6 ms·
Americans living in their cars are finding refuge in 'safe parking lots'
- 082349872349872 3y agoUnfortunately "orphan crushing machine", however apt, is not notable by Wikipedia standards, so no link for you all.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoThat's a shame as I can't think of a phrase that sums up late stage Capitalism quite so well. Here in the UK there has been an increase in young people living in vans/caravans in order to escape hefty bills and the extremely high cost of housing. https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/orphan-crushing-machine
- hunglee2 3y agoWe are seeing the re-emergence of a form of persistent nomadism, as cost-of-living crisis forces people to abandon (or escape from) the liabilities which come from sedentary living. The cost to kit out and maintain a vehicle is not trivial but almost certainly less than keeping up monthly rental or mortgage payments. This is not without precedent - DNA analysis of the Irish Traveller community traces genealogy back to the displacement of previously sedentary Irish nobility who refused to bend the knee to the English in the aftermath of the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and were forced from their properties to become permanent itinerants in their own land
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mcmcmc 3y agoYou only have to go back 100 years, just look at the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. It's literally the story from the Grapes of Wrath.
- Dalewyn 3y agoYou're still going to need a street address somewhere for tax and other legal purposes, including registering and titling that car or RV. Before anyone says "just use a PO box for that", those need a street address too (and also proof of residing in the city or county the PO box is located in). Plenty of services also refuse PO boxes too, including vehicle titles/registrations and a driver's license. Yes, you could try convincing a very good friend or family member to lend you their street address if you really can't or won't pay for a place of residence yourself, but that's literally leeching off their generosity and good will which doesn't sound like a nice way of living if you ask me.
- raincole 3y agoCan I rent out my street address as a mailbox on demand? Or more importantly, can one rent out their address to multiple people?
- avery17 3y agoThe problem here is they could try to claim residency and sue you for illegally evicting them and then they move in for free and stay as long as legally possible.
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoAlso debt collectors could also show up and just take your shit because the assumption would be that since it's at the debtor address, then it is his, unless you can prove otherwise, but I'm sure you keep invoices with your name for all your stuff, should such a need araised. People are really naïve if they think that providing their address to others is without any risks.
- liveoneggs 3y agoyes but you'll be competing with a few services like https://escapees.com/mail-service/domicile/florida/ https://escapees.com/mail-service/domicile/florida/
- j4yav 3y ago
- RivieraKid 3y agoWhy has the cost of living seemingly gone up across the world? Is there a consensus about this?
- aaomidi 3y agoInequality is on the rise globally.
- buzzert 3y agoInequality != poverty. You think if there was a society of 90 millionaires and 10 billionaires, people would be complaining about inequality? Of course not, because the real problem is what people can afford, and what the base standard of living is. That has nothing to do with inequality (unless those at the top are putting their thumb on the scale somehow, by buying up real estate and not using it, for instance).
- mkl95 3y agoHow does it compare to a trailer park? It looks a tier or two below in terms of safety and wellbeing.
- 082349872349872 3y agoI just saw a couple of mobile homes asking half a million (although those inland appear to be going for only a few hundred thousand), so it may be significantly cheaper. https://zerodown.com/search/details/5750-via-real-unit-223-carpinteria-ca-93013/32204374 https://zerodown.com/search/details/5750-via-real-unit-223-c... https://www.homes.com/property/4025-state-st-santa-barbara-ca-unit-46/xlbqtjxz9qqyk/ https://www.homes.com/property/4025-state-st-santa-barbara-c...
- al_borland 3y agoI’ve looked at mobile homes in the Midwest recently that can be had for under $30k. California has become unlivable for the average person. The weather might be nice, but I don’t think it’s worth the price.
- 082349872349872 3y agoUnder $30k is incredibly cheap by global standards. I just looked at Poland, and that'll only get you either garages or building plots. $37k produces some actual living spaces: https://en.arkadia.com/oezt-t5136/ https://en.arkadia.com/oezt-t5136/ https://en.arkadia.com/oezt-t1434/ https://en.arkadia.com/oezt-t1434/ Romania looks a little cheaper, but not much. Russia, on the other hand, has some (for the handyman) deals: https://en.arkadia.com/jhnu-t439863/ https://en.arkadia.com/jhnu-t439863/ or even a (no picture?) condo in Sochi for under $30k: https://en.arkadia.com/ca-t203634/ https://en.arkadia.com/ca-t203634/ Scenic Chelyabinsk runs a bit more expensive: https://en.arkadia.com/for-sale/chelyabinsk-g446921/?orderby=total_sale_price+desc https://en.arkadia.com/for-sale/chelyabinsk-g446921/?orderby... (sorry, couldn't find any sale listings for Magadan, but even if you're not a guest of the state, rents look cheap out there)
- 3y ago
- drmpeg 3y agoMountain View has safe parking. https://www.mountainview.gov/our-city/departments/city-manager-s-office/human-services/homelessness/safe-parking https://www.mountainview.gov/our-city/departments/city-manag...
- cousin_it 3y agoI think the problem would be more manageable if the government had a full employment program. Basically act as an employer of last resort, hire everyone who wants a job and allocate them to something useful, possibly at cost. With good management such a program could probably pay for itself, and remove a lot of economic anxiety people are feeling now. People are focusing on housing, but a country of subsidized housing and scarce jobs would still be a pretty sad place. Jobs seem like the real issue to me.
- master-lincoln 3y agoThis seems to assume most homeless people in the USA are unemployed. Is that the case?
- adrianN 3y agoHow would that work? Is it forced labor? If not, why should people work there? Is there no social security in this scenario?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoSounds like slavery with extra steps. Surely some type of universal basic income would be more practical and less open to abuse.
- newsclues 3y agoMake people work to pay for living expenses plus taxes to support the people who call work slavery…
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoAnd I suppose it's just natural for the people administering such a scheme to make a very tidy profit from it too.
- krapp 3y agoTechnically it would be indentured servitude. Which is far more likely (along with debtors' prisons) to come back in the US than any useful form of UBI. The ruthlessness of American capitalism intersecting with the callous self-righteousness of the Protestant work ethic has bred into American culture an ideology that would rather see the poor starve and die in the street like dogs than suffer the indignity of a system that takes so much as a penny from them to help another. Hell, the US will simply normalize and commoditize homelessness before taking UBI seriously. Some brilliant startup will disrupt cardboard boxes and sell them as hyper-economy "nomad chic" living units. They'll do great with SV nerds who want to feel like they're really grinding it hard-core.
- giantg2 3y agoSo basically hoovervilles are making a comeback...
- TacticalCoder 3y agoIn Europe there are some people who buy lands for which you cannot have a building permit: they're way, way, way cheaper that lands on which you can build a house. As in: they can be 20x or 30x cheaper or maybe even more. Then they park their own car / RV / caravan/trailer on it. This way it's extremely hard for authorities to kick them out. Bonus if you can get a family member or someone from your community buy the land for you: that way even if you own money to the state, the land cannot be seized. It's extremely common in the gypsy community, for example (now that nomadism is getting more and more complicated). FWIW my father (who wasn't a gypsy but who was totally broke) used to live, for years, in a caravan on a plot of land owned by someone he knew. It was bad, but not hobo-bad. He had an old totally beaten up and ultra high-mileage Mercedes car, gypsy style (gypsies love old Mercedes cars). His friend was renting, for pennies and illegally, the rest of his plot of land to actual gypsies. P.S: nowadays my brothers and I are helping our father, who now lives in an apartment
- aitchnyu 3y agoWhy are Mercs preferred?
- gumballindie 3y agoNot op, but mercedes used to be known for reliability and ample inside space. It could do 1 million km without issue. Probably the reason it was popular among people that would travel a lot (ie traveler gypsies).
- pi-e-sigma 3y agoYou forget to mention that such land also is not connected to the electrical grid, sewage or running water. And you can't force utilities to provide the connection because the land is not meant to be used for buildings so they don't have to provide such connections. And in many situations you can't officially live there, so can't provide the address of that land as your home address in a bank, to your employer etc. In fact, it's quite common that such a piece of land doesn't even have an address to begin with so no mail or Amazon delivery for you
- jmyeet 3y agoOnce you realize that suppressing wages and extracting every last ounce of wealth from workers is an explicit policy goal, it's impossible not to see it everywhere. Increasing housing costs is wealth extraction. Moreso, it's state violence to deny a basic human need such as shelter for profit. Homelessness kills people. Yet we've been successfully propagandized into thinking homelessness is some personal moral failure. And then we have the deacdes-long (successful) effort to suppress real wages. Restrictive immigration policies intentionally create a permanent underclass to erode wages. States are now relaxing child labor laws for the same reason. Even tying wage gains to "productivity increases" is a form of wage suppression in an inflationary environment. Under the category of "private equity ruins everything", we have large companies buying up land where mobile homes sit and jacking up the land fees as another form of wealth extraction. This is a problem because this was a more affordable housing option for many, almost housing of last resort. It's predatory and should be illegal. What kind of society are we that we have to depend on the largesse of Walmart to provide refuge parking lots for those just one step above living on the street?
- buzzert 3y ago> Moreso, it's state violence to deny a basic human need such as shelter for profit It’s violence to not provide something for free? What do you call forcing someone to build a house for someone else?
- bazil376 3y agoSeems like at some point people will have had enough of being unable to afford life in the US