11 ms·
People living in storage units in order to avoid paying Boston rents
- neocraftster 8y agoInteresting that the article mentions why people would do this (much, much cheaper) but avoids talking about any possible solutions to rising rent costs in urban areas.
- furbyhat 8y agoHow would someone reporting on shanty towns be able to cover the breadth and depth of an entire field of economics in a way that is not merely biased propaganda?
- bamboo_7 8y agoThat's because the city has no solutions. So far they've only tried telling the universities to build more dorms and give up some of the housing they have. I mean, there's plenty of new apartment buildings going up around Boston, but they're all luxury.
- ransom1538 8y agoLive in the van hacking is on the rise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG4kJrhjzaY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG4kJrhjzaY
- seltzered_ 8y agoEh, there's plenty of videos on living inside storage units: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=living%20in%20storage https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=living%20in%20s...
- downrightmike 8y agoMost affordable housing today was once the luxury housing of the past. Since WWII we went from 1 billion people to over 7 and no one could plan for that. The housing crisis is a population crisis.
- bryanlarsen 8y agoIt's stronger than that. People moving into luxury housing are generally moving from mainstream housing, freeing up capacity downstream.
- jschwartzi 8y agoI see your point. However I don't agree that nobody could plan for the increase in population. They can absolutely plan for that. The failure is in planning modes of housing that nobody in the city wants(single-family detached housing with a 45 minute commute by car), and in blocking the increasing densification of neighborhoods in desirable areas. Because the density and housing type of a district is controlled by government, the zoning lags behind how people actually want to live. That's the source of the housing crisis. It's shameful that our local governments continue to allow people to block the construction of housing when it's clear how much the NIMBYs contribute to the homelessness and impoverishment of their neighbors.
- downrightmike 8y agoYou have to remember that in the time when suburbs were being created, most people in the city did want to escape it. The white flight was a huge change. And once the whites left cities, cities drove out poor people and put them into Projects. For a while later, in the last century, downtowns were pretty much deserts with the wealthy living in pent houses and everyone else either suburbs or the streets. It is only in the last couple of decades that cities have become able to attract the grand-kids of the suburb generations back to the cities. Largely because that is where profitable work is located. It is a feedback loop. Also humans don't work well on the larger scale. Nimbys exist because that is the scale human people can operate at. A million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is almost 32 years. Maybe IBM could use Watson to figure out the housing crisis. A few less variables there to work with than cancer.
- rflrob 8y agoThere is a belief, with a number of associated caveats, that "Today's luxury apartment's are tomorrow's affordable housing" [1]. They are one piece of the puzzle, and I don't think it's helpful to block their construction. That said, they aren't the only thing that's necessary for affordable and equitable housing, but I've become less hostile towards the luxury condo/shopping complex projects near me, even if I can neither afford them nor have much interest in living in one. [1] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/todays-luxury-apartments-may-be-tomorrows-affordable-housing/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/todays-luxury...
- triviatise 8y agoluxury units can create affordability immediately. if 100 thousand luxury units suddenly came online at a cost of 1.5M each Here are a few possible outcomes: 1) 100K people can afford them and decide to move from their current homes into the luxury homes. Homes that were 1.5m get downward pressure. As every level moves up it puts downward pricing pressure on the level below. Luxury housing will impact entry level housing if enough is built. 2) 100K people choose to not buy the new luxury housing a) the owners go bankrupt and the price of the luxury housing goes down. Then see 1) b) the owners lower the price of the new luxury housing. then see 1 The point is that any inventory puts downward pricing pressure on existing inventory. You generally don't see the effect so obviously because the new supply of luxury housing rarely keeps up with demand in hot markets. You can see the impact in flat markets where new housing dries up demand for existing houses such that agents recommend you not buy existing homes in areas that are being actively developed.
- my_usernam3 8y agoI wish SF would listen to this way of thinking. I'm no urban development expert, but this seems pretty cut and dry to me. Unfortunately I've seen it being coupled with "trickle down economics" Personally I would love to move into a more luxury (some call cookie cutter) apartment which would free up my existing dwelling and potentially lower housing costs.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
- tjr225 8y agoJust another real symptom of a supposedly booming economy.
- furbyhat 8y agoI did this myself for 3 months. Saved about $4k doing so. You start to appreciate simpler things and realize how cluttered your life was before
- vertexFarm 8y agoDid you do it out of choice or necessity? This sounds so out of touch. Most of these people aren't doing it as an experiment to bolster their savings and achieve some kind of minimalist zen, they're doing it because real affordable housing is out of reach. Like I'd love to imagine that Hiro Protagonist and Vitaly Chernobyl are somewhere in Boston, but our current cyberpunk reality is mostly very sad.
- darawk 8y agoWhy does it matter why he did it? It's a more efficient alternative. If affordable housing is out of reach, adapt your housing. Live somewhere else, or find a way to live where you want more cheaply - like living in a storage space.
- marnett 8y agoThis is, again, out of touch with the actualities of poverty. How does someone with no money "live somewhere else?" When someone who is impoverished is evicted, they take their children on a trip to a shelter and go to work the next day for 12 hours physical labor, skipping a few meals to feed their children as needed.
- darawk 8y agoTake a bus. Buses are cheap. Nobody gets evicted without warning. You have time to prepare.
- hprotagonist 8y agoAnd i have a russian roomate, too. I hear the scene's better in LA...
- wpdev_63 8y agoAt that you would just buy a cheap rv and park it in south boston
- icantdrive55 8y agoBecause it would be ticketed to extinction.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoBecause then instead of some busybody having to call the cops to come harass you for living somewhere that isn't a house or apartment (that's a low bar, we take pride in being busybodies here in MA) like happened in the article they'll take the initiative and do it on their own because it's a vehicle parked somewhere and will be subject to far more scrutiny. Getting your house ticketed and towed because some concerned mother didn't like how it looked or some cop thought it looked suspicious is a massive PITA. It's kind of hard to ticket and tow a storage locker. About the only way you could make it work would be to toss all the appliances from a rotted out camper in a UHaul van, park at bog box stores during the day and park at UHaul locations overnight and even then you'd always be looking for somewhere new. You would have to put a massive effort in to be invisible if you don't want problems. You can get away with living in a camper or box truck in other cities in MA but if you do it east of I-495 it's gonna be an uphill battle.
- r00fus 8y agoIt's not legal to park an RV for any reasonable period on most curbs. Had a chat with someone who'd parked an RV next to my house (SF Bay) for a week. He said he was down on his luck (claimed to previous live in one of the nearby houses but got booted because his mom had to sell and he couldn't afford rent) and insisted it was his right. I reminded him of the law (72hrs max for an RV in my neighborhood), and that I wouldn't take action if he would move around a bit. Next day he was gone. I sympathize with folks in this situation but it's pretty weird having someone living in a vehicle that looks into your living room window from the sidewalk - esp if you have kids.
- mmt 8y ago
- s73v3r_ 8y agoWasn't that something that happened in Snow Crash?
- GW150914 8y agoYes it was. Hiro Protagonist and Vitaly Chernobyl, roommates, are chilling out in their home, a spacious 20 by 30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood, California. The room has a concrete slab floor, corrugated steel walls separating it from the neighboring units and - this is a mark of distinction separating it from the neighboring units - a roll-up steel door that faces northwest, giving them a few red rays at times like this, when the sun is setting over LAX. But there are worse places to live… slum housing, 5-by-10s and 10-by-10s where Yanoama tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of burning lottery tickets.
- DoctorOetker 8y agoI have actually seriously considered doing this in Belgium, instead of working ~4 months a year, I would only have to work ~1 month a year...
- nickthemagicman 8y agoYou only have to work 4 months a year in Belgium?
- DoctorOetker 8y agoSure, I've even worked ~3 months a year before, but that was very cheap, and no occasional electronics or whatever to keep myself motivated (oscilloscope etc) I keep my food and fun expenses very low, and rent a flat with a friend, so its half as much as renting a flat on my own. Still rent and associated living expenses is about 2/3 of my expenses.
- nickthemagicman 8y agoThat's awesome. Jealous. Have a drink for us 60 hour a week people in America.
- icantdrive55 8y agoI think it's time to open up certain tracts of federal, state, and local land to free camping. Right now there's basically no where to live for free, or even reasonable rent. (Yes--I know about section 8, etc. Those programs were at maximum density 20 years ago.) I used to work at a mini storage, and saw people trying to live out of their units. It never worked more than a few months. I saw one guy use all his savings to buy 50 grand VW bus. By the second night, he was getting tickets for sleeping where he shouldn't, which is everywhere, except $60 buck a night RV parking. I did let him use the bathroom, but I was the only one. We need to realize America's biggest problem is housing. That combined with so many chit jobs, and lousy government support systems; equals what we are seeing on our streets---filth, and homelessness. And cops don't stop crime. They collect Revenue. They seem to go out of their way to harass anyone trying to game the system. (Game is the wrong word. They are trying to survive thus mess.)
- beauzero 8y agoThis is nothing new. People living on the street will often do this in Atlanta in order to have a safer place to live. Storage facilities do the best they can to keep people from doing it. - source. Have purchased foreclosed storage units off and on for 15+ years.
- swiley 8y agoI would have expected this to be illegal! Can you really get away with it? It sounds like an easy way to handle crashing after a night out downtown without having to look for a cab/DD.
- burkaman 8y agoIt is illegal, the headline is "Officials: People living illegally in rented spaces". Storage spaces are private, nobody is going to inspect it without good cause, so you can get away with it for a while by being discreet.
- ams6110 8y agoYep, I know of several people who have done it when down on their luck. Beats sleeping under a bridge.
- jstarfish 8y agoIt violates the terms of all self-storage contracts.
- t0mbstone 8y agoBut you are technically storing your "self". The product is literally called "Self storage"!
- merolish 8y agoI moved back to Cambridge this spring after over a decade mostly in NYC. It was surprising to see that while cheaper it wasn't too much cheaper. On the other hand, the job market here seems robust and I hear fewer tales of appalling living conditions and insane 2+ hour commutes like in NYC and California.