High rents force some in Silicon Valley to live in vehicles

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/high-rents-force-silicon-valley-live-vehicles/

by grej • 9 years ago

41 73 9 years ago

virmundi2• 9 years ago

Good. Let's see what the SV folk do with the SF NIMBY folk. There should be enough socially minded individuals in SV with the Google or Apple like money to go to zoning meetings to allow more than 5 story buildings. Time for the SJW folk at those companies to put their future property money where their controlling mouths are.

simonsarris• 9 years ago

Do recall that Google itself couldn't even get a couple small bridges built in mountain view to save the polluting commute of its own workers between parts of campus.

But even Google money can't shake a small city council.

https://www.mv-voice.com/news/2013/12/23/viewpoint-city-shou...

virmundi2• 9 years ago

Google is just one voice. There are people that actually pay taxes on their homes there. Enough of those people should be able to raise a fuss, any fuss. I don't think they will. P(Fussing | SWJ) = .01. There's my odds.

thearn4• 9 years ago

Serious question, why do the major tech companies put up with this and not slowly migrate elsewhere? I get it's a bit of a chicken vs. the egg game when it comes to where the work is & where the talent is, but the bay area seems like it's at such a critical mass.

s0rce5• 9 years ago

One of the people listed makes $175,000 he can easily afford his own apartment at, conservatively, $3000/month, or he can have a couple roommates and pay around $1000-1400/month. He chooses not to so he can save money and use the amenities at his work. You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street, people paying property taxes are paying for those streets.

Free parking is the problem here, you shouldn't be able to leave your car on the street anywhere for long periods, especially not living in it. If you do this you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying owners and renters.

If the cost of the car registration included the true cost of parking on city streets living in your car would likely be much less attractive for these people who can afford housing but simply choose not to.

liquidise• 9 years ago

You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street

Why not? You cite taxes. If i am allowed to park my car overnight somewhere, what would disallow me from sleeping in that same car over the same period?

sanswork12• 9 years ago

I live in a beach town popular with people driving down the Australian East coast in vans. The problem we have here is that these vans don't have toilet facilities so you end up with people using the bushes along the beach as toilets.

s0rce5• 9 years ago

What about other people who want to use parking in the neighborhood, if your RV is parked in the spot permanently no one else can use the spot. If there was a parking tax, even an absurd one with Prop 13 level restrictions it would still be better than free parking for your RV on the street.

surfmike3• 9 years ago

If you do this you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying owners and renters.

Many people living in California, thanks to Prop 13, are also paying almost nothing to the system because they bought their house early on. Many could even afford property taxes on a current market valuation but the law still means they pay much less.

If someone rented an apartment with some friends there is a good chance the landlord is paying peanuts in property tax anyway.

Addressing the property tax imbalance is far more important than kicking out people living in cars. Many of them are genuinely out of options, despite this anecdote.

s0rce5• 9 years ago

I agree Prop 13 is also terrible, leads to large inequity in property taxes, and this problem should be solved, however, I'm not sure its directly related to whether you should be able to live in your car on the street for free.

NTDF9• 9 years ago

> If the cost of the car registration included the true cost of parking on city streets living in your car would likely be much less attractive for these people who can afford housing but simply choose not to.

If the cost of property taxes included the true cost of owning a house in the bay area, living here would be a much less attractive for people who cannot afford housing here but simply got in earlier and live at the expense of newcomers (who are working hard and struggling to make ends meet)

michaelchisari3• 9 years ago

You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street

There is no good reason you shouldn't be allowed to, as long as there's no disturbance.

engx• 9 years ago

I agree, but there's a range of people who live in their cars. Some cause destruction, trash and probably aren't employed or trying to work in a legitimate way. Hard drug use, crime etc are all likely.

sanswork12• 9 years ago

When you live in your car and you wake up in the night needing to go to the toilet what do you do?

electricEmu• 9 years ago

This view presents a selfish and very NIMBY attitude.

The gentleman in question paid off his student loans, contributes to his retirement, and sounds OK with life. None of that has ant bearing on if he should live on the street.

Anti-density home owners in California might be the problem. They shouldn't be able to stunt the housing market for long periods, especially not living in it. If you do this, you are taking advantage of the system supported by tax paying citizens who balk at, or can't afford, to rent.

If the cost of supporting regressive anti-density measures included the true cost then home owners would be overturning Prop 13 and removing building height restrictions. Instead, they simply choose not to.

closeparen• 9 years ago

Yes please. I would love the optics of homeless car-campers being forcibly removed from Bay Area NIMBY neighborhoods at homeowners' request. It'll make so much better television, and show so much more clearly who the villains really are, than dreary zoning commission meetings.

In the meantime, it's excellent that homeowners are suffering the consequences of their decision to prevent their neighbors from living in real housing units by waking up to RVs as blight on their neighborhoods. It's not close to proportional for the massive damage they choose to inflict on the lives of those around them, but it's a start.

GhostVII• 9 years ago

What are homeowners doing to prevent other people having houses? I don't think that someone buying a house in the Bay Area automatically makes them some sort of evil person forcing others to live in vehicles.

astrange• 9 years ago

You shouldn't be allowed to live in cars on the street, people paying property taxes are paying for those streets.

Because of Prop 13 homeowners are the ones getting a free ride on property tax. The wide streets in SF, so big you could build another row of buildings in the middle, are caused by Americans' obsession with putting cars in places that could be served by subways.

aanm19883• 9 years ago

I don't know if I agree with what you are saying, butI am awfully tired of reading stories glorifying these weirdos for living in a car.

JDiculous• 9 years ago

I don't see any problem with someone wanting to sleep in their car in a parked lot that otherwise wouldn't be occupied. The fact that homeowners pay property tax doesn't have anything to do with anything. I rent and I don't pay property taxes either.

If it makes you feel better, these people pay income and sales tax.

yannovitch• 9 years ago

From the guy you're talking about : https://frominsidethebox.com/post/i-dont-live-in-a-truck/576... "I don't live in a truck. I just sleep in a truck. Living is what happens when you wake up."

colmvp• 9 years ago

I know this isn't the same as people who live there, but while in SV, I met Uber/Lyft drivers who drove in from other cities in NoCal and worked 5 days a week in the Bay Area as a driver, sleeping overnight in their cars. Only on the weekends did they drive back home to spend time with family.

36bydesign• 9 years ago

This was my Uber driver from yesterday in SF

booleandilemma• 9 years ago

To paraphrase William Gibson, the dystopia is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.

nradov3• 9 years ago

SFGate had an article about this phenomenon.

http://m.sfgate.com/business/article/When-Their-Shifts-End-U...

sputknick• 9 years ago

I haven't been to Silicon Valley in ~15 years, is living in outer suburbs and commuting not an option? Here in Seattle, you can live in the outer suburbs and pretty easily get to Seattle. I'm not crazy about my 45-60 minute commute, but I like not paying Seattle-sized rent.

Judgmentality• 9 years ago

45-60 minutes away from San Francisco (I'd argue that's the epicenter of SV today), with traffic, might get you to Oakland or somewhere in the peninsula (not even close to San Jose). The rents there are also ridiculously high, although slightly better than San Francisco.

To actually live in cities further away you'd need to drive at least 90 minutes, and realistically 2 hours - each way.

austenallred• 9 years ago

I commute to San Francisco every day - 15 min drive to BART then an hour on BART. About as far as you could expect a reasonable person to love.

It costs me $300/month to pay for commute and parking, and a 2 BR apartment runs us $2500/month. It's a nicer area (for wife/daughter) but it doesn't really get far below $2,000 in even the worst areas, and that commute wears on you.

colechristensen• 9 years ago

When I worked remotely for a bay area startup and did some hypothetical apartment shopping, there was no amount of rent saved that came close to being worth the commute time. It was a min-max problem with no optimum. Live close and take a significant lifestyle hit, live far and give up time for any sort of lifestyle. I chose instead to live remote and take a work-interaction situation hit which ultimately led to leaving that position. Oh well, such is life.

toomuchtodo• 9 years ago

Quality of life is paramount. Jobs come, jobs go.

aanm19883• 9 years ago

Roommates?

driverdan2• 9 years ago

Commuting 45-60 min a day is a waste of your life. I'd rather pay double the rent to live close to where I work than throw away two hours a day.

aanm19883• 9 years ago

No you can't you liar. Seattle is the worst city on the planet. You will live in a crime riddled suburb and pay outrageous rents with awful commutes.

Don't come to Seattle. Stay in wonderful sunny california. It's so much better than Seattle.

;)

I'm probably gonna end up moving out of Seattle because of the rent. It's affordable on my salary, but I want to start really saving up so I can have more freedom.

40acres• 9 years ago

How about the folks who work for the tech companies in the area, are they also struggling with rent or is the average salary of an engineer in SV enough to cover the recent increases?

sidlls2• 9 years ago

I earn a substantial income in the Bay Area. It's not the $250k/yr Google experience, but it's in that ballpark (within 25%). My commute into the city is about 90 minutes one way (using trains and biking or walking). Rent on the attached home my family lives in is half my take-home pay. The only reason it isn't more than half after the 8% increase my landlord added this last renewal is because I got a substantial raise.

jrysocarras• 9 years ago

Assuming you're making 25% less than $250k/yr, that puts you at ~$190k/yr. Are you saying you pay ~90k/yr ($7.5k/month!) to live 90 min away from the city? If so, what are your living conditions?

driverdan2• 9 years ago

I'm currently converting a 25 ft former shuttle bus to my home. I make enough money to buy a house here in Austin but have chosen to live in a vehicle.

I like tiny homes and wanted to build my own place so it would meet my wants and needs. Zoning makes building small hard and land costs make it very expensive per square foot.

I like to travel and would rather take my home with me than sleep in a hotel or hostel.

chmaynard• 9 years ago

I'd love to find out what SF Bay Area property owners who rent their properties out to others are doing with their extraordinary windfall profits. Are there any academic studies or reports that explore this question?

1dundundun• 9 years ago

Is this the situation with those RV's lined up just outside of Stanfords campus?

High rents force some in Silicon Valley to live in vehicles

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