High rents force some in Silicon Valley to live in vehicles
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http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-U...
Free parking is the problem here, you shouldn't be able to leave your car on the street anywhere for long periods, especially not living in it. If you do this you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying owners and renters.
If the cost of the car registration included the true cost of parking on city streets living in your car would likely be much less attractive for these people who can afford housing but simply choose not to.
Why not? You cite taxes. If i am allowed to park my car overnight somewhere, what would disallow me from sleeping in that same car over the same period?
It's not an easy problem. The town I live in is debating it and working with other coastal councils to try and come up with solutions since the drivers do bring in a lot of revenue to the towns. Overnight washrooms are prone to vandalism that makes them costly to maintain for an example of a problem with an "obvious" solution.
You are going to need rangers to patrol anyway to see if the cars/vans have people sleeping in them.
Have overnight washrooms and have cameras to monitor them(obviously not inside the washrooms) as well as the streets. It's not a foolproof solution and the council still has to make a decision if all the expenses are worth it or not.
Yes but they only have to do a single pass and they can nab everyone sleeping in their vehicle. To catch people going to the toilet in public they need to be there all the time.
>Have overnight washrooms and have cameras to monitor them(obviously not inside the washrooms)
What good do cameras outside the washrooms do to stop vandalism inside?
Many people living in California, thanks to Prop 13, are also paying almost nothing to the system because they bought their house early on. Many could even afford property taxes on a current market valuation but the law still means they pay much less.
If someone rented an apartment with some friends there is a good chance the landlord is paying peanuts in property tax anyway.
Addressing the property tax imbalance is far more important than kicking out people living in cars. Many of them are genuinely out of options, despite this anecdote.
If the cost of property taxes included the true cost of owning a house in the bay area, living here would be a much less attractive for people who cannot afford housing here but simply got in earlier and live at the expense of newcomers (who are working hard and struggling to make ends meet)
There is no good reason you shouldn't be allowed to, as long as there's no disturbance.
Neither of these is true. You haven't posted a solution to the problem you've just tried to imagine a world where the problem doesn't exist.
So to implement your "solution" we'd need to what. Assess bladder strength in individuals then give them some sort of license to allow them to sleep in their cars?
If it's a problem then keep increasing the punishment or ability to catch perpetrators.
>ability to catch perpetrators.
How do you do this in a way that is affordable to local councils?
See this is another non-solution from you. In a perfect world we wouldn't have a problem but a perfect world is the only place where these solutions are going to solve one too.
Cameras are cheap. Hell, just a slap a bounty on footage.
>Cameras are cheap.
Paying to have people watch them isn't cheap though and it's not like with a store where you only need to check it when there is an incident you need to watch it all the time. You need people monitoring a lot of cameras all the time.
Of possible relevance: http://newatlas.com/bog-in-a-bag-backcountry-toilet-stool/24... and apparently supplies for such are called WAG Bags https://www.rei.com/product/662978/cleanwaste-wag-bag-waste-... - and they're even landfill approved and "can be disposed of in trash with regular garbage"
Edit: from the comments on the REI page, two other brands are "Biffy Bags" and "Restop Bags"
The gentleman in question paid off his student loans, contributes to his retirement, and sounds OK with life. None of that has ant bearing on if he should live on the street.
Anti-density home owners in California might be the problem. They shouldn't be able to stunt the housing market for long periods, especially not living in it. If you do this, you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying citizens who balk at, or can't afford, to rent.
If the cost of supporting regressive anti-density measures included the true cost then home owners would be overturning Prop 13 and removing building height restrictions. Instead, they simply choose not to.
In the meantime, it's excellent that homeowners are suffering the consequences of their decision to prevent their neighbors from living in real housing units by waking up to RVs as blight on their neighborhoods. It's not close to proportional for the massive damage they choose to inflict on the lives of those around them, but it's a start.
Homeownership certainly doesn't make someone evil, however, if in addition to owning a home they also attempt to make it difficult for subsequent residents to own a home, all the while taking advantage of the generous subsidies that Prop 13 provides and reaping the benefits of RE appreciation when it's time to sell, I think it's fair to call them out on it.
The unintended consequences didn't become apparent until much later.
There just seem to be so many better ways for fixed income people to keep their homes, like a tax rebate for seniors below a certain income... Although I disagree it is strictly necessary for grandma to keep her home, retires who can't afford their taxes could reasonably be expected to downsize once kids leave home or even god forbid cohabitate with their children as is very common in the rest of the world.
The housing market has few properties on the market, which is part of a why prices are so high.
Because of Prop 13 homeowners are the ones getting a free ride on property tax. The wide streets in SF, so big you could build another row of buildings in the middle, are caused by Americans' obsession with putting cars in places that could be served by subways.
If it makes you feel better, these people pay income and sales tax.
I like tiny homes and wanted to build my own place so it would meet my wants and needs. Zoning makes building small hard and land costs make it very expensive per square foot.
I like to travel and would rather take my home with me than sleep in a hotel or hostel.
To actually live in cities further away you'd need to drive at least 90 minutes, and realistically 2 hours - each way.
It costs me $300/month to pay for commute and parking, and a 2 BR apartment runs us $2500/month. It's a nicer area (for wife/daughter) but it doesn't really get far below $2,000 in even the worst areas, and that commute wears on you.
Don't come to Seattle. Stay in wonderful sunny california. It's so much better than Seattle.
;)
I'm probably gonna end up moving out of Seattle because of the rent. It's affordable on my salary, but I want to start really saving up so I can have more freedom.
My family (self, wife, two children) live what I'd describe as a modest lifestyle (for America). The home is big enough to be comfortable but not big enough to have "extras" (e.g. there's no space suitable for a private home-office). I would normally describe it as a comfortably middle-class (not affluent) lifestyle, but considering the savings and other perks the taxes pay for that'd be a bit disingenuous, in my view.
I do think the rent is excessive, though. The same home we're living in would sell for perhaps $150k-$250k (depending on neighborhood) in the location my wife's family lives. The high end of that range is a 25% down-payment on what the units in the community we live in sell for the last few months; a ridiculous valuation by any reasonable standard. There isn't as much cultural variety there, but it's not exactly a cultural wasteland (e.g. there are a variety of native-come-to-America run restaurants for Afghan and other similar foods, stores, a non-trivial presence of foreign-born non-whites, etc.). The offerings of the Bay Area don't justify the huge difference in prices.
But even Google money can't shake a small city council.
https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/23/viewpoint-city-shou...
In the same election, neighboring Palo Alto rejected the "residentialist" slate of candidates.
It was only really obvious to me what the benefits were after I visited Palo Alto. For Stanford spinouts, you can literally go visit 10 VCs within a 20min walk. If must make life so much easier.
For larger companies, they still want to interact with VCs and aquire startups. They also want access to other forms of capital/banking services which are available in the area.