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I N N O V A T I O N
I slept in my car a lot while I was in college, but I wasn’t homeless. It was just more convenient. “Safe” was the location wherever my car was parked, I would just avoid parking it in unsafe areas.
The difference here is choice. I have slept in my car on road trips. These people are sleeping in cars because they can’t afford housing. If that doesn’t concern you - it should.
It’s concerning that people need housing.
My point was more about the providing safe spaces to sleep in their car. That’s weird. Did anyone ask for that? What kind of solution is this? Was a lack of safe car camping locations the problem that should have been addressed or should the lack of real housing have been addressed?
Sometimes you can only do what you can with what you have. Will this solution help everyone? No. Will it help anyone as much as they deserve? Probably not. Will it help some? Yes.
Its normalization. Its framed as a good thing… Like “protect the children” while masking the problematic thing… Like mass surveillance or in this case: people can’t afford a place to sleep.
Zoidberg: Still, to have your own parking spot!
And with close access to free paper printing to make such incredible decorations with.
Paper curtains, paper quilts, and my homework was used for those paper coasters.The american dream is still alive: enterprising young men can pull themselves up by the bootstraps, purchase an abandoned lot with their inheritance, and turn it into an affordable housing lot for struggling college students!
And after a few years, they can have a flashy exit when they sell their lot to a private equity firm for big bucks!
I’m reading this after coming from a thread in which people were mocking or handwringing over an article that suggested the official poverty line was unrealistically low.
I mean yeah, the poverty line is unrealistically low. It’s tied to the average annual price of food, even though food is not a major expense in most impoverished households. Truly broke people are spending like five dollars a day on food, with beans, rice, lentils, bouillon, spices, and whatever else they happen to have available/find on sale in a 20 year old crockpot. Food is a negligible expense when you take the time to prep, and truly impoverished people don’t have a choice. They’re forced to prep, or else they’ll starve.
The other costs, like rent, car payments, utilities, etc., have all massively ballooned in comparison to the price of food. Rent only used to account for ~20% of expenses, but now it often accounts for over 50%… But since the poverty line is tied directly to food, it hasn’t adjusted to maintain a realistic measure of expenses.
Rent prices are approaching half my income in my country because rich foreigners keep coming in to escape their own hellhole. Isn’t this fun?
You’ve been fed and are repeating racist bullshit. People buying houses for their own use aren’t what’s driving up prices, it’s people buying up houses they don’t live in. Being “local” or “foreign” is an irrelevant distraction designed to feed into mistrust of people who are different to you.
Bro, I think you should find out more by asking questions first before jumping into conclusions.
We are currently suffering through a gentrification crisis here in Mexico. A lot of foreigners from the USA (some of whom are Latino as well) are moving in and are renting and buying land while working abroad and paying no taxes, effectively displacing the native population in states like Yucatán and paying outrageous rents for the most basic apartments that the rest of us can’t afford.
How do I know this? I’ve met them and I’ve been to their apartments and I’ve asked how much they’re paying and they told me they weren’t paying taxes and were telling their friends to do the same. There have also been numerous news reports on this because people have been protesting in Mexico City but I don’t doubt we’ll be seeing some in other places like Guadalajara as well.
It doesn’t make sense that rent keeps going up and up at disproportionate rates. I’m paying $1000 more than last year which is a 30% increase. My landlord effectively told me that if I didn’t like it I could find some other place. And guess what, I can’t afford any of the places I’ve looked into.
So, no, it’s not racist to say that wealthy foreigners are causing problems because our problems are not being cause by race but by income inequality and people breaking the rules.
Ironic, because when I was working in the States I paid all my taxes but these people come here and refuse to do the same.
Some people live their lives frothing at the mouth to telegraph how morally superior they are to everyone around them.
There is this interesting thing happening where people trying to show how welcoming/open/accepting they are and not racist, they excuse away things that are actually against progressive helpful morals.
there is no such thing as race or borders, we are all just humans struggling to find a place to fit in and claw back against the wealthy
its totally therefore fine for me to come into your country and dramatically change the neighborhood you created with my much higher salary thus removing you to find a new place to establish.
I feel bad for Edgar but he needs to learn how to touch type.
I would be excited to find any open parking spot at school that won’t get me ticketed and/or towed
We’re collectively picking all the worst solutions, aren’t we?
Paraphrasing a quote I head years ago: Americans will always do the right thing, after exhausting all other possibilities.
Rofl send money to jungle Mexicans or prevent students being homeless…
What are jungle Mexicans? I’m trying to be open minded but it sounds like your talking shit
We have sunk to the point where living in your car is an acceptable living option, and the government would rather have that, than address the basic problem of housing affordability.
To exacerbate the issue, many communities and states are “banning” and criminalizing homelessness, arresting people for the crime of being so poor you can’t afford any sort of roof.
The beatings will continue until we learn to enjoy it.
This reminds me of those stories of old England where there were warehouses filled with coffins and you could rent a coffin to sleep in if you were homeless. Or even better, if you are too poor for the coffin there were those houses where you can rent your place on a rope tied between two wooden beams, so you can hang ober the rope and have a good night’s sleep until in the morning the owner wakes you up by cutting the rope.
With each new headline like this I hate my country just a little bit more.
time to organize. be a revolutionary optimist, and NOT give in to counterrevolutionary doom and gloom. seriously!
They threw tea in the ocean for less than what’s happening to us right now!!! And Americans are letting it happen while stealing own HARD EARNED money to line the pockets of everyone elected… it’s savage!
I am saying that it’s savage that these college students are paying thousands of dollars a year if not hundreds of thousand dollars for a degree yet a parking lot is a solution for housing for them because they clearly don’t have enough money. Where is this money going in the pockets of the elected and college officials? When college students can’t even afford housing what does that mean for everybody else?! These elected officials have no interest in helping anybody but themselves in the fact that we are trying to normalize college students paying thousands of dollars to live in their cars is not OK. Something has gotta change with these officials. That’s what I mean and if we normalize sleeping in cars in college, nothing will change.
what do you mean by that?
They’ll finally get to use their Rivian’s third bedroom.
Hard times for people living outside their means.
Ts&Ps!
“Orphan-crushing Machine”
Maybe they can finally pay off their school lunch dept
I had to sleep in my car from time to time when I was in college.
I’d park in a well-lit spot in an active parking lot (back in the before times, many major retailers were open 24/7) in a safer part of town. The backseats of my car were pull-downs that opened directly into the trunk. So, I’d sneakily climb through and into the trunk, then curl up back there to sleep.
It was a dark space and since nobody could see me back there, there was less chance of someone targeting me for robbery (sleeping person = easy target) or calling the cops on me (sleeping person = drugs or medical emergency). But those were still factors that added lots of stress to an already shitty situation.
I know times are harder for more people these days, but I figured I’d share since a lot of people don’t actively recognize that things were also difficult for many people back in the day as well. While there’s obviously a problem that needs to be solved here, and it sucks that we’re at a point where this is considered a solution, I would just say, don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.
Of course we should strive for a situation where everybody has a home, familial / social supports, good stable income, etc. But, also, even a little added comfort from having a safe® place to park & sleep as well as access to things like showers and bathrooms is a tiny little step in the right direction.
Tbh as someone who had to sleep in her car a few times in college, it would have been a nice thing to have. Like, yeah it’s bad that it’s needed, and an indoor option like some benches in rooms that are unused at night would’ve been also desired, but the most important thing was being able to know I wouldn’t get in trouble for sleeping somewhere.
I get that college is expensive, but I think this hits more closely at the lack of social services and the inherent instability in the lives of people new to adulthood. They don’t have the financial backing to get a hotel for a night, especially as they’re putting in a full time job of their education (though they may very well be working as well).
They’re also just more likely to be in unstable living conditions. Compared to adults 5-10 years older they’re far less likely to be in stable long term habitation of their choosing and instead are far more likely to be living with roommates, parents, or a partner of only a few years or even less with whom they have little commitment beyond a lease. These situations are more volatile, especially in ways that can lead to needing to sleep somewhere else for a few nights.
if this were a socialist country, rent would be abolished and everyone would be living comfortably. would socialism/communism help reduce homelessness and such?
Anything but build affordable housing or abolish rent. It’s like that “no way to prevent this” Onion article.
You don’t even have to abolish rent. There are giant predatory companies, small local landlords that got lucky with their timing, and everything in between. They’re getting money for doing nothing, and aren’t going to start contributing to society just because they have to be less wealthy for no effort! Slash rents now to get people homes, and implement rent control and price ceilings.
