UCLA professor says he's homeless due to low pay

yes, this. as others have pointed out: of course it is (understatedly) terrible that so many people who work various types of jobs cannot pay their bills. all that i see happening here is that the low income bar for being able to survive and live a decent life is getting higher and higher; it is not that there are not many others who also should be able to live a decent life.

(and yes, i do understand the difference between a lecturer and a professor, and i do understand about roommates, and i do understand about living in a cheaper cost-of-living area. i think these are all reasonable points. but i still think that it would be nice if someone could live a good life a distance from work that doesn't make their commute an absolute dread and still be able to afford basic things. yes, i believe everyone deserves this, no matter what type of work that they do. no, i don't think that's the direction we are currently headed.)

It is if you want to continue educating new physicists.

'How the world works' is not set in stone. The current dysfunction of the academic system in the US (the world?) wasn't always this bad. We can educate the next generation, make scientific advancements, and not have professors starve on the street to make that happen.

As someone who recently left an industry job to teach full-time at a community college, I have mixed feelings about the situation of this physics lecturer. I don’t want to dismiss the difficulties that many people, including academics, face in the housing market. In places like Los Angeles and Silicon Valley it’s rough for those having to pay market rates for housing unless they have extremely high incomes.

However, I feel that the lecturer, who started his position at UCLA last year, didn’t do enough homework regarding academic salaries. $70,000 for a non-tenured lecturer is normal, maybe above average, and in fact there are many tenure-track assistant professors who make about the same. To add, UCLA is in a very expensive area. He will have to compete against well-heeled people who want to live within close proximity to some of the nation’s wealthiest areas, such as Santa Monica and Beverly Hills. A physics lecturer simply can’t compete against Hollywood.

In addition, a $70,000 annual salary means that he could qualify for a rental no more than $1944 per month due to the standard 3x the rent requirement a lot of California landlords have. A cursory search on Craigslist shows plenty of one-bedroom apartments in Los Angeles County that are within this budget. Granted, they may not be the nicest complexes in the nicest neighborhoods, and they may require a commute, but the Los Angeles metro area does have extensive public transportation, and nobody goes into academia expecting a luxurious lifestyle on an academic salary. An academic who wants to make serious money needs to take advantage of entrepreneurial opportunities outside the institution.

In addition, there are plenty of grad students and postdocs making less than $70,000 who attend schools like UCLA that are in very expensive areas. Once again, I don’t want to dismiss the challenges they have. I myself lived in Santa Cruz County for over a decade and I know firsthand the challenge of being a grad student at UC Santa Cruz dealing with the area’s notoriously difficult housing market.

But I have a feeling we’re being withheld useful information about his finances. Does he have massive student loans impacting his budget? Does he have other obligations such as taking care of family members? Why wasn’t he able to take advantage of UCLA’s faculty housing?

I just feel that this guy didn’t do enough homework about the realities of being an academic, especially one living in a very expensive area. I’m an academic in Silicon Valley and I’m fully aware of the tradeoffs of choosing this lifestyle over industry. Yes, I’d like a bigger home closer to work, and I have no idea how I’d raise a family (though I’m single now so I don’t need to worry). But at the same time I enjoy the freedom I have in academia; I have far more research freedom as a community college instructor than I did as an industry researcher. I also love teaching and guiding students.

> There's nowhere $70k shouldn't enable you to afford rent

You can afford to rent a 1 bedroom on a $70k salary in Los Angeles - not in Westwood (the bougie neighborhood that UCLA is located in), but take the 405 and commute from the Valley.

Yeah, I think this article does a massive disservice to the issue of low pay for contract faculty and postdocs by highlighting the relative out-of-touchness of McKeown while ignoring how a lot of lecturers and post-docs (at UCs like UCLA as well as other institutions) earn well below $70k depending on the field.

> Why wasn’t he able to take advantage of UCLA’s faculty housing

Lecturers are at the lowest priority for UCLA Faculty Housing.

That said, you can afford a 1bdrm on $70k in LA, just not in Westwood. He'd have to commute from the Valley if he wants to pay less than $2500/mo.