11 ms·

Life Inside the RVs of Silicon Valley

134 points by lnguyen 9y ago

pfarnsworth 9y ago
I'm sympathetic because the wealth inequality Silicon Valley is extremely vast, and these people are on the losing end of the inequity. But truthfully, about half of the people in the article made bad decisions in simply moving to the Bay Area in the last few years, even though it's one of the most expensive areas in the world. That said, if you are determined to live here when you don't make a lot of money, living living in an RV makes a lot more sense than paying ridiculous rent. Their rent is almost nil, and they get to save money based on a higher wage than they would get in other areas of the country.
- hkmurakami 9y ago
  Well on one hand we tell people that they were unwise for moving to an expensive area. On the other hand we tell people in areas where jobs are disappearing that it's their fault for not being willing to move out of their hometown and move to an area with job growth. Heads they win, tails you lose? (long term I would think that access to education will be the solution to this, and yet I also know that if everyone in the rust belt were reeducated with some great skill set, we still wouldn't have enough jobs for them at the pay they would expect)
- SwellJoe 9y ago
  California, in general, has seen massive housing price increases. A lot of them came from other expensive places, and it sounds like often they came for a specific job or opportunity or need (medical care is a recurring theme). I find it sort of horrific that folks are having to make decisions like, "Do I get good health care and live in a van or do I live in an apartment I can afford?" I still can't get over the guy who was on a transplant list but was removed from the list because he lived in a box truck. There's something sick about a society that lets that happen, but I don't know what the cure is.
samcheng 9y ago
Another interesting profile is that of the Google engineer living in the parking lot: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truc...
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Interesring. It seems... Very practical and economical? I would wager a lot of people would do that if only they weren't afraid of a stigma. Those living and working in SV are among the richest people to ever live. But studies of happinesss suggest we're not really happier for being richer--it appears people get caught up in "buying things we don't need, to impress people we don't like."
  - dandr01d 9y ago
    I don’t think there’s a real stigma for people who can afford to rent an apartment but live in an RV... it’s almost hip at this point. However I don’t think it’s as practical as you think. Addresses are very important.
    - wallace_f 9y ago
      Well, I should have been more up front that for the record, I lived and surfed for 8 months out of campervan I built myself in Australia. It was pretty great. I didn't really have any major issues, it seemed really practical to me? But I didn't really have a day job then.
  - ThrustVectoring 9y ago
    I'd do it out of pure spite for the NIMBYs who have made it impossible to pay reasonable prices for housing.
  - eloisant 9y ago
    There's a huge difference between the Googler who lives at the Googleplex (with showers, cafeteria, plenty of rooms to hang out, etc.) and only sleeps in his RV and the Standford admin who has nowhere else to go than her RV.
jurassic 9y ago
The junky RVs seem extremely out of place lined up together on El Camino. I've always assumed they only get away with this because they're on the Stanford side of the border between Stanford and the City of Palo Alto. Palo Alto NIMBYs would have run them out long ago.
- samcheng 9y ago
  Gee, have some compassion. After all, someone's got to be the janitor or the cashier, and it's tough to pay sky-high rent on that kind of pay. There's actually a substantial debate about car camping in Palo Alto. A parking/camping ban was floated, then repealed; these spaces on El Camino seem like a compromise, and are in a bit of a jurisdictional gray-area between Stanford, Palo Alto, and the California Highway Patrol. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/11/18/palo-alto-strikes-down-car-camping-ban https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/11/18/palo-alto-str...
- Mortiffer 9y ago
  Its not necessarily a bad thing having to see how other real humans live their lives.
- s0rce 9y ago
  I feel sorry for people that can't afford to live there and am greatly upset by the nimby attitude around the bay but I don't think living in RVs on public streets or for that matter tents in parks is acceptable. They need to pay property taxes and contribute. What about going to the bathroom, proper sewage treatment is a necessity for public health. The solution seems to be to stop letting selfish locals dictate policy. Maybe the RVs are the best option at the moment but I hope we don't consider it a permanent one.
nopinsight 9y ago
SF Bay area (Nine-county) is 25 times the size of Singapore and 11 times that of London. Its population at 7.7 million is only 1.4 times as large as Singapore's (5.6 million) and less than London's (8.8 million). Its GDP at $721 billion is 2.4 times that of Singapore's ($297 billion) and 1.3 times London's ($542 billion). Solutions should be possible if rational negotiations could be carried out and affected parties could be compensated adequately. I understand that older residents wish to retain their lifestyle and community character. Could any amount of money and other concessions from new developments compensate them for the potential change that will come quite gradually in any case? Could the new developments be constructed in an area that wouldn't have a direct impact on their daily lives? More practical concerns like increased traffic jam and effect on property value should be addressable with the tens of billions of economic benefits that could be realized from new, denser developments. Finding a way to equitably distribute these benefits would be a huge headache but since the net results are likely positive, the solution should be possible with the right organization and efforts.
- wallace_f 9y ago
  Asking because I don't know: is SF, on a 100- to 1,000-year time horizon, a good place to invest dense, high rise development?
  - dirktheman 9y ago
    Since the chance that a major earthquake will occur within the next -1000 years is about 100%, I wouldn't invest a dime in long term real estate in SF...
    - hkmurakami 9y ago
      If you own the land underneath the building, and you're on non-land fill land, then maybe it's okay. Buying a unit in a highrise in SF never really made sense to me.
    - gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
      It is not guaranteed that the earthquake will destroy your investment. What is fairly likely is that the-greater-fool will apply. Some people won't discount the risk properly and you are therefore bidding against people who overvalue the asset.
bwang29 9y ago
It seems like for most entry level engineers ranged at $100-120k who wants to live in a one bedroom apartment in SF, a 30% off in rent could potentially be better than 30% cut in salary, considering the current tax rate. In China, there have been attempts by startup companies offering employees sleeping pods near the office, while providing water and shower so that the employee can simply stay around the office during the course of a year long employment with occasional "offsite" airbnb living. But unfortunately such attempt was shut down: https://www.techinasia.com/china-napping-pods-startup-forced-shutdown https://www.techinasia.com/china-napping-pods-startup-forced...
- gotrecruit 9y ago
  There is a similar concept in South Korean cities like Seoul, they're called Officetels. These are executive hotel rooms designed for office workers to sleep overnight if they work too late - inevitably i guess, most of these have been converted in recent years to AirBnB locations.
- s0rce 9y ago
  Company housing is a bad idea, it's already bad enough in the us that your health insurance and retirement savings are tied to your employer, it makes it very hard to go and start something yourself or change jobs, not to mention abruptly losing your job since you have to find a new place to live.
jedberg 9y ago
Oh man. I was driving right by there the other day, and it was the Friday before a Stanford home football game. I thought those RVs were all tailgaters who were just trying to get a good spot. I feel terrible now.
- lowglow 9y ago
  Palo Alto is one of the few places it's actually legal to sleep in a vehicle. El Camino is a good (but loud) spot to sleep at where you won't get hassled by cops.
SwellJoe 9y ago
It's worth noting that even for folks who have enough income to afford an RV park, there are effectively none in the Bay Area. The ones that exist are either: Booked solid with a long waiting list, don't allow old RVs (I found this out when I passed through the area with my 34 year old Avion travel trailer), or are so far from everything as to be useless for most of the folks covered in the article. Or, most likely, all three. Also, among the most expensive RV parks in the country. I'm pleasantly surprised the city of Palo Alto isn't ticketing or arresting or towing these folks. They passed a law against sleeping in vehicles a few years ago, as I recall. It's deeply troubling, to me, that the solution to homelessness (or near homelessness) is often to make mere existence illegal. I spent a couple of weeks parking around the University Ave./Downtown area in Palo Alto a few months after I moved into my first RV (a nice/newish motorhome), about eight years ago, to visit with a friend who lived on University, and I didn't have any trouble with police or neighbors, even parked among multimillion dollar homes (it certainly helped that the RV was nice...I got questions from residents but they were of the form "Where've you been?" and "Where are you going next?"), but I'd read there'd been a crackdown on it. I haven't been back in an RV since then. Last time I was in the area earlier this year, I parked way outside of the valley (about a 1.5 hour drive away, which was literally the closest I could get) and rented a car to drive in (rather than driving my very large F250; the fuel savings paid for the car rental), but I saw that there were little RV villages in a few locations in Mountain View and Palo Alto. If I'd been in a motorhome and didn't have a girlfriend that liked having limitless power and water with me, I would have spent a night or two on those streets just to avoid making that ridiculous drive several times. But, with a trailer, it's just not a great idea to park on streets. Even in places that tolerate motorhomes and vans, they might not tolerate a truck and trailer, and its length often makes it subject to other street parking laws.
- j_s 9y ago
  I vaguely recall an HN discussion recommending rest stops; I wonder if those near SF have near-permanent residents.
  - 0xffff2 9y ago
    I can't think of a single rest area that's within a 1.5 hour drive of Mountain View.
icantdrive55 9y ago
We have a problem all across America. I'm tired of debating. We need to open up available Federal, state, and local land to free camping via tents, or RVs. Maybe put in some portable showers, and washing facilities. It's beyond a National Emergency. The economy is still horrid for many Americans. That "able bodied, but not working number" has never been higher. People are dying in the streets. People are being harassed by cops, and NIMBY muni codes. People are killing themselfs. I'm personally sick of it.
dxmalai 9y ago
Buying a unit in a highrise in SF never really made sense to me.
eloisant 9y ago
What I don't understand is: why do these people live in SV? I can understand tech worker staying with their big salary, but non-tech workers would live a much better life in a more "normal" place. Then after they all move out, maybe the tech industry will figure out a way to make it livable for those people when they realise they need them too.
- exDM69 9y ago
  Several of the people interviewed in the article mentioned the proximity of the hospital where they get their medical needs taken care of. One mentioned having to be nearby because they were waiting for a liver transplant. I don't know the intricacies of the US health care system, but I think it might be a major setback for their healthcare if they relocated. And they might not be any more well off if they relocated. They might have slightly higher wages living in SV. Moving elsewhere might mean they couldn't even afford living in a vehicle.
bobbinsbob 9y ago
This reminds me of the "first world problems" meme only in this instance it's more like a first world shanty town.
- sjg007 9y ago
  The Bay area has a huge homeless population with shanty towns all over the place (just hidden).
Mz 9y ago
Their precarious living situation became a catch 22: while the truck allowed them to live near the hospital, when the social worker found out Isidoro was living in a truck, the hospital kicked Isidoro off the transplant list: he needed to live indoors to recover from a potential surgery to be eligible for a transplant. Luckily, after weeks of looking, Silvia’s sister in nearby Milpitas rented her a bedroom for $700/month this fall, where they’ve been staying since. The last she heard, they had to stay inside for a year for Isidoro to get back on the list. Well, I think I officially feel ashamed to be an American now. I slept in a tent for nearly six years to work on getting healthier, but I was not seeing a doctor. I was doing my own thing. That was frustrating enough, what with not getting taken seriously by a lot of people and facing classism online, etc. But, I kind of understand why I get given so much flak: people genuinely think what I am doing simply cannot be done. They have no mental framework for effectively engaging with me. But to have a specialty hospital someplace so expensive and a requirement to live near it to get treatment and no help for complying with this expectation, then delist them for sleeping in a truck, it just seems monstrous. The hospital has to know that normal, healthy people can't afford housing here. They should also be fully well aware that people with health problems face the double whammy of high medical expenses plus reduced earnings. America needs to fix both the medical system and affordable housing. It doesn't really deserve to be seen as a civilized, first world nation as things stand currently. I don't care what our GDP is. We are failing to take care of our people and it is monstrous.
- walshemj 9y ago
  Ouch - that's strange its not how its done in the UK I know that the royal free (one of the main transplant centres) has had people fly down from Aberdeen for a potential match. And I was approximately 2 hours away whilst being on the transplant list
- jdavis703 9y ago
  I agree with your premise, and don't know what your medical details are, or much about liver operations in general. But sleeping outdoors is tough on the body during rainy season. The immune system has to work extra hard to fight off internal fungal infections, so depending on the nature of the operations I could see why this would be a medical problem. Now my question is, could the hospital have tried to work something out, say with the Ronald McDonald House? Absolutely. And further, people in SV are so short-sighted they have no problem paying their workers so little and restricting new housing that their workers can't find a place to live. I've literally had executives at my Palo Alto company bragging about their NIMBY exploits -- which is at the least insensitive considering almost non of their employees could afford to live in Palo Alto and have a decent commute.
gumby 9y ago
As a side point: the “history” and “significance” of El Camino Real was invented less than a century ago as a marketin* effort: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-el-camino-real-californias-royal-road-was-invented https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-el-camino-real-califo...
tomohawk 9y ago
There's really two Californias. This talk by VDH digs into this some more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eNcuGcPW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eNcuGcPW4
Shinchy 9y ago
It's like something from 'The Grapes of Wrath'.
losteverything 9y ago
Someone go put a $100 gift card on their windshield. Seriously, why cant there be an easy app with shameless reputation to allow anonymous tiny donations? Maybe they can pick up $$ at a Walmart
kqr2 9y ago
For those who don't have a RV or car to sleep in, some of them use "Hotel 22", the only 24-hour bus line in the area as a shelter at night. Short video documentary on the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html They ride the bus back and forth throughout the night getting off at each end usually several times.
omilu 9y ago
How many of us clicked on the link expecting decked out airstreams? Great article showing the struggle of people dealing with insane housing prices.
sreekar545 9y ago
Am I missing something? Why are they staying in these areas? They can do the same jobs where RV parks nearby.

134 points by lnguyen 9y ago

I'm sympathetic because the wealth inequality Silicon Valley is extremely vast, and these people are on the losing end of the inequity. But truthfully, about half of the people in the article made bad decisions in simply moving to the Bay Area in the last few years, even though it's one of the most expensive areas in the world. That said, if you are determined to live here when you don't make a lot of money, living living in an RV makes a lot more sense than paying ridiculous rent. Their rent is almost nil, and they get to save money based on a higher wage than they would get in other areas of the country.

hkmurakami 9y ago
Well on one hand we tell people that they were unwise for moving to an expensive area. On the other hand we tell people in areas where jobs are disappearing that it's their fault for not being willing to move out of their hometown and move to an area with job growth. Heads they win, tails you lose? (long term I would think that access to education will be the solution to this, and yet I also know that if everyone in the rust belt were reeducated with some great skill set, we still wouldn't have enough jobs for them at the pay they would expect)
SwellJoe 9y ago
California, in general, has seen massive housing price increases. A lot of them came from other expensive places, and it sounds like often they came for a specific job or opportunity or need (medical care is a recurring theme). I find it sort of horrific that folks are having to make decisions like, "Do I get good health care and live in a van or do I live in an apartment I can afford?" I still can't get over the guy who was on a transplant list but was removed from the list because he lived in a box truck. There's something sick about a society that lets that happen, but I don't know what the cure is.

samcheng 9y ago

Another interesting profile is that of the Google engineer living in the parking lot: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truc...

wallace_f 9y ago
Interesring. It seems... Very practical and economical? I would wager a lot of people would do that if only they weren't afraid of a stigma. Those living and working in SV are among the richest people to ever live. But studies of happinesss suggest we're not really happier for being richer--it appears people get caught up in "buying things we don't need, to impress people we don't like."
- dandr01d 9y ago
  I don’t think there’s a real stigma for people who can afford to rent an apartment but live in an RV... it’s almost hip at this point. However I don’t think it’s as practical as you think. Addresses are very important.
  - wallace_f 9y ago
    Well, I should have been more up front that for the record, I lived and surfed for 8 months out of campervan I built myself in Australia. It was pretty great. I didn't really have any major issues, it seemed really practical to me? But I didn't really have a day job then.
- ThrustVectoring 9y ago
  I'd do it out of pure spite for the NIMBYs who have made it impossible to pay reasonable prices for housing.
- eloisant 9y ago
  There's a huge difference between the Googler who lives at the Googleplex (with showers, cafeteria, plenty of rooms to hang out, etc.) and only sleeps in his RV and the Standford admin who has nowhere else to go than her RV.

jurassic 9y ago

The junky RVs seem extremely out of place lined up together on El Camino. I've always assumed they only get away with this because they're on the Stanford side of the border between Stanford and the City of Palo Alto. Palo Alto NIMBYs would have run them out long ago.

samcheng 9y ago
Gee, have some compassion. After all, someone's got to be the janitor or the cashier, and it's tough to pay sky-high rent on that kind of pay. There's actually a substantial debate about car camping in Palo Alto. A parking/camping ban was floated, then repealed; these spaces on El Camino seem like a compromise, and are in a bit of a jurisdictional gray-area between Stanford, Palo Alto, and the California Highway Patrol. https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/11/18/palo-alto-strikes-down-car-camping-ban https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/11/18/palo-alto-str...
Mortiffer 9y ago
Its not necessarily a bad thing having to see how other real humans live their lives.
s0rce 9y ago
I feel sorry for people that can't afford to live there and am greatly upset by the nimby attitude around the bay but I don't think living in RVs on public streets or for that matter tents in parks is acceptable. They need to pay property taxes and contribute. What about going to the bathroom, proper sewage treatment is a necessity for public health. The solution seems to be to stop letting selfish locals dictate policy. Maybe the RVs are the best option at the moment but I hope we don't consider it a permanent one.

nopinsight 9y ago

SF Bay area (Nine-county) is 25 times the size of Singapore and 11 times that of London. Its population at 7.7 million is only 1.4 times as large as Singapore's (5.6 million) and less than London's (8.8 million). Its GDP at $721 billion is 2.4 times that of Singapore's ($297 billion) and 1.3 times London's ($542 billion). Solutions should be possible if rational negotiations could be carried out and affected parties could be compensated adequately. I understand that older residents wish to retain their lifestyle and community character. Could any amount of money and other concessions from new developments compensate them for the potential change that will come quite gradually in any case? Could the new developments be constructed in an area that wouldn't have a direct impact on their daily lives? More practical concerns like increased traffic jam and effect on property value should be addressable with the tens of billions of economic benefits that could be realized from new, denser developments. Finding a way to equitably distribute these benefits would be a huge headache but since the net results are likely positive, the solution should be possible with the right organization and efforts.

wallace_f 9y ago
Asking because I don't know: is SF, on a 100- to 1,000-year time horizon, a good place to invest dense, high rise development?
- dirktheman 9y ago
  Since the chance that a major earthquake will occur within the next -1000 years is about 100%, I wouldn't invest a dime in long term real estate in SF...
  - hkmurakami 9y ago
    If you own the land underneath the building, and you're on non-land fill land, then maybe it's okay. Buying a unit in a highrise in SF never really made sense to me.
  - gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y ago
    It is not guaranteed that the earthquake will destroy your investment. What is fairly likely is that the-greater-fool will apply. Some people won't discount the risk properly and you are therefore bidding against people who overvalue the asset.

bwang29 9y ago

It seems like for most entry level engineers ranged at $100-120k who wants to live in a one bedroom apartment in SF, a 30% off in rent could potentially be better than 30% cut in salary, considering the current tax rate. In China, there have been attempts by startup companies offering employees sleeping pods near the office, while providing water and shower so that the employee can simply stay around the office during the course of a year long employment with occasional "offsite" airbnb living. But unfortunately such attempt was shut down: https://www.techinasia.com/china-napping-pods-startup-forced-shutdown https://www.techinasia.com/china-napping-pods-startup-forced...

gotrecruit 9y ago
There is a similar concept in South Korean cities like Seoul, they're called Officetels. These are executive hotel rooms designed for office workers to sleep overnight if they work too late - inevitably i guess, most of these have been converted in recent years to AirBnB locations.
s0rce 9y ago
Company housing is a bad idea, it's already bad enough in the us that your health insurance and retirement savings are tied to your employer, it makes it very hard to go and start something yourself or change jobs, not to mention abruptly losing your job since you have to find a new place to live.

jedberg 9y ago

Oh man. I was driving right by there the other day, and it was the Friday before a Stanford home football game. I thought those RVs were all tailgaters who were just trying to get a good spot. I feel terrible now.

lowglow 9y ago
Palo Alto is one of the few places it's actually legal to sleep in a vehicle. El Camino is a good (but loud) spot to sleep at where you won't get hassled by cops.

SwellJoe 9y ago

It's worth noting that even for folks who have enough income to afford an RV park, there are effectively none in the Bay Area. The ones that exist are either: Booked solid with a long waiting list, don't allow old RVs (I found this out when I passed through the area with my 34 year old Avion travel trailer), or are so far from everything as to be useless for most of the folks covered in the article. Or, most likely, all three. Also, among the most expensive RV parks in the country. I'm pleasantly surprised the city of Palo Alto isn't ticketing or arresting or towing these folks. They passed a law against sleeping in vehicles a few years ago, as I recall. It's deeply troubling, to me, that the solution to homelessness (or near homelessness) is often to make mere existence illegal. I spent a couple of weeks parking around the University Ave./Downtown area in Palo Alto a few months after I moved into my first RV (a nice/newish motorhome), about eight years ago, to visit with a friend who lived on University, and I didn't have any trouble with police or neighbors, even parked among multimillion dollar homes (it certainly helped that the RV was nice...I got questions from residents but they were of the form "Where've you been?" and "Where are you going next?"), but I'd read there'd been a crackdown on it. I haven't been back in an RV since then. Last time I was in the area earlier this year, I parked way outside of the valley (about a 1.5 hour drive away, which was literally the closest I could get) and rented a car to drive in (rather than driving my very large F250; the fuel savings paid for the car rental), but I saw that there were little RV villages in a few locations in Mountain View and Palo Alto. If I'd been in a motorhome and didn't have a girlfriend that liked having limitless power and water with me, I would have spent a night or two on those streets just to avoid making that ridiculous drive several times. But, with a trailer, it's just not a great idea to park on streets. Even in places that tolerate motorhomes and vans, they might not tolerate a truck and trailer, and its length often makes it subject to other street parking laws.

j_s 9y ago
I vaguely recall an HN discussion recommending rest stops; I wonder if those near SF have near-permanent residents.
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  I can't think of a single rest area that's within a 1.5 hour drive of Mountain View.

icantdrive55 9y ago

We have a problem all across America. I'm tired of debating. We need to open up available Federal, state, and local land to free camping via tents, or RVs. Maybe put in some portable showers, and washing facilities. It's beyond a National Emergency. The economy is still horrid for many Americans. That "able bodied, but not working number" has never been higher. People are dying in the streets. People are being harassed by cops, and NIMBY muni codes. People are killing themselfs. I'm personally sick of it.

dxmalai 9y ago

Buying a unit in a highrise in SF never really made sense to me.

eloisant 9y ago

What I don't understand is: why do these people live in SV? I can understand tech worker staying with their big salary, but non-tech workers would live a much better life in a more "normal" place. Then after they all move out, maybe the tech industry will figure out a way to make it livable for those people when they realise they need them too.

exDM69 9y ago
Several of the people interviewed in the article mentioned the proximity of the hospital where they get their medical needs taken care of. One mentioned having to be nearby because they were waiting for a liver transplant. I don't know the intricacies of the US health care system, but I think it might be a major setback for their healthcare if they relocated. And they might not be any more well off if they relocated. They might have slightly higher wages living in SV. Moving elsewhere might mean they couldn't even afford living in a vehicle.

bobbinsbob 9y ago

This reminds me of the "first world problems" meme only in this instance it's more like a first world shanty town.

sjg007 9y ago
The Bay area has a huge homeless population with shanty towns all over the place (just hidden).

Mz 9y ago

Their precarious living situation became a catch 22: while the truck allowed them to live near the hospital, when the social worker found out Isidoro was living in a truck, the hospital kicked Isidoro off the transplant list: he needed to live indoors to recover from a potential surgery to be eligible for a transplant. Luckily, after weeks of looking, Silvia’s sister in nearby Milpitas rented her a bedroom for $700/month this fall, where they’ve been staying since. The last she heard, they had to stay inside for a year for Isidoro to get back on the list. Well, I think I officially feel ashamed to be an American now. I slept in a tent for nearly six years to work on getting healthier, but I was not seeing a doctor. I was doing my own thing. That was frustrating enough, what with not getting taken seriously by a lot of people and facing classism online, etc. But, I kind of understand why I get given so much flak: people genuinely think what I am doing simply cannot be done. They have no mental framework for effectively engaging with me. But to have a specialty hospital someplace so expensive and a requirement to live near it to get treatment and no help for complying with this expectation, then delist them for sleeping in a truck, it just seems monstrous. The hospital has to know that normal, healthy people can't afford housing here. They should also be fully well aware that people with health problems face the double whammy of high medical expenses plus reduced earnings. America needs to fix both the medical system and affordable housing. It doesn't really deserve to be seen as a civilized, first world nation as things stand currently. I don't care what our GDP is. We are failing to take care of our people and it is monstrous.

walshemj 9y ago
Ouch - that's strange its not how its done in the UK I know that the royal free (one of the main transplant centres) has had people fly down from Aberdeen for a potential match. And I was approximately 2 hours away whilst being on the transplant list
jdavis703 9y ago
I agree with your premise, and don't know what your medical details are, or much about liver operations in general. But sleeping outdoors is tough on the body during rainy season. The immune system has to work extra hard to fight off internal fungal infections, so depending on the nature of the operations I could see why this would be a medical problem. Now my question is, could the hospital have tried to work something out, say with the Ronald McDonald House? Absolutely. And further, people in SV are so short-sighted they have no problem paying their workers so little and restricting new housing that their workers can't find a place to live. I've literally had executives at my Palo Alto company bragging about their NIMBY exploits -- which is at the least insensitive considering almost non of their employees could afford to live in Palo Alto and have a decent commute.

gumby 9y ago

As a side point: the “history” and “significance” of El Camino Real was invented less than a century ago as a marketin* effort: https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-el-camino-real-californias-royal-road-was-invented https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-el-camino-real-califo...

tomohawk 9y ago

There's really two Californias. This talk by VDH digs into this some more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eNcuGcPW4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eNcuGcPW4

Shinchy 9y ago

It's like something from 'The Grapes of Wrath'.

losteverything 9y ago

Someone go put a $100 gift card on their windshield. Seriously, why cant there be an easy app with shameless reputation to allow anonymous tiny donations? Maybe they can pick up $$ at a Walmart

kqr2 9y ago

For those who don't have a RV or car to sleep in, some of them use "Hotel 22", the only 24-hour bus line in the area as a shelter at night. Short video documentary on the NYT: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html They ride the bus back and forth throughout the night getting off at each end usually several times.

omilu 9y ago

How many of us clicked on the link expecting decked out airstreams? Great article showing the struggle of people dealing with insane housing prices.

sreekar545 9y ago

Am I missing something? Why are they staying in these areas? They can do the same jobs where RV parks nearby.