4 ms·

Among the obviously mentally unwell homeless in coastal cities, I also notice more and more (seemingly) healthy young people also living in tents and vans. I gu

by mcntsh 4y ago

Among the obviously mentally unwell homeless in coastal cities, I also notice more and more (seemingly) healthy young people also living in tents and vans. I guess at a certain point your quality of life working minimum wage isn't so much better than living on the streets.

Saint_Genet 4y ago
They live in tents and vans because they work minimum wage
samatman 4y ago
It used to be expected that young bachelors would live in boarding houses, with (maybe) a private room with a bed, but shared bathing accommodations, usually with a meal. We made that illegal, effetively, so the entire market between living in a tent and splitting a detached home with roommates is missing. Therefore, you get people who have four hundred a month to spend on a room, with no room that cheap, and they live in a van.
- TheFreim 4y ago
  > We made that illegal, effetively I've not heard of this, how was it made illegal?
  - samatman 4y ago
    > In 1917, California passed a new hotel act that prevented the building of new hotels with small cubicle rooms.[0] That's California, but it isn't the only place which has restricted SROs. In some places they were explicitly legislated out of existence, others were squeezed out by the sum of various zoning and occupancy restrictions. Things like a requirement that a common kitchen adhere to commercial rather than residential standards, requiring a certain number of bathrooms per resident, and so on. Also very much worth noting that in many cases, a woman's boarding house was presumed by law to be of ill repute, these laws having lasted into recent decades in places (I know this was still on the books in 1990s Chicago, for an example). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy#History
  - ascagnel_ 4y ago
    Zoning regulations, which have substantial knock-on effects on everything from traffic to mental health. When you think of suburban sprawl (especially in the US and Canada), it's largely the result of zoning regulations -- minimum distance between structures, minimum setbacks from the street, parking requirements, limiting areas where multi-family dwellings can be built, etc.

by mcntsh 4y ago

Saint_Genet 4y ago

They live in tents and vans because they work minimum wage

samatman 4y ago

It used to be expected that young bachelors would live in boarding houses, with (maybe) a private room with a bed, but shared bathing accommodations, usually with a meal. We made that illegal, effetively, so the entire market between living in a tent and splitting a detached home with roommates is missing. Therefore, you get people who have four hundred a month to spend on a room, with no room that cheap, and they live in a van.

TheFreim 4y ago
> We made that illegal, effetively I've not heard of this, how was it made illegal?
- samatman 4y ago
  > In 1917, California passed a new hotel act that prevented the building of new hotels with small cubicle rooms.[0] That's California, but it isn't the only place which has restricted SROs. In some places they were explicitly legislated out of existence, others were squeezed out by the sum of various zoning and occupancy restrictions. Things like a requirement that a common kitchen adhere to commercial rather than residential standards, requiring a certain number of bathrooms per resident, and so on. Also very much worth noting that in many cases, a woman's boarding house was presumed by law to be of ill repute, these laws having lasted into recent decades in places (I know this was still on the books in 1990s Chicago, for an example). [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_room_occupancy#History
- ascagnel_ 4y ago
  Zoning regulations, which have substantial knock-on effects on everything from traffic to mental health. When you think of suburban sprawl (especially in the US and Canada), it's largely the result of zoning regulations -- minimum distance between structures, minimum setbacks from the street, parking requirements, limiting areas where multi-family dwellings can be built, etc.