8 ms·

3 Kids. 2 paychecks. No home

56 points by samfisher83 7y ago

tropdrop 7y ago
> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care. > There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey, the complex had strict rules governing who could reside in its units — and since the apartment was in Candido’s mother’s name, her children and grandchildren were barred from living there. The building’s sympathetic manager, however, assured them that it would be fine; with a yearslong waiting list to even enter the lottery for these subsidized rentals, they certainly weren’t the only ones, he said, who’d be living “off-lease.” Everything went well for about a year. But then a neighbor threatened to report the family. She’d started photographing the kids as they left and reentered the apartment each day, and the manager had no choice but to tell them to go elsewhere. “We were totally scared and shocked,” Brenda said, “and we knew that we needed to get out right away. If not, Candido’s mom might have been evicted, too.” What heartless NIMBY does this? I am just shocked and appalled at the cruelty of this neighbor - it's impossible that she wasn't aware of the housing crisis in the area.
- Aeolun 7y ago
  I rather assume that was why they were taking pictures in the first place. I have a much harder time understanding why though...
  - tehwebguy 7y ago
    Probably because everyone else that lives there chose to live there because of the restrictions in the first place? Super shitty, just that’s probably the reason.
Aeolun 7y ago
Just like mass murders, these stories seem to be popping up everywhere in the US. I find it hard to understand how a country can be so good in some ways, but so terrible in others. Is it just because the successful truly extract all their wealth from the more unfortunate?
- nojvek 7y ago
  Welcome to the US. How else do you think we have such a massive income disparity ? We’re a wealthy country but the wealth is in very few hands.
  - pkaye 7y ago
    A lot of the people in this forum are part of the wealth. People talk about how after just a few year of working they are making $400k at a FAANG like its now big deal. That is a lot of money compared to the people around them.
    - ldoughty 7y ago
      See my other comment on this thread, it's not just about the money... it's about the cost of living. Making $100k+/year now is "easy" in the tech sector, move to any of the major cities. Unfortunately homes cost $750k+ or you take an unpaid part-time job in commuting to the office (2-4 hours/day, 5 days a week). And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of the parents stay at home even!
      - pkaye 7y ago
        > And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of the parents stay at home even! So do you not consider the $400k FAANG compensation a huge disparity vs the service industry pay? Is it only at the C-level and senior manager/owner level that it becomes a problem?
imtringued 7y ago
1. freeze property taxes on residential construction 2. local government is running out of funding 3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise 4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes) 5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases 6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants 7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable 8. NIMBYs introduce rent control 9. developers cannot recoup their investments and leave 10. households with (two) incomes become homeless 11. people start living in tent cities or their cars (we are here) What a shitshow... Freezing rents or property taxes just delays the negative effects and perversely make it harder to implement a long lasting solution. Frozen property taxes lead to high house prices which lead to high property taxes on the next assessment. At some point the theoretical property taxes become so large it is no longer possible to unfreeze property taxes because home owners cannot afford them. The threat of high property taxes would force NIMBYs to optimize for variables other than their home value. The goal would be to provide as much housing as is necessary to prevent yourself from being priced out of your neighborhood.
- oppositelock 7y ago
  CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to build small developments, like duplexes or triplexes, which would help a lot here! To give you some concrete examples; in Mountain View, adding a new unit of housing requires about $80k in impact fees and permit fees from the city, and the permits require bending over backward, since they're sometimes self conflicting. We've now banned natural gas, so homes have to be electric. The only way to heat electrically efficiently is heat pumps, but those are affected by noise ordinances, so it's tricky to place them. Solar panels are mandatory, but you need to pay for a permit to install them. Electric car chargers are mandatory. The fire code, city code, and state building codes conflict at times, so you sometimes have the fire inspection, then change stuff around for the city inspector, etc. Everybody knows how broken it is, so everyone cheats, and inspectors sign off on temporary kludges, knowing full well they'll be changed right after inspection, but the i's must be dotted, and the t's must be crossed. But hey, "we're" doing something! Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern political discourse.
eshack94 7y ago
Here's a novel idea (/s): Move cities.
- knolax 7y ago
  Anyone wanna move to California City? If enough of us do it at once we can jumpstart the growth cycle.
  - hakfoo 7y ago
    I always figured with modern technology we don't need to have all of the federal government in the DC/VA area. I'd scatter each department to a different rust-belt or similarly hollowed-out city, creating a permanent economic base and allowing redevelopment to jump start.
    - ldoughty 7y ago
      That's my argument for internet everywhere to. You physically can't have work from home employees if, in 2019, they have to pick between 3Mbps or a 25GB data cap. And if more people worked remotely, stress on large cities is reduced. I actually liked the concept of wework -- a shared office to work in that is not at home -- to bad there was serious issues with the company. With enough places like this, you can still move people out of cities.
      - brianwawok 7y ago
        The top issue of WFH is not internet speed. It’s a lot deeper than that. I could WFH on 1 mbit pretty easy, git commits and slack are low bandwidth.
        Hackbraten 7y ago
        Then again, many workers depend on video calls or video conferences, which easily require a multiple of that bandwidth. Regular security updates are also important. Those add up nowadays, and if they’re slow to download you tend to skimp on them.
pruneridge 7y ago
More construction is not going to solve this problem. The laws of supply and demand do not apply to American coastal real estate
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- opportune 7y ago
  It sounded like this particular family was doing ok until the wife lost her job when she was on maternity leave (wouldn’t happen if maternity leave were actually protected), so they started illegally subletting, and then they got kicked out of their illegal sublet. Yeah it’s clear they basically had no savings at that time though, other than the car. I read the article a few hours ago but I think I remember them saying like a quarter of the kids in the Salinas public school system were homeless? I agree that in general, people should be responsible about having children. But let’s be clear: a quarter of a city’s kids being homeless is indicative of a deep systemic problem. That’s not something that we should simply accept as natural because they are poor. Of course, the big issue which they touch on briefly is that the whole “affordable/subsidized housing” crap is not even close to reaching the scale it needs to be at to address the problem. You can’t solve a housing shortage by selling $10 for $3 to a couple thousand people.

56 points by samfisher83 7y ago

> When Adelene was born, and Brenda stopped working for a brief season to stay home with her, they realized that their financial footing was less secure than it had seemed. So they were grateful to accept an offer from Candido’s mom to come stay with her. She had extra space, the location was more convenient, and, crucially, they would have help with child care. > There was one catch. Owned and operated by the Housing Authority of the County of Monterey, the complex had strict rules governing who could reside in its units — and since the apartment was in Candido’s mother’s name, her children and grandchildren were barred from living there. The building’s sympathetic manager, however, assured them that it would be fine; with a yearslong waiting list to even enter the lottery for these subsidized rentals, they certainly weren’t the only ones, he said, who’d be living “off-lease.” Everything went well for about a year. But then a neighbor threatened to report the family. She’d started photographing the kids as they left and reentered the apartment each day, and the manager had no choice but to tell them to go elsewhere. “We were totally scared and shocked,” Brenda said, “and we knew that we needed to get out right away. If not, Candido’s mom might have been evicted, too.” What heartless NIMBY does this? I am just shocked and appalled at the cruelty of this neighbor - it's impossible that she wasn't aware of the housing crisis in the area.

Aeolun 7y ago
I rather assume that was why they were taking pictures in the first place. I have a much harder time understanding why though...
- tehwebguy 7y ago
  Probably because everyone else that lives there chose to live there because of the restrictions in the first place? Super shitty, just that’s probably the reason.

Aeolun 7y ago

Just like mass murders, these stories seem to be popping up everywhere in the US. I find it hard to understand how a country can be so good in some ways, but so terrible in others. Is it just because the successful truly extract all their wealth from the more unfortunate?

nojvek 7y ago
Welcome to the US. How else do you think we have such a massive income disparity ? We’re a wealthy country but the wealth is in very few hands.
- pkaye 7y ago
  A lot of the people in this forum are part of the wealth. People talk about how after just a few year of working they are making $400k at a FAANG like its now big deal. That is a lot of money compared to the people around them.
  - ldoughty 7y ago
    See my other comment on this thread, it's not just about the money... it's about the cost of living. Making $100k+/year now is "easy" in the tech sector, move to any of the major cities. Unfortunately homes cost $750k+ or you take an unpaid part-time job in commuting to the office (2-4 hours/day, 5 days a week). And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of the parents stay at home even!
    - pkaye 7y ago
      > And yes, that's a HUGE disparity when compared to the people working service industry in the same cities... but it's also a huge disparity compared to C-level and senior managers/owners... that can afford a 1-2 million dollar home and the $15-20+/day "Fast Lanes"... and can often afford to have one of the parents stay at home even! So do you not consider the $400k FAANG compensation a huge disparity vs the service industry pay? Is it only at the C-level and senior manager/owner level that it becomes a problem?

imtringued 7y ago

1. freeze property taxes on residential construction 2. local government is running out of funding 3. local NIMBYs want theirs home values to rise 4. government prioritizes commercial development permits (no frozen taxes) 5. area becomes more "desireable" as the number of jobs increases 6. housing fails to keep up with growing number of migrants 7. rent and home values rise quickly and become unaffordable 8. NIMBYs introduce rent control 9. developers cannot recoup their investments and leave 10. households with (two) incomes become homeless 11. people start living in tent cities or their cars (we are here) What a shitshow... Freezing rents or property taxes just delays the negative effects and perversely make it harder to implement a long lasting solution. Frozen property taxes lead to high house prices which lead to high property taxes on the next assessment. At some point the theoretical property taxes become so large it is no longer possible to unfreeze property taxes because home owners cannot afford them. The threat of high property taxes would force NIMBYs to optimize for variables other than their home value. The goal would be to provide as much housing as is necessary to prevent yourself from being priced out of your neighborhood.

oppositelock 7y ago
CA's local governments have basically reached crippling levels of stupidity. I live in Mountain View, the home town of Google, but every city around here has made building so difficult, that it barely happens. What we do build are expansive planned "communities", where a developer managed to navigate the web of red tape and got it approved, and the amount of red tape involved is so huge that it's not worth trying to build small developments, like duplexes or triplexes, which would help a lot here! To give you some concrete examples; in Mountain View, adding a new unit of housing requires about $80k in impact fees and permit fees from the city, and the permits require bending over backward, since they're sometimes self conflicting. We've now banned natural gas, so homes have to be electric. The only way to heat electrically efficiently is heat pumps, but those are affected by noise ordinances, so it's tricky to place them. Solar panels are mandatory, but you need to pay for a permit to install them. Electric car chargers are mandatory. The fire code, city code, and state building codes conflict at times, so you sometimes have the fire inspection, then change stuff around for the city inspector, etc. Everybody knows how broken it is, so everyone cheats, and inspectors sign off on temporary kludges, knowing full well they'll be changed right after inspection, but the i's must be dotted, and the t's must be crossed. But hey, "we're" doing something! Sheesh. I wish tar and feathering of politicians made a return to modern political discourse.

eshack94 7y ago

Here's a novel idea (/s): Move cities.

knolax 7y ago
Anyone wanna move to California City? If enough of us do it at once we can jumpstart the growth cycle.
- hakfoo 7y ago
  I always figured with modern technology we don't need to have all of the federal government in the DC/VA area. I'd scatter each department to a different rust-belt or similarly hollowed-out city, creating a permanent economic base and allowing redevelopment to jump start.
  - ldoughty 7y ago
    That's my argument for internet everywhere to. You physically can't have work from home employees if, in 2019, they have to pick between 3Mbps or a 25GB data cap. And if more people worked remotely, stress on large cities is reduced. I actually liked the concept of wework -- a shared office to work in that is not at home -- to bad there was serious issues with the company. With enough places like this, you can still move people out of cities.
    - brianwawok 7y ago
      The top issue of WFH is not internet speed. It’s a lot deeper than that. I could WFH on 1 mbit pretty easy, git commits and slack are low bandwidth.
      - Hackbraten 7y ago
        Then again, many workers depend on video calls or video conferences, which easily require a multiple of that bandwidth. Regular security updates are also important. Those add up nowadays, and if they’re slow to download you tend to skimp on them.

pruneridge 7y ago

More construction is not going to solve this problem. The laws of supply and demand do not apply to American coastal real estate

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
opportune 7y ago
It sounded like this particular family was doing ok until the wife lost her job when she was on maternity leave (wouldn’t happen if maternity leave were actually protected), so they started illegally subletting, and then they got kicked out of their illegal sublet. Yeah it’s clear they basically had no savings at that time though, other than the car. I read the article a few hours ago but I think I remember them saying like a quarter of the kids in the Salinas public school system were homeless? I agree that in general, people should be responsible about having children. But let’s be clear: a quarter of a city’s kids being homeless is indicative of a deep systemic problem. That’s not something that we should simply accept as natural because they are poor. Of course, the big issue which they touch on briefly is that the whole “affordable/subsidized housing” crap is not even close to reaching the scale it needs to be at to address the problem. You can’t solve a housing shortage by selling $10 for $3 to a couple thousand people.