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Comment by felipelemos | Hacker News Reader

Imagine the situation. The only property that you have is a truck. You get out of money and cannot afford gas anymore, so for 72h straight your truck stay parked in some street. The city notices this and impound your vehicle. Now you have to:

1. Pay for the time your vehicle is in city deposit and the fine

2. Do nothing and wait for your vehicle got auctioned.

You end up with the second option because you don't have any money (or the car wouldn't be impounded in first place). So you now have: a fine to pay and no car.

And no place to live.

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  for 72h straight your truck stay parked in some street

That's misrepresenting the facts. He may have been there for weeks; the article didn't say. What it does say is:

"When officers saw the truck, which was not operable, they called a city parking enforcement officer, who tagged it and told Long he had to move it within 72 hours (of the tagging)... Long tore off the impound sticker... and left the truck in place. The parking officer waited at least four days before having the vehicle towed, giving Long extra time to buy a part needed to get it running. When the enforcement officer returned Oct. 12, the truck was still there but Long was not, and the vehicle was towed."

The officers didn't know initially that it was outright inoperable. Simply pushing the vehicle (or having it pushed) to the next adjacent space complies with the letter of the law; he may have volunteered that it was inoperable hoping for an empathetic extension (which he received), yet he still didn't move or fix it. Since its release, it's right back on the street, inoperable.

Just another one of those fun ways that being poor in America is ludicrously expensive.

So how does this play out in Europe? Say, a poor immigrant can't afford housing in London so he sleeps in an illegally parked car.

The car gets towed.

But asylumseekers and refugees get some money from the state they are doing the legal asylum/refugee process.

Oh, and you can push a car by human strength. Preferably at night, to somewhere else.

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