Slashdot Mirror
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 have no more strategy for caring for stray animals than I do for the bears in the forest or the birds in the sky. And why should I?
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
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"
When city planning cant plan for long term housing and normal people have to live in an RV they are poor.
The problem is the "older and richer neighbors living in a nearly identical house". Stop trying to shape a city with demographics.
Free up land use and let the free market move in.
People who don't want to live in an illegal parked RV will then find homes as that demand for low cost housing exists.
Areas of the city will face huge property taxes changes.
Wealthy areas will stay wealthy and attract only more very wealth people.
Areas then free from city tax rates and efforts to shape "demographics" will then be open to new investment.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
There's so much confusion and error in your post that I don't even know where to begin. In fact, I'm just not going to bother. You are unable to see things through any lens other than class warfare, so there's no point in trying.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.