I spent several years camping all over the U.S. recently, from the countryside to the sidewalk. I had a good experience doing it, and little trouble. Apolitical.
If you're trying to not pay rent for a while and enjoy a more free lifestyle, I think it's worth dipping one's toes into, especially if you have prior camping experience.
> Phoebe S. K. Young finds that Americans have long struggled to decide what camping is, and who is allowed to do it
Huh? Anyone is allowed to camp in designated camping areas. No one is allowed to “camp” in random public areas. There is nothing anti-homeless about camping. Is this article for real?
Well you implied that laws against theft are not just. I disagree but disagreement is fine. Just, in what general area of the world do you live? I’m in Louisiana by the way.
"As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me."
The article starts at a time in American history where there weren’t campsites at all, and describes times and situations where certain people were either explicitly forbidden or highly discouraged from camping in designated places.
This is still the case in very rural areas. I remember camping in the fields down by the river as a cub scout. You just had to ask the farmer who owns them first, he would always say yes.
Somewhat. Permits are required in some places, especially Wilderness Areas and other heavily-used places. There may also be maximum length of stay restrictions. (And actual campgrounds typically charge and have set spots.) National forests may also lease land for non-recreational use, e.g. lumber.
First, there is a huge amount of public lands where you can't just set up camp.
National parks, lots of state parks, city mountain parks which are public and do allow camping have very limited permit access, rules, exclusions etc. Some lands which ostensibly should be dispersed camping allowed you can't even access bc you'd have to travel through private land.
But your comment misses the entire crux of the article imho.
It's not that camping is anti-homeless, it's that there has historically been - and still is - a societal judgement and double standard based on ethnicity, class, and housed status.
It's about a double standard of the Govt forcing native Americans to give up their 'barbarous campfire life' while the rich were encouraged to have the same experience for the benefit of their health.
Same happens today just not as extreme.
Just to illustrate, i get this isn't the same as pitching a tent in front of someone's house.
But society says it's not ok for the homeless to stay in their RVs on public streets but it is ok for people to stay the night in 150k sprinter vans.
Not exaggerating, there are both happening in large numbers here in Denver. The difference is one can afford to move their place of rest around the other can't.
I might try and take a photo at the Movement Baker gym there are 2 homeless RVs on the road and almost always at least 3 sprinters, usually one with doors totally open someone just chilling there living their day. Shower & internet inside. For the rich climbing dirt bag only though.
A related issue to restrictions regarding camping is the politics of zoning laws in America. As someone who works in Silicon Valley and can afford to rent an apartment but cannot afford to purchase even a condo in the area, for the past few years I've researched alternatives such as living in a mobile home and buying land and placing a tiny house on it. However, the zoning laws in many of the municipalities within a two-hour radius of Silicon Valley make it very difficult to do these things. In all the municipalities I researched, I'm not allowed to live in a mobile home on my own land unless I'm in the process of building a home on a permanent foundation. Homes on a permanent foundation must meet minimum size requirements, thus prohibiting tiny homes and thus requires spending more money for a larger place. Permits can cost many thousands of dollars, and that's assuming I could get the permits. Water is a serious issue; in some parts of Monterey County, there are long waitlists to connect to the water system, and in Cambria (a town in northern San Luis Obispo County) there's an ordinance barring any new construction until more water is available.
A part of me understands the rationale for these restrictions. But another part of me feels discouraged that the real estate market in much of California is all sewn up with no way to "hack" it without figuring out how to make $200K+ per year or throwing in the towel and moving to some other part of the state or outside California. Thus I continue to rent my apartment while trying to find other ways to get into real estate.
Serious answer: get into your local politics. Start calling up your representatives and demanding this change. Find a representative for which this is a key issue for them and start campaigning to get them elected or re-elected. Organize with other renters; there’s more of you than there are land owners there I bet.
The number of voters needed to radically alter the landscape of extremely local politics is probably maybe a dozen or less in this way, btw.
The bar is more accurately described as "controlling the selectorate", you need to be whomever is able to rally the votes to put people on or off the council. That person already exists, and has a lifetime's head start. Good luck.
Gavin Nuesome actually had good intentions with streamlining ADU's in California.
It turns out only the wealthy are taking advantage of the gift though.
In my county, I believe 6 guys took advantage of the streamlined process. It's still very expensive.
They used building the ADU as an excuse to build a bigger house, and that variance is hard to get, but if you have money and kiss ass, you can get it.
I believe almost all the 6 used an ADA unit to increase the size of their home. They all had to get variances from the town, and 5 got it. One homeowner refused to kiss the town council's ass, write begging letters to his neighbors, and attent countless meetings while paying for an architect, and a Builder's time.
They are all asked a bunch of questions.
The one that got me is "Are you going to rent the unit out to low income individuals. (Low income in my town is like "$90, 000. Yea--really. $110,00 if married.". All basically lied, and said yes they will rent it to a Nun. They wanted a bigger home, and the ADU will be used as----an Art studio, or for Lupe' the cheap help that will wipe them in later life?
My point putting in an ADU is fine, and I'm glad Neusome streamlined the process. People aren't taking advantage of it besides the wealthy though. The people whom didn't need any help.
I would rather see something different.
1. If a person (not a corporation, rich foreigner, etc.) of modest means buys a small piece of land they can put a trailer, tent, small cabin, etc. on the land. And of course live there. I'd even be ok with no foundations until you build properly, and no renting unless you offer it for free. I'd even be ok with time limits that are reviewed every ten years for free. So basically a guy would have to go in front of some official and sign a declaration that they still don't have the money to build a proper unit.
2. CA counties, and towns are going to be told to build more housing in the future if Neusome is still around. They only way I see it happening is if we start building huge blocks of housing, like I see being demolished in Ukraine. (I've seen pictures of Russia. It does look like everyone is in a reasonably priced apartment. I guess it's a leftover from evil Socialism.
Personally, I'd be happy with 1. I just don't think the powers at be really want to help the very poor.
Marin County, San Anselmo. This is basically the town I'm writing about. Newsome has a mansion here where Jenny wanders room to room trying to find something "important" in life to do. Be careful Gavin. She reminds me of an Amber Heard. I honestly like the guy. He was voted most fashionable in my high school.)
I disagree fully. This is not "Democracy". This is arbitrary little dictators pushing their little pet agenda forward (no matter how good in your example) over those that just want to be left alone. The same thing you're advocating is the same reason the landscape of regulation is currently such a mess.
It may not have been the case even five years ago and you definitely won't make the same six figures, but that simple threshold is probably in reach in any mid-size american city for a software dev more than a year or two into their career.
I'm a bit confused by housing in San Francisco. The median household income in San Francisco is around $120k, which suggests that making six figures is quite sufficient for living in San Francisco.
But the impression I often get on HN is that you've got people making well above that finding themselves barely able to afford a place to live in SF.
Somebody could have bought a house in 90s for 200K, retired and live in the same house, which has appreciated to 2M now, drawing on 60K retirement. Somebody making 180K cannot afford the 2M house even though these two individuals have a median 120K income and the latter makes much more than the former.
I make six figures and can afford only a modest 1-bedroom in a rural area well outside of an east coast university town. I will probably not be able to afford a house without parental help.
My back-of-the-napkin math suggests you are in a high COL area. It's not an indictment of capitalism if you choose to live in a desirable area, have a generous salary, and just can't make it work. That or you are mishandling your finances, but I don't know your situation. For reference, I am debt-free homeowner in a midwest university town and make much less than you.
> It's not an indictment of capitalism if you choose to live in a desirable area, have a generous salary, and just can't make it work.
It's an indictment of any system that people making twice the median household income cannot afford to buy housing within a reasonable distance of wherever their labor generates that income. It's a terrible situation - communities in which at least half of the necessary jobs do not pay enough for the people who do those jobs to live in the community - and it isn't good for anyone in or around those communities, and probably not for the nation as a whole.
The fact that, yes, yes of course there are other communities where the economics are different doesn't in any way mitigate the fucked-up ness of the situation the GP is describing.
I suppose that depends on how you evaluate the success or failure of capitalism. The richest person in the world would probably say that capitalism is a great success. As far as the coasts, all life choices involve trade offs.
I recently started the process of moving from my high cost of living California home to a low cost of living, but still on the coast city. Three years ago you'd see homes in this city for $300k. Almost all of them are now approaching $600k. The areas which used to be considered low cost are now unaffordable to everyone currently living there as well as a large swath of people not making huge total comp at FAANG. Other costs are still less expensive but housing is nuts everywhere I've looked.
The only homes I've seen for $200k need to basically be torn down and are too small for a family.
The Bay Area in particular is something of an outlier in that it's pretty hard to reasonably drive out of the expensive area in, say, an hour.
That's much less true of most metros. Even a fairly expensive city like Boston, while there are expensive suburban towns, an hour drive gets you to some small cities, exurbs, and other suburbs where housing prices are--if not cheap--pretty reasonable (e.g. $300-400K for midrange houses--though prices may have risen). And a lot of the professional jobs are well outside the city anyway.
Even in the Bay Area about an hour's drive gets you to Stockton which has plenty of houses for sale for under $450k that look pretty decent on Redfin.
An hour or so commute each way sucks, but if you can get a Bay Area job that is either fully WFH or that only requires you to come into the office once a week being an hour away wouldn't be too bad, especially if you can arrange the hours on that one day a week you come in so that you are't driving during the most congested times.
I had about a 90 minute commute (either mostly driving or mostly train) for about 18 months--averaging coming into my Boston office maybe a couple days a week. I wouldn't have wanted to do that long term and stretches when I was in more frequently were pretty bad. But it's pretty manageable for one day a week.
It’s capitalism. We have plenty of housing but a capitalist society protects hoarding housing more than equalizing housing. You end up with more airbnb, “investment” rentals or abandoned properties stuck in legal limbo than inventory for first time home buyers.
you can’t build to infinity when everything is built out…
Well, you’re not completely wrong there. In this case however, San Francisco is full to the gills with 100–year–old two–story houses, which the city government will not allow anyone to knock down and replace with four–story houses.
Some people might say it’s capitalism that allowed rich homeowners to take over government to create themselves laws to protect their real estate investment. Laws of the rich to make themselves richer.
That cannot be capitalism’s fault, because the city government is elected. Every adult gets one vote, no matter how much money they have. Every person has as much right as every other to try to convince the elected members of that government to take the correct course of action. If your city government is unfairly favoring one segment of the city’s population over another then you should elect a better one. Not all cities are as badly run as San Francisco. It can be done.
So how the hell does this work in SF? Where do your cleaners, barristas, teachers and other assorted pauper servants live? Do they put them in caves under the ground in California or something?
They tend to either live with multiple roommates, commute from faraway places (like Stockton, Los Banos, and Salinas), or live in their vehicles. I remember reading an article (https://www.kqed.org/news/10467044/long-commute-to-silicon-v...) about a Stanford cafeteria worker who commuted from Stockton on public transportation.
While there's a lot of NIMBY about zoning higher density, is not the problem also (partly) that 'price' can't be used as a motivating factor for more efficient (people/area) land use?
I haven’t tried this, but I am curious if they would allow you to build a garage or storage unit on the property. Is there anything they cannot legally block?
I wonder also if there is an obligation to finish construction in a certain time frame. If not you could draw up grandiose plans with an architect and after you get the permit you just build part of it immediately and start living in that part and then take the next 20-30 years to build the rest, if ever.
You generally have to get a certificate of inspection when the work in a permit is complete and a number of things are technically illegal before then.
My parents recently bought a plot of land in a mobile home development in order to house my uncle with mental health issues. They have the exact same requirements you mention above - no travel trailers as permanent housing and permanent housing must meet square footage requirements. In a place named $X Mobile Home Estates. And in supposedly low-tax, freedom-loving Texas; not California.
In fact I was quite careful with my words to use development because I did not feel that park described the situation. The plot is a quarter acre with it's own electrical and water connections that is in fact owned by my parents. I was somewhat circumspect, but I'll just use the actual name of the neighborhood - it is Canyon Lake Mobile Home Estates in Canyon Lake, TX. Up to a few years ago, it was a rural backwater on "the wrong side of the lake" and does not actually feature lake access or much chance of a view. For the last few years (predating the pandemic, but the pandemic seems like an accelerant) it has, like much of Texas, seen significant in-migration, probably exacerbated by its proximity to Austin. All that said, I still find it ridiculous that they don't allow people to live in travel trailers.
i guess what we are all not clear about is what is the difference between a mobile home and a trailer. my guess is mobile home refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufactured_housing which are factory assembled buildings that are moved as a whole to their destination where they make a permanent structure because they don't have wheels.
rules like these probably try to influence what kind of people are going to choose to live there.
I think your statement is correct in theory, but when you get into the actual practice of low-income housing, the lines get quite blurry and calling it a "mobile home" sure doesn't help. I'd say I'm more incensed at the idea of being told how to live on property that I putatively own, especially in a state that claims to have great respect for property rights.
oh, totally, things like that would drive me mad. if i am ever going to buy a plot of land then i'd want to do it far away from anyone who can tell me what do do with it (short of forest fire safety and pollution)
No. The rules account for that and generally you get permission to live in the temporary mobile home for x amount of months with a provision for an extension for another x amount of months. You don’t get the permission to put up the mobile home/tiny home until after your designs have been completed and approved.
i wonder if a hack like this would work: a large courtyard inside the house. so the actual inside living area is much less than what it looks like from the outside.
the only question is if you can get away with not putting a roof over the courtyard or if you can find a very cheap, lightweight roof that you can move aside.
Although that spelling makes sense, it's not one that's ever been widely used (since 'education' is from French éducation). So I'm not sure if that's an attempt to use a dated spelling (I noticed some others, such as élite) to conjure a certain je ne sais quois, or to forge a new trend for continental accents in English writing where it seems there ought to be?
> Basically, we have three options for these kinds of words: “cooperate,” “co-operate,” and “coöperate.” Back when the magazine was just getting started, someone decided that the first misread and the second was ridiculous, and adopted the diaeresis as the most elegant solution with the broadest application. The diaeresis is the single thing that readers of the letter-writing variety complain about most.
Personally I use a diaeresis as well. Not very hard on an Apple device: press-and-hole "o", wait for the pop-up, press 2.
> This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.
> The diaeresis is the single thing that readers of the letter-writing variety complain about most.
There's a poster on a message board i read who always uses the archaic letter thorn for 'th' (þink of writing someþing like þis). Whatever a comment is about, 70% of the replies are criticising or questioning the use thorn instead.
If it's the thing readers complain about the most, and it hasn't entered wider use in the last 40+ years, then it was a bad decision. If your style distracts the audience from what you're trying to say, you should change your style.
Interesting, 'most elegant solution with the broadest application', I have never seen it anywhere, but it sounds like at the time at least it was (perhaps in America specifically?) relatively popular?
I don't think so - by "broadest application" they mean "most generic" or "capable of being applied to the most cases" rather than "actually applied to the most cases".
>The government forced Native children to attend boarding school and subjected adults to dehumanizing reëducation projects.
This isn't morally right by the standards of modern western neo-liberal culture, but with the alternative it is imperative that we accept that these different cultures are not likely able to achieve collective equity in a society of equal opportunity. And that's ok, because we have no right to impose our cultures onto others, even if we believe our practices to be better suited for success in the modern world.
>In June, 2020, in Forks, Washington, residents mistook a mixed-race family for members of Antifa. The family, unemployed because of the pandemic, had been living in a modified school bus...
The race of the family is completely irrelevant and serves only to race bait. Also there's no indication that they weren't involved in a little protesting on the side, especially when covering up such a fact would make their story far more sympathetic.
The fact that racist policies were once common and sanctioned in the US does not imply that all modern inequities are due solely or significantly to discrimination, past or present, but that seems to be the consistent angle of material from high brow outlets like the New Yorker and NPR, exponentially so as of the last few years.
If we cut out the race and political baiting and clearly define camping in the typical modern sense of a sleeping bag, tent, and/or trailer in an outdoor setting surrounded by nature then the confoundedness disappears. It's borderline disingenuous to treat a nature escape and a tent on a city street as conceptually the same activity just because both involve sleeping outside, and betrays an agenda.
Only slightly related to the article is "stealth camping", which is an entertaining genre of youtube channels, including Steve Wallis. A recent example is https://youtu.be/OPDvLaXuSHQ
Wallis is Canadian, but similar sensibilities hold with regard to camping in places that aren't explicitly marked as campable.
I've seen a few of that guy's videos. He's very sweet and entertaining, but there definitely seems to be a bit of nose-thumbing and gentle protest in his stealth camping. I won't call it overtly political, but he does seem to like the idea of transgressing what he believes are silly laws, and given his homelessness in the past, there's also a "'til things are brighter, I'm the man in black" quality to it. All that to say, I think it is relevant to the article!
Really it goes back to European vs. Native lifestyles and colonization. The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.
People who could get away from the towns and join Native American societies didn't want to go back. Whereas Natives had to be forced (typically with savage brutality) to adopt European culture.
"Going native" was perceived as a serious problem, because it was: if you didn't like society, or your actual literal "master" (a person under the psychotic delusion that he or she actually literally owned you) you could try to escape to, say, the Sioux nation.
We mostly exterminated or marginalized these societies, and filled and/or enclosed most of the open land, so it seems like options are fewer.
And today we have "the homeless" to act as a goad: if you don't work you will starve in the street. There's not supposed to be a way out.
This is somewhat of a Noble native fallacy. Native American culture was diverse and a mixed bag. Some exercised extreme territorial claims and had very hierarchical societies. Some practice slavery and cannibalism.
Yeah, that's an unfortunate flaw in the above screed, and I appreciate you pointing it out. I do not mean that Native American cultures were or are some kind of fantasy elves or anything like that. Humans are humans.
I'm trying to point out the deeper currents that underlie the stuff the article is talking about. They touch on it but they don't cut to the bone.
I don't have time this morning to go into detail but the main points are:
1) The essence of state power is the ability of the king to command others to die for the state (often even before they reproduced!), this is almost entirely absent in Native American cultures. (At least in the ones we know about.) The Native view was that Europeans were not really free: they had to obey their kings.
2) There really was a serious problem with people preferring Native cultures to European cultures in the New World. Harsh measures were enacted.
3) Natives did not spontaneously adopt European cultures. Again, harsh measures were enacted.
4) Last but hardly least, Native cultures were integrated with ecological systems much more efficiently than European cultures. (This was almost certainly a major reason why Native life was generally more fun and easy than European life.)
In sum, the reasons why we are messed up in the heads about camping today go back pretty far, and tie in pretty deeply with the structure of our culture and society.
- - - -
I can't help but add that I believe there is a way to fashion a new kind of society that fuses elements of Eastern, Western, and Native American cultures with modern science and particularly ecology to, uh, make a really fun and easy way to live, but that's a whole 'nother story and it's a sunny Sunday morning, so it'll have to wait.
You know, I have in fact heard this sort of thing all my life and I used to believe it too. But now I hear stories of Liberals who perform satanic rituals while they drink the blood of children or torture them in basements of pizza parlors that don't actually have basements, and I'm thinking some of those old stories might not be 100% on the level. Certainly there was some scalping going on back then, but the elaborate torture stories sure sound like something one ethnic group might say while de-humanizing another.
I've also heard that a lot of the medieval torture devices are actually just Victorian inventions made up for gawks which sounds plausible; you don't really need elaborate works of ironmongery to torture people when the time-honored methods of beating the shit out of them with fists or clubs or various forms of water torture seem quite effective.
I actually know a lot (relatively speaking) about the Comanches, including what kinds of experiences they had that drove them to be so vicious. Not to put too fine a point on it, they were responding to atrocities committed on them and their kin by the Europeans. Doesn't make any of it right though.
And the Aztecs were pretty far gone, in my opinion, they sound almost as bad as the old Assyrians.
> The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.
The natives never fought amongst themselves for resources or territory? No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?
This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?
> The natives never fought amongst themselves for resources or territory?
Of course they did, but they had forms and traditions that limited the (excuse me) savagery of their conflicts, for example "counting coup":
> Among the Plains Indians of North America, counting coup is the warrior tradition of winning prestige against an enemy in battle. It is one of the traditional ways of showing bravery in the face of an enemy and involves intimidating him, and, it is hoped, persuading him to admit defeat, without having to kill him. These victories may then be remembered, recorded, and recounted as part of the community's oral, written, or pictorial histories.
> No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?
Generally, no. Even N.Am. "slavery" was very different from, say, Roman or later (Euro-)American slavery of Africans.
IANAAnthropologist but it's pretty clear that Europe was a much more cruel and savage land than North America, at least (I don't know as much about Central and South American cultures.)
> This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?
They had conflicts, and hierarchy, and even in some societies a kind of slavery, but nothing like the brutality, cruelty, and savagery of the Europeans.
Again, I'm not an expert, but as I've looked into it, I've come to see that Europeans pretty much were "infected" with hardcore trauma and resulting psychological repression and etc.etc. Freudian, etc... plus bad religion. I mean, the Spanish Inquisition much?
I didn't see it mentioned in the quick search of the article so a quick reminder that federally managed BLM land has the best use in camping options. You can usually go anywhere at your own risk of death and stay in any one place for up to two weeks for free
I didn't see it mentioned in the quick search of the article so a quick reminder that federally managed BLM land has the best use in camping options. You can usually go anywhere at your own risk of death and stay in any one place for up to two weeks for free. National Forest are one step behind, rarely requiring permits with lots of free camping opportunities
How can such a huge article about camping, one that links it back to the civil war, not even mention the word "hunting"? If you want to talk about politics of the outdoors, there is nothing more illustrative than the different viewpoints of hunters and hikers.
There are some very interesting current developments in this area going on today with checkerboard public lands that are bounded on the sides with private land but touch other public land on the corners. Hunters will take ladders across from public land to a public land not touching the private land. There are some lawsuits from private owners saying this violates their property rights trying to stop it. If this is upheld, it would mean that only the private landowners have access to the National Forest
In general, as areas get built up and properties get subdivided, activities that a lot of landowners didn't really have an issue with can start getting clamped down on. Of course, as around where I live, when people start tearing up paths with ATVs, that doesn't help either.
I'm sure that is an issue too, but I was thinking of areas where 10s of thousands of acres are broken into 160 acre parcels with checkerboard private public ownership. Here's a picture for context.
Camping is so easy out east and so difficult out west. People must be writing scripts to book these campsites on these websites the nanosecond they become available. Its such a shame.
Really? Certainly there are popular locations out West in season including but not limited to the national parks where it can be hard to reserve a spot/get a permit. But especially once you get to vast BLM and National Forest properties, with some exceptions it's usually pretty easy to just find a spot.In general, even backpacking in the East, your options tend to be more limited.
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 154 ms ] threadIf you're trying to not pay rent for a while and enjoy a more free lifestyle, I think it's worth dipping one's toes into, especially if you have prior camping experience.
Huh? Anyone is allowed to camp in designated camping areas. No one is allowed to “camp” in random public areas. There is nothing anti-homeless about camping. Is this article for real?
-- Anatole France (The Red Lily, 1894)
- 'This Land Is Your Land', Woody Guthrie
- Giorgio Agamben
National parks, lots of state parks, city mountain parks which are public and do allow camping have very limited permit access, rules, exclusions etc. Some lands which ostensibly should be dispersed camping allowed you can't even access bc you'd have to travel through private land.
But your comment misses the entire crux of the article imho.
It's not that camping is anti-homeless, it's that there has historically been - and still is - a societal judgement and double standard based on ethnicity, class, and housed status.
It's about a double standard of the Govt forcing native Americans to give up their 'barbarous campfire life' while the rich were encouraged to have the same experience for the benefit of their health.
Same happens today just not as extreme.
Just to illustrate, i get this isn't the same as pitching a tent in front of someone's house.
But society says it's not ok for the homeless to stay in their RVs on public streets but it is ok for people to stay the night in 150k sprinter vans.
Not exaggerating, there are both happening in large numbers here in Denver. The difference is one can afford to move their place of rest around the other can't.
I might try and take a photo at the Movement Baker gym there are 2 homeless RVs on the road and almost always at least 3 sprinters, usually one with doors totally open someone just chilling there living their day. Shower & internet inside. For the rich climbing dirt bag only though.
A part of me understands the rationale for these restrictions. But another part of me feels discouraged that the real estate market in much of California is all sewn up with no way to "hack" it without figuring out how to make $200K+ per year or throwing in the towel and moving to some other part of the state or outside California. Thus I continue to rent my apartment while trying to find other ways to get into real estate.
The number of voters needed to radically alter the landscape of extremely local politics is probably maybe a dozen or less in this way, btw.
You have to be on the council, along with a like-minded majority. It'll be a full time job for all of you.
It turns out only the wealthy are taking advantage of the gift though.
In my county, I believe 6 guys took advantage of the streamlined process. It's still very expensive.
They used building the ADU as an excuse to build a bigger house, and that variance is hard to get, but if you have money and kiss ass, you can get it.
I believe almost all the 6 used an ADA unit to increase the size of their home. They all had to get variances from the town, and 5 got it. One homeowner refused to kiss the town council's ass, write begging letters to his neighbors, and attent countless meetings while paying for an architect, and a Builder's time.
They are all asked a bunch of questions.
The one that got me is "Are you going to rent the unit out to low income individuals. (Low income in my town is like "$90, 000. Yea--really. $110,00 if married.". All basically lied, and said yes they will rent it to a Nun. They wanted a bigger home, and the ADU will be used as----an Art studio, or for Lupe' the cheap help that will wipe them in later life?
My point putting in an ADU is fine, and I'm glad Neusome streamlined the process. People aren't taking advantage of it besides the wealthy though. The people whom didn't need any help.
I would rather see something different.
1. If a person (not a corporation, rich foreigner, etc.) of modest means buys a small piece of land they can put a trailer, tent, small cabin, etc. on the land. And of course live there. I'd even be ok with no foundations until you build properly, and no renting unless you offer it for free. I'd even be ok with time limits that are reviewed every ten years for free. So basically a guy would have to go in front of some official and sign a declaration that they still don't have the money to build a proper unit.
2. CA counties, and towns are going to be told to build more housing in the future if Neusome is still around. They only way I see it happening is if we start building huge blocks of housing, like I see being demolished in Ukraine. (I've seen pictures of Russia. It does look like everyone is in a reasonably priced apartment. I guess it's a leftover from evil Socialism.
Personally, I'd be happy with 1. I just don't think the powers at be really want to help the very poor.
Marin County, San Anselmo. This is basically the town I'm writing about. Newsome has a mansion here where Jenny wanders room to room trying to find something "important" in life to do. Be careful Gavin. She reminds me of an Amber Heard. I honestly like the guy. He was voted most fashionable in my high school.)
But the impression I often get on HN is that you've got people making well above that finding themselves barely able to afford a place to live in SF.
I'm clearly missing something, but what?
It's an indictment of any system that people making twice the median household income cannot afford to buy housing within a reasonable distance of wherever their labor generates that income. It's a terrible situation - communities in which at least half of the necessary jobs do not pay enough for the people who do those jobs to live in the community - and it isn't good for anyone in or around those communities, and probably not for the nation as a whole.
The fact that, yes, yes of course there are other communities where the economics are different doesn't in any way mitigate the fucked-up ness of the situation the GP is describing.
The only homes I've seen for $200k need to basically be torn down and are too small for a family.
That's much less true of most metros. Even a fairly expensive city like Boston, while there are expensive suburban towns, an hour drive gets you to some small cities, exurbs, and other suburbs where housing prices are--if not cheap--pretty reasonable (e.g. $300-400K for midrange houses--though prices may have risen). And a lot of the professional jobs are well outside the city anyway.
An hour or so commute each way sucks, but if you can get a Bay Area job that is either fully WFH or that only requires you to come into the office once a week being an hour away wouldn't be too bad, especially if you can arrange the hours on that one day a week you come in so that you are't driving during the most congested times.
you can’t build to infinity when everything is built out…
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1978_California_Proposition_13
After that, just expect to pay property taxes unless you have money to build exactly the home they sign off on.
I once was ready to buy a reasonable small piece of land in Bolinas after graduating from college. I should have known the price was too good.
When I called the seller he took pity on me when I told him I wanted to just use it to pitch a tent on until I saved more money.
He said, "Son---you can't even put an blanket on "your" land and take a nap."
Did you forget what you wrote?
rules like these probably try to influence what kind of people are going to choose to live there.
oh, totally, things like that would drive me mad. if i am ever going to buy a plot of land then i'd want to do it far away from anyone who can tell me what do do with it (short of forest fire safety and pollution)
Would it possible to do that, but extremely slowly? What counts as being "in the process"? Just designing your home might take you many, many years...
the only question is if you can get away with not putting a roof over the courtyard or if you can find a very cheap, lightweight roof that you can move aside.
Although that spelling makes sense, it's not one that's ever been widely used (since 'education' is from French éducation). So I'm not sure if that's an attempt to use a dated spelling (I noticed some others, such as élite) to conjure a certain je ne sais quois, or to forge a new trend for continental accents in English writing where it seems there ought to be?
TL;DR: it was an arbitrary decision from long ago that they stick to despite getting many letters of complaint.
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-curse-of-...
Personally I use a diaeresis as well. Not very hard on an Apple device: press-and-hole "o", wait for the pop-up, press 2.
> This was in 1978. No one has had the nerve to raise the subject since.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
There's a poster on a message board i read who always uses the archaic letter thorn for 'th' (þink of writing someþing like þis). Whatever a comment is about, 70% of the replies are criticising or questioning the use thorn instead.
This isn't morally right by the standards of modern western neo-liberal culture, but with the alternative it is imperative that we accept that these different cultures are not likely able to achieve collective equity in a society of equal opportunity. And that's ok, because we have no right to impose our cultures onto others, even if we believe our practices to be better suited for success in the modern world.
>In June, 2020, in Forks, Washington, residents mistook a mixed-race family for members of Antifa. The family, unemployed because of the pandemic, had been living in a modified school bus...
The race of the family is completely irrelevant and serves only to race bait. Also there's no indication that they weren't involved in a little protesting on the side, especially when covering up such a fact would make their story far more sympathetic.
The fact that racist policies were once common and sanctioned in the US does not imply that all modern inequities are due solely or significantly to discrimination, past or present, but that seems to be the consistent angle of material from high brow outlets like the New Yorker and NPR, exponentially so as of the last few years.
If we cut out the race and political baiting and clearly define camping in the typical modern sense of a sleeping bag, tent, and/or trailer in an outdoor setting surrounded by nature then the confoundedness disappears. It's borderline disingenuous to treat a nature escape and a tent on a city street as conceptually the same activity just because both involve sleeping outside, and betrays an agenda.
Wallis is Canadian, but similar sensibilities hold with regard to camping in places that aren't explicitly marked as campable.
Really it goes back to European vs. Native lifestyles and colonization. The Europeans were psychotic bastards who murdered and tortured and enslaved people, and who had absolute masters and abject servants, and all kinds of psychotic baggage. The native cultures were (and still are in many many places) not quite so messed up.
People who could get away from the towns and join Native American societies didn't want to go back. Whereas Natives had to be forced (typically with savage brutality) to adopt European culture.
"Going native" was perceived as a serious problem, because it was: if you didn't like society, or your actual literal "master" (a person under the psychotic delusion that he or she actually literally owned you) you could try to escape to, say, the Sioux nation.
We mostly exterminated or marginalized these societies, and filled and/or enclosed most of the open land, so it seems like options are fewer.
And today we have "the homeless" to act as a goad: if you don't work you will starve in the street. There's not supposed to be a way out.
I'm trying to point out the deeper currents that underlie the stuff the article is talking about. They touch on it but they don't cut to the bone.
I don't have time this morning to go into detail but the main points are:
1) The essence of state power is the ability of the king to command others to die for the state (often even before they reproduced!), this is almost entirely absent in Native American cultures. (At least in the ones we know about.) The Native view was that Europeans were not really free: they had to obey their kings.
2) There really was a serious problem with people preferring Native cultures to European cultures in the New World. Harsh measures were enacted.
3) Natives did not spontaneously adopt European cultures. Again, harsh measures were enacted.
4) Last but hardly least, Native cultures were integrated with ecological systems much more efficiently than European cultures. (This was almost certainly a major reason why Native life was generally more fun and easy than European life.)
In sum, the reasons why we are messed up in the heads about camping today go back pretty far, and tie in pretty deeply with the structure of our culture and society.
- - - -
I can't help but add that I believe there is a way to fashion a new kind of society that fuses elements of Eastern, Western, and Native American cultures with modern science and particularly ecology to, uh, make a really fun and easy way to live, but that's a whole 'nother story and it's a sunny Sunday morning, so it'll have to wait.
In addition plenty of really barbaric tortures done by the Aztecs documented.
I've also heard that a lot of the medieval torture devices are actually just Victorian inventions made up for gawks which sounds plausible; you don't really need elaborate works of ironmongery to torture people when the time-honored methods of beating the shit out of them with fists or clubs or various forms of water torture seem quite effective.
And the Aztecs were pretty far gone, in my opinion, they sound almost as bad as the old Assyrians.
The natives never fought amongst themselves for resources or territory? No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?
This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?
Of course they did, but they had forms and traditions that limited the (excuse me) savagery of their conflicts, for example "counting coup":
> Among the Plains Indians of North America, counting coup is the warrior tradition of winning prestige against an enemy in battle. It is one of the traditional ways of showing bravery in the face of an enemy and involves intimidating him, and, it is hoped, persuading him to admit defeat, without having to kill him. These victories may then be remembered, recorded, and recounted as part of the community's oral, written, or pictorial histories.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_coup
> No victorious tribes ever enslaved or murdered their defeated foes?
Generally, no. Even N.Am. "slavery" was very different from, say, Roman or later (Euro-)American slavery of Africans.
IANAAnthropologist but it's pretty clear that Europe was a much more cruel and savage land than North America, at least (I don't know as much about Central and South American cultures.)
> This whole idea of conflicts between ethnicity and tribes and nations, master-and-slave and hierarchical societies is just some weird European pathology that, like smallpox, was unknown in the Americas pre-1492?
They had conflicts, and hierarchy, and even in some societies a kind of slavery, but nothing like the brutality, cruelty, and savagery of the Europeans.
Again, I'm not an expert, but as I've looked into it, I've come to see that Europeans pretty much were "infected" with hardcore trauma and resulting psychological repression and etc.etc. Freudian, etc... plus bad religion. I mean, the Spanish Inquisition much?
https://www.seligmanaz.us/checkerboard-land-use/