The confounding politics of camping in America
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
A part of me understands the rationale for these restrictions. But another part of me feels discouraged that the real estate market in much of California is all sewn up with no way to "hack" it without figuring out how to make $200K+ per year or throwing in the towel and moving to some other part of the state or outside California. Thus I continue to rent my apartment while trying to find other ways to get into real estate.
The number of voters needed to radically alter the landscape of extremely local politics is probably maybe a dozen or less in this way, btw.
You have to be on the council, along with a like-minded majority. It'll be a full time job for all of you.
It turns out only the wealthy are taking advantage of the gift though.
In my county, I believe 6 guys took advantage of the streamlined process. It's still very expensive.
They used building the ADU as an excuse to build a bigger house, and that variance is hard to get, but if you have money and kiss ass, you can get it.
I believe almost all the 6 used an ADA unit to increase the size of their home. They all had to get variances from the town, and 5 got it. One homeowner refused to kiss the town council's ass, write begging letters to his neighbors, and attent countless meetings while paying for an architect, and a Builder's time.
They are all asked a bunch of questions.
The one that got me is "Are you going to rent the unit out to low income individuals. (Low income in my town is like "$90, 000. Yea--really. $110,00 if married.". All basically lied, and said yes they will rent it to a Nun. They wanted a bigger home, and the ADU will be used as----an Art studio, or for Lupe' the cheap help that will wipe them in later life?
My point putting in an ADU is fine, and I'm glad Neusome streamlined the process. People aren't taking advantage of it besides the wealthy though. The people whom didn't need any help.
I would rather see something different.
1. If a person (not a corporation, rich foreigner, etc.) of modest means buys a small piece of land they can put a trailer, tent, small cabin, etc. on the land. And of course live there. I'd even be ok with no foundations until you build properly, and no renting unless you offer it for free. I'd even be ok with time limits that are reviewed every ten years for free. So basically a guy would have to go in front of some official and sign a declaration that they still don't have the money to build a proper unit.
2. CA counties, and towns are going to be told to build more housing in the future if Neusome is still around. They only way I see it happening is if we start building huge blocks of housing, like I see being demolished in Ukraine. (I've seen pictures of Russia. It does look like everyone is in a reasonably priced apartment. I guess it's a leftover from evil Socialism.
Personally, I'd be happy with 1. I just don't think the powers at be really want to help the very poor.
Marin County, San Anselmo. This is basically the town I'm writing about. Newsome has a mansion here where Jenny wanders room to room trying to find something "important" in life to do. Be careful Gavin. She reminds me of an Amber Heard. I honestly like the guy. He was voted most fashionable in my high school.)
But the impression I often get on HN is that you've got people making well above that finding themselves barely able to afford a place to live in SF.
I'm clearly missing something, but what?
It's an indictment of any system that people making twice the median household income cannot afford to buy housing within a reasonable distance of wherever their labor generates that income. It's a terrible situation - communities in which at least half of the necessary jobs do not pay enough for the people who do those jobs to live in the community - and it isn't good for anyone in or around those communities, and probably not for the nation as a whole.
The fact that, yes, yes of course there are other communities where the economics are different doesn't in any way mitigate the fucked-up ness of the situation the GP is describing.
The only homes I've seen for $200k need to basically be torn down and are too small for a family.
That's much less true of most metros. Even a fairly expensive city like Boston, while there are expensive suburban towns, an hour drive gets you to some small cities, exurbs, and other suburbs where housing prices are--if not cheap--pretty reasonable (e.g. $300-400K for midrange houses--though prices may have risen). And a lot of the professional jobs are well outside the city anyway.
An hour or so commute each way sucks, but if you can get a Bay Area job that is either fully WFH or that only requires you to come into the office once a week being an hour away wouldn't be too bad, especially if you can arrange the hours on that one day a week you come in so that you are't driving during the most congested times.
you can’t build to infinity when everything is built out…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
After that, just expect to pay property taxes unless you have money to build exactly the home they sign off on.
I once was ready to buy a reasonable small piece of land in Bolinas after graduating from college. I should have known the price was too good.
When I called the seller he took pity on me when I told him I wanted to just use it to pitch a tent on until I saved more money.
He said, "Son---you can't even put an blanket on "your" land and take a nap."
Did you forget what you wrote?
rules like these probably try to influence what kind of people are going to choose to live there.
oh, totally, things like that would drive me mad. if i am ever going to buy a plot of land then i'd want to do it far away from anyone who can tell me what do do with it (short of forest fire safety and pollution)
Would it possible to do that, but extremely slowly? What counts as being "in the process"? Just designing your home might take you many, many years...
the only question is if you can get away with not putting a roof over the courtyard or if you can find a very cheap, lightweight roof that you can move aside.
If you're trying to not pay rent for a while and enjoy a more free lifestyle, I think it's worth dipping one's toes into, especially if you have prior camping experience.
Wallis is Canadian, but similar sensibilities hold with regard to camping in places that aren't explicitly marked as campable.
Huh? Anyone is allowed to camp in designated camping areas. No one is allowed to “camp” in random public areas. There is nothing anti-homeless about camping. Is this article for real?
-- Anatole France (The Red Lily, 1894)
- 'This Land Is Your Land', Woody Guthrie
- Giorgio Agamben
National parks, lots of state parks, city mountain parks which are public and do allow camping have very limited permit access, rules, exclusions etc. Some lands which ostensibly should be dispersed camping allowed you can't even access bc you'd have to travel through private land.
But your comment misses the entire crux of the article imho.
It's not that camping is anti-homeless, it's that there has historically been - and still is - a societal judgement and double standard based on ethnicity, class, and housed status.
It's about a double standard of the Govt forcing native Americans to give up their 'barbarous campfire life' while the rich were encouraged to have the same experience for the benefit of their health.
Same happens today just not as extreme.
Just to illustrate, i get this isn't the same as pitching a tent in front of someone's house.
But society says it's not ok for the homeless to stay in their RVs on public streets but it is ok for people to stay the night in 150k sprinter vans.
Not exaggerating, there are both happening in large numbers here in Denver. The difference is one can afford to move their place of rest around the other can't.
I might try and take a photo at the Movement Baker gym there are 2 homeless RVs on the road and almost always at least 3 sprinters, usually one with doors totally open someone just chilling there living their day. Shower & internet inside. For the rich climbing dirt bag only though.
Although that spelling makes sense, it's not one that's ever been widely used (since 'education' is from French éducation). So I'm not sure if that's an attempt to use a dated spelling (I noticed some others, such as élite) to conjure a certain je ne sais quois, or to forge a new trend for continental accents in English writing where it seems there ought to be?
TL;DR: it was an arbitrary decision from long ago that they stick to despite getting many letters of complaint.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...
Personally I use a diaeresis as well. Not very hard on an Apple device: press-and-hole "o", wait for the pop-up, press 2.
> This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There's a poster on a message board i read who always uses the archaic letter thorn for 'th' (þink of writing someþing like þis). Whatever a comment is about, 70% of the replies are criticising or questioning the use thorn instead.
Really it goes back to European vs. Native lifestyles and colonization. The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.
People who could get away from the towns and join Native American societies didn't want to go back. Whereas Natives had to be forced (typically with savage brutality) to adopt European culture.
"Going native" was perceived as a serious problem, because it was: if you didn't like society, or your actual literal "master" (a person under the psychotic delusion that he or she actually literally owned you) you could try to escape to, say, the Sioux nation.
We mostly exterminated or marginalized these societies, and filled and/or enclosed most of the open land, so it seems like options are fewer.
And today we have "the homeless" to act as a goad: if you don't work you will starve in the street. There's not supposed to be a way out.
I'm trying to point out the deeper currents that underlie the stuff the article is talking about. They touch on it but they don't cut to the bone.
I don't have time this morning to go into detail but the main points are:
1) The essence of state power is the ability of the king to command others to die for the state (often even before they reproduced!), this is almost entirely absent in Native American cultures. (At least in the ones we know about.) The Native view was that Europeans were not really free: they had to obey their kings.
2) There really was a serious problem with people preferring Native cultures to European cultures in the New World. Harsh measures were enacted.
3) Natives did not spontaneously adopt European cultures. Again, harsh measures were enacted.
4) Last but hardly least, Native cultures were integrated with ecological systems much more efficiently than European cultures. (This was almost certainly a major reason why Native life was generally more fun and easy than European life.)
In sum, the reasons why we are messed up in the heads about camping today go back pretty far, and tie in pretty deeply with the structure of our culture and society.
- - - -
I can't help but add that I believe there is a way to fashion a new kind of society that fuses elements of Eastern, Western, and Native American cultures with modern science and particularly ecology to, uh, make a really fun and easy way to live, but that's a whole 'nother story and it's a sunny Sunday morning, so it'll have to wait.
In addition plenty of really barbaric tortures done by the Aztecs documented.
I've also heard that a lot of the medieval torture devices are actually just Victorian inventions made up for gawks which sounds plausible; you don't really need elaborate works of ironmongery to torture people when the time-honored methods of beating the shit out of them with fists or clubs or various forms of water torture seem quite effective.
And the Aztecs were pretty far gone, in my opinion, they sound almost as bad as the old Assyrians.
The natives never fought amongst themselves for resources or territory? No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?
This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?
Of course they did, but they had forms and traditions that limited the (excuse me) savagery of their conflicts, for example "counting coup":
> Among the Plains Indians of North America, counting coup is the warrior tradition of winning prestige against an enemy in battle. It is one of the traditional ways of showing bravery in the face of an enemy and involves intimidating him, and, it is hoped, persuading him to admit defeat, without having to kill him. These victories may then be remembered, recorded, and recounted as part of the community's oral, written, or pictorial histories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
> No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?
Generally, no. Even N.Am. "slavery" was very different from, say, Roman or later (Euro-)American slavery of Africans.
IANAAnthropologist but it's pretty clear that Europe was a much more cruel and savage land than North America, at least (I don't know as much about Central and South American cultures.)
> This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?
They had conflicts, and hierarchy, and even in some societies a kind of slavery, but nothing like the brutality, cruelty, and savagery of the Europeans.
Again, I'm not an expert, but as I've looked into it, I've come to see that Europeans pretty much were "infected" with hardcore trauma and resulting psychological repression and etc.etc. Freudian, etc... plus bad religion. I mean, the Spanish Inquisition much?
This isn't morally right by the standards of modern western neo-liberal culture, but with the alternative it is imperative that we accept that these different cultures are not likely able to achieve collective equity in a society of equal opportunity. And that's ok, because we have no right to impose our cultures onto others, even if we believe our practices to be better suited for success in the modern world.
>In June, 2020, in Forks, Washington, residents mistook a mixed-race family for members of Antifa. The family, unemployed because of the pandemic, had been living in a modified school bus...
The race of the family is completely irrelevant and serves only to race bait. Also there's no indication that they weren't involved in a little protesting on the side, especially when covering up such a fact would make their story far more sympathetic.
The fact that racist policies were once common and sanctioned in the US does not imply that all modern inequities are due solely or significantly to discrimination, past or present, but that seems to be the consistent angle of material from high brow outlets like the New Yorker and NPR, exponentially so as of the last few years.
If we cut out the race and political baiting and clearly define camping in the typical modern sense of a sleeping bag, tent, and/or trailer in an outdoor setting surrounded by nature then the confoundedness disappears. It's borderline disingenuous to treat a nature escape and a tent on a city street as conceptually the same activity just because both involve sleeping outside, and betrays an agenda.