
People living in storage units in order to avoid paying Boston rents - ilamont
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/local_coverage/2018/08/officials_people_living_illegally_in_rented_spaces
======
tjr225
Just another real symptom of a supposedly booming economy.

~~~
furbyhat
I did this myself for 3 months.

Saved about $4k doing so.

You start to appreciate simpler things and realize how cluttered your life was
before

~~~
vertexFarm
Did you do it out of choice or necessity? This sounds so out of touch. Most of
these people aren't doing it as an experiment to bolster their savings and
achieve some kind of minimalist zen, they're doing it because real affordable
housing is out of reach.

Like I'd love to imagine that Hiro Protagonist and Vitaly Chernobyl are
somewhere in Boston, but our current cyberpunk reality is mostly very sad.

~~~
darawk
Why does it matter why he did it? It's a more efficient alternative. If
affordable housing is out of reach, adapt your housing. Live somewhere else,
or find a way to live where you want more cheaply - like living in a storage
space.

~~~
marnett
This is, again, out of touch with the actualities of poverty. How does someone
with no money "live somewhere else?" When someone who is impoverished is
evicted, they take their children on a trip to a shelter and go to work the
next day for 12 hours physical labor, skipping a few meals to feed their
children as needed.

~~~
darawk
Take a bus. Buses are cheap. Nobody gets evicted without warning. You have
time to prepare.

~~~
marnett
I do not know why you insist down this line of thinking when I am talking
about _impoverished_ people. If someone is skipping meals to feed their child,
what funds are they using for the bus? And what are they going to do when they
arrive at some magical "cheaper COL" and they have no job?

I implore you to go volunteer at your local homeless shelter. After talking
with several perfectly sane and working homeless individuals you will realize
some people really have no money leftover to better their plight. They really
are trapped.

If you don't feel like actually meeting people whose life and privilege is
drastically different than yours, at least read Matthew Desmond's Evicted to
round out your knowledge on the America in which you live.

~~~
darawk
I haven't done those things, and i'm not going to any time soon. However, you
apparently have, and i'm more than happy to listen to what you have to say on
the matter.

I don't really buy the idea that someone who is employed can't scrape together
a $19 bus fare. Buying the bare amount of food and water necessary to live can
be done for $1-2/day, even in a developed country. If you're employed in any
sort of regular way, you're making more than that, so I don't really
understand the argument that these people are financially incapable of saving
up that much money.

That being said, i'm more than happy to be wrong if there's some aspect of the
issue that I don't understand.

------
neocraftster
Interesting that the article mentions why people would do this (much, much
cheaper) but avoids talking about any possible solutions to rising rent costs
in urban areas.

~~~
bamboo_7
That's because the city has no solutions.

So far they've only tried telling the universities to build more dorms and
give up some of the housing they have.

I mean, there's plenty of new apartment buildings going up around Boston, but
they're all luxury.

~~~
rflrob
There is a belief, with a number of associated caveats, that "Today's luxury
apartment's are tomorrow's affordable housing" [1]. They are one piece of the
puzzle, and I don't think it's helpful to block their construction. That said,
they aren't the only thing that's necessary for affordable and equitable
housing, but I've become less hostile towards the luxury condo/shopping
complex projects near me, even if I can neither afford them nor have much
interest in living in one.

[1] [https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/todays-
luxury...](https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/todays-luxury-
apartments-may-be-tomorrows-affordable-housing/)

~~~
triviatise
luxury units can create affordability immediately.

if 100 thousand luxury units suddenly came online at a cost of 1.5M each

Here are a few possible outcomes: 1) 100K people can afford them and decide to
move from their current homes into the luxury homes. Homes that were 1.5m get
downward pressure. As every level moves up it puts downward pricing pressure
on the level below. Luxury housing will impact entry level housing if enough
is built.

2) 100K people choose to not buy the new luxury housing a) the owners go
bankrupt and the price of the luxury housing goes down. Then see 1) b) the
owners lower the price of the new luxury housing. then see 1

The point is that any inventory puts downward pricing pressure on existing
inventory.

You generally don't see the effect so obviously because the new supply of
luxury housing rarely keeps up with demand in hot markets. You can see the
impact in flat markets where new housing dries up demand for existing houses
such that agents recommend you not buy existing homes in areas that are being
actively developed.

~~~
tomatotomato37
Don't forget 3) Foreign oligarch parks questionable money in the entire
building and then leaves it unoccuped for a decade in the hopes that he could
sell it to another foreign investor at double the price

------
DoctorOetker
I have actually seriously considered doing this in Belgium, instead of working
~4 months a year, I would only have to work ~1 month a year...

~~~
nickthemagicman
You only have to work 4 months a year in Belgium?

~~~
DoctorOetker
Sure, I've even worked ~3 months a year before, but that was very cheap, and
no occasional electronics or whatever to keep myself motivated (oscilloscope
etc)

I keep my food and fun expenses very low, and rent a flat with a friend, so
its half as much as renting a flat on my own. Still rent and associated living
expenses is about 2/3 of my expenses.

~~~
nickthemagicman
That's awesome. Jealous. Have a drink for us 60 hour a week people in America.

------
hprotagonist
And i have a russian roomate, too.

I hear the scene's better in LA...

------
swiley
I would have expected this to be illegal! Can you really get away with it? It
sounds like an easy way to handle crashing after a night out downtown without
having to look for a cab/DD.

~~~
burkaman
It is illegal, the headline is "Officials: People living illegally in rented
spaces". Storage spaces are private, nobody is going to inspect it without
good cause, so you can get away with it for a while by being discreet.

~~~
ams6110
Yep, I know of several people who have done it when down on their luck. Beats
sleeping under a bridge.

------
merolish
I moved back to Cambridge this spring after over a decade mostly in NYC. It
was surprising to see that while cheaper it wasn't _too_ much cheaper.

On the other hand, the job market here seems robust and I hear fewer tales of
appalling living conditions and insane 2+ hour commutes like in NYC and
California.

------
beauzero
This is nothing new. People living on the street will often do this in Atlanta
in order to have a safer place to live. Storage facilities do the best they
can to keep people from doing it. \- source. Have purchased foreclosed storage
units off and on for 15+ years.

------
wpdev_63
At that you would just buy a cheap rv and park it in south boston

~~~
r00fus
It's not legal to park an RV for any reasonable period on most curbs.

Had a chat with someone who'd parked an RV next to my house (SF Bay) for a
week. He said he was down on his luck (claimed to previous live in one of the
nearby houses but got booted because his mom had to sell and he couldn't
afford rent) and insisted it was his right.

I reminded him of the law (72hrs max for an RV in my neighborhood), and that I
wouldn't take action if he would move around a bit. Next day he was gone.

I sympathize with folks in this situation but it's pretty weird having someone
living in a vehicle that looks into your living room window from the sidewalk
- esp if you have kids.

~~~
mmt
> 72hrs max for an RV in my neighborhood

You can rely on this being the longest possible time limit, for any vehicle,
not just RVs, on any public street/highway anywhere in California.

------
s73v3r_
Wasn't that something that happened in _Snow Crash_?

~~~
GW150914
Yes it was.

 _Hiro Protagonist and Vitaly Chernobyl, roommates, are chilling out in their
home, a spacious 20 by 30 in a U-Stor-It in Inglewood, California. The room
has a concrete slab floor, corrugated steel walls separating it from the
neighboring units and - this is a mark of distinction separating it from the
neighboring units - a roll-up steel door that faces northwest, giving them a
few red rays at times like this, when the sun is setting over LAX. But there
are worse places to live… slum housing, 5-by-10s and 10-by-10s where Yanoama
tribespersons cook beans and parboil fistfuls of coca leaves over heaps of
burning lottery tickets._

