Homeless population doubles in Mountain View

http://mv-voice.com/news/2015/06/30/homeless-population-doubles-in-mountain-view

by nkzednan • 11 years ago

36 30 11 years ago

icanhackit• 11 years ago

The city now has 271 people with no access to an emergency shelter or transitional housing who are stuck on the street, living in cars or living in encampments around the city.

Slight tangent, but when I walk down the street at night I see car after empty car and think, why can't it also be a bed? If all of the seats could fold down flat and the car's engine could idle in a fuel efficient way, providing heating/cooling/climate control, it'd be a comfortable double bed. If the windows could have opaque blinds that slide over the windows when the car is set to camp mode for privacy and additional security from delinquents.

It just seems like a wasted opportunity not to make cars that can become a bed when they're using all of this space already - it could reduce drink driving, make staying closer to work easier, provide shelter for people low on funds etc. Perhaps with the advent of driverless cars we could have this and be delivered to our destination upon getting out of bed. Perhaps a family of vehicles, one for each family member, could cart each individual to their destinations, pick them up, then at the end of the day merge the vehicles together to transform into the family home.

dev-da06• 11 years ago

I live in a compact-width van conversion (which fits in the tightest parking garages) with absolute privacy (curtains) in Mountain View (illegal to sleep in a car on the street, so stay on private property like parking lots) & Palo Alto (where it's currently legal to sleep in a car on the street). It's very comfortable and sleeps 3 adults or 2 adults and 2 kids.

Living in a car (when it's obvioua) is unfortunately an invitation for continual police harassment. Been there, done that. Police in Mountain View bang on car windows if you were to sleep in any of the downtown municipal parking lots OR even on private property. They have zero tolerance for poor people and show no compassion whatsoever. There is even this one female officer whom enjoys Schadenfreude to such a degree that it is well past hubris; (she will tow your car even if it's on private property.)

Better to live in a car or van where it's not obvious, (tint, curtains, etc.) because the junked-up cars and people obviously sleeping draw the most attention.

Also, ask me anything.

PS: During the day, it's impossible to tell that I live in my vehicle because it's very clean and everything's put away.

fwn2• 11 years ago

I know it's off topic but that it's illegal to sleep in a car appears to me to impose the most cynical incentive structure I encountered in a while.

I already did that several times in the past because I was seriously drunken.

Edit: Also as a follow up question on your further writing:

How do you handle very high or low temperature in a car? First I thought it's not a problem due to ACs, but as you pointed out that you've to hide your presence I can't really see that working. Very interesting post!

dognotdog• 11 years ago

So what do you do, and why did you choose to live in the van?

pm24601• 11 years ago

So I live in MTV, I would like to hear more about this as I am interested getting MVPD to be more understanding. It seems like harassing people on private property should be not allowed.

carcamper• 11 years ago

Hello fellow car camper. I also live in my car. Although it's not as well setup or planned out as you, I just lay back the passenger seat and sleep there, no tint either which sucks.

When it was cooler out I would lay my back seat down and roll out the sleeping pad and sleeping bag and stretch out like that, but it's too hot and humid for that now (south east US).

I'm looking to move to the bay area, are walmarts accepting of overnight sleepers there? Do you use church parking lots at all?

webnrrd2k• 11 years ago

For those who are interested, check out the vandwellers sub on reddit.

https://www.reddit.com/r/vandwellers

reddiric• 11 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNC5Dn0Dtnc

nugget2• 11 years ago

Silicon Valley is a gold rush type of town. In these environments, people are willing to live very minimally in the manner you describe. Van dwellers all around MV and PA are proof of that. There's euphoria in the air and a sense that nothing else matters. But to the rest of the world, or even here if/when the gold rush ends, people (even very poor people) settle into their normal lives and start to demand a little more comfort and convenience.

dev-da06• 11 years ago

Demand? Sounds like entitlement hate of us vs. them that don't subscribe to consumerism in order to rationalize staying on the treadmill of unnecessary ostentation because "what your friends think?" Just stop until you have something positive to say that doesn't involve sweeping bigotry.

uhwhat• 11 years ago

Startup idea: an affordable compact mobile home

[0] http://www.designboom.com/design/cornelius-comanns-bufalino/ TukTuk Camper!

alkimie2• 11 years ago

That happens to be a feature of my first car, a 1961 Peugeot 403. Seats folded perfectly flat to form a 'camp bed'. Here's a blog where you can see it--it is found on the first page of the second set of the manual.

http://peugeot403arg.blogspot.ae/

Loved that car, but the engine and especially the cooling system struggled in California. The other problem was that the car seat rails were built for lighter Europeans. I was all the time bending the seat rails.

4ndr3vv• 11 years ago

Direct link

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2EHKwzNylG8/TNB4CqwHtGI/AAAAAAAAAA...

kqr2• 11 years ago

The sad reality is that a lot of homeless people don't even have cars and just take the bus back and forth during the night.

http://www.businessinsider.com/hotel-22-the-dark-side-of-sil...

panglott2• 11 years ago

A related question is why all this space is being taken up providing government-subsidized parking for cars rather than decent housing for humans. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/business/economy/15view.ht...

One major problem with living in a car is the lack of a toilet.

Animats• 11 years ago

I'm seeing a few more homeless people lately in Palo Alto and Redwood City. I'm also seeing a lot more "Help Wanted" signs for low end jobs. Housing has become so expensive, though, that there are now homeless people with day jobs.

There's one homeless guy with a long beard who's been panhandling on University Avenue since at least the 1990s.

geff822• 11 years ago

After visiting the USA in December 2014 I cannot help but wonder why the matter of homeless people is not one of the biggest issues in the country. While you see homeless people occasionally here in Europe, streets seemed to be flooded by the homeless. I really wonder why a country so wonderful in many areas can be so agnostic to the problem of homeless people. A developed society should not have that situation nowadays. And while taxes are not the highest in the US, they are not that low that problems like this can't be addressed.

mixmastamyk2• 11 years ago

Because all the money is spent on corruption of various sorts, which is mostly ignored--those folks like getting their money. The media make it clear that any such money spent on humanitarian grounds is not only unavailable but would be wasted even if it was.

Indeed, I don't believe in hand-outs, but some investment would be welcome. You can only walk by people shitting in the street or laying face-down on the sidewalk so long before wanting to kill.

geff822• 11 years ago

yes... while I also rather like economy friendly governments, it is pure logic that if you ignore the poor, they will come knocking on your door in one way or the other... Some kind of welfare is good for the rich (they can enjoy their money more without fearing being robbed or kidnapped) and the poor (they can eat and have somewhere to live).

panglott2• 11 years ago

If we don't treat poor people like dirt, how will they have sufficient incentive (i.e., desperation) to accept whatever horrible jobs are available? Such as being on call 24/7 for a part-time job at sub-living wages.

But honestly, the problem of homelessness is more closely tied to high housing prices, which in the US is associated with the liberal urban areas. The same liberal urban areas that otherwise pride themselves on being "progressive" are just pricing people out of houses by not building enough housing and "maintaining the character of the neighborhood."

Homeless population doubles in Mountain View

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