I live in a van in SF and I'm a software engineer. I park in the Sunset and ride a bike to work. I have a gym membership with towel service at a major gym chain. I have two comped meals a day at the office. I make more than $150K, but less than $200K. I go out drinking every night and wind up at a bar in the Sunset with clean bathrooms. On weekends I drive out of town and camp somewhere scenic. I'm saving 80% of my take home pay. I have been doing this for six months. I date regularly. On the first date I state that my place is a no-go. Camping is a good second or third date. If they are special, I explain that I live in a van.<p>My van was towed once when I was out of town and construction notices were placed after a few days. That stung. Otherwise, it has been fine. If everything in the van was stolen I'd be out $1,000.
> That homelessness persists in Silicon Valley has puzzled me.<p>The reason is (as the paragraphs just below this line indicate) in fact the same reason for a great deal of issues in the Bay Area: lack of regional planning.<p>Planning in the Bay Area is far too localized. Cities constantly pawn off problems on each other. There are cities that approve thousands of new units of office space but zero housing. Transit systems don't connect to each other. Sports stadiums are constructed with no thought as to how people will arrive. Freeways have lanes that appear and disappear at various county boundaries, causing dangerous congestion. On and on. It's also why so many cities don't have enough shelters and just seem to expect (as the article states) that other nearby cities will pick up the slack.<p>What is needed is for the disparate cities of the Bay Area to stop passing the buck and come together as a region and plan together. Continuing to hope someone else does the hard work of solving problems will continue to result in them not getting solved.
Palo Alto, Mountain View, and other peninsula communities don't spend money on homeless shelters for two big reasons:<p>1) San Francisco spends a ton of money on the homeless. Over $40k per homeless person per year. "If big SF spends so much on the homeless, why should little ol' us?"<p>2) The weather in the Bay Area is not particularly harsh. Yeah, it might get cold 1-3 days a year, but it's not really bad. You're not going to die from exposure to the elements like you would in Cleveland, Detroit, or even Dallas. "No one will die sleeping outside here" is a common thought.<p>I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with these thoughts, but this is what peninsula planners think.
I'm mixed on the issue. I've got roots going back multiple generations in the bay area. The only immediate family member besides myself still living in the "bay area" (monterey to Santa Rosa) is one of my Aunts. Both parents born/raised in the Bay Area, my sister and I as well. Choices made, people moved. There is a golden rule - "if you sell your house and move out of California, it is hard to move back". My parents found this out in spades. They live in WA now and I'm supporting them a bit.<p>Old friends of my family still own a house in Campbell. Retired now, even with ups and downs, their mentality is "we aren't splitting up, because we can't afford to go anywhere". The build out of the Bay Area, lack of planning, etc. is taking a toll and making it hard on current and retired blue collar workers.<p>That said, I live in Santa Cruz and have very little pity on the "I should be allowed to live where I want". Mostly because over here, our "3000+ homeless" are 2/3 (according to a UCSC/Civinomics survey) didn't reside here before becoming homeless. We have way too many services, few rules, and a lot of "compassion" -- to the point of people being publicly called out if you publicly ask about "compassion".<p>The Bay Area is expensive, yes one would like to stay where their friends are, but one should also be open to where they can afford. For instance, locally, we keep being lectured about needing "safe places for RVs to park", yet these RVs aren't local, and a simple search of CL, a trailer park in Modesto has spaces (including utilities) for $15/day.
I feel somewhat terrible for thinking this… but, to me this story seems like a sad example of why responsible financial planning is important. It seems like they had plenty of opportunity to build equity into their house over time. Taking out multiple mortgages and refinancing seems like dangerous behavior.<p>Also, why is living in a van preferable to moving somewhere where they can afford the housing?
There are 35k homeless people in the Bay Area [1]
7-15k of them in SF.
There are ~7M people living here.<p>While those numbers sound at first high. It's not such a crazy high amount of people. (from what i know cities like Vienna or London also have at least a forth of that number (couldnt find stats))<p>The "homelessness situation" is next to cost of living the #1 thing i hear from people who don't want to relocate here. And tbh it's also the reason why i dont plan to stay in SF for longer term.<p>I know there is no easy answer to the problem of homelessness in the bay area - but it doesnt sound unsolvable.<p>[1]: <a href="http://www.myphilanthropedia.org/top-nonprofits/bay-area/homelessness/2009" rel="nofollow">http://www.myphilanthropedia.org/top-nonprofits/bay-area/hom...</a>
Two things irritate me.
1. A food bank should never ask for a person's home address. If you need to use a food bank, chances are you're homeless.<p>2. Homeowners should not worry so much about their property value. It's all going to be destroyed by an earthquake. I wager that the homeless are better prepared, and more likely to survive the Big One.
OT to the article but following up on some other comments about van living. I don't think it will be long before one of the big tech companies opens a dorm. There's no way it hasn't been discussed somewhere already.
There was an article last month on "dorms for grownups" <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/coliving.." rel="nofollow">http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/11/coliving...</a>. and the big tech companies already offer so many perks would access to a company dorm actually hurt at this point?<p>Of course this is common place in China already for the factory workforce...
It's time to index everything to an area's cost of living. $1 in SV is not the same as $1 in {somewhere else). It's time to stop pretending that you can set a federal poverty line, or set a federal social security pension.
This is a pretty easy optimization problem and I think it's hilarious that SV can't seem to solve it. If this was a network you would just push the resources further out closer to the edge to alleviate the load in one place.<p>What you have is people from all over the world swarming SV because you can't get that job in Cork or Boise.<p>Everything doesn't need to be in silicon valley. If someone is willing to live in their car for a job, with all the social baggage, sneaking around and unhygienic side effects that entails, surely they would be willing to move to a less crowded place like Portland to do the same job.<p>If the nexus for every single tech company must remain in SV then these companies could set up satellite offices around the country or allow people to telecommute with robust teleconferencing setups that turn a monitor into a window. Then just hang it up on the wall in your office and turn it off when you're not working.<p>Seriously people. You don't have to live like animals. I have a decent software job where I live. I pay $700 rent and look what I get to do every weekend<p><a href="http://imgur.com/a/d5BkF" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/a/d5BkF</a><p><a href="http://imgur.com/a/iFN9Z" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/a/iFN9Z</a><p><a href="http://imgur.com/a/ow47m" rel="nofollow">http://imgur.com/a/ow47m</a>
For those without a car or van, life can be even worse on Hotel 22 -- the only bus in Santa Clara county which runs 24 hours a day. People will ride it back and forth all night.<p><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html?_r=0</a>
This is really sad.
Not to change the subject, but I'm wondering how difficult it would be to live in a Van in SV and work as a Software Dev?<p>The temperature seems right, how hard would it be doing a stealth van situation and showering at the gym?