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Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

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Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#161

Post by sjg007 »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #153
beamatronic wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The official poverty line is $250k household income in Palo Alto.

I believe this is a misinterpretation of a news story about Palo Alto considering subsidizing housing for households making under $250k. It is not the poverty threshold, it is just a hypothetical cutoff for qualifying for housing subsidization in one housing plan that Palo Alto considered.

Which is still nuts... a quarter million a year and you qualify for subsidized housing.. yet they won’t build condos.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#162

Post by s0rce »

drdeadringer wrote: post #98
aphextron wrote: post #34

I'll be facing this soon as well, at least they've got RV's. After getting back from my third open house for the week, with double digit atendees, I think the bay area just isn't for me. A perfect credit score and a job making double the median wage is not enough to land a 1 bedroom apartment apparently. I'll probably end up sleeping on someones couch for a few months to finish my work contract, and get out of this h…

Where are there open houses for 1 bedroom apartments? Note: While I am in the bay area, I am not in the SF-specific market.

I've seen open houses for 1bdrms in Oakland, not all apartments but some of them would have them. From my experience they tented to be smaller and cheaper units that would rent easily.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#163

Post by s0rce »

htormey wrote: post #154
lsc wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You'd expect someone with low income to have trouble finding housing... that's a problem, but the situation makes sense. When someone struggles to find housing while making multiples of middle income, something is deeply fucked. That says a lot about how bad it is for everyone else. I... disagree that upper middle income immigrants having a hard time says anything definitive about the situation of the local poor, at…

Just in case someone reads the above comment the wrong way: Rent control in San Francisco is not tied to a tenants income but rather the age of the building. It’s entirely possible for someone who works in a wealthy person job (tech) to have a rent controlled apartment.

Same with prop 13, you can make 2million/yr and pay $5000 in property tax on your (current market rate) $3M house.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#164

Post by totalZero »

lsc wrote: post #118
totalZero wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> take 30 days vacation a year I know people who earn seven figures who don't, and honestly can't, do this. Vacation is also a function of workplace culture, not just discretionary income and allotted vacation days.

so, there's what, 11 standard paid holidays, so 30 days off would be 'four weeks of vacation' - The set of people who make more than a million dollars a year who can't negotiate four weeks of vacation... I think is small. There's this persistent myth of the driven executive... I mean, I guess it's possible that other fields of endeavor are different? but everywhere I've worked? the more they pay you, the better they…

Would you please consider that not everyone works in the same field as you?

I worked on a trading floor with a trader, early 30s, very profitable and well respected. Took a week off to go to the Mediterranean with his girlfriend (from what I hear, he proposed to her on that trip). Had his mandatory two-week vacation the next month. While he was away on that two-week vacation, I heard several people, including the group head, criticizing him behind his back for taking so much time off -- despite every trader on that floor having four weeks of vacation, two contiguous weeks of which were mandatory.

Just because something hasn't happened in your own experience, doesn't mean that it doesn't happen in other sectors. This guy was the right-hand man to his boss and he still got criticized for taking his mandatory vacation.

I once took a single day of vacation to finish moving into my new apartment, and I was made fun of publicly and criticized for it by a number of semi-senior people who weren't even in my chain of command.

Not every company has a culture of asynchronicity, and not every career path offers a healthy balance of work and life. There is also a difference between having vacation days, and being able to take them without hurting your reputation and compensation.

If people are depending on you to be perpetually present, prepared, and profitable -- whether as a trader, an executive, or any other role -- there's social pressure to minimize vacation. And that pressure is amplified in the culturally dog-eat-dog industries, I reckon.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#165

Post by s0rce »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #122

I was an exchange student at UCSB for 1 year. The US government caused me a lot of visa issues because I didn't have $25,000 cash, which meant that I couldn't get a job and had to pay $900 in fees for a visa application that was eventually denied. Due to family issues, I also wasn't getting support from my parents that year. AS CAB (the Associated Students Community Affairs Board) gave out free hot dogs on Tuesday ni…

Your were a student at a major university and they didn't assist with your immigration documents? Granted, I'm from Canada but when I was in grad school I don't know anyone of the other international students who had visa issues like that, although we didn't try to get other jobs beyond school, maybe that is the issue.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#166

Post by s0rce »

sjg007 wrote: post #161
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this is a misinterpretation of a news story about Palo Alto considering subsidizing housing for households making under $250k. It is not the poverty threshold, it is just a hypothetical cutoff for qualifying for housing subsidization in one housing plan that Palo Alto considered.

Which is still nuts... a quarter million a year and you qualify for subsidized housing.. yet they won’t build condos.

Makes sense if you let the locals control zoning decisions, if you have a house in your nice quaint suburb and are extremely selfish you probably would try to block condo developments.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#167

Post by s0rce »

flembat wrote: post #18

A good definition for middle class; is that you make a significant income from your capital investments. In that case it doesn't matter if you stop working for a few months; your stocks and shares still pay dividends and your tenants still pay you rent; your capital still keeps on working for you. A good clue is this: if your money all comes from working for someone else; and it all stops when you stop working; then…

While the definition of working class (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/working_class) does seem to include everyone who works, it points out that it is "especially in manual or industrial work". Wikipedia consensus (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_class) also disagrees with your definition in that the working class are engaged in manual labor and not in any wage generating employment.

Further, most people who have adequate capital to sustain them are basically financially independent and could effectively retire, unless they are 60-70 and have been saving for years this isn't an accurate representation of the middle class, upper middle class, possibly.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#168

Post by khedoros1 »

darreld wrote: post #156
tempz wrote: post #12

There is a linguistic problem here - extending the term 'middle class' to hide prevailing poverty in the US. You are not middle class if: - you will lose home, car if you are out of job for 6-10 months; - you don't take 30 days vacation a year; - you cannot afford health services without going to debt; - you cannot send your kids to university; - your diet is mostly junk food because you can't afford fresh stuff. If…

I’m a senior developer in the Washington DC area and 1) I definitely do not take 30 days vacation per year and 2) I can assure you that I would lose my house and probably more if I was out of a job for 6-10 months. So I guess regardless of the very good salary I make, I’m poor?

You can make a good salary and still live paycheck-to-paycheck. If you can't afford a good, strong cushion (regardless of how good or bad your salary is), I'd consider that a certain degree of poor.

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#169

Post by disnsj »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #6
cletus wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Serious question: why are you having children in such a financially precarious situation when it’s only going to increase your living costs? EDIT: by “financially precarious” I mean that above you said you were a new grad having difficulty finding work. I assume it is your intent to work after the baby is born (rather than being the primary caregiver) or it wouldn’t matter so much about finding work. If your wife ret…

Assuming I'm in a "financially precarious situation" is a bit presumptuous. My wife is an employed college grad, and we have much more saved than the average American. We have health insurance, and have already completely paid off the medical bills for her birth. We are fine. It's still too risky and difficult for us to relocate, though. Our family all lives nearby, so we have a support structure here. My wife has an…

You don’t have to justify to anyone why you are having a child. (As a parent, I can see by you’re set up better than most)

If for no other reason having children is our biological raison d’être. Go tell a squirell it’s not rich enough to procreate!

Children are brought up with very little means everyday; they don’t need rich parents.

Children are seen by our rich society as a luxury good that only the well off are worthy of buying.

Instead what children need are strong loving parents. (I’m so anoyed at the parents of my kid’s spoiled friends, and she not even three)

I lived for three months in Cali (Santa Barbara) and it is one of the last places in N. America I would raise my daughter. Only the despair from the poorest, heroin addicted, countries in WV would rank lower.

A well employed parent, a well educated spouse and grandparents to help. We should all be so lucky!

Re: Living in a parking lot in Santa Barbara

#170

Post by sabujp »

morganvachon wrote: post #97
gozur88 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A pound of uncooked white rice is $0.69, and it has 1696 calories, which works out to 24.6 calories per penny. That's about 19x better by your metric.

Yep, and it doesn't take much to turn that rice into a full meal. If you've got a freezer and a microwave, fresh-frozen veggies are a good alternative to always buying fresh veggies for the time constrained. It's a little more expensive but you lose virtually none of the health benefits and gain ease of preparation. Throw some veggies in with the rice and some soy or teriyaki sauce, and you've got a healthy meal that…

"fresh-frozen" lol
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