The Homeless in Silicon Valley
newrepublic.com
newrepublic.com
My van was towed once when I was out of town and construction notices were placed after a few days. That stung. Otherwise, it has been fine. If everything in the van was stolen I'd be out $1,000.
Sign of the times.
Still, though.
Which suggests the market's more fucked up than I care to think -- insane and all-but-unaffordable rents and still oversubscription.
Not so appealing
I know a few people who move here and discreetly lived in their car until they got a good job. I even know a guy who was a unix guy like me, who quit working with computers during the real-estate boom and became homeless in the crash. He's been living out of his car for a while, while looking for work.
As far as I can tell, the factors for success are
1. make sure it's not obvious you live in the van.
that is all.
You're telling me in the middle of the night if you wake up and have to pee, you're really going out to a bar and finding a restroom? I think not. At worst you're peeing onto the sidewalk or into a bush and at best you're peeing into a bottle in your van and then dumping it out on the street.
I report anyone I can tell living in a van on our streets to the non-emergency PD line, and they come out and they make them move.
I have noticed similar things in Europe and Australia.
As I see it this is a symptom of housing becoming too expensive. By a perverse logic the only thing the powers that be do is to make sure that housing becomes even more expensive. In that way people buying too expensive houses are saved by house price appreciation.
How this will end is no longer obvious too me, however people in top paying jobs living out of hostels or vans for me is a sign of erroding real wealth in our society.
The political will is a big problem. Homeowners are much more likely to vote than people like me. In San Francisco, the latest new regulation/roadblock is that any increases in waterfront height limits have to be approved by voter proposition. That regulation was passed by simple majority, 8.5% of San Francisco residents voting in favor. This is pathetic. We need to be involved in reforming our neighborhoods.
I do hardware, though.
Out of concern for what the other respondent said-
I looked for you, people suggest a kind of self-contained bathroom -
https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/comments/2ve9qf/how_man...
specifically this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004SFKJIQ?ref_=cm_sw_r_awd...
I don't think that $70 will cut into your life too much :) Even though it's well-sealed and hygienic, if it were me I would also put it into a large black trash bag, rolling the sides down to expose it when I needed it, also keeping new and a grocery bag of used sanitary wipes (baby wipes) in the same bag, and so after use I would clean my hands carefully and put the used wipe into the grocery bag of used wipes in the same black trash bag, then manually roll the trash bag back up, sealing it hermetically, and probably even put something on top.
Who wants to sleep next to a toilet - but out of sight, out of mind. This would likely take about five minutes of work but I'm sure beats the alternative if you have to do some business at night. I would try to avoid using this at all. But it would probably lend you some peace of mind to have around in case you really need it. Empty it in the woods.
As for piss, I'd probably piss in a large opaque bike bottle - since it says sports - and bike with it to work. On my way back I'd empty it somewhere (for example into a gutter, it's just biological, totally a non-issue), or keep it on my bike. worst case scenario someone learns a lesson in stealing.
it all sounds doable and a nice hack/challenge.
The reason is (as the paragraphs just below this line indicate) in fact the same reason for a great deal of issues in the Bay Area: lack of regional planning.
Planning in the Bay Area is far too localized. Cities constantly pawn off problems on each other. There are cities that approve thousands of new units of office space but zero housing. Transit systems don't connect to each other. Sports stadiums are constructed with no thought as to how people will arrive. Freeways have lanes that appear and disappear at various county boundaries, causing dangerous congestion. On and on. It's also why so many cities don't have enough shelters and just seem to expect (as the article states) that other nearby cities will pick up the slack.
What is needed is for the disparate cities of the Bay Area to stop passing the buck and come together as a region and plan together. Continuing to hope someone else does the hard work of solving problems will continue to result in them not getting solved.
Regional governance seems to be the answer, but making that happen seems like an impossible task.
As we have seen here, regulation like rent control is much more harmful than helpful. Rather than needing to cough up an extra $50 per month for example, you wait until the market rent is double what you're paying now - and naturally, get kicked out for one reason or another.
If zoning was dramatically curtained and / or abolished, the housing problem would be solved almost overnight. The high property prices ARE a market signal saying, build more houses. Regulation is preventing efficient markets.
Aren't "cities" just manifestations of players within the greater market system coming together to assert their interests and preferences?
Or is this an example of how a group can act to block the proper functioning of a market, kind of like a cartel?
In San Francisco, the latest new regulation against housing was passed by a simple majority of the vote, with 8.5% of San Francisco residents voting in favor. In the latest election, the moderate District 3 supervisor was replaced by a rabid anti-growth supervisor with the approval of 12% of the district’s residents.
This is actually sort of by design. Americans in general are pathetic (I do not mean apathetic) about their civic responsibilities, but aggressive home ownership policies were pushed partly to get people more involved in politics. Turns out that this promotes narrow-minded personal interest rather than the good of society.
Given the geographical constraints and the velocity of tech growth, it's really unlikely that a free market would build so many units that all the high-paid tech workers who could possibly come to the Bay Area were situated, and landlords were forced to start catering to the working poor. We have to force them to, because market incentives won't.
Without the restrictions on development (which are designed to keep the area desirable, and succeed at that, as shown by market prices) desirability would drop -- because you'd have more people, and less money for services per person -- along with prices, and tech companies would be more likely to locate elsewhere.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Developer-pulls-o...
Removing the regulation would move us further towards "people with money can get housing." I want a livable city for everyone, including those without the resources to outbid me, and that requires different kinds of regulation.
Not to fully respond to your trollbait, but the market isn't god. Its just smarter (i.e. crowdsourced) than a few government officials about establishing what society wants.
When market participants are playing with roughly similar amounts of money, or at least roughly normally distributed amounts of money, sure. Markets give us the best consumer products. Part of how they do that is slicing the "budget" and "luxury" segments away into their own little worlds, where they don't do too much damage to everything else.
Inequality in the Bay Area housing market is so extreme that the best use of capital (in a market sense) is to exhaust it on the luxury segment and leave everyone else out in the cold. This might be "what society wants, weighted by salary" but that is importantly different from "what society wants" in this case.
Imagine if general income inequality was such that the auto industry found it optimal to produce only a few thousand Bugatti Veyrons, leaving everyone else in the cold. At the very least, we'd have to force it to produce some tanks and aircraft engines in case of war.
These are scapegoats. If the city started building social housing the shortage would be over.
If those pesky zoning regulations were eliminated property developers would flood in and build thousands of luxury apartments which would be bought by Chinese investors and left empty much like all the other property they've bought.
For everybody else it's a (rather poor) allocation mechanism that implicitly favors monopoly power, wealth and corruption. Great if you happen to have a lot of wealth thanks to your connections in the Chinese Communist Party I guess, and are looking for an American bolthole. Not so great if you're an American primary school teacher who grew up in the Bay Area.
Companies are focused too much on silicon valley. People are willing to live like animals putting up with appaling conditions and subjecting themselves to insane costs and commutes. They would certainly move a few hundred miles for the same job with decent rent 10 min from the office even with a pay cut. The market can fix this problem right now without deregulation. But it won't get fixed until more companies actually start hiring outside of SV.
1) San Francisco spends a ton of money on the homeless. Over $40k per homeless person per year. "If big SF spends so much on the homeless, why should little ol' us?"
2) The weather in the Bay Area is not particularly harsh. Yeah, it might get cold 1-3 days a year, but it's not really bad. You're not going to die from exposure to the elements like you would in Cleveland, Detroit, or even Dallas. "No one will die sleeping outside here" is a common thought.
I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with these thoughts, but this is what peninsula planners think.
In many ways, $40k per person is a low-end figure.
"It costs the city $61,000 per year between ER’s, jail, and support services per homeless person living on the streets."
Old friends of my family still own a house in Campbell. Retired now, even with ups and downs, their mentality is "we aren't splitting up, because we can't afford to go anywhere". The build out of the Bay Area, lack of planning, etc. is taking a toll and making it hard on current and retired blue collar workers.
That said, I live in Santa Cruz and have very little pity on the "I should be allowed to live where I want". Mostly because over here, our "3000+ homeless" are 2/3 (according to a UCSC/Civinomics survey) didn't reside here before becoming homeless. We have way too many services, few rules, and a lot of "compassion" -- to the point of people being publicly called out if you publicly ask about "compassion".
The Bay Area is expensive, yes one would like to stay where their friends are, but one should also be open to where they can afford. For instance, locally, we keep being lectured about needing "safe places for RVs to park", yet these RVs aren't local, and a simple search of CL, a trailer park in Modesto has spaces (including utilities) for $15/day.
Also, why is living in a van preferable to moving somewhere where they can afford the housing?
If there is a factor of luck or context somewhere involved in their last X years it would mean statistically mean that there are people in similar situations who did everything right on their end.
And this can happen to anyone with the right kind of car accident.
If you don't particularly need a large space, why not?
There are credit cards offered with cash back. Endless TV ads for new cards including finance. It's a lot of pressure on people without family/peer support holding out against these things.
While those numbers sound at first high. It's not such a crazy high amount of people. (from what i know cities like Vienna or London also have at least a forth of that number (couldnt find stats))
The "homelessness situation" is next to cost of living the #1 thing i hear from people who don't want to relocate here. And tbh it's also the reason why i dont plan to stay in SF for longer term.
I know there is no easy answer to the problem of homelessness in the bay area - but it doesnt sound unsolvable.
[1]: http://www.myphilanthropedia.org/top-nonprofits/bay-area/hom...
2. Homeowners should not worry so much about their property value. It's all going to be destroyed by an earthquake. I wager that the homeless are better prepared, and more likely to survive the Big One.
Of course this is common place in China already for the factory workforce...
I had to move out because the particular one I was in was too close to industrial smog, but I have friends who still live in a $150/mo corporate dorm after 6 years working there. Not a bad arrangement at all since many of us went home exclusively to sleep anyways.
What you have is people from all over the world swarming SV because you can't get that job in Cork or Boise.
Everything doesn't need to be in silicon valley. If someone is willing to live in their car for a job, with all the social baggage, sneaking around and unhygienic side effects that entails, surely they would be willing to move to a less crowded place like Portland to do the same job.
If the nexus for every single tech company must remain in SV then these companies could set up satellite offices around the country or allow people to telecommute with robust teleconferencing setups that turn a monitor into a window. Then just hang it up on the wall in your office and turn it off when you're not working.
Seriously people. You don't have to live like animals. I have a decent software job where I live. I pay $700 rent and look what I get to do every weekend
We literally climbed in a shadow for 6 hours before getting into the sun. It was ridiculously invigorating.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html?_r=0
The temperature seems right, how hard would it be doing a stealth van situation and showering at the gym?
Shower: YMCA on Ross Road Food: non-perishable stuff Work: Hacker Dojo.
I slept in a Mormon church parking lot most nights
https://www.google.com/search?q=oakland+temple&rlz=1CDGOYI_e...