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[flagged] Woman found living in Michigan grocery store sign for months (nbcnews.com)
34 points by fortran77 13 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 22 comments





Decades ago, the same thing occurred at the local super market where I worked as a kid. He was living between the ceiling and roof. He had a bed, TV, small dresser.

The guy worked at the store and was there for quite a while. They discovered him because for 1 week, the night crew schedule was changed. He was seen walking around "shopping" after the store closed in his PJs.

They did not prosecute him so they could avoid the press, he was just fired.

The night crew usually works 2 nights a week and the stores closed at 9pm.


Anyone got pictures? This article is terrible.


Not sure if it's just me, but the experience with this slideshow is no better. Reddit desktop has become even worse lately.

There is a picture of the store sign. To protect her privacy there are no pictures of her or the encampment.

Sort of a poor man's version of the Caltrain employees who built apartments in some unused space inside stations https://therealdeal.com/sanfrancisco/2024/04/06/two-bay-area...


Friend of mine lived in a storage unit for a year. $50 a month. Had a novel solution for bathroom stuff.

What was it?

Reminds me of Hugo Cabret (and the Scorsese film about him); reality keeps being at least as strange as fiction.

Seems comfy enough. What is the rent?

Fear and uncertainty.

But electricity is included!


Why on earth was this flagged? This is most certainly a "hack" and this is "hacker news"

I am guessing she chose the location not just for shelter, but being quiet and peaceful. Public housing tends to cone with elevated risk of crime and violence. major problem is stuff getting stolen and noise. I see people blaming this on capitalism, which is wrong.

What’s with the “late stage” part? People have lived rough (under bridges, squatting, and wherever) through all stages of capitalism, including before capitalism.

Funny, in my city the 90s transition from communism to free market economy was accompanied by a big reduction of homelessness, drug addiction and untreated mental illness.

I guess by the commenter's view, that was "early stage capitalism" :-(

Without capitalism wouldn't all housing be public housing?

There are multiple types of capitalism. What's afflicting us is rentier capitalism which is the type commonly associated with slumlords.

If you think everything is being run by and for slumlords, the last 40 years makes total sense.


I suppose it's a bit simplified, but my impression of public housing in both socialist-capitalist societies and those communist societies that outright ban private property is that the government becomes the slumlord. I've seen public housing in France and Spain and in the former Soviet bloc, and it's just as grim everywhere. It never looks like the utopia on the 50s posters.

The only housing people take care of is their own. Now, should a society enforce provisions on landlords to take care of their property? Absolutely. That's just capitalism with some basic rules.


Singapore HDB, Austria, Netherlands are the textbook examples of better run public housing models. Its not that it doesnt exit.

I'm curious what policies are in place in those countries to make public housing not turn into a dystopian nightmare, and also whether those policies would be scalable from small, wealthy, low-crime countries to somewhere like the United States.



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