Bugout Machine Subdivision Sprouts in Sunny California

[RE]

Not the best location when a Tsunami hits.

"Low Income" around there is anybody making <$150K. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12050937/Shocking-images-TWO-MILE-long-encampment-people-living-RVs-trucks-trailers.html

Shocking images show the TWO-MILE long vehicle encampment - made up of people living in RVs, trucks and trailers - along Highway 101 north of San Francisco as low income people are pushed out of the housing market



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[FarmGirl]

Binford Road where these folks are isn't along the coast. The tsunami would hit a range of hills to the west before getting to San Pablo Bay, then it would have to about reverse direction and go back up the Petaluma River, and then make a left turn and end up in the lake they are parked beside. Seems relatively safe from tsunamis. Those California homeless sure seem smarts! 

[RE]

CA Geography is not my strong point.  I thought HY101 was on a coastal Lagoon. I was thinking of HY1.

RE

[FarmGirl]

CA Geography is not my strong point.  I thought HY101 was on a coastal Lagoon. I was thinking of HY1.

RE

I love HWY101, it's the one that goes through the redwoods. Spends more time inland than HWY 1, for sure. HWY 1 going from LA to San Fran runs the coast and is gorgeous. I've got to get to the part of it above San Fran sometime.

[RE]

I only watched 15 min of this vid before my puke reflex became overwhelming.  The POV here is basically what's left of the middle class moaning about how their quality of life has become so horrible because of all those awful messy homeless people and the mountains of garbage lining the Seattle streets.   Off the record, the Survey Sez the answer is simple, cops need to enforce the law and lock these criminals up!  It sucks because Homeless people think they can get free medical care and free food and free tents so they all come here!  lol.  In the 1st 15 minutes of this hour long demonization of the homeless, not a single homeless person actually got interviewed.  They just shot videos of the memtally ill and drug addicted archetypal bums lining the streets, screaming and decompensating or passed out in a drunken stupor in a pile of garbage.  Not even a passing thought about how so many people got this way to begin with, or how lousy THEIR lives are.  It just sucks because it's ruining MY life because I have to look at it and I don't feel safe!

Even if locking them all up WAS a solution, how is that gonna get paid for?  They sure aren't gonna vote to have their Property Taxes raised to build more jails and hire more prison guards.

Now, I don't feel safe when I'm rolling around downtown Anchorage either on my Ewheelz and sitting at a bus stop with half a dozen hard cases arguing with each  other or with people who aren't actually there, but I am not so stupid as to think you could fix this just by having a bus rolling around with cops loading them in and driving over to the station to charge them with violating the vagrancy laws, drinking in public, smelling really bad and yelling too loud.

Basically, the downtown  area of most major big shities now resembles the set of the Walking Dead or other post Apocalyptic TV show, and while sitiing at a downtown bus stop it's pretty hard to argue that the Collapse isn't already here.  Same thing out in many suburbs around the closed Malls, parks and Public Schools.

What's the answer? Stay home if you still have one, have your groceries delivered by InstaCart and stream another rerun of a Superhero movie.  The city streets won't be improving anytime soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpAi70WWBlw

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[K-Dog]

I only watched 15 min of this vid before my puke reflex became overwhelming.

You are not the first.  That happened to me a couple of years ago.  No surprise that I have seen this production by the Seattle Petite Bourgeoisie. 

I remember I had to turn it off and walk around a while before I finished it.  I wanted to punch a judgemental mofo in the face.

I remember what was pissing me off.  The deep bible-thumper message is all these people caused their own problems.  Everything they experience they brought upon themselves, and the only solution of course is to change thy ways.  Can someone say Sinner Repent!

In terms of manifesting behaviors I agree.  Hard cases do need a lifestyle change.

But How does one get from A to B and how did a person get to be is state A (The state of being fucked.) to begin with.  What incentives provide results?

Any generalized answer is impossible, and someone looking for one is a moron.

Cut the bull and:

[RE]

But How does one get from A to B and how did a person get to be is state A (The state of being fucked.) to begin with.

Very good questions, and I can postulate a few answers with a little Sherlock Holmes type observation & deduction.

First thing is observing the demographic.  These folks are mostly between the ages of 20-50, with the real hard cases being right in the middle in their late 20s-early 30s.  Younger kids heading in that direction get picked up by CPS and given a little more in the way of help with group homes and counseling, and they haven't spent that much time on the street doing drugs they're totally fucked up yet.  Folk older than 50 who have been consuming mass quantities of drugs and alcohol for a couple of decades tend to die as their livers resemble swiss cheese and give out.

The beginners in their 20s tend to come out of the foster homes system after bouncing around there for the first 20 years of their lives, having been removed from their original less than ideal living situation with a parent or parents at the low end of the socio economic spectrum.  Said parents may have held some kind of crappy job, but probably had substance abuse issues of their own, and the kids learned everything they needed to know about drugs by the time they got to Junior High.

If they managed to graduate HS, they still couldn't read anything longer than a twitter message, although they might be able to add and subtract to do drug transactions and bargain at the pawn shop for how much the tv they stole is worth.  They are basically unemployable, quickly land on the streets and busy themselves finding ways to get enough money to score some drugs.  If they're female and still decent looking enough with a few teeth left, they work as prostitutes.  If they're male,they go into the robbery and burglary bizness, along with dealing some drugs.

By the time they hit 30 if they make it that far they've been in countless fights with others like them on the streets, or with the cops.  Violence has become a way of life, and if they are hopped up on some crystal meth, you have a human A-Bomb walking the streets ready to explode at any moment.

If you could even get these folks to counseling, do you really think you could fix psychological problems 30 years in the making with a couple of hours of therapy a week with an overworked social worker?  Not gonna happen.

To fix this problem, you need to go back all the way to where it starts, back with the parents who bred them and the basically hopeless lives they lived at the bottom end of the society 30-50 years ago.  Contrary to what you might think, everybody growing up then didn't live like Kevin & Winnie Cooper of the Wonder Years or the cast of Beverly Hills 90210.  A much larger percentage of the population was living in the decaying cities of the rust belt and the dying towns out in West Texas, Kansas and Nebraska.  Its the children of those folks who have migrated out to the cities of San Francisco and Seattle where the weather generally isn't too bad, they can find food, score some drugs and steal some cars or burglarize some McMansions.

Are we as a society doing anything to fix the etiology of this problem, which begins with the kids growing up in households with no hope, homes being foreclosed on and schools which fail to educate?  Of course we're not, those problems are only getting worse, so one can predict with fair certainty the problem of whacked out homeless people will only increase for the forseeable future.

RE

[K-Dog]

That is a good description of many no doubt.

Working a McJob was one thing when I was in my 20's.  Working one now is an eye-opener.

No way can a person work a McJob without having their life subsidized in some way.  All income would go to food or rent.  Wages will not cover both.  The 'get a job' theme promoted in 'Seattle is Dying' has no appeal because it won't work.  The American food chain is not set up that way.

Hard cases come in the store to rip us off all the time.  My fellow employees want to go medieval on their asses.  I fully understand their point of view.  Too much 'shrinkage' and the store could close to open somewhere else.  The self-justification that one is stealing from a corporation and not employees is not as simple as a twisted conscience would have it.  People 'doing the right thing' for minimum reward are also not fond of freeloaders.  It is a redneck sort of thing, and the sun has been on my neck.

But the hard cases who match your demographic have no conscience needing a twist into self-justification. They walk into the store to steal and for no other reason.  Old beat up cars with a get-away driver.  They come in, load up shopping carts, bags and backpacks, then they leave.

What we can officially do is limited.  We may not sting.  But we swarm.



But that is another story.  Humans are creative.  The right incentives and tactics of persuasion would reach a majority of the lost if our society provided such things. 

Which we don't.

[K-Dog]

Not the best location when a Tsunami hits.

"Low Income" around there is anybody making <$150K. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12050937/Shocking-images-TWO-MILE-long-encampment-people-living-RVs-trucks-trailers.html

Shocking images show the TWO-MILE long vehicle encampment - made up of people living in RVs, trucks and trailers - along Highway 101 north of San Francisco as low income people are pushed out of the housing market



RE

"Low Income" is anybody making <$150K is social pressure creating these new American Gypsies.  Locked out of the American Dream it looks like Custer's Last Stand will be repeated in history sometime soon.  Or some such version featuring Winnebago Teepees.  Ironic that.

But on the way there shall be massacres.



Rantz: Homeless at encampment with pool explain why they won't leave

Rantz, by the way I have had peripheral contact with.  He can be a POS.

[RE]

Hard cases come in the store to rip us off all the time.  My fellow employees want to go medieval on their asses.  I fully understand their point of view.  Too much 'shrinkage' and the store could close to open somewhere else.  The self-justification that one is stealing from a corporation and not employees is not as simple as a twisted conscience would have it.  People 'doing the right thing' for minimum reward are also not fond of freeloaders.  It is a redneck sort of thing, and the sun has been on my neck.

But the hard cases who match your demographic have no conscience needing a twist into self-justification. They walk into the store to steal and for no other reason.  Old beat up cars with a get-away driver.  They come in, load up shopping carts, bags and backpacks, then they leave.

What we can officially do is limited.  We may not sting.  But we swarm.

Definitely what can be done to reduce the "shrinkage" is limited.  In many jurisdictions now if a shoplifter manages to get out of the store, store security personnel are not allowed to pursue.  By the time cops arrive on the scene, the perps are in the wind.

Of course this is another nail in the coffin for the brick & mortar shopping experience, pretty soon you'll need to buy everything online and your groceries delivered by Door Dash.  At which point our perps will adapt and start hijacking more UPS trucks and delivery drivers.  Hungry for a Pizza?  Call Dominos and give them a random address and sit outside in your car till the driver arrives, then take the pizza from him before he can ring the doorbell.

Agreed incentives and persuasion could make some dent, but it would be expensive and perceived by many as being a reward for being a low life.  Nobody's gonna want to give them decent free housing if they are spending their whole paycheck to keep a roof overhead.  Besides the threat of prison, not sure what means you have for persuasion, accepting the idea thumbscrews are not an option.

RE

[RE]

OK, here's an incentive UBI pilot program in Denver.

https://www.axios.com/local/denver/2023/07/19/denver-universal-basic-income-project-reports-early-success

Denver's universal basic income project reports early success

Now, the $50/mo group is a joke.  This pays your cell phone bill.

The other 2 programs are slightly more realistic, but neither is enough by itself just to rent a 1 bedroom apartment in the Denver market, much less cover all the rest of your basic costs for living like food, transportation and communication.  So you're homeless hard case you're trying to help bootstrap himself up still needs a job, but even a $15/hr min wage job should be enough supplemented by the UBI.

One would expect that staying eligible for your monthly UBI check requires staying clean and not getting in trouble with the cops, but thats gonna take frequent visits by a social worker at the least.  The real question is assuming your hard case can clean up enough to actually get a job like say stacking shelves in a warehouse, will he be able to keep it for more than a week?  Show up on time for his shifts, not get in fights with other workers, do what the boss says without mouthing off, resist the temptation to steal some merchandise, not call in sick more than once or twice a month etc?  The social skills said person has acquired to survive living on the street are not generally the same ones needed in the workplace.

Anyhow, the UBI is at least some attempt to save these lost souls, but the cost of expanding it beyond a pilot program would be high, because after all not only the hard cases need the UBI, so does every other worker in the warehouse.  The rednecks who work there and are not ex-junkies would not be pleased if they didn't get the free money also.

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[K-Dog]

I removed the double post.

The article says the money comes from charitable donations.  Taxes would have to generate money if UBI ever is more than an experiment.

It is a patch job.  Extra money offsets costs the homeless, (I am going to put the term 'unhoused' up my ass sideways.) can't afford because of the ever growing economic divide.

Over the past 50 years, the highest-earning 20% of U.S. households have steadily brought in a larger share of the country's total income. In 2018, households in the top fifth of earners (with incomes of $130,001 or more that year) brought in 52% of all U.S. income, more than the lower four-fifths combined, according to Census Bureau data.

In 1968, by comparison, the top-earning 20% of households brought in 43% of the nation's income, while those in the lower four income quintiles accounted for 56%.

Taxes are essential, but the Republican party has cut taxes so only the military and police float in a sea of cash.  There is nothing left for anything good.

Overall, 61% of Americans say there is too much economic inequality in the country today, but views differ by political party and household income level. Among Republicans and those who lean toward the GOP, 41% say there is too much inequality in the U.S., compared with 78% of Democrats and Democratic leaners, a Pew Research Center survey conducted in September 2019 found.

From which we can conclude American Republicans are bigger A-holes than Democrats are.  But they may in fact only be more honest.

The top 20% has to stop buying apartment buildings and charging $2000 a month rent.  But Dems will fight rent controls as hard as Republicans.  Those in the top 20% think it is their god given right to charge as much rent as they want.  They earned that money the bank paid interest on and it is a free country so they can do what they want.  Some such bull they will say.

Both American Political parties and the American lumpenproletariat worship the elite.

[RE]

It is a patch job.  Extra money offsets costs the homeless, (I am going to put the term 'unhoused' up my ass sideways.) can't afford because of the ever growing economic divide.

Here in fact is where the real problem lies, because all that would happen if you did hand out an extra $1000/mo to everyone, landlords would simply jack up the rents to reflect the additional cash in the renter's wallets.  As long as there is a shortage of affordable housing, property owners will charge as much as the market will bear.  The end result id price inflation, and the recipients of this money end up no better off than before they got it.  Landlord profits will of course increase though.

UBI programs can't work without price controls also, which is something the rentier class of capitalists will never accept.  Once you do go down this road, you are in a managed economy, like the old Soviet Union.  At least there though everybody did have an apartment, although they were all pretty shit and butt ugly project type housing.  We all know also how well project housing worked out here in the FSoA Inner Cities in the aftermath of LBJs "Great Society" programs, which turned out not so great.

Goobermint may allocate money to build these places, but they never allocate the continuing money necessary to maintain them.  They may look pretty good as architectural models and right before the 1st occupants move in, but after a year or two lights are out in hallways, elevators don't work and playgrounds and common areas are strewn with garbage and used needles.   Middle class critics shake their heads and bloviate about how "those people" don't take pride in their homes and don't maintain them properly.  You think those prideful Condo owners do their own maintenance?  Hell no, they pay a monthly fee to the HOA to do regular maintenance and a waste management company to pick up the trash every day.  A housing project is lucky if the sanitation dept shows up once a week to empty their dumpsters, which regularly begin to overflow.  New lightbulbs have to be requisitioned, and when they arrive promptly get stolen by the hard cases blowing crack pipes on the basketball court.  There's no doorman keeping track of who enters the buildings, andentrance doors locks are broken and not fixed.

Thus the whole affordable housing problem remains a major bear, and as long as these projects exist they are petri dishes for blooming drug addiction, gang activity and the regular domestic violence and drive by shootings we are all too familiar with from TV cop shows.

Do I have an answer for this problem?  Not really, but what wwe are currently doing or not doing DEFINITELY is not working, so almost anything eelse is worth trying.

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[Nearings Fault]

I don't generally find people who invest in real estate evil but the last decade has created a lot of moral ambiguity. Here is an article
https://globalnews.ca/news/8754119/canada-budget-2022-home-prices/
So, 30 percent of serving federal politicians have income property. That leads to some hazy decision making as far as I'm concerned if you have to regulate it. On a more local level I know of 3 examples of places that should be traditional basic rentals that are now glamped up air b and b setups. Hard to fault the owners as the people are there for only a few days and you make as much as with a whole month of regular rental, they pay up front, you don't have to worry about trying to evict serial non payers, the short term renters have set out rules about damages and responsibilities that would make a tenant landlord arbitrator apoplectic. Then there is seasonal cottages. They used to get rented out in the winter to a group of people who generally lived in a camp like setting 9 months a year then rented a better place all winter. Those setups dried up as more and more cottage owners decided the extra money was not worth the hassle. I don't think the local rules have caught up to the trends yet. If we cared about housing we would have insurers penalize the crap out of short term renters, cancel any kind of tax offset for second properties mortgage interest for starters.

[RE]

I read an article recently which said the "home ownership" paradigm was fading into the sunset asa greater and greater percentage of single family dwellings are being purchased as investment properties by corporations like Blackrock and then rented out.  Not surprising since few people can qualify for mortgages at the prices they sell at now.  Said corporations can also afford to keep properties off the rental market to reduce supply and artificially maintain high prices.  The capitalist system is definitely NOT set up to benefit the individual homeowner.  Rather it favors corporations with access to large amounts of cheap debt unavailable to the individual.  You can't get a mortgage at a rate a couple of points over the Fed discount rate like an investment capital firm has access to through the CMBS market.

Of course all this debt has been rehypothecated so many times there isn't really collateral to cover all that debt, so eventually it will collapse.  Until it does though, the system is totally FUBAR.

RE