9 ms·

Motel Living and Slowly Dying

233 points by fern12 9y ago

FussyZeus 9y ago
This is an especially hard read given what's happening right now to the tax system. I wish more people understood just how easy it is to end up in those kind of circumstances, but most seem either secure enough that they don't see it as a realistic outcome for them or too frightened to consider just how close to the razor's edge they themselves are to accept it.
- alexanderstears 9y ago
  It's a hard read given what's happened with all the waste and excess in the social safety net. The social workers in my neighborhood live in nicer houses than me and lease vehicles that people purchase when intelligence isn't the limiting factor (e.g FCA products), and they leave for work after me and arrive home before I do. Yet I see stories about their clients needing winter coats and socks. I look at how much of my paycheck goes to taxes and it seems like there should be enough to ensure that kids don't go hungry but apparently not. But the solution remains the same as always. The bureaucrats bleat "we need more money" - I don't think I've ever heard one say "we need to do a better job with the budget".
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    That's the beauty of UBI. On UBI, those bureaucrats are on UBI immediately, and out of work.
    - FussyZeus 9y ago
      In theory anyway, yes, it would be a much more efficient system that directly benefits the people under it. I'm sure you'd still need some staff but it would be drastically lower, and a fraud department wouldn't be required.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    I hear what you're saying, but the fact is the roles of poor being helped by these systems are ever growing, therefore them constantly needing more money makes perfect sense. Especially after the housing crash in '08, from which many many households never recovered. The fact is though we spent something on the order of 13 trillion dollars on a plane for the USAF that's not yet flown a single mission since it was purchased in what, 2008? Until that type of stuff starts getting cut, I refuse to buy the argument that "we can't afford it." BS we can't. Right now we won't afford it but that's not the same thing.
    - alexanderstears 9y ago
      Are you talking about the F-35? The latest estimates peg our total expenditures on the F-35 at 1.5 trillion through 2055: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-broke-the-air-force.html https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-br... We've spent less than a trillion on it so far. I don't know where you got your 13 trillion dollar expense, but I'd like to know more about the claim. I don't argue that we don't have the money to take better care of the poor. I'm just reluctant to advocate for more money until our welfare system demonstrates its efficiency. If it kicked butt, I'd want much more money going into the welfare system. But it's awful that so many good intentioned people run a system so poorly and the most vulnerable take the hit.
  - EADGBE 9y ago
    Be careful judging others based on your quality of life standards. You might get angry realizing everyone has it better than you; but perhaps debt, lost love, resentment and bitterness is funding those extravagant purchases.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago
  The post below yours got flagged into oblivion, but I think it raises an important issue. Nationwide, less than 30% of the money spent on welfare actually winds up as cash in the hands of the needy it's supposedly benefiting. Most of it is spent on other things (some of which are no doubt good, others of which may not be so good). Surely one can suggest taking a hard look at these other expenditures without being accused of taking bread out of the mouths of children? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-dont-go-directly-to-poor-people-anymore/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-do... In California (one of the better states) only about 45% of the money supposedly spent to help poor people actually winds up in their hands. Some states are much, much worse. The guy who got flagged suggested (in a rather combative manner, true) that too much of the welfare budget is spent on the salaries of bureaucrats. I don't know about you, but > 50% overhead seems like too much to me.
  - papaver 9y ago
    i've wondered the same thing about the overhead. the argument given to me by some friends in non-profits is that raising money is an art and they have to compete with profit companies for the same people. hence they offer high salaries for c-level positions who can bring in money. there are only so many people that are willing to do it for a under industry salary. not sure i agree one way or another, but penny for your thoughts.
    - icc97 9y ago
      Do they set some kind of limit of how much of the donations can go to management and administration?
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    The post below yours got flagged into oblivion, but I think it raises an important issue. My impression was that it showed up dead. I vouched for it, to no avail. Assuming you mean this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848548
DoreenMichele 9y ago
It's very well written, but feels a little like it doesn't quite make the point it set out to make. It's a good read from the perspective of a richness of language and insight into a lifestyle many here will not have familiarity with. But, I don't know, when I was homeless, a hotel stay was a brief foray back into civilization. It was a chance to get a proper shower in a proper bathroom facility, unlike the homeless showers back in downtown San Diego that I was all too happy to leave behind. It was a chance to watch a TV like normal people do. It sits a bit uncomfortably with me that the meaning (of hotel stays) for those living precariously is cast in such negative terms. Perhaps that seems necessary to motivate people to try to do something about the problem, but I am not so sure that works. The pity with which other people clearly saw me when I was on the street rarely motivated anyone to help me, though I was only asking for help with figuring out how to effectively make money online. The pity itself seemed to be a barrier to the connections and useful information I desired. The pity seemed rather corrosive to my finances and not some means to channel assistance my way. While I can understand the strong feelings people have about how galling our high rates of homelessness are, I am not so convinced that this framing is particularly helpful to some cause of trying to make headway against such things.
- jpatokal 9y ago
  This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet desperation of motel-homeless life. They thought it would be a brief stay, but they ended up staying in various hotels like the Red Roof Inn and the GuestHouse Inn for the next two and a half years. All six of them would pile into one room, with two of the boys sleeping on the floor and everyone vying for bathroom time. They could rarely stay at a hotel longer than 28 days—many establishments have time limits—and so would have to pack up their bags every few weeks and find a new place to live. “I think the worst part of it was not having your privacy, your own room, we all had to share one big room,” Karina told me. “And not having a place to call home during Christmas.” ... Moving into a place where they had a kitchen and some privacy was an almost indescribable relief. Karina posted pictures of scrambled eggs she made on Facebook, puzzling friends who didn’t know that the family had been homeless for two and a half years, because being able to cook in her own kitchen again filled her with joy. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-neverending-foreclosure/547181/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-nev...
haroldp 9y ago
Reno Nevada is a little infamous for it's strips of shabby motels leftover from the 50s and 60s when it was a Mecca for people to get a quick marriage or divorce. The matrimony industry is gone but the motels are still here. People in town hate them because they are old and run down and ugly and occupied by our seedier citizens. They attract drugs and prostitution, as you might imagine. Everyone wants to get rid of them, and indeed three or four were razed this last summer. But as the story points out, shitty old motels are an important rung on the ladder between homelessness or living in a shelter, and being able to afford one or two thousand dollars to move into an apartment. This year our little "angel tree" that exclusively services those old motels has over 160 kids on it. I hate to think where those kids would be without the old motels. Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse.
- barry-cotter 9y ago
  > Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse. The problem these people are trying to solve is not that those children are trying to solve is not that those people are living in a crap situation, it is that those people are living near them. See NIMBY, banning Single Room Occupancy hotels, minimum lot sizes, maximum occupancy, minimum square footage, etc. Middle class people ban choices they wouldn’t make, news at 11.
  - mjevans 9y ago
    It isn't just the middle class. The wealthy don't want anyone (relatively) worse off living next to them either. One of the points I think a home (or apartment, etc) should make is keeping unwanted noises on one side of it's walls. Outside noises out, inside noises in. It very much annoys me how easy it is for the un-thoughtful to make the lives of those around them hell.
    - jaggederest 9y ago
      One of the things I (probably incorrectly, but) happily spent money on over the last couple years was putting soundproof windows. I think having better sound isolation in apartments would make them substantially more liveable, and it's not comparatively expensive versus many other upgrades you can make to multi-family housing.
elchief 9y ago
Imagine if Americans put the effort of complaining about inequality into actually changing things
- nofilter 9y ago
  Well, Americans do like changing things .. with words and zero action.
  - dominotw 9y ago
    They changed lives of millions in India and China by being good consumers.
- aloner 9y ago
  That's the kind of comment HN doesn't need, please refrain from posting such comments!
  - david-cako 9y ago
    Completely valid criticism of slacktivism?
    - jjoonathan 9y ago
      Which is itself slacktivism.
tomalpha 9y ago
In the UK we don’t have motels as such. We tend to have Bed And Breakfast guest houses. Much smaller affairs. They can end up having the same use though as we have a growing precariat too. There is some, perhaps better, provision for state funded emergency housing over here but claiming any kind of perfection would be very wide of the mark. It can still leave whole families in single rooms for long periods of time. https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/temporary_housing_if_youre_homeless/bed_and_breakfasts_b_and_bs_private_short-term_housing https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/t... Edit: I missed out acknowledging the author’s talents as a writer, and the plight of those (on downward or maybe as another commenter points out, upwards trends). This was a very moving piece. The picture it paints is captivating and bleak.
- seanmcdirmid 9y ago
  Youth hostels serve this role in much of Europe. The Lausanne hostel would have a drunk homeless guy living there, the police would bring him in and pay for his stay. He reaked, it was difficult for me to share a dorm room with him. Good times.
  - icc97 9y ago
    Youth Hostels are a pretty good solution I think. They're designed to be simple and cheap from the start, but further I think they're designed to be durable and low maintenance too. This means you can fairly sure of a basic level of quality. Unlike numerous B&Bs or run down hotels. I stayed in two separate youth hostels in Switzerland. One was amazing, the other was basically a camp for American students with speakers to wake you up each morning.
  - Mediterraneo10 9y ago
    I wouldn’t say much of Europe. Switzerland is actually known for putting the ordinary homeless into youth hostels. Elsewhere in Europe, hostel owners are completely free to refuse to accept such people, and if you are working or volunteering in one, one of the first instructions given to you is about who to turn away, like the local homeless.
peatmoss 9y ago
Oof. That bit about teachers pulling kids aside to see if they had a winter coat is 100% truth. When I was a kid, there were basically never any school cancellations due to snow. The reason? The calculus in Montana was that it was safer to risk traveling on terrifying roads than it was to risk kids being home, alone, with no heat, and maybe nothing to eat.
- jopsen 9y ago
  wow, to bed fair, if snow is common then the roads and infrastructure should be aimed at handling it, right?
  - greaseball 9y ago
    As a Canadian who's spent a few years in the southern states, I can say that the difference in infrastructure here does help reduce the risks of road accidents when there's snow. In the south the entire city shuts down because the people there don't have the snow plows, road salt, and winter tires to deal with it. However, in a really bad storm the reduced visibility and slippery roads can still make your drive very dangerous.
  - peatmoss 9y ago
    Yes, but there’s only so fast that so many plows can clear so much snow. Horrendous road conditions are still very much a reality.
ggm 9y ago
Housing the homeless in hotels across the UK since Margaret Thatcher...
Overtonwindow 9y ago
My greatest fear is eeking out an existence while I wait to die.
- icc97 9y ago
  Have you made any plans to avoid this?
  - Overtonwindow 9y ago
    Yes. I purchased a home and turned it into a rental, bringing a few hundred dollars of profit each month. I have a Roth IRA that I invest in, and I work very hard to stay out of debt.
diebir 9y ago
Billings, MT is a horrible shithole. I don't know of any other town along any major road between Colorado and any other place west, where I would have less liked to stop. Pollution, chemical industry, grim setting, run down downtown... The weather is awful too, summers too hot, winters too cold.
- wyclif 9y ago
  I've driven through there many times on my way from Denver to Bozeman, MT. Never wanted to stop there. It's really flat there, and there doesn't seem to be much to look at or experience there.
- SparkleBunny 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana#Berkeley_Pit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana#Berkeley_Pit
  - 24gttghh 9y ago
    Dear god. That could contaminate the entire Columbia River watershed in a few years...
petethomas 9y ago
Available on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motel-living-and-slowly-dying/# http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewof...!
Animats 9y ago
The next generation of this will be WeLive, the residential branch of WeWork. They're setting up dorms in old office buildings.[1] Once those become run down and are passed on to low rent operators, they'll be tomorrow's SRO hotels. [1] https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-live-in-welive-crystal-citys-dorm-for-adults/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-li...
groundCode 9y ago
On the subject of motel living, Willy Vlautin’s book This Motel Life is an excellent read.
fpisfun 9y ago
Life is what you make of it
fergie 9y ago
I'm so glad that the HN community still promotes quality long-form journalism. Long may it continue.
elboru 9y ago
Could someone help a non-American to understand? I've read people can stay years in motels, how is that possible? is renting a house in the US that expensive? or, is renting a motel that cheap? maybe I'm missing another variable? In perspective renting a cheap Motel in my city for one month would be the equivalent of renting a fairly big middle class house.
- jordanmoconnor 9y ago
  It's not the cost, but the mobility that is necessary for jobs like the one described. He travels (several hours) to the next destination and rests before his shift.
- garethsprice 9y ago
  Motels in the US can be extremely cheap, maybe $30/night. This makes a month comparable to a low-end apartment - but the advantage is that they are highly transient - as long as you've got $30, you've got a bed for the night. No contract, no lease, etc. Moving into an apartment usually requires a month (or more) deposit, potentially a credit check and employment verification. There's a growing precariat in the US who cannot provide this, so motels provide a solution in a society that operates on free-market principles and has little social safety net. "The Florida Project" is a good film that dives into this part of American society a little bit. As an immigrant who started out in this country near that run down part of the US-192 in Florida, it's spot on.

233 points by fern12 9y ago

This is an especially hard read given what's happening right now to the tax system. I wish more people understood just how easy it is to end up in those kind of circumstances, but most seem either secure enough that they don't see it as a realistic outcome for them or too frightened to consider just how close to the razor's edge they themselves are to accept it.

alexanderstears 9y ago
It's a hard read given what's happened with all the waste and excess in the social safety net. The social workers in my neighborhood live in nicer houses than me and lease vehicles that people purchase when intelligence isn't the limiting factor (e.g FCA products), and they leave for work after me and arrive home before I do. Yet I see stories about their clients needing winter coats and socks. I look at how much of my paycheck goes to taxes and it seems like there should be enough to ensure that kids don't go hungry but apparently not. But the solution remains the same as always. The bureaucrats bleat "we need more money" - I don't think I've ever heard one say "we need to do a better job with the budget".
- thriftwy 9y ago
  That's the beauty of UBI. On UBI, those bureaucrats are on UBI immediately, and out of work.
  - FussyZeus 9y ago
    In theory anyway, yes, it would be a much more efficient system that directly benefits the people under it. I'm sure you'd still need some staff but it would be drastically lower, and a fraud department wouldn't be required.
- FussyZeus 9y ago
  I hear what you're saying, but the fact is the roles of poor being helped by these systems are ever growing, therefore them constantly needing more money makes perfect sense. Especially after the housing crash in '08, from which many many households never recovered. The fact is though we spent something on the order of 13 trillion dollars on a plane for the USAF that's not yet flown a single mission since it was purchased in what, 2008? Until that type of stuff starts getting cut, I refuse to buy the argument that "we can't afford it." BS we can't. Right now we won't afford it but that's not the same thing.
  - alexanderstears 9y ago
    Are you talking about the F-35? The latest estimates peg our total expenditures on the F-35 at 1.5 trillion through 2055: https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-broke-the-air-force.html https://www.cnbc.com/2014/07/31/how-dods-15-trillion-f-35-br... We've spent less than a trillion on it so far. I don't know where you got your 13 trillion dollar expense, but I'd like to know more about the claim. I don't argue that we don't have the money to take better care of the poor. I'm just reluctant to advocate for more money until our welfare system demonstrates its efficiency. If it kicked butt, I'd want much more money going into the welfare system. But it's awful that so many good intentioned people run a system so poorly and the most vulnerable take the hit.
- EADGBE 9y ago
  Be careful judging others based on your quality of life standards. You might get angry realizing everyone has it better than you; but perhaps debt, lost love, resentment and bitterness is funding those extravagant purchases.
Turing_Machine 9y ago
The post below yours got flagged into oblivion, but I think it raises an important issue. Nationwide, less than 30% of the money spent on welfare actually winds up as cash in the hands of the needy it's supposedly benefiting. Most of it is spent on other things (some of which are no doubt good, others of which may not be so good). Surely one can suggest taking a hard look at these other expenditures without being accused of taking bread out of the mouths of children? https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-dont-go-directly-to-poor-people-anymore/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-welfare-dollars-do... In California (one of the better states) only about 45% of the money supposedly spent to help poor people actually winds up in their hands. Some states are much, much worse. The guy who got flagged suggested (in a rather combative manner, true) that too much of the welfare budget is spent on the salaries of bureaucrats. I don't know about you, but > 50% overhead seems like too much to me.
- papaver 9y ago
  i've wondered the same thing about the overhead. the argument given to me by some friends in non-profits is that raising money is an art and they have to compete with profit companies for the same people. hence they offer high salaries for c-level positions who can bring in money. there are only so many people that are willing to do it for a under industry salary. not sure i agree one way or another, but penny for your thoughts.
  - icc97 9y ago
    Do they set some kind of limit of how much of the donations can go to management and administration?
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  The post below yours got flagged into oblivion, but I think it raises an important issue. My impression was that it showed up dead. I vouched for it, to no avail. Assuming you mean this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848548 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15848548

DoreenMichele 9y ago

It's very well written, but feels a little like it doesn't quite make the point it set out to make. It's a good read from the perspective of a richness of language and insight into a lifestyle many here will not have familiarity with. But, I don't know, when I was homeless, a hotel stay was a brief foray back into civilization. It was a chance to get a proper shower in a proper bathroom facility, unlike the homeless showers back in downtown San Diego that I was all too happy to leave behind. It was a chance to watch a TV like normal people do. It sits a bit uncomfortably with me that the meaning (of hotel stays) for those living precariously is cast in such negative terms. Perhaps that seems necessary to motivate people to try to do something about the problem, but I am not so sure that works. The pity with which other people clearly saw me when I was on the street rarely motivated anyone to help me, though I was only asking for help with figuring out how to effectively make money online. The pity itself seemed to be a barrier to the connections and useful information I desired. The pity seemed rather corrosive to my finances and not some means to channel assistance my way. While I can understand the strong feelings people have about how galling our high rates of homelessness are, I am not so convinced that this framing is particularly helpful to some cause of trying to make headway against such things.

jpatokal 9y ago
This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet desperation of motel-homeless life. They thought it would be a brief stay, but they ended up staying in various hotels like the Red Roof Inn and the GuestHouse Inn for the next two and a half years. All six of them would pile into one room, with two of the boys sleeping on the floor and everyone vying for bathroom time. They could rarely stay at a hotel longer than 28 days—many establishments have time limits—and so would have to pack up their bags every few weeks and find a new place to live. “I think the worst part of it was not having your privacy, your own room, we all had to share one big room,” Karina told me. “And not having a place to call home during Christmas.” ... Moving into a place where they had a kitchen and some privacy was an almost indescribable relief. Karina posted pictures of scrambled eggs she made on Facebook, puzzling friends who didn’t know that the family had been homeless for two and a half years, because being able to cook in her own kitchen again filled her with joy. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-neverending-foreclosure/547181/?single_page=true https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/12/the-nev...

haroldp 9y ago

Reno Nevada is a little infamous for it's strips of shabby motels leftover from the 50s and 60s when it was a Mecca for people to get a quick marriage or divorce. The matrimony industry is gone but the motels are still here. People in town hate them because they are old and run down and ugly and occupied by our seedier citizens. They attract drugs and prostitution, as you might imagine. Everyone wants to get rid of them, and indeed three or four were razed this last summer. But as the story points out, shitty old motels are an important rung on the ladder between homelessness or living in a shelter, and being able to afford one or two thousand dollars to move into an apartment. This year our little "angel tree" that exclusively services those old motels has over 160 kids on it. I hate to think where those kids would be without the old motels. Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse.

barry-cotter 9y ago
> Tearing them down does not make the problem go away. It makes it worse. The problem these people are trying to solve is not that those children are trying to solve is not that those people are living in a crap situation, it is that those people are living near them. See NIMBY, banning Single Room Occupancy hotels, minimum lot sizes, maximum occupancy, minimum square footage, etc. Middle class people ban choices they wouldn’t make, news at 11.
- mjevans 9y ago
  It isn't just the middle class. The wealthy don't want anyone (relatively) worse off living next to them either. One of the points I think a home (or apartment, etc) should make is keeping unwanted noises on one side of it's walls. Outside noises out, inside noises in. It very much annoys me how easy it is for the un-thoughtful to make the lives of those around them hell.
  - jaggederest 9y ago
    One of the things I (probably incorrectly, but) happily spent money on over the last couple years was putting soundproof windows. I think having better sound isolation in apartments would make them substantially more liveable, and it's not comparatively expensive versus many other upgrades you can make to multi-family housing.

elchief 9y ago

Imagine if Americans put the effort of complaining about inequality into actually changing things

nofilter 9y ago
Well, Americans do like changing things .. with words and zero action.
- dominotw 9y ago
  They changed lives of millions in India and China by being good consumers.
aloner 9y ago
That's the kind of comment HN doesn't need, please refrain from posting such comments!
- david-cako 9y ago
  Completely valid criticism of slacktivism?
  - jjoonathan 9y ago
    Which is itself slacktivism.

tomalpha 9y ago

In the UK we don’t have motels as such. We tend to have Bed And Breakfast guest houses. Much smaller affairs. They can end up having the same use though as we have a growing precariat too. There is some, perhaps better, provision for state funded emergency housing over here but claiming any kind of perfection would be very wide of the mark. It can still leave whole families in single rooms for long periods of time. https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/temporary_housing_if_youre_homeless/bed_and_breakfasts_b_and_bs_private_short-term_housing https://england.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/homelessness/t... Edit: I missed out acknowledging the author’s talents as a writer, and the plight of those (on downward or maybe as another commenter points out, upwards trends). This was a very moving piece. The picture it paints is captivating and bleak.

seanmcdirmid 9y ago
Youth hostels serve this role in much of Europe. The Lausanne hostel would have a drunk homeless guy living there, the police would bring him in and pay for his stay. He reaked, it was difficult for me to share a dorm room with him. Good times.
- icc97 9y ago
  Youth Hostels are a pretty good solution I think. They're designed to be simple and cheap from the start, but further I think they're designed to be durable and low maintenance too. This means you can fairly sure of a basic level of quality. Unlike numerous B&Bs or run down hotels. I stayed in two separate youth hostels in Switzerland. One was amazing, the other was basically a camp for American students with speakers to wake you up each morning.
- Mediterraneo10 9y ago
  I wouldn’t say much of Europe. Switzerland is actually known for putting the ordinary homeless into youth hostels. Elsewhere in Europe, hostel owners are completely free to refuse to accept such people, and if you are working or volunteering in one, one of the first instructions given to you is about who to turn away, like the local homeless.

peatmoss 9y ago

Oof. That bit about teachers pulling kids aside to see if they had a winter coat is 100% truth. When I was a kid, there were basically never any school cancellations due to snow. The reason? The calculus in Montana was that it was safer to risk traveling on terrifying roads than it was to risk kids being home, alone, with no heat, and maybe nothing to eat.

jopsen 9y ago
wow, to bed fair, if snow is common then the roads and infrastructure should be aimed at handling it, right?
- greaseball 9y ago
  As a Canadian who's spent a few years in the southern states, I can say that the difference in infrastructure here does help reduce the risks of road accidents when there's snow. In the south the entire city shuts down because the people there don't have the snow plows, road salt, and winter tires to deal with it. However, in a really bad storm the reduced visibility and slippery roads can still make your drive very dangerous.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Yes, but there’s only so fast that so many plows can clear so much snow. Horrendous road conditions are still very much a reality.

ggm 9y ago

Housing the homeless in hotels across the UK since Margaret Thatcher...

Overtonwindow 9y ago

My greatest fear is eeking out an existence while I wait to die.

icc97 9y ago
Have you made any plans to avoid this?
- Overtonwindow 9y ago
  Yes. I purchased a home and turned it into a rental, bringing a few hundred dollars of profit each month. I have a Roth IRA that I invest in, and I work very hard to stay out of debt.

diebir 9y ago

Billings, MT is a horrible shithole. I don't know of any other town along any major road between Colorado and any other place west, where I would have less liked to stop. Pollution, chemical industry, grim setting, run down downtown... The weather is awful too, summers too hot, winters too cold.

wyclif 9y ago
I've driven through there many times on my way from Denver to Bozeman, MT. Never wanted to stop there. It's really flat there, and there doesn't seem to be much to look at or experience there.
SparkleBunny 9y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana#Berkeley_Pit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butte,_Montana#Berkeley_Pit
- 24gttghh 9y ago
  Dear god. That could contaminate the entire Columbia River watershed in a few years...

petethomas 9y ago

Available on archive.org: http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/motel-living-and-slowly-dying/# http://web.archive.org/web/20171205060015/https://lareviewof...!

Animats 9y ago

The next generation of this will be WeLive, the residential branch of WeWork. They're setting up dorms in old office buildings.[1] Once those become run down and are passed on to low rent operators, they'll be tomorrow's SRO hotels. [1] https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-live-in-welive-crystal-citys-dorm-for-adults/ https://www.washingtonian.com/2017/05/19/what-its-like-to-li...

groundCode 9y ago

On the subject of motel living, Willy Vlautin’s book This Motel Life is an excellent read.

fpisfun 9y ago

Life is what you make of it

fergie 9y ago

I'm so glad that the HN community still promotes quality long-form journalism. Long may it continue.

elboru 9y ago

Could someone help a non-American to understand? I've read people can stay years in motels, how is that possible? is renting a house in the US that expensive? or, is renting a motel that cheap? maybe I'm missing another variable? In perspective renting a cheap Motel in my city for one month would be the equivalent of renting a fairly big middle class house.

jordanmoconnor 9y ago
It's not the cost, but the mobility that is necessary for jobs like the one described. He travels (several hours) to the next destination and rests before his shift.
garethsprice 9y ago
Motels in the US can be extremely cheap, maybe $30/night. This makes a month comparable to a low-end apartment - but the advantage is that they are highly transient - as long as you've got $30, you've got a bed for the night. No contract, no lease, etc. Moving into an apartment usually requires a month (or more) deposit, potentially a credit check and employment verification. There's a growing precariat in the US who cannot provide this, so motels provide a solution in a society that operates on free-market principles and has little social safety net. "The Florida Project" is a good film that dives into this part of American society a little bit. As an immigrant who started out in this country near that run down part of the US-192 in Florida, it's spot on.