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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 en

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...

DoreenMichele 9y ago
I slept in a usually 7x7 tent for 5.7 years with my two adult special needs sons. I am not asserting that their quiet desperation is invalid. But please don't dismiss my experience as invalid. I do a lot of writing on things like homelessness and housing issues. I wish tech giants would abandon their advocacy of UBI and replace it with trying to solve affordable housing for this country. But I cannot begin to tell you what a kick in the stomach it feels like for you to try to "educate" me on the issue of homelessness here, like I have no clue whereof I speak.
- deftturtle 9y ago
  I think they were just trying to contribute to the discussion. Why assume a hostile position towards the comment?
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    If it is mere contribution to the discussion, it is quite badly handled. If they did not intend to rebut me, they could have posted it as a top level comment instead of as a reply. If they wished to engage me without coming across as dismissive, the framing of it needs a lot of work. Your comment also comes across as subtly dismissive and accusatory due to what you choose to comment on here. If you only wish to engage in discussion, why feel the need to criticize my reply? Why not say something constructive in response to my top level comment above? Women, people of color, the poor and other disenfranchised groups face this sort of thing a great deal. It is rather maddening as it puts people in a no win situation. Such groups get no respect. When they complain of it, it is yet another thing to criticise them for. It would be nice if the world stopped such insidious patterns.
    - adrianN 9y ago
      No offense, but I think you're misinterpreting a normal pattern of discussion on this site. jpatokal's comment was pretty clearly not trying to dismiss your experience as invalid but simply contributed a similar story.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        No offense, but your comment merely continues the insidious pattern I wish would end. Edit: If you are assuming I am new here because of the green handle, you are in error.
        mrunkel 9y ago
        You seem to be reading a lot into some very innocuous responses. I read jpatokal's response as simple addressing your point that the original author didn't make his point. There was no explicit criticism in the post. Several of us now have tried to point out that we didn't detect any implicit criticism either, but you've take all of these very friendly responses as further attacks. As far as I can tell, nobody is being hostile or making assumptions here except for you.
- totalZero 9y ago
  I see UBI as a means to make life more affordable. Assuming price stasis across introduction of UBI, can't a family just use the extra money to help pay rent/mortgage costs? Ultimately, cost of living is one of the big differences between first-world society and the rest of the world. UBI is a way to share the fruits of productivity of the first world among its common classes, effectively reducing their net monthly expenses.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    There are a number of problems with UBI. The largest issue is that tech giants say they want to create a UBI because many jobs are going away permanently. These jobs pay like $20k to $50k annually. Proposed UBI is usually $10k. The most generous figure I have seen (from Sam Altman) is $18k. Then the rest of the article talks in glowing terms about how lovely it will be for underpaid workers to have this extra money. These articles never actually explore what life would be like if your $50k job disappears, you are doomed to only get $10k UBI and have no hope of getting another job. Another issue is that we have a serious, long standing shortage of affordable housing. We tore down about 80% of SROs in a couple of decades and never replaced them. Average size of new housing has more than doubled since the 1950s. If you do nothing to address the issue of affordable housing, then UBI solves nothing. My fear is that tech giants focusing on UBI means that restructuring work to better distribute it, addressing the need to fix health care and affordable housing will all get ignored because UBI is supposed to be some panacea. But it's not. It is basically rich people imagining they can solve this by cutting a check. They can't. That doesn't work. If there simply isn't affordable, basic housing, UBI won't get you off the street.
    - thriftwy 9y ago
      If you're on UBI you don't need affordable housing because the huge array of very cheap housing in currently non-desirable areas. The kind that is described in the article. Some of those will probably pay you for moving in. And then you have whole day to yourself to figure out additional income on top of UBI.
  - jopsen 9y ago
- jpatokal 9y ago
  Whoah there, you're completely misreading my comment. The single sentence I wrote, "This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet desperation of motel-homeless life" isn't even directed at you personally, but at HN readers who want to understand more about the topic. So: of course staying in motels is far preferable to life on the streets, and it sounds like you had it far worse than the family profiled in the Atlantic. My sole point was that precarious living in a string of motels is still homelessness and -- as the article explains -- far more challenging than the average HNer (like me) might think.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    It would have made an excellent top level comment, with much less room for misinterpretation. Thank you for clarifying.

DoreenMichele 9y ago

I slept in a usually 7x7 tent for 5.7 years with my two adult special needs sons. I am not asserting that their quiet desperation is invalid. But please don't dismiss my experience as invalid. I do a lot of writing on things like homelessness and housing issues. I wish tech giants would abandon their advocacy of UBI and replace it with trying to solve affordable housing for this country. But I cannot begin to tell you what a kick in the stomach it feels like for you to try to "educate" me on the issue of homelessness here, like I have no clue whereof I speak.

deftturtle 9y ago
I think they were just trying to contribute to the discussion. Why assume a hostile position towards the comment?
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  If it is mere contribution to the discussion, it is quite badly handled. If they did not intend to rebut me, they could have posted it as a top level comment instead of as a reply. If they wished to engage me without coming across as dismissive, the framing of it needs a lot of work. Your comment also comes across as subtly dismissive and accusatory due to what you choose to comment on here. If you only wish to engage in discussion, why feel the need to criticize my reply? Why not say something constructive in response to my top level comment above? Women, people of color, the poor and other disenfranchised groups face this sort of thing a great deal. It is rather maddening as it puts people in a no win situation. Such groups get no respect. When they complain of it, it is yet another thing to criticise them for. It would be nice if the world stopped such insidious patterns.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    No offense, but I think you're misinterpreting a normal pattern of discussion on this site. jpatokal's comment was pretty clearly not trying to dismiss your experience as invalid but simply contributed a similar story.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      No offense, but your comment merely continues the insidious pattern I wish would end. Edit: If you are assuming I am new here because of the green handle, you are in error.
      - mrunkel 9y ago
        You seem to be reading a lot into some very innocuous responses. I read jpatokal's response as simple addressing your point that the original author didn't make his point. There was no explicit criticism in the post. Several of us now have tried to point out that we didn't detect any implicit criticism either, but you've take all of these very friendly responses as further attacks. As far as I can tell, nobody is being hostile or making assumptions here except for you.
totalZero 9y ago
I see UBI as a means to make life more affordable. Assuming price stasis across introduction of UBI, can't a family just use the extra money to help pay rent/mortgage costs? Ultimately, cost of living is one of the big differences between first-world society and the rest of the world. UBI is a way to share the fruits of productivity of the first world among its common classes, effectively reducing their net monthly expenses.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  There are a number of problems with UBI. The largest issue is that tech giants say they want to create a UBI because many jobs are going away permanently. These jobs pay like $20k to $50k annually. Proposed UBI is usually $10k. The most generous figure I have seen (from Sam Altman) is $18k. Then the rest of the article talks in glowing terms about how lovely it will be for underpaid workers to have this extra money. These articles never actually explore what life would be like if your $50k job disappears, you are doomed to only get $10k UBI and have no hope of getting another job. Another issue is that we have a serious, long standing shortage of affordable housing. We tore down about 80% of SROs in a couple of decades and never replaced them. Average size of new housing has more than doubled since the 1950s. If you do nothing to address the issue of affordable housing, then UBI solves nothing. My fear is that tech giants focusing on UBI means that restructuring work to better distribute it, addressing the need to fix health care and affordable housing will all get ignored because UBI is supposed to be some panacea. But it's not. It is basically rich people imagining they can solve this by cutting a check. They can't. That doesn't work. If there simply isn't affordable, basic housing, UBI won't get you off the street.
  - thriftwy 9y ago
    If you're on UBI you don't need affordable housing because the huge array of very cheap housing in currently non-desirable areas. The kind that is described in the article. Some of those will probably pay you for moving in. And then you have whole day to yourself to figure out additional income on top of UBI.
- jopsen 9y ago
jpatokal 9y ago
Whoah there, you're completely misreading my comment. The single sentence I wrote, "This recent story in the Atlantic does a good job of capturing the quiet desperation of motel-homeless life" isn't even directed at you personally, but at HN readers who want to understand more about the topic. So: of course staying in motels is far preferable to life on the streets, and it sounds like you had it far worse than the family profiled in the Atlantic. My sole point was that precarious living in a string of motels is still homelessness and -- as the article explains -- far more challenging than the average HNer (like me) might think.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  It would have made an excellent top level comment, with much less room for misinterpretation. Thank you for clarifying.