Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
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Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
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Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#2Seems to be largely a means of pushing the problem elsewhere.
"Um, could you please be poor some place else? This is Palo Alto - we have a prosperous reputation to uphold."
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#3Does Palo Alto have regulations regarding minimum apartment size? If not, lower-cost microapartment complexes might make a good long-term investment.
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#4Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme.
The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#5Seems to be largely a means of pushing the problem elsewhere. "Um, could you please be poor some place else? This is Palo Alto - we have a prosperous reputation to uphold."
Police in Long Beach, CA does this. When they find a homeless person sleeping on the streets or generally causing trouble, they put them in the patrol car, drive them to a neighboring city and "let them go." Now it's that other city's problem, but that doesn't matter because Long Beach has one fewer homeless person to worry about!
(This place is awful for many other reasons, but this just reflects the general mindset.)
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#6Seems to be largely a means of pushing the problem elsewhere. "Um, could you please be poor some place else? This is Palo Alto - we have a prosperous reputation to uphold."
It is, but that's nothing new. The cops in NYC have been known to give the homeless a McDonalds meal and a bus ticket up the coast.
I'm curious what the prevalence of work-from-home software jobs will do, over time, to the ridiculous swell in cost-of-everything in the bay area though. I realize that, like Manhattan for finance, there's some status associated with being in tech in the bay area, as well as legitimate opportunities. But there are high-paying tech jobs in places where you can live much more comfortably.
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#7Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme. The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.
As a 20-something, does anyone have any advice me for or know of resources where I can learn about financial management?
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#8Well if Palo Alto is willing to spend $250,000 they could pave a bit of parking lot and put in a bathroom/shower unit like exists in campgrounds. But that seems a bit extreme. The guy profiled was tech worker for 30 years, but allegedly "not good with money." If you're in your 20's don't be that guy. Live within your means, save for those future days.
I was thinking the same thing. While exorbitant rents are definitely a huge problem, a tech worker in SV should be able to save for retirement over 30 years if they have good financial habits.
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#9It's very unfortunate, but the main character also an interesting study in skill set relevance and retirement planning (or lack thereof).
He's a software engineer in SV... By all the common stereotypes, he should be in the winner circle and living the life. Agism is definitely an issue in tech, but it's likely that he is not up to date with some of the more modern languages or techniques, resulting in lack of employment.
If he lived there since the 70's, he could have had a paid off place. (Typical mortgage is 30 years term.) If not save by paying off the mortgage, he could have also saved via 401k or something similar. It probably never really occurred to him that employment might be so hard to come by or that things would get so pricey. Coming from an eastern european background, I was conditioned that if you have a paid off place, you can withstand a lot of up and down swings in the economy and the world.
As a society, we should really be focusing on helping people properly market themselves and acquire/update skills needed AND re-enforcing the need to plan for the future. Not really sure how we'd go about implementing the latter without annoying people though...
Re: Homeless Lose a Longtime Last Resort: Living in a Car
#10I hate to be that guy, and I'm going to sound like an ass, but this is 100% his doing. Software worker in Palo Alto for 30 years making as much as 150k has no excuse. Save some money stupid. Also, when you get fired and can't find another job, perhaps you should move out of your $2150 a month rental. That's enough for 4-5 months or more in other places. $1700 a month SS isn't much, but it's enough to not be homeless in other places in America. It's not enough to live in Palo Alto. MOVE.
All that being said, I'm not sure what the point of making criminals out of homeless people is. No reason to kick people when they are down.