city out of the site for Google's new building.
China has helped 100's of millions out of poverty. It pains me to say it but they have done the best in the world at removing people out of poverty. But they are Communists.
They have a Communist party !
It's in the name.
Only CafinatedBacon / Crimson Tsunami will try to tell you China isnt Communist, but he/they always lie.
--
WindBourne
Government needs to make tax donations to the government tax deductible, so that people will donate to the government.
Are working homeless people.
Another family lost their Redwood City apartment when their landlord increased the rent from $1,300 to $2,800 a month.
So far as I know this shouldn't be possible, explain please?
THERE WILL ALWAYS BE CONSEQUENCES FOR YOUR LIES NAZI FAGGOT KEN DOLL
Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING. Filter error: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.
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Even the previous owners of the site were lefties. We used to have daily articles from lefty rags like slate.com
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The market dictates prices. Someone finds nearly three grand a month for rent is acceptable and pays it. Meanwhile in more sane areas of the country that would get a mortgage on a 3000 square foot home.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Last count, Google has over 50,000 employees in the bay area with its campus expanding all the way from Mountain View down into San Jose now. Facebook has under 15,000. Redwood City, 2014 Population: 90,000, just saw the opening of giant 6+ story apartment complexes that increase its population nearly 20% over a few months.
Cisco has over 60,000 employees in its massive 3-city campus at the north end of San Jose.
But the RV campus was previously lining El Camino Real in Palo Alto outside Stanford, it just wound up in East Palo Alto because they got kicked off the Stanford property.
Google, Facebook, and Apple all need their asses kicking for this stupidity of putting tens of thousands of employees into single buildings because it makes for "better creativity". Really? 2 hour commute each way makes people more creative? It makes them earn a ton of money of which they see none because of rent and living costs beyond ridiculous.
2 bed apt within 40 minutes of google is likely to set you back ~$3000/month.
-- A change is as good as a reboot.
Fuck those deplorables, always bellyaching about "jerbs" and "living indoors" and "having something to eat". Ingrates! Don't they know that in some parts of the world people live in stacks of used tires and are *happy* to eat a bowl of gravel every other day?
How dare those rednecks complain about their own disinheritance and destitution, when there are far more picturesque problems in distant exotic parts of the world that are fun to visit on vacation! Don't they know they live in THE RICHEST COUNTRY EVER!!!!1!!1!!???!?
In conclusion, those ignorant deplorables should pull themselves up by the bootstraps, after begging for a pair of boots. If only they would just put a little effort into it, they too can graduate from Stanford and take a seven figure sinecure with a loss-making, ultimately QE-funded startup company. Let them live in Palo Alto! Let them eat organic vegan steak tartar!
... by making it illegal. :(
Wall Street's been involved since the inception of Silicon Valley. So, no.
Just another day in Paradise
They relocate to where Bezos already had homes...NYC and DC.
Just another day in Paradise
More than the homeowners, since they only lose money if they sell the house, the landlords dont want their ability to charge what the hell they feel like to be infringed. And if you get housing benefit, that money goes to the landlord. Another wealthy owner class welfare. If government built homes for those in receipt of housing benefit and put them in those homes, the money would stay in government hands, or even go from federal to state funds, rather than leave government to become welfare payments to private individuals. It would lessen the price pressure on the lower rent homes so the landlords would have to improve their properties to make them rentable, and the change on the upper bracket housing would remain unchanged.
Everyone but landlords win. Even government spends less, reducing the deficit. But because landlords have money and government housing sounds more socialist, it will not be done.
if you don't know, the renter doesn't either, so how will they know that they've been stiffed, even if there WERE a law against it? And if there were a law against it, you can bet that it would be knocked down as "unconstitutional" as soon as it was used.
So what point is their computer skills when where they can live only has service jobs and plantation work?
See the origin of "Jawalking" in the USA. Educate yourself.
More trailer trash to vote Trump.
Sadly you can't just "free marked" to solve it either. Free marked is going to build the modern version of commie blocks, which can be somewhat pretty. And what will happen is that the size of the apartments is going to be too small, where prices will be "marked regulated" which is going to be built at a pace to go far above marked value.
But even if they did build commieblocks but with reasonable apartment sizes, and somehow pricing wasn't insane: There is still more problems ahead. For instance, the private company building the block is not building the local infastructure or the local roads/paths/bikeways to commute to wherever the workplace is. Which means they might not be attractive as the local city scape changes with the ages past. Commuting might be a pain, because there is always traffic jams or no public commute thats reasonable to just go there.
What i am saying is that its a multi facet problem, where short sighted profitable solutions will come back and bite anybody involved.
Well, are you?
Thank you for saying that. I actually get a bit self-conscious about my writing at times, so your post is meaningful to me.
I get self-conscious about errors - I said "things cost 43% in California", missing the word "more". I also often wonder if my logic is clear, if readers will be able to follow my reasoning.
In this instance, I almost posted a follow-up explaining that I meant it's not a moral issue (fault), but an arithmetic issue, a choice. If someone *wanted* to spend a million dollars a year on exotic animals while living in a tent they could certainly do that. I wouldn't *fault* them. I would just be aware that they could have chosen a nice house with no giraffes.
In this case, the story makes it sound like perhaps the person is unhappy with the results of their decisions. In which case, we can only "fix" that by a) educating them about their options or b) forcing them to do what we think is best, taking away their freedom to make "foolish" choices.
These problems affect poor people in liberal areas the most. However the housing crisis is also solvable. Three simple changes will remove the regulatory hurdles that prevent the market from resolving the housing crisis:
Remove setback requirements
Remove height requirements
Remove zoning restrictions for high density housing
Reducing regulatory overhead is a conservative value. It's also the only value that can solve the housing crisis as it allows the law of supply and demand to work. Unfortunately for current homeowners these changes will lower property values as the market adjusts to new supply. You can't solve the housing crisis by adding more regulations. Choose your values.
Because not enough landlords who routinely and successfully double people's rent have been ripped out of their homes and eaten alive while their families watched.
never drink kool-aid from a big vat
Allowing workers in legally and illegally has brought down the wages and made the average American citizen disposable. Sure some of the H1B1 or undocumented are very talented it should be made easy for these people to work and live in the US. Most however are a cheap source of labor with marginal skills but US industry wants it that way.
Those have worked so well every other time we've done that. I suppose housing projects are like communism, they just haven't been done right yet, but this next one, yeah that's the ticket.
It's really cool that these Facebook employees live only two miles away from work. It must really cut down on commute time and costs. Cause, ya know, things are really expensive in California.
These people tend to have "issues." Do you have any idea how much it costs to support 7 dogs, as this woman is doing? A large dog can cost you $50 a month in dog food alone, if not more. 7 dogs, $350 a month. That comes to $4200 a year. If your salary is $30K, with a take home of say 25K, you are spending 17% of your pay just on your dogs. How many apartments allow 7 dogs? My city has a legal limit of 3 dogs. So, we begin to see why she has to live in an RV.
Female. The reason I had her was she was freakishly huge and too big to breed so I got her at the pound. These are dogs bred to run along carriages and kill bandits. This is my 20s so she got plenty of exercise, which a 63 year old woman wouldn't be doing with her dogs. She cost me $20 bucks month and that was 'cause I bought the sightly higher quality dog food (having lost a cat to the cheap stuff).
Yes, you can spend a fortune on dogs if you want. But if you've just got a raft of them for protection/companionship their dirt cheap.
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What kind of mental health issue does that lady have that you are willing to destroy your life for an excessive amount of domestic animals? Like homeless people who complain they cant find shelter because they own a dog. Pull your $%#@ together. I have no remorse for anyone who cant try and help themselves.
RV != Trailer. If anything, RVs are even smaller and less suitable for a permanent residence than a typical trailer.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Right?
1.) Don't use FB.
2.) Unless you're obscenely rich, stay away from silicon valley and the Bay area.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
“a ceiling on rents reduces the quantity and quality of housing available.” [American Economic Review poll of economists, 93+% agreed]
Economists are virtually unanimous in concluding that rent controls are destructive. The agreement cuts across the usual political spectrum, ranging all the way from Nobel Prize winners Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek on the “right” to their fellow Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal, an important architect of the Swedish Labor Party’s welfare state, on the “left.”
Myrdal stated, “Rent control has in certain Western countries constituted, maybe, the worst example of poor planning by governments lacking courage and vision.”
His fellow Swedish economist (and socialist) Assar Lindbeck asserted, “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”
[https://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/RentControl.html]
How about not live in the most expensive area in the entire country?? I feel no sorrow for these people. Neither the companies or the people that work for them.
The inevitable answer to this kind of logic is "Poor people should be able to have pets, $150 shoes, and smoke if they want to. And you owe it to them to provide those for them."
How can this be possible in such a liberal state with high taxes, generous safety net, sanctuary cities, and prosperous businesses? I thought CA was a model for the rest of the country
Sure, let's have some pro-capitalism articles, where we showcase lives that a Profit First Profit Above All approach had a positive effect on.
>Why does reality have so many anti-capitalism events
Even assuming the readership is "low six figures" (which in a 50-50 divide is technically poor, not rich) we're not necessarily aligned with capital, with owing the means of production, with owning land, factories, supply lines, with owning rentseek money trees that safely print print print.
Fire up the RV, drive somewhere other than Palo Alto, and find a job there.
You and others in this comment thread don't understand the question fully: so far as I know, here in California, there is a cap on how much you can increase someone's rent annually. What they're talking about here is more than 10 times what I understood was the limit. The only way you can get around that is by issuing a 30 day notice to force the tennant to leave, then setting the rent wherever you want for the next tennant. There's been news stories about that this past year, too, it's a real scumbag practice. So how in Redwood City, California, did they raise someone's rent by $1500 in the same year? Shouldn't be possible so far as I know.
Bureaucracy and intermediaries are solving their economical 'crisis' by making life more difficult to workers that might also face an uncertain future...
Now they try to blame all those responsible for their actual crisis because they should have to live (and work) as the rest of us...
This is the way that they have always solved their problems. What a shame!
For when they would accept their new way of living, I hope that all the excluded from the American way of life could have solved their existence with a more creative, promising and realistic future.
"The working poor are spilling into Bay Area streets for lack of safe, affordable shelter,"
Most RVs I've seen are safe and affordable!
"fighting for the only place they can call home."
Most RVs I've seen are more than good enough to call home! "pet supplies for her seven dogs". Seven dogs are a bit much for an RV, but it is her choice, isn't it?
"from a dark RV trailer"
Most RVs I've seen have light switches!
"people pushed out of apartments and into trailers and the edge of homelessness..."
Calling RV living the edge of homeless? A lot of people dream of living in an RV, expecially after retirement, spending years touring the country.
"she trudges back and forth to the office every day"
People in mansions go back and forth to work. Are they trudging, too?
This is yet one more article written to spread discontent and anger.
Let's face it - companies are not going to solve this - it would cost them money and give them nothing. Individuals aren't going to solve this. Charities aren't going to solve this. This is where the government needs to step up and provide regulations. Perhaps unheard of in the US and considered socialist. Considered very normal and basic decency almost everywhere in western Europe...
Retirees are still spending money and paying taxes.
And they are doing plenty of that, living in comfortable homes, paying those property taxes, buying stuff and paying sales taxes, etc.
All that spending keeps the economy moving, keeps people employed.
These poor people living in tents, they are not paying property taxes and they aren't spending nearly as much. They mostly receive government assistance money. And, obviously, this existence SUCKS. So, why do they continue to accept it? Because they have no choice. Why don't they have any choice? Because they either cannot, or will not, work jobs that pay. And that matters, because the jobs that pay are the ones that are valuable to society.
So, there you have it. Retirees are contributing, whereas these homeless are not. Maybe the reasons why they aren't contributing are totally tragic and not their fault. Doesn't change the fact that they aren't contributing.
A country is unstable if a significant population depends on having to rent a place to live. We need to relax the laws against building new housing units.
It might get solved with electric self driving RVs maybe? I mean work in Palo Alto and commute to Gilroy or some place like that? Who cares if it takes an hour .. self driving and costs nothing if you recharge via solar panels at your home (all new homes in CA from 2019 on are required to have solar panels).
In NYC, it's possible to do sudden large rent increases by several ways. One way is by proving that according to property value and rent history, the landlord could've legally been charging a much higher rent for years already but they had kept it low for market reasons. Another way is by claiming that the property is actually much more valuable than it had been previously valued by documentation of renovations or improvements. I suspect similar loopholes exist in the Bay Area of CA.
At first i thought that this article was about the working poor in Seattle. It rings true here with Amazon and other tech companies. I recently moved out of a homeless shelter and i knew at least 5 people who worked for the 'Zon and still couldn't afford a room to rent situation. It is kinda the reason i got out of tech and into food.
some people are a "glass half empty" some are "glass half full" i'm a "there is something in the glass be happy" person
Zoning laws in the Bay Area are so strict that affordable housing cannot be built anywhere near tech giant headquarters. Relax zoning, and you'll see the price of housing come done. But then, that would make all the current owners angry, so that won't happen.
When I finished school, I moved to where the jobs were, and to where I could afford to live. That was 700 miles, in my case. I owned only a car and a bean bag. I slept on a cheap air mattress in an inexpensive apartment. I wasn't upset about this, it was just temporary until I was able to earn enough money for something better.
These days, people don't want to move for a better standard of living. Instead, they feel entitled.
These poor RV dwellers have made a choice. They value the job or the location more than they value having a house in a less expensive part of the country. Why do the rest of us have to impose our values on them?
They have a COMMUNIST PARTY, and are hence Communists.
Case closed.
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WindBourne
Many would wonder why you are so willing to lick the boots of the Capitalists. I'm sure they do appreciate the little people like you who so willingly keep out from under foot when they point somewhere and say "I WANT". Not very much though, since they will never bother to even learn your name or remember what you look like.
The lack of self awareness of "progressives" is astounding. You accuse your enemy, the evil "Capitalists" of pointing and saying "I want" when in fact that is exactly what you are doing.
until they put them down. If you get a dog from a pound (which most poors do) that's still better then them being put down right then and there for overcrowding. And those poors don't see docs themselves until they're hurting bad, what makes you think their pets would?
This is sort of the problem, folks who come from middle class families don't consider what life is like when you don't. The idea of not taking your pet to a vet every year is nonsensical. Among the poor that's just how it is. Hell, if she gets to take her dog to a vet to be put down in it's old age she's doing a lot better than a lot of rural folks who do it with a bullet.
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