
Life Inside the RVs of Silicon Valley - lnguyen
https://www.topic.com/life-inside-the-rvs-of-silicon-valley
======
Mz
_Their precarious living situation became a catch 22: while the truck allowed
them to live near the hospital, when the social worker found out Isidoro was
living in a truck, the hospital kicked Isidoro off the transplant list: he
needed to live indoors to recover from a potential surgery to be eligible for
a transplant. Luckily, after weeks of looking, Silvia’s sister in nearby
Milpitas rented her a bedroom for $700 /month this fall, where they’ve been
staying since. The last she heard, they had to stay inside for a year for
Isidoro to get back on the list._

Well, I think I officially feel ashamed to be an American now.

I slept in a tent for nearly six years to work on getting healthier, but I was
not seeing a doctor. I was doing my own thing. That was frustrating enough,
what with not getting taken seriously by a lot of people and facing classism
online, etc. But, I kind of understand why I get given so much flak: people
genuinely think what I am doing simply cannot be done. They have no mental
framework for effectively engaging with me.

But to have a specialty hospital someplace so expensive and a requirement to
live near it to get treatment and no help for complying with this expectation,
then delist them for sleeping in a truck, it just seems monstrous. The
hospital has to know that normal, healthy people can't afford housing here.
They should also be fully well aware that people with health problems face the
double whammy of high medical expenses plus reduced earnings.

America needs to fix both the medical system and affordable housing. It
doesn't really deserve to be seen as a civilized, first world nation as things
stand currently. I don't care what our GDP is. We are failing to take care of
our people and it is monstrous.

~~~
stcredzero
_Well, I think I officially feel ashamed to be an American now...America needs
to fix both the medical system and affordable housing. It doesn 't really
deserve to be seen as a civilized, first world nation as things stand
currently._

California in particular is worse of in many of these regards. The imbalance
of political power in California, skewed to the urban population centers, to
the affluent, and to the left has resulted in policies that disadvantage the
less educated, lower income, and rural populace. If you go out into the
countryside, you can find an anger which can only be explained by people who
have been beleaguered on a fundamental level, that of culture and livelihood.
On top of that, there are definite non-governmental socio-cultural systems
which further work against them. (It is much easier to see these things when
you are outside them or have been cast out of them. Let's just say that I've
had the misfortune of a broader point of view.)

What I see happening in California is a cultural and political ascendancy of
the left, which has become drunk on power which it is abusing. The political
right aren't saints, but no faction of human beings are saints and the
corruption of power is universal. While we nerds spend our attention on
esoteric fripperies like IPAs and keyboards, our society is starting to
resemble France when someone said, "after me, the deluge."

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-xhFLkgiE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n-xhFLkgiE)

[http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/california-schools-
ear...](http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/01/05/california-schools-earn-c-in-
national-ranking/)

~~~
Mz
There are things I like about California and I lived there for a total of
around 12 years. I recently left and I am shocked at how much nicer people are
where I currently live.

I don't know what California needs to do to get its head out of its butt.
These are clearly systemic problems. I am incredibly concerned about the trend
of tech giants who are, for example, pro Basic Income while they live in the
San Francisco Bay Area and can't treat their own employees decently and can't
solve problems locally.

I am baffled as to why anyone takes their social theories at all seriously.
They are, to some degree, the architects of the dire situation in the SFBA,
but they think they can cure the country of its social woes by throwing money
at the problem.

This sounds to me like virtue signalling, not like they have any clue what
they are talking about. It sounds like trying to deflect the justified anger
of the masses with Good Intentions while continuing to be part of the problem.

On the one hand, some of them make the news for how much they want to give to
charity or whatever. On the other, some of the same names make the news for
how badly they treat their own employees. Sometimes people point this out,
but, more often, people debate the so called merits of their proposed
solutions without going "Hey, isn't this the same guy who just did [shitty
thing du jour] to their own employees?"

I am pretty fed up. I have started fussing at the president via tweet. I am
waiting for the FBI to show up at my door. Because silencing (or turning a
deaf ear to) the people being crapped on in this country instead if taking
their problems seriously seems to be par for the course for the rich,
including our real estate mogul president.

I wish someone would make me look like a fool by proving such assertions
wrong. Sadly, I think that is increasingly unlikely.

~~~
toomuchtodo
> I wish someone would make me look like a fool by proving such assertions
> wrong. Sadly, I think that is increasingly unlikely.

I’m sorry to say no such reprieve is on the way. The situation is as dire as
you make it out to be. Silicon Valley, tech culture as a whole, can either be
the new master or the savior, it just hasn’t collectively made up its mind
yet.

~~~
stcredzero
_Silicon Valley, tech culture as a whole, can either be the new master or the
savior, it just hasn’t collectively made up its mind yet._

Oh it's made up it's mind. It's just a question of what kind of master it's
going to be while it also makes up its mind about what kind of savior it will
claim to be while it's at it.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Unfortunately, I agree with you; its time we start finding ways to cut Silicon
Valley off at the knees [1].

[1] I'm aware of the irony of the forum I'm posting that statement in.

------
nopinsight
SF Bay area (Nine-county) is 25 times the size of Singapore and 11 times that
of London. Its population at 7.7 million is only 1.4 times as large as
Singapore's (5.6 million) and less than London's (8.8 million). Its GDP at
$721 billion is 2.4 times that of Singapore's ($297 billion) and 1.3 times
London's ($542 billion).

Solutions should be possible if rational negotiations could be carried out and
affected parties could be compensated adequately. I understand that older
residents wish to retain their lifestyle and community character. Could any
amount of money and other concessions from new developments compensate them
for the potential change that will come quite gradually in any case? Could the
new developments be constructed in an area that wouldn't have a direct impact
on their daily lives?

More practical concerns like increased traffic jam and effect on property
value should be addressable with the tens of billions of economic benefits
that could be realized from new, denser developments. Finding a way to
equitably distribute these benefits would be a huge headache but since the net
results are likely positive, the solution should be possible with the right
organization and efforts.

~~~
leggomylibro
There's always eminent domain, aka Theft By Government.

"Screw you all, we gave you a chance to play ball and you didn't. So now we
have to do things the hard way."

Or, more reasonably, just stay the fuck away from silicon valley if you're
looking at starting a business or working for a tech company. Things will even
out eventually. Or not, but the market can stay irrational longer than you can
stay solvent.

I don't get what's so great about the area, anyways. Every time I've been it's
just seemed like an insanely expensive shithole...but I guess I'm not the one
splashing billions of dollars around.

~~~
nopinsight
If you are an entrepreneur in a certain field, such as deep learning, and need
to stay at the bleeding edge by having people with extensive experience to
bump ideas off and hire as employees or partner with, it is one of the best,
if not the best, areas in the world. For example, the number of AI meetups in
Silicon Valley proper is many times that of East Bay, which is a hub in its
own right.

If you work in a right position for one of the tech giants in the area, the
compensation you get will leave you with more savings than working in a much
cheaper place with smaller salary.

Correct me if I'm wrong. I wish to have other options as well.

~~~
arthur_pryor
>> I don't get what's so great about the area, anyways. Every time I've been
it's just seemed like an insanely expensive shithole...but I guess I'm not the
one splashing billions of dollars around.

> If you are an entrepreneur in a certain field...

more prosaic: sure, it's changed some, but it's still pretty hard to beat
culturally for certain sorts of people. if you like both art and technology,
especially if you want access to both internationally recognized things and
little-known indie things, the only other places in the US that feel like they
really compete with SF are LA and NY.

i don't have a job at a tech giant, but i do have what i think is a very
interesting software development job, that'd be harder (but not impossible) to
find in other places. realistically, because i'm cheap/frugal and interested
in saving money, rent control is the only reason i can still afford to live
here. but i also really take advantage of the city that i live in: in the past
couple months, i've seen p-funk, actress, flying lotus, a local industrial-ish
electronic duo, a handful of local noise acts, JLin, hauschka, a screening of
"sun ra's space is the place", pharaoh sanders, philip glass & kronos quartet,
curren$y, and a bunch i'm forgetting since i'm just listing stuff off-hand.
that's an especially good few weeks in an especially good year, but even in
slower times, i'm usually going to at least one show i'm really excited about
every two weeks to one month. i can also eat delicious food for cheap either
from taquerias or by going to the grocery store, or if i have the disposable
cash, i can choose from a wide variety of higher-end options across a range of
prices. i get to meet people from all over the world. i went to college here,
and because of all the above, a number of my good friends from school stuck
around, and so i have a very solid social network here. i volunteer at a great
community radio station, where i met my girlfriend.

so, for a lot of people, even transplants, wanting to stay isn't so crazy. if
my GF and i both happened to get evicted, i'm not sure what we'd do. that
seems unlikely, but it does always feel like a bit of a worry.

i don't quite understand the resistance of the natives to the influx of new
people, esp since this has literally always been kind of a gold rush town. but
hey, i moved around a bunch as a kid, and i like meeting people from different
places.

when i told a cabdriver that i'd lived in SF for 11 years, he joked that i
wasn't a native, but that i could say i was a local. so as a local, i'd say
i'm very strongly YIMBY. fucking build. build housing. build
better/faster/more regional transit. e.g., make it fast and easy to get from
the SJ suburbs to SF and vice versa, whether it's rush hour or post-last-call.
some old stuff will have to come down, some neighborhoods will change
character. so it goes. better than steadily pricing out all but the most
affluent and pushing them to the far edges (or entirely out of) the region.

~~~
leggomylibro
As someone who is really into artsy stuff, that scene is _dead_ in SF.
Seattle, too. A whiff of tech or electricity, and you'll be ostracized in a
flash.

I've been really disappointed with these ostensibly libertine cities; weirdly,
I'm thinking of heading back to the _Midwest_ for tolerance and creativity.

Dafuq? But them's the breaks...people in the PNW are indifferent to the point
of cruelty, on the off chance that they aren't being extremely hostile for the
hell of it.

Sorry, but I disagree. Wanting to stay is very crazy. If _I_ got evicted, I'd
give a week's notice and take the opportunity to pack a U-haul and leave for
greener pastures. What is it with people being content where they are, even
when it's a creatively destitute skidrow? Not that I'm one to talk...

------
SwellJoe
It's worth noting that even for folks who have enough income to afford an RV
park, there are effectively none in the Bay Area. The ones that exist are
either: Booked solid with a long waiting list, don't allow old RVs (I found
this out when I passed through the area with my 34 year old Avion travel
trailer), or are so far from everything as to be useless for most of the folks
covered in the article. Or, most likely, all three. Also, among the most
expensive RV parks in the country.

I'm pleasantly surprised the city of Palo Alto isn't ticketing or arresting or
towing these folks. They passed a law against sleeping in vehicles a few years
ago, as I recall. It's deeply troubling, to me, that the solution to
homelessness (or near homelessness) is often to make mere existence illegal.

I spent a couple of weeks parking around the University Ave./Downtown area in
Palo Alto a few months after I moved into my first RV (a nice/newish
motorhome), about eight years ago, to visit with a friend who lived on
University, and I didn't have any trouble with police or neighbors, even
parked among multimillion dollar homes (it certainly helped that the RV was
nice...I got questions from residents but they were of the form "Where've you
been?" and "Where are you going next?"), but I'd read there'd been a crackdown
on it. I haven't been back in an RV since then.

Last time I was in the area earlier this year, I parked _way_ outside of the
valley (about a 1.5 hour drive away, which was literally the closest I could
get) and rented a car to drive in (rather than driving my very large F250; the
fuel savings paid for the car rental), but I saw that there were little RV
villages in a few locations in Mountain View and Palo Alto. If I'd been in a
motorhome and didn't have a girlfriend that liked having limitless power and
water with me, I would have spent a night or two on those streets just to
avoid making that ridiculous drive several times. But, with a trailer, it's
just not a great idea to park on streets. Even in places that tolerate
motorhomes and vans, they might not tolerate a truck and trailer, and its
length often makes it subject to other street parking laws.

~~~
j_s
I vaguely recall an HN discussion recommending rest stops; I wonder if those
near SF have near-permanent residents.

~~~
0xffff2
I can't think of a single rest area that's within a 1.5 hour drive of Mountain
View.

~~~
SwellJoe
There's one just north of San Francisco on 101 (probably a little over an hour
from Mountain View if not driving during rush hour), but nobody is living
there. It's very crowded every night, and I've heard time limits are enforced.
Truckers complain a lot about any routes through the SF Bay area, as there are
very few places for them to rest or even park for a short time.

There's also a couple on I-5, but they might be a 1.5 hour drive from Mountain
View.

------
pfarnsworth
I'm sympathetic because the wealth inequality Silicon Valley is extremely
vast, and these people are on the losing end of the inequity. But truthfully,
about half of the people in the article made bad decisions in simply moving to
the Bay Area in the last few years, even though it's one of the most expensive
areas in the world.

That said, if you are determined to live here when you don't make a lot of
money, living living in an RV makes a lot more sense than paying ridiculous
rent. Their rent is almost nil, and they get to save money based on a higher
wage than they would get in other areas of the country.

~~~
SwellJoe
California, in general, has seen massive housing price increases. A lot of
them came from other expensive places, and it sounds like often they came for
a specific job or opportunity or need (medical care is a recurring theme).

I find it sort of horrific that folks are having to make decisions like, "Do I
get good health care and live in a van or do I live in an apartment I can
afford?"

I still can't get over the guy who was on a transplant list but was removed
from the list because he lived in a box truck. There's something sick about a
society that lets that happen, but I don't know what the cure is.

------
samcheng
Another interesting profile is that of the Google engineer living in the
parking lot:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-
truc...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-employee-lives-in-truck-in-
parking-lot-2015-10)

~~~
wallace_f
Interesring. It seems... Very practical and economical? I would wager a lot of
people would do that if only they weren't afraid of a stigma.

Those living and working in SV are among the richest people to ever live. But
studies of happinesss suggest we're not really happier for being richer--it
appears people get caught up in "buying things we don't need, to impress
people we don't like."

~~~
eloisant
There's a huge difference between the Googler who lives at the Googleplex
(with showers, cafeteria, plenty of rooms to hang out, etc.) and only sleeps
in his RV and the Standford admin who has nowhere else to go than her RV.

~~~
j_s
> showers, cafeteria, plenty of rooms to hang out

I think I understand where you're coming from, but Stanford does not have
these things?

~~~
heedlessly2
The woman is 60. Most people taking showers in the university showers are
undergrads in the dorms. The age difference would make it uncomfortable and
admin staff do not get the same privileges as current students anyways because
they don't pay tuition. Stanford has a dining hall, but you need a meal plan,
it's not free.

Google offers those things if you're an employee.

------
gumby
As a side point: the “history” and “significance” of El Camino Real was
invented less than a century ago as a marketin* effort:
[https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-el-camino-real-
califo...](https://www.kcet.org/shows/lost-la/how-el-camino-real-californias-
royal-road-was-invented)

------
jedberg
Oh man. I was driving right by there the other day, and it was the Friday
before a Stanford home football game.

I thought those RVs were all tailgaters who were just trying to get a good
spot.

I feel terrible now.

~~~
lowglow
Palo Alto is one of the few places it's actually legal to sleep in a vehicle.
El Camino is a good (but loud) spot to sleep at where you won't get hassled by
cops.

------
eloisant
What I don't understand is: why do these people live in SV? I can understand
tech worker staying with their big salary, but non-tech workers would live a
much better life in a more "normal" place.

Then after they all move out, maybe the tech industry will figure out a way to
make it livable for those people when they realise they need them too.

~~~
exDM69
Several of the people interviewed in the article mentioned the proximity of
the hospital where they get their medical needs taken care of. One mentioned
having to be nearby because they were waiting for a liver transplant.

I don't know the intricacies of the US health care system, but I think it
might be a major setback for their healthcare if they relocated.

And they might not be any more well off if they relocated. They might have
slightly higher wages living in SV. Moving elsewhere might mean they couldn't
even afford living in a vehicle.

------
bwang29
It seems like for most entry level engineers ranged at $100-120k who wants to
live in a one bedroom apartment in SF, a 30% off in rent could potentially be
better than 30% cut in salary, considering the current tax rate.

In China, there have been attempts by startup companies offering employees
sleeping pods near the office, while providing water and shower so that the
employee can simply stay around the office during the course of a year long
employment with occasional "offsite" airbnb living. But unfortunately such
attempt was shut down: [https://www.techinasia.com/china-napping-pods-startup-
forced...](https://www.techinasia.com/china-napping-pods-startup-forced-
shutdown)

~~~
s0rce
Company housing is a bad idea, it's already bad enough in the us that your
health insurance and retirement savings are tied to your employer, it makes it
very hard to go and start something yourself or change jobs, not to mention
abruptly losing your job since you have to find a new place to live.

------
tomohawk
There's really two Californias. This talk by VDH digs into this some more.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eNcuGcPW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1eNcuGcPW4)

------
kqr2
For those who don't have a RV or car to sleep in, some of them use "Hotel 22",
the only 24-hour bus line in the area as a shelter at night.

Short video documentary on the NYT:

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/28/opinion/hotel-22.html)

They ride the bus back and forth throughout the night getting off at each end
usually several times.

------
jurassic
The junky RVs seem extremely out of place lined up together on El Camino. I've
always assumed they only get away with this because they're on the Stanford
side of the border between Stanford and the City of Palo Alto. Palo Alto
NIMBYs would have run them out long ago.

~~~
samcheng
Gee, have some compassion. After all, someone's got to be the janitor or the
cashier, and it's tough to pay sky-high rent on that kind of pay.

There's actually a substantial debate about car camping in Palo Alto. A
parking/camping ban was floated, then repealed; these spaces on El Camino seem
like a compromise, and are in a bit of a jurisdictional gray-area between
Stanford, Palo Alto, and the California Highway Patrol.

[https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/11/18/palo-alto-
str...](https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/11/18/palo-alto-strikes-down-
car-camping-ban)

------
Shinchy
It's like something from 'The Grapes of Wrath'.

------
bobbinsbob
This reminds me of the "first world problems" meme only in this instance it's
more like a first world shanty town.

~~~
sjg007
The Bay area has a huge homeless population with shanty towns all over the
place (just hidden).

------
sreekar545
Am I missing something? Why are they staying in these areas? They can do the
same jobs where RV parks nearby.

------
omilu
How many of us clicked on the link expecting decked out airstreams? Great
article showing the struggle of people dealing with insane housing prices.

------
losteverything
Someone go put a $100 gift card on their windshield.

Seriously, why cant there be an easy app with shameless reputation to allow
anonymous tiny donations? Maybe they can pick up $$ at a Walmart

