Car campers in beach parking lots • Hacker News Board

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#31

Post by joe_the_user » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:10 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #21

> In December, Cheatham, her children and their father qualified for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Mountain View. > The couple isn’t completely reconciled, but they came together to provide a roof — one that’s not welded to a chassis — over their children’s heads. > “We’re working things out,” said Cheatham, 37. “The most important thing is to have a stable place for our kids.” It's amazing to me to see / he…

Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up?

You could just say "authorities punish the poor for being poor while pretending to help them up". We have reached the point where courts demands that when police move homeless people on that these police offer them a place in shelters. So, you wind-up with a situation where phantom shelter-beds are created. The (mostly) fiction of attempting to help people has to be maintained while the primary intention to remove them as annoyance, knowing they'll reappear elsewhere.

And yeah, allow tiny house camps on private land and you'll reduce the incredible pressure towards higher rents (or build public high rises like the old days or whatever). But then a whole lot of land value is threatened and so the concerned, naive homeowner becomes the threatened homeowner.

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#32

Post by ChuckMcM » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

I talked with a guy living in a motorhome in Mountain View California, he works for Google. He could certainly afford an apartment but said his payments on the motorhome are about $600 a month, and an apartment close to Google would be $2500 a month at least, so he feels like its a free $2000 a month to save or spend. He's fortunate that Google also has nice showers, free food, and laundry. Things he might otherwise have to find other options for.

I can't argue with the logic. It means $24,000 a year to apply toward student loans or what have you isn't a bad deal. And he will eventually pay off the motorhome giving him some security there.

Sadly, most people won't talk about their situation (I tried by walking down a road and knocking on doors) I was hoping to get a sense of how many people were living in motorhomes because they wanted to (like the guy I talked to) and how many were there because they felt they had no choice. I don't have any good ideas on how to get that information.

I did enough research to know that building a small lifestyle business out of offering black/grey water pumping and garbage collection services for the folks who were doing this by choice was probably viable. You would need a couple of custom trucks[1] that were capable of being mobile RV dumping stations and a business with sewer rights to dump (the City of Sunnyvale will license a business to have an RV dumping station on site, so starting there would work.) I think it would be a "pump and dump" scheme that would be both good for the neighborhood and probably make enough money to employ a few folks.

[1] To be full service you'd probably want a fresh water tank, a propane tank, and a sewage collection tank. Then you could dump the grey/black tanks, refill fresh water and refill propane. Personally I think it makes way more sense than these companies that were sending trucks out to refill your gas tank.

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#33

Post by jethro_tell » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:12 PM UTC

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #21

> In December, Cheatham, her children and their father qualified for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Mountain View. > The couple isn’t completely reconciled, but they came together to provide a roof — one that’s not welded to a chassis — over their children’s heads. > “We’re working things out,” said Cheatham, 37. “The most important thing is to have a stable place for our kids.” It's amazing to me to see / he…

>Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up?

I think that's the natural consequence of having spent years pushing the idea that being poor is a personal choice or a lack of character. Once you make the connection that it's directly linked to a lack of character, you can be punitive instead of providing a safety net, and punitive is much cheaper for those of us with high moral character.

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#34

Post by onetimemanytime » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

mikeryan wrote: post #13

Living in Berkeley/Oakland area I'm torn on this one we have a growing problem with tent encampments (in SF too) I don't know if this is anything but a cosmetic solution but its an interesting tact allowing people to overnight in vehicles.

sucks for your property value. No one with a $million home wants a camp near it, lets be honest. The govt can move the hot potatoes around until someone gets stuck with it. I wonder what this does for crime rates?

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#35

Post by TomK32 » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:13 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #32

I talked with a guy living in a motorhome in Mountain View California, he works for Google. He could certainly afford an apartment but said his payments on the motorhome are about $600 a month, and an apartment close to Google would be $2500 a month at least, so he feels like its a free $2000 a month to save or spend. He's fortunate that Google also has nice showers, free food, and laundry. Things he might otherwise…

> "pump and dump" scheme

you win.

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#36

Post by Jaruzel » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:18 PM UTC

ascorbic wrote: post #25

mikepurvis wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like it's a story that came in from a wire service, particularly since the writer and story are both from San Diego, but this is an LA publication. I guess that's the risk of just mindlessly hooking up your CMS to someone else's feed. (Yup, there are lots of other hits for this exact story published elsewhere; other publications seem to have done a better job filtering out these notes to the editor: https://www…

This seems to be the original. It even has a picture! https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/public-safety/sd-m...

Another 451 anti-EU block. ^sigh^

Here's the wayback link for us poor Europeans:

https://web.archive.org/web/20190322191045/https://www.sandi...

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#37

Post by ucaetano » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:19 PM UTC

blunte wrote: post #20

akerro wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was sarcasm, all 3 articles once implemented on EU scale will make web even worse than GDPR made it.

Only when the politicians have a low enough average age that they actually use computers themselves (and find out how unusable the web is already) will they possible revise or eliminate the restrictions. One big problem with tech regulation right now, particular that which involves the internet, is that the old farts making the rules are barely skilled enough to send emails. Not only do they have no concept of how th…

Yep, there is a divide between the old people in power who know economics, markets and regulation but have no idea how "technology" works, and the young voters who understand the technology, but without an understanding of how the economics work.

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#38

Post by lstodd » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

djakjxnanjak wrote: post #29

Our public policy often chooses to subsidize free parking by making large chunks of land available for free use by automobiles. Modern technology allows permanent structures to be much more space-efficient for housing by building many stories high. However, the use of such technology is often banned and structures are limited to one or two stories. Also, even for one-story structures, rules often require eg. 6000 sqf…

And this "technology" is banned for the right reasons.

It is demonstrably harmful to the enviroment, physical and mind health and the society in general.

I'm all for this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtSf69vjrVM

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#39

Post by klank » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:24 PM UTC

jethro_tell wrote: post #33

HeWhoLurksLate wrote: post #21

> In December, Cheatham, her children and their father qualified for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house in Mountain View. > The couple isn’t completely reconciled, but they came together to provide a roof — one that’s not welded to a chassis — over their children’s heads. > “We’re working things out,” said Cheatham, 37. “The most important thing is to have a stable place for our kids.” It's amazing to me to see / he…

>Why does it seem to be that we, at least in America, punish the poor for being poor, instead of, or even at the same time that we try to help them up? I think that's the natural consequence of having spent years pushing the idea that being poor is a personal choice or a lack of character. Once you make the connection that it's directly linked to a lack of character, you can be punitive instead of providing a safety…

> and punitive is much cheaper for those of us with high moral character.

I didn't understand this assertion. Could you expand on it a bit?

Re: Car campers in beach parking lots

#40

Post by RoadieRoller » Fri, Mar 22, 2019, 7:25 PM UTC

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #30

Tried to visit the site from Europe: 451: Unavailable due to legal reasons We recognize you are attempting to access this website from a country belonging to the European Economic Area (EEA) including the EU which enforces the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and therefore access cannot be granted at this time. For any issues, contact webmaster@bakersfield.com or call (661) 395-7500.

https://web.archive.org/web/20190322182840/https://www.baker...