8 ms·

Living in cars, working for Amazon

• dizzystar 9y ago
  For those who want to read an expose on the nomadic and way underpaid, I'd suggest checking out Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. (actually, anything she writes is phenomenal). This whole living in your car and being nomadic is hardly new to America. I saw it when I was traveling the USA from 2001 to 2007 or so. As I tell anyone, the only reason Los Angeles can have so many gyms is because the working homeless needs to take a shower too. On the one hand, I'm glad that this topic is getting more attention, but I'm uncomfortable with the thought that Amazon is the poster child for this, when they are one of the few companies that has low wage workers working full time, which is very rare in this day of required health care.
  • sjg007 9y ago
    I agree it is weird. It is also sad that as a society we can't take care of our elders. With respect to insurance, some of these workers are over age 65 so they get Medicare. What's interesting is that the article describes "Don Wheeler" a former software exec who lost everything in the '08 crash as well as his Berkeley house to his ex-wife. For the HN softare crowd who worry about a career as they get older, this is close to home. That being said he may have unique circumstances but still... I think people also underestimate the financial impact of divorce.
    • ShabbosGoy 9y ago
      Yeah, I’d love to take care of the people who mortgaged my future away for a few more dollars. Entitlement programs need to be cut ASAP and supplanted by UBI. Especially so for the boomers who wrecked my country.
      • mathgeek 9y ago
        > Yeah, I’d love to take care of the people who mortgaged my future away for a few more dollars. You're going to really enjoy the irony when you realize what we're currently doing to the next generation's world as well.
        • ShabbosGoy 9y ago
          Automation is an evil I can live with. At least it’s fair.
    • dizzystar 9y ago
      It hits all ages full-force. The person serving you coffee, cooking your food, ringing up your groceries, are all part-time and can't get full-time. Yeah, a lot of them are homeless. At the end of the day, no one is going to help them.
      • tomjen3 9y ago
        Can't get full time because that means the company have to pay for health benefits. That one was totally predictable and could have been solved by making part time employment provide part of the benefits.
        • maxerickson 9y ago
          Or just punitively tax all in kind benefits. There's no good policy reason to make it advantageous for businesses to provide compensation that the recipient can't spend or sell.
  • janesvilleseo 9y ago
    I don’t live on the west coast, but I know that housing is ridiculously expensive and nobody wants to build housing. Atleast in the San Francisco area. Anyways, crazy idea. Why not build a parking garage with a few amenities to cater to these van dwellers. I’m sure there are permitting issue, but it might be easier.
    • dizzystar 9y ago
      A lot of church parking lots let car dwellers sleep there. LA has fairly loose rules about parking and sleeping (I get that impression walking around north of Hollywood Blvd). I suppose it depends on where you are. You can't park in Beverly Hills, I'm sure. EDIT to add: Rent in Los Angeles can be quite reasonable, though out of reach of the single minimum wage worker. With a dual income, it's possible. The problem is good credit and proof of long-term employment. The move-in costs is absurd.
  • jimmaswell 9y ago
    I wish temporarily living in your car was more acceptable. I'd somewhat rather do that right now than have to hop between airbnb places while I'm looking for a real apartment by my new job. If I had a van or something I'd do it but it's just a normal car that would be too conspicuous.
• tw1010 9y ago
  Let's not fool ourselves into thinking these people are forced into living this way due to rising housing and apartment costs. There is always a choice. These people could live in crappy apartments in crappy city-jobs if they so chose. But they don't want to, because part of them romanticizes life on the road.
  • kingkawn 9y ago
    You’re trash.
    • dang 9y ago
      The GP was not a charitable comment, but outright personal attacks are still not allowed. We ban accounts that post this way, and I don't want to ban you, so would you please not post like this? You've been here a long time, so I'm sure you know that civil, substantive comments are what we're looking for.
      • kingkawn 9y ago
        I will obey this, respect the needs of encouraging good discussion, and value my place as a member of this mostly interesting and thoughtful community. Still I stand behind the logical accuracy of my original statement.
  • TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
    You are right, there is a choice. The fact that this nomadic lifestyle is on the rise, however, is notable. What is causing the increase? IMO, it's regional inequality. If the only good jobs with growth potential are centralized to areas with some of the highest cost of living in the world, then it makes sense that people would do anything they can to go to those areas, even if it means homelessness. Is this really something that we want to support in our society? Shouldn't we try to provide an increasing quality of life for _all_ of our people, not just the rich? Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain? What did I say that was wrong or inaccurate?
  • jwatte 9y ago
• codeCatalyst 9y ago
  "Don had spent the last two years of his main career as a software executive, traveling to Hong Kong, Paris, Sydney and Tel Aviv. Retiring in 2002 meant he could finally stay in one place: the 1930s’ Spanish colonial revival house he shared with his wife in Berkeley, California. It also gave him time to indulge a lifelong obsession with fast cars. He bought a red-and-white Mini Cooper S and souped it up to 210 horsepower, practicing until he was named third overall in the US Touring Car Championship pro series. The fast times didn’t last. When I started exchanging emails with Don, he was 69, divorced, and staying at the Desert Rose RV park near the warehouse in Fernley. His wife had gotten to keep the house. The 2008 market crash had vaporized his savings. He had been forced to sell the Mini Cooper. In his old life, he’d spent about $100,000 a year. In his new one, he learned to get by on as little as $75 a week." This is sad. How do I avoid this fate in the future.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• rawnlq 9y ago
  The most famous one is probably the google employee who lived in a truck: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-parking-lot-2015-10 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truc... There are actually a lot of other software engineers / freelancers on https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/top/?sort=top&t=all https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers/top/?sort=top&t=all. Like this engineer from Tesla: http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employee-lived-out-of-van-2015-11/#-7 http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-employee-lived-out-of-v... I find the modding be really cool. But the stories of people getting killed/robbed at night like this Palo Alto tech worker scares me: https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/man-killed-in-gym-parking-lot-in-wrong-place-at-wrong-time/ https://www.reviewjournal.com/local/local-las-vegas/man-kill... (Google campus would be a pretty ideal place to do this though)
  • SeoxyS 9y ago
    Did you read the article? It's not about a high-paid engineer working at a big 5 tech company and living in an RV. It's about people who can't afford homes and work temporary jobs around the country because our economy has failed them.
• iiiggglll 9y ago
  This will only become more common once vehicles are self-driving. People will live in their vehicles and have them either drive around all night or find a place to park many hours away from their jobs (assuming there any jobs left). The fantasy many folks seem to have about self-driving vehicles causing car ownership to disappear in favor of automated Ubers/Lyfts/whatevers on demand might come to pass for one class of people, but there will be large numbers of people for whom the opposite happens: they give up their homes (by choice or not) and live in a self-driving vehicle that is the only dwelling they own.
  • Noos 9y ago
    We already have this, without self-driving cars. http://www.mcall.com/news/local/bethlehem/mc-sands-bethlehem-asian-bus-20140329-story.html http://www.mcall.com/news/local/bethlehem/mc-sands-bethlehem... Some Asian patrons of casinos almost live on the bus, in between stays to sell the various free perks they receive. It's a hellish existence, and not one to be wished on anyone.
• rjbwork 9y ago
  This is terrible, but that dude, Don Wheeler, absolutely should not have had that much assets in assets like stocks at such an advanced age. As you get older your asset mix should shift towards more low gain and high stability investments, like bonds, T-bonds, and other stable fixed-income asset classes. Or, so I understand.
  • gt_ 9y ago
    I had the same thoughts. Also, his story highlights the impact of divorce and rising trends of solo living arrangements.
• jwatte 9y ago
  Federal minimum wage, times 2000 hours (if you can get it,) is not enough to sustain a living, much less a family. If we want people to work for a living, we'd support significant increases there.
  • sokoloff 9y ago
    Is 40 hours a week some kind of natural upper limit? People long ago worked more hours than that for sustenance. I talk to a lot of people hustling and making a living working a trade or a service job and then doing something else on the side. I agree that $15K per year is a meager existence. What I'm not as sure about is whether one earner working only 2000 hours at minimum wage is something we need to make sustainable for a family of four. (Side note: I'm in favor of UBI around $500-800/adult/month and half that for teens as supplemental income for most.)
    • ThinkingGuy 9y ago
      The problem is that minimum- to low-wage jobs tend to be the ones with inflexible, unpredictable schedules, making it difficult to juggle more than one job at a time. On top of that, they're also the ones where employers will do anything to limit one's work hours to avoid having to pay them overtime. In theory anyone should be to earn more money just by putting in more hours, but in practice this is really only an option for those in higher-income professions (doctors, lawyers, the self-employed, etc.)
      • deleted 9y ago
        [deleted]
  • nradov 9y ago
    Minimum wage increases make it uneconomic for employers to hire workers whose labor produces little value — mainly youths and people without advanced education. So they get stuck in the permanently unemployed underclass, always reliant on welfare or working under the table for cash. A better solution would be to eliminate the minimum wage entirely and make up the difference through income redistribution with something like a negative income tax for the lower brackets.
• throw2016 9y ago
  There is no concept of 'society' and 'community' in the country. As long as things are good there is no problem, but when things start falling apart you need robust social and community structures and these simply don't exist. Because people who are down need more than just tokenism, they need real human structures that can provide psychological human support, that sense of family, and then social and community structures that show the society is human and has empathy for its fellow members to get them back on their feet. People who are wealthy already have this. People who are not need to think about down times, not just for themselves, but their family, friends, community and children down the line. If everyone thinks they are strictly individuals on the verge of becoming rich and these silly things don't matter you are going to have serious social problems.
  • sjg007 9y ago
    There are definitely communities organized around churches, mosques and synagogues. I think one problem we have is that we expect faith based organizations to pick up the slack instead of the government. That was a big agenda in W’s administration. Here’s the issue, everyone is broke except the rich. Some of them don’t want to pay their fair share in taxes. Politicians are easily bought.
• whyenot 9y ago
  Amazon seems to almost always be the target of these articles, how about highlighting someone else for a change. For example, drive along El Camino Real next to Stanford University and you will see a long line of campers parked along the road. Many of the people living there work either directly or indirectly for the University. Stanford has literally thousands of acres of empty land where they could build housing for their temporary and low income employees, yet they chose not to. They could at least provide a campground with proper facilities and hookups (so sewage doesn't go down storm drains, for instance). Of course the real solution, which is to pay ALL your employees a living wage, that apparently is crazy talk in The Valley.
  • 21 9y ago
    When the owner of Amazon it's the richest person on the planet I would say it's fair game. Also, Amazon has amazing public perception, letting the public know how they can be so cheap and good it's worth doing, just like the campaigns of the past against sweatshop usage by famous clothing brands.
    • golergka 9y ago
      > When the owner of Amazon it's the richest person on the planet I would say it's fair game. How is the structure of ownership of the company changes the rules of the game for the company? Company's goal is to create value for shareholders. If you want punish people for having more than others, there's already an instrument for that, progressive taxation.
      • 21 9y ago
        > If you want punish people for having more than others, there's already an instrument for that, progressive taxation Except that rich people (and companies) don't pay taxes.
  • BurningFrog 9y ago
    Paying higher wages doesn't create more housing. At best these people could displace some others if paid more. The real real solution is to legalize housing construction in the area.
• dimpadumpa 9y ago
  People have to live in car .. while working in amazon.. but why in earth we should use amazon ?? Do we support rich getting richer only.. ? Please, lets start to respect our self and forgot these mega companies
  • jopsen 9y ago
    You can regulate these companies through the political process, but you do need to get involved... What chance do you have of convincing consumers to use a less convenient more expensive alternative to Amazon, when you can barely convince them to vote in their own interest?
    • gt_ 9y ago
      ‘Barely convince’? When did that happen? I think it is fair to say Americans are flat out incapable of voting in their own best interest. It could be argued they don’t even have a chance to, but regardless, they by-and-large cannot identify that chance whether it exists or not.
      • jopsen 9y ago
        Fair point...
  • krapp 9y ago
    Markets don't optimize for ethical practices, but for convenience and price - driving down wages and driving up profits. Consumers don't care how bad Amazon employees have it, if that degree of ruthless exploitation is what it takes to deliver an Echo anywhere in the world in two days.
• epx 9y ago
  Haven't anyone noted that the guy was made homeless by divorce?
  • gt_ 9y ago
    So heartbreaking! As a younger man, I have seen enough. Married people can say what they want about how they love their lives, but the risk is just overwhelming. I am sure Don Wheeler loved being married at some point as well.