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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.
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.
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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we need more unions
Just because you work in the city does not mean you should live in it or would want to, you just need to solve the population transport method from satellite towns (residential communities) to the cities.
Well, it's a bit more complicated than that. The reason people move to the surrounding areas is that they can have more space to themselves, like a single family residence with a front and back yard. If you were going to live in an apartment building you might as well do that downtown. That often means a population density which is critically low for public transport. A lot of the solutions are thus hybrids where you drive to a commuter parking attached to public transport and take the bus/tram/rail from there. I've always wondered if this might be an early use for self-driving cars, it works in a limited area with low speed local roads and if you can make cost-efficient 0.2-2 mile rapid-fire pickups it could tip the balance for a lot of people.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
>"The ASPCA says the *nationwide* average cost per dog is $1,000-$2,000 / year. [...] That's what dogs cost. It's not someone's FAULT, it's just a fact. Dogs need food, vet care, etc."
Cats, too.... they require less food/space, but just higher QUALITY food because they are true carnivores, and usually litter. And if you are NOT spending that much, then it is likely animal abuse because they are NOT being properly cared for. Poor nutrition, poor hygiene, no health care, no space, no parasite control, deplorable conditions, no attention. It is just like those "hoarders" shows- inevitably, they almost always have a bunch of abused pets in the mix.
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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"Let's be honest. If they contributed anything worthwhile to society, they would not be working at Facefook. Just human refuse, that's all."
FIFY
My town, a major tourist draw in rural northern Arizona, also has a low-cost housing problem. The place is full of artists and high-end retirees, but there is no low-cost housing for our service army of waitstaff, janitors, medical techs, and cashiers. The spare rooms the plebeians used to rent are now being Air BnBed out of their reach.
Last month, a solution emerged: an Evil Developer staked out a large trailer park on the main highway just outside the city limits in county territory, where it does not require city approval. Though it would handily solve the worker housing problem, local property snobs are reacting as though it's going to be "The Stacks" from Ready Player One.
Re "This is all rather rich... free markets to the rescue...."
Hows that gov control with waste in the streets and people living in RV working for decades?
Need another city and state tax to support the poor?
Let the free market build some new housing by removing gov control over the number of new homes.
The free market will fill released land by building homes that will sell in that area.
Wealthy people get nice new homes. Rents will reflect the price the value of a nice area, that's clean and has no crime.
Middle class areas get affordable homes.
Poor areas get rent supported homes.
Wealth keeps the different communities well apart and tech workers will enjoy their new homes.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"