Homeless turn overnight bus route into Hotel 22

http://www.mercurynews.com/bay-area-news/ci_24429126/homeless-turn-overnight-bus-route-into-hotel-22

by BIackSwan • 13 years ago

92 97 13 years ago

elag• 13 years ago

Hack this; disrupt that; look down at your smartphone when the 22 rolls by.

Aloha5• 13 years ago

This to me points at the flaw of the startup model. Most of the problems startups are solving are not real problems, they don't need solving - but there is money to be made in solving them, so they get solved. This is a problem (lack of jobs/affordable housing) that does need solving, but there isn't much money to be made in it.

derefr• 13 years ago

And because there isn't much money to be made in it, you really can't make it scale on the back of its own business-model. So there's really nothing a startup can do to help with these problems.

However, I think there's a case to be made that startups can become an important part of solving these problems: they rake in money from wealthy sectors of the population, they're usually quite high-margin, and they are headed by small, smart, effective groups of people, who could make the decision to engage in Effective Altruism with their proceeds.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is doing more for the world's problems than any little start-up aiming to help people track their dogs' sleep-cycles--but it could have been started way earlier, when Microsoft was way smaller, and still be having just as much of an impact--if it had been the whole organization on-board, instead of just a private hobby of the founder.

(Really, any company could join in on this at any point, but the more bureaucratic and self-sustaining the business culture has become--which usually happens proportionally to scale--the less likely it is to happen. Far easier to convince a few guys in their garage that this is their end-goal-after-the-end-goal, rather than to convince a company already making big money that they should reorganize their corporate vision to doing good.)

iron_ball• 13 years ago

Edit: replaced snarky response with this.

It's not just startups -- businesses tend to focus on earning money. I don't know if we can realistically expect private industry to take an interest in social or economic problems. At the lowest level, there are founders trying to choose a niche that gets them from debt to break-even as quickly as possible; at the highest level, you get into transnational corporations which act only in their own interest.

I would be happy if Apple or Google were to dump their excess billions into social welfare or government reform, but it is vanishingly unlikely.

schenecstasy• 13 years ago

Can't these people learn to code?

jisaacstone3• 13 years ago

Possibly, but in the real world not a chance.

Most of the formally homeless people I know are now in the food industry. That is because at the shelter I worked at they would rotate who cooks the meal, so all homeless 'in the program' learned to cook, and now they all work at the cheesecake factory.

Which pays enough to live comfortably in my hometown. Don't know how viable it is here in the valley, though, with both higher expenses and more competition.

Raphmedia2• 13 years ago

Sure, go ahead and teach them.

Remember you will need to start from the ground up. "To start the computer -- that machine in front of you -- press the button that is right there"... then, in about a year, perhaps you could teach them to code.

mahyarm• 13 years ago

Only a fraction of homeless are like that, there a good chunk of just regular people who have worked in middle class environments and used to have jobs, but had shitty savings & a combination of not being able to get another one led them to the streets. There are people who have decided to be itterant homeless by their own choice, many young homeless people have email addresses.

Look at this guy for example: "NYC Homeless Man Learns To Code And Builds App In Four Weeks" http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2013/09/27/nyc-homeless-man-lea...

CanSpice• 13 years ago

That's a pretty condescending reply. Homeless in no way implies stupid or ignorant. To state that a homeless person wouldn't know how to turn on a computer is insulting.

Jgrubb• 13 years ago

I was 30 when I started teaching myself to code. Had a music degree and a good amount of success in the music business. I spent the first 18 months or so wandering all over the internet just trying to figure out what I was trying to figure out. Now I'm 35. I have a good job, a family, a house, basically all the support structure you would want in your life to help you along. This stuff is still, to me, incredibly hard, and I have an insane work ethic and a decent amount of intelligence and everything I need to learn.

So no, most of them probably can't.

oftenwrong• 13 years ago

kvinnako• 13 years ago

This is such a rude comment. This comment is basically like putting salt on the injury. You are talking about coding when these people don't actually have a place to stay and/or good food to eat. You have spoken like a true 'born with a silver spoon and never knew what poverty really is like' guy.

ericd2• 13 years ago

I'm fairly sure it was sarcasm, since that's sort of a kneejerk reaction that coders have to people with issues, and in this case it's completely absurd.

Fomite• 13 years ago

Pretty sure this was sarcastic folks.

Please god let this have been sarcastic.

infra178• 13 years ago

I already know how to code. What do I code that will make me money? It's not like a person can just code anything at all and get paid by the line.

Getting a programming job is nice in theory until nobody will hire you. Programming freelance is a nice idea in theory until people on Odesk take your work and disappear. Bootstrapping a startup is a nice idea until you realize you don't have a good idea for one.

I'm ill, got fired from a tech support job I loved because of it, and have tried several times to support myself with coding from home. If I didn't have a loving wife who works hard to provide barely enough to pay rent and have decent health insurance, I might be homeless now. If I didn't have a home or own my own computer I would have even less of a chance.

There's a disconnect between the imagined reality where skill and effort instant translates into wealth and the actual reality where luck or the generosity of others is required.

wehadfun4• 13 years ago

Just to build homes for the homeless. Provide food, water, soap, security. It can't be much more expensive then the millions the government wastes on other things.

DanBC• 13 years ago

plus drug and alcohol rehab, plus mental health treatment.

chris_mahan4• 13 years ago

Plus job training. Probably some schooling too.

potatolicious2• 13 years ago

Not quite that simple. Homeless shelters, per resident-wise, are much more expensive to run than an equivalent place housing, well, people like us.

Some homeless people avoid shelters even if there are space because they are frequently giant nests of disease and violence. Besides catching some rather unpleasant diseases and pests, your odds of getting stabbed increase dramatically.

So you'd have to pay for hygiene, health, and security expenses well above and beyond the norm. And that's just if you want to pursue the "containment" side of housing the chronically homeless.

If you want to pursue the "rehabilitation" side it gets even crazier. A large portion of the population suffer from severe mental health problems that prevent them from any meaningful integration into mainstream society, and mental health care ain't cheap.

That said I do believe it should be done, but it isn't "oh yeah just levy a tiny tax" territory.

wehadfun4• 13 years ago

Give the homeless homes.

Homes with lock, bathroom, AC/Heat, kitchen, bedroom, living/dining area, and food.

I predict 50-70% of the issues disease and violence would go away if they had homes and not shelters.

A security,sanitation crew could probably bring this disease and violence down even further.

paddy_m• 13 years ago

This points to the need for less restrictive zoning. There are cheaper ways to house people than in a moving bus. They are willing to pay, maybe not the full rate, but they are paying something. Build army barracks style residences (which I guess is what homeless shelters are).

jisaacstone3• 13 years ago

There is this:

http://www.weirdasianews.com/2009/11/21/hong-kong-citizens-l...

Which is not a good way to live, but much much better than riding a bus.

Zoning and fire codes and whatnot means this may be illegal here. But really I think people here are more comfortable with homelessness than allowing uncomfortably affordable housing to be built.

oijaf888• 13 years ago

Aside from quality of construction, are those that different from capsule hotels in Japan? It seems like a similar space and setup?

VladRussian22• 13 years ago

Zoning

it is what "we the people" through our elected representatives use to keep unwanted (i.e. weak/ill/less fortunate ones) out. Shame.

fire codes

this obviously a necessary and what is most important - pure technically solvable thing for minimum amount of money.

We don't have to go for extreme HK approach. A city like PA, MV, Sunnyvale could easy build on a single-family size lot a shelter that would take a busload of homeless. Considering that MV (San Antonio/El Camino) and Sunnyvale (near downtown) have just had huge redevelopment projects going so fitting a couple of 10-20 bdrm appartments somewhere on the back alley (so it wouldn't offend eyes and noses of our sensitive citizens) would be noise for the projects' cost.

jisaacstone3• 13 years ago

Curious if there are any examples of major metros that have successfully tackled homelessness without simply forcing them to go somewhere else.

Anyone know of any examples?

People paying to sleep on a bus clearly shows the problem here is ridiculously bad.

JackFr• 13 years ago

http://harpers.org/archive/1956/03/subways-are-for-sleeping/

I would argue that it's difficult to determine if the problem is worse, better or the same. The best intentioned efforts sometimes go off the rails -- homeless people might prefer buses, because they are safer, cleaner and more comfortable than shelters.

discardorama2• 13 years ago

There are 2 problems that I can see here that need to be tackled: shelter, and safety. It is _relatively_ easier to provide shelter: just 4 walls and a roof, basically. The more difficult part is the safety. City-run shelters are a haven for criminals, who are much better than the homeless in working 'the system'. And then there's the problem of amenities: showers, toilets, etc. Who will build them? Who will maintain them? And finally: homeless come with assorted mental/physical/drug issues. It's very rare to find a homeless person who does not have serious issues.

SF is doing a massive underground dig for a subway line. I often wonder: how difficult would it be to create some more room down there, and let the homeless just pitch a tent or crash for the night? But that would solve the shelter problem, which isn't that hard. It's the other facilities that are needed, which make the problem intractable.

grey-area• 13 years ago

Safety really isn't an intractable problem. There is absolutely no reason, apart from lack of money and will, that the city run homeless shelters have to be oversubscribed and unsafe. A few security guards keeping an eye out and throwing out anyone unruly, and better facilities with lockable single/family rooms would make them a far safer and a reliable option.

With a little bit of money, this problem of secure safe sheltered housing could be solved, even if all the other problems leading to homelessness could not. As you say there are often other issues leading to the lack of a stable life which cannot be easily solved.

Just as an example, we have sheltered housing round the corner from me in London for the homeless in a normal house - people have their own rooms, and it works, even if it doesn't solve their other issues. People seem to stay a few years then hopefully move on to a more stable life, I think that's the idea anyway. The provision here is inadequate as in the states, but it can be done with more money.

johnrob• 13 years ago

The influx of money into silicon valley has many side effects; not all of them are good. People outside the tech industry are becoming relatively poorer across the board, including those at the bottom in this article. What bothers me the most is that none of this is planned. It's just happening and everyone is observing. I would be more comfortable if this 'relatively poorer' effect was part of a plan since it would imply that someone had considered the consequences.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

This happens in Chicago too, on the blue line.

officemonkey• 13 years ago

This happens on the Red Line as well. 1:20 each way.

The nice thing about the Blue Line is they generally don't make you get off at O'Hare. You can doze until the train goes back downtown. That means you can get a 2+ hour sleep in a round-trip between Forest Park and O'Hare.

tptacek2• 13 years ago

I just remember picking up the Blue Line in Forest Park, the southern terminus of the line, at 8:30AM, and the train always having several sleeping homeless people on it.

skwirl• 13 years ago

A 10 year old child has spent 5 months sleeping on the bus at night with her father. She's getting off the public bus and onto a school bus each morning.

I'm not saying that the adults deserve to be homeless, but can't everyone agree that no child should be in this situation? I can't even imagine how 10 year old me would have done in such a situation. I know kids are resilient, but it sounds absolutely terrifying.

According to a quick search, it is claimed that there are 1.6 million homeless children in America, with 1.1 million enrolled in public schools. That is insane. I can only hope that this number counts mostly children who were homeless for very short stints, and that most of them aren't doing anything like sleeping on a bus for 5 weeks straight.

rprospero• 13 years ago

This is an anecdote, not data, but my wife spent six months of her time in high school living in the park. This wasn't in sunny California - she still has some medical problems from sleeping in the snow. Also, her pre-school aged step brother was also living under the same conditions.

To answer the obvious questions to follow, the family did try the two homeless shelters. The government ran homeless shelter was quickly abandoned, as it was a haven for rape. There was a non-profit, privately ran homeless shelter for women which did not have the same level of trouble, but they turned my mother-in-law away because she would not convert to their religious beliefs.

I'm not doing reporting this as some sort of pity party. My mother-in-law is a terrible human being and she made many poor decisions that resulted in her being in this situation. I just wanted to make it clear that five weeks on a bus is in no way an outlier among those 1.6 million homeless children.

derleth4• 13 years ago

but can't everyone agree that no child should be in this situation?

The problem is that you'll never get everyone to agree that the government needs to be involved in fixing the situation, even though there is no other entity which can be relied upon to solve it.

It's gone from being politics to being religion: Socialism is Evil. It isn't just bad policy, it's Evil and therefore must not be compromised with, for all the same reasons you don't compromise with Satan Himself. The people who believe that will spin stories about how private groups will step up to solve all of the problems, even though they never have in the past, simply to prevent Evil, which they call Socialism.

jamesbritt2• 13 years ago

... even though there is no other entity which can be relied upon to solve it.

The government has shown that it, too, cannot be relied upon to solve it.

I certainly don't believe that the reason there are homeless children in American is because of people yelling "socialism."

Cries of "police state" have not stopped the formation and growth of the TSA.

When the government wants to spend money on something it seems to find a way.

The problem is that you'll never get everyone to agree that the government needs to be involved in fixing the situation

A lot of things happen despite a lack of public support. Do you think the public is cheering for the government to send billions to Pakistan?

You don't need everyone to agree. There would be enough people behind it.

This is a matter of political priorities.

yummyfajitas5• 13 years ago

The problem is that you'll never get everyone to agree that the government needs to be involved in fixing the situation

We already did agree that the government needs to fix the situation. As a result we have the foster care system which will provides homeless children with housing and care. As far as I'm aware, no remotely mainstream politicians advocate ending this system.

I get that you want to bait people into a debate about socialism. But if you want to argue for a change in policy, you need to do more than just criticize your ideological opponents (who don't disagree with you on this matter); you need to actually delve into technical details.

yummyfajitas5• 13 years ago

I was under the impression that every state provides a foster home or group home for children in need. Is that incorrect?

(Granted, I'm under the impression that these systems suck. But it's not as if there is no effort to care for the children.)

joe_the_user• 13 years ago

Many ideas have been tried over the years.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html

ceejayoz3• 13 years ago

Foster/group homes wouldn't take in the father.

201311022• 13 years ago

Why do you think they suck? Not "why is that your impression", but granted they suck, why?

201311022• 13 years ago

All sentient life is suffering. Individuals choose to create life in spite of this inevitability, and society perpetuates and encourages individuals making this decision.

We are the product of a mindless evolutionary process, and for the most part societies also take shape mindlessly.

but can't everyone agree that no child should be in this situation?

Prioritising basic guarantees of well being, above people living in the absurdly precarious situation described, above endless growth and winner-take-all game playing, is actually asking a lot of this world.

mynameishere• 13 years ago

for very short stints,

Well, yes. Look at the last sentence:

As many as 3.5 million people experience homelessness in a given year (1% of the entire U.S. population or 10% of its poor), and about 842,000 people in any given week.[36][37] Most were homeless temporarily. The chronically homeless population (those with repeated episodes or who have been homeless for long periods) fell from 175,914 in 2005 to 123,833 in 2007.[38]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_Stat...

The people who put these statistics together seem to have an interest in bucking up the numbers. I'm guessing "homeless" could include all manner of things like switching jobs and so being without an apartment for a few days.

Spooky232• 13 years ago

The problem is she's with her father. The system is skewed towards mothers and there is a high risk of the girl being separated from her dad (and potentially her school and extended support system) if he sought help.

IMO it's a disgrace that this situation exists, but if she has good grades and nobody has figured it out yet, her dad isn't some sort of nut and is taking care of her. They will get through it. She's better off on the bus that rolling the dice with some foster situation.

andrewhillman• 13 years ago

This guy https://twitter.com/LiCharles1985/status/396322399198539776 reached out to the reporter, he wants to help the man and his daughter.

landongn• 13 years ago

The mental picture of these people, huddled on a bumpy bus, in the middle of the night, being the only regular thing they can look forward to is incredibly saddening.

I wish there was something I could personally do.

DamnYuppie• 13 years ago

Volunteer your time, give of your resources, open your home up to a family in need. This list of things we could do to make a difference in someones life is bounded only by our own selfishness.

chris_mahan4• 13 years ago

Find a church, shelter, or other organization, and send them a check each month for $100. (that's $3.30/per day). Try it for a year.

ck2• 13 years ago

No one should be homeless and freezing in this country.

I am really disgusted how we let people fall this far.

We should all be ashamed.

The comments on that article are even more disturbing but I am going to assume it is people trolling because they are in warm homes with computers so they feel comfortable being asses.

Sanddancer2• 13 years ago

I used to work swing shift, and would take the late night busses in Orange County home. I'd get on Line 60 in downtown Long Beach, taking it to the 57 line in Orange, then the 2 or so miles to home. The drivers of those late night busses usually having the interior lights off. They knew what their passenger load's like -- regular working people just wanting to nap before they got home, the homeless people who would sleep as the motors wound up, brakes hissed, and stops were announced -- so tiny bits of peace and quiet were appreciated.

I'd see the same faces night after night. Some were grumpy, years of living on the streets having turned their faces and attitudes to weathered stone. Some were friendly; willing to chatter, unbowed by what the fates had given them. I'd say hi, but not much else; we didn't have much in common -- my ipod and sidekick were very out of place for them.

There were routines, ways to keep their semi-warm, if bumpy, beds. People getting off at Harbor to transfer to the 43 bus. Long bus line there, could get lots of uninterrupted sleep. People getting on at Harbor; they'd done a round trip, needed to change to the 60 so they could get to the 57 for another good trip, another few hours of sleep.

It saddened me. Couldn't do much about it. I donated when I could to shelters, even when people in my social circle would question my sanity for it. "Fuck you, got mine" being the mantra of entirely too many. After all, this was a county where a light rail system was vetoed because of fears that "those" people would have too much mobility and become visible in areas where they obviously didn't belong.

Unfortunately, a few years back, the Powers that Be decided to cut even that most slim of safety nets. Budget cutbacks, no need for busses in those wee, cold hours. Regardless of the passengers inconvenienced, regardless of the people thrown even deeper into misery. Regardless of people working those late nights. Having a soul is too expensive in times of austerity.

NovemberWest3• 13 years ago

Well, we need to stop trying to solve homelessness per se. We need to work on taking better care of people generally. That will shrink the numbers of homeless.

GhotiFish• 13 years ago

...

explain.

No one's willing to gives these guys work.

biot• 13 years ago

I hope my YC application gets approved for BusBNB: disrupting traditional fixed shelter in favor of housing that is simultaneously mobile, social, AND local. Extensions to the bus add food truck capability, washroom/shower facilities, dedicated hacker spaces, and more.

Homeless turn overnight bus route into Hotel 22

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