I talked with a guy living in a motorhome in Mountain View California, he works for Google. He could certainly afford an apartment but said his payments on the motorhome are about $600 a month, and an apartment close to Google would be $2500 a month at least, so he feels like its a free $2000 a month to save or spend. He's fortunate that Google also has nice showers, free food, and laundry. Things he might otherwise have to find other options for.
I can't argue with the logic. It means $24,000 a year to apply toward student loans or what have you isn't a bad deal. And he will eventually pay off the motorhome giving him some security there.
Sadly, most people won't talk about their situation (I tried by walking down a road and knocking on doors) I was hoping to get a sense of how many people were living in motorhomes because they wanted to (like the guy I talked to) and how many were there because they felt they had no choice. I don't have any good ideas on how to get that information.
I did enough research to know that building a small lifestyle business out of offering black/grey water pumping and garbage collection services for the folks who were doing this by choice was probably viable. You would need a couple of custom trucks[1] that were capable of being mobile RV dumping stations and a business with sewer rights to dump (the City of Sunnyvale will license a business to have an RV dumping station on site, so starting there would work.) I think it would be a "pump and dump" scheme that would be both good for the neighborhood and probably make enough money to employ a few folks.
[1] To be full service you'd probably want a fresh water tank, a propane tank, and a sewage collection tank. Then you could dump the grey/black tanks, refill fresh water and refill propane. Personally I think it makes way more sense than these companies that were sending trucks out to refill your gas tank.
There's a pretty strong notion in this thread that parking is valued at $0 and this is a great social injustice, but this is not the case. Try getting a permit from just about any city to reserve a parking spot for occupying (for construction, moving, etc.). The cost will likely be comparable to renting an apartment of similar area for a similar amount of time. More, if the parking spot is in a high density area (multi-story buildings).
Parking is only "free" if you share it. Perma-parking a motorhome or "building a studio on it" is not that.
If you reclaim a parking space for another use (such as building accommodation for families or an animal shelter), you're not depriving the car of anything, it's an expensive, large piece of metal and is not sentient.
Next, you'll say that you're depriving car owners from the practicality of parking their vehicles anywhere they like. I'm perfectly fine with depriving car owners from this convenience to allow a human being to have a roof over their head. (speaking from direct experience as I've just minutes ago had to park my car 1km away from home because the city is currently building housing and has restricted parking space nearby)
Then, some might argue that one should be ashamed of helping animals while humans are suffering. That's the exact same train of thought with «we can't allow more migrants in, we have to take care of our "own" homeless people».
This is a false dichotomy. Western societies inequalities are growing larger and larger. Me trying to do my part is insignificant. Me donating to human or animal causes is a small dent into the mountains of inequalities we live on top of. Us collectively, we do make a difference, by donating, voting and generally keeping our eyes open about the world we live in...
Finally, an entirely anecdotal pov: I've witnessed several times extremely poor people going out of their ways to show solidarity to animals or humans. I've also witnessed an awful lot of extremely wealthy individuals complaining about the poor inconveniencing them by just being there, whose wealth was a direct consequences of their ancestors exploiting whose very same poor people.
So we should never have parking lots, because they could be repurposed into homes for homeless people?
I feel this is only really relevant to high-density cities that are being underdeveloped because of local regulations and NIMBY. Most of America has plenty of space when it comes down to it.
And aren't the parking lots this article is talking about basically public access parking for beaches? Do ya'll really think it's reasonable to say we need to remove public beach parking because it could be better used for condos? Because that's dumb, and that quote I responded to was said as if parking is a violation of human rights because it takes away room for shelter.
In all honesty, I'm not sure I understand your train of thought[0]: why would re-purposing beach parking into housing be dumb as an absolute?
There are probably places where that would be dumb and others where the community as a whole would benefit from increased housing availability?
Most of America has plenty of space but why would anyone agree to live in bumfuck nowhere? How could they make a living out of nowhere (remote jobs are, in the grand scheme of things, a drop in the bucket)? Why should they forego access to health services, community & the fabric of society? Some human beings enjoying being solitary but we all crave to various degrees of social interaction.
To answer your comment in a too simplistic way: if parking does take room away from shelter, yes, absolutely, that's very bad urban planning & if done on purpose is a "violation" of the rights of those who needed that shelter. Except that life & urban planning aren't always that cut and dry and we need parking space, shops, warehouses, factories, housing & animal shelters and a myriad other things, as well as stop urban sprawling as much as possible.
[0]there might be a cultural/language bias generated by me having english as a 2nd language
No, we should let people willing to pay market price for the land live on it if they wish. Or park. Or garden. Whatever. Just not make taxpayers subsidize car storage.
It is meaningful, if you choose to think about it. Most people choose to ignore it, because it brings up a lot of thoughts that are inconvenient or uncomfortable. Effective Altruism asks these questions.
It's a pretty easy decision for me whether to support a pet charity (including the wildly inefficient service of personally rescuing a dog or cat) or a humanitarian charity. It's different if you have pets for your own enjoyment.
I really would like straightforward answers. I'm surprised there isn't more things like this: https://causeprioritization.org/Cause_prioritization It gets very complicated and turns into three dimensional chess. Well I guess I answered my own question of why it's a small niche.
As a consequentialist I'm a bit noncommital. I would hate to spend 40 hours in a month helping an acquaintance to find a job when I could spend that same 40 hours saving a life by making more money and using it to buy mosquito nets for Against Malaria.
Uh, "People give pets free food and shelter while letting the homeless starve, what's wrong with our society" is ... meaningfull, "telling" but not insightful.
Misery and poverty in the midst of plenty is symptom of a serious problem, it's signal we should be thinking about the situation. The non-insightful part is that this, by itself, doesn't point the way out of the problem.
>>The insanity, here, is that you can't take the land the motorhome is on and build a studio on it.
apple and oranges. The permit to built the studio makes that building legit, kinda forever. A motor home, they can chase out with a new law, or just by enforcing existing laws.
Actually a better business is to start having more RV parks in the SV. The last 5 years has been record breaking sales history for RVs. Yet the rest of the industry (RV parks specifically) isn't catching up. Most of the people buying RVs are now surprised that no RV parks have availability. I've watched for the past 5 years bay area periphery cities go from having tons of space any time of the year, to being completely full all the time, no matter what they do to their monthly price. It's kinda crazy.
Sort of, sort of not. I agree that it would be better to create more RV parks but the zoning issues are pretty extreme in that most cities are not big fans of RV parks for more historical reasons than actual ones. Sunnyvale, as a city, has preserved its mobile home parks in an effort to keep housing more affordable.
I have an inquiry out to a developer on the cost of building a 'multi-story' RV park. Not trying to recreate the "stacks" here (if you're a Ready Player One fan), but wondering if you could increase the available parking spots while not consuming additional acreage. It has to be a better use than 'public storage' buildings.
Most california cities are under extreme pressure to increase housing supply, an RV lot isn't going to house as many people as a condo/apartment building. (I honestly don't even know if an RV park counts towards overall housing supply)
Though the stacks idea is interesting ;-)
There's a few buildings going up in the Oakland Temescal by Rad Urban which are modular its been cool seeing units with kitchens etc already installed getting stacked up into a larger complex.
Sunnyvale, as a city, has preserved its mobile home parks in an effort to keep housing more affordable.
Um, what? Is there a single surviving RV park in Sunnyvale south of the train tracks?
In the past year, the last two I know of (Blue Bonnet and the one on ECR near Poplar) shut down, with everybody ejected. Several of the mobile homes at the latter were outright abandoned, since there was no place to move to.
These fifth wheels and class As can weigh up to 24000 pounds (even if they where never legally allowed to). A moving object at that weight would make a multi-story RV park an architecture/safety nightmare.
I'm talking about east-bay area that still has space. Not sunnyvale.
- Just checked out the ready player one images - holy mother of guacamole.
I agree they are heavy, and even more heavy than the bus chassis they are built on top of, but I see that as an engineering problem right? There are bus depot parking structures where unused commercial buses are parked. And my civil engineering friends are fond of saying that with enough steel and concrete you can hold up anything :-). So as a mental exercise in scaling density by going vertical, in my sketchbook using lot "sizes" that were similar to a KOA RV campground as a baseline (about 30' x 60' per space), an 8 story parking complex on a 5 acre lot could hold 250+ spaces.
It's certainly possible, but with a lot less steel and concrete you could just build walls and have, you know, apartments. My guess is it's easier to find investors for that, too.
The only reason I can imagine a multi-storey RV park making sense would be to take advantage of some weird zoning quirk or something. But that's a lot of money to throw at what's effectively a legal vulnerability that will probably quickly be fixed.
I don't disagree, the changes that a multi-level RV park bring are a more flexible pricing structure, a lower cost facilities budget, and perhaps a lower cost maintenance load.
From a cash flow perspective I started with parking garages as a business model. The typical 'monthly parking' type garage is a concrete and steel affair with sprinklers and elevators as its biggest operational expense, a bit more if you add an on-site office for an attendant to capture additional revenue from special events.
All the space that requires maintenance in an apartment building that is 'non-apartment' doesn't exist in an RV park. You don't repaint or re-carpet, you don't send HVAC dollars on cooling or heating, Etc.
My assumption (and I'm open minded about missing things) are that using the ratio of comparing of a traditional RV park to a one story apartment complex is a valid way to estimate expenses and cash flow. Then to extrapolate by adding additional layers to the RV park. There are also different tax treatments but I suspect that if the difference there appears to exploitable that it will be quickly changed.
The biggest complaint about RV parks are that they are RV parks and they are an "eyesore". By enclosing the park you can improve the optics, and by increasing the density you grow the ROI relative to an apartment by the cost ratio. But is it a $5M project, a $10M project, or a $25M project that I don't know yet. And while a casual polling of city folks about which would they prefer, RV's parked on the street or parked in an externally attractive structure set aside for them, polls favorably, it isn't clear that is enough to get final approval.
Put the apartment buildings above ground, and RV parks underground with fresh air pumped in and fiber-optic lighting carrying natural light down from the surface. Have elevators going from below ground, and from the apartments, to ground-level retail complexes and terrestrial activities.
Then have underground hyperloop tunnels to connect the RV parks, so that you can go to sleep in your home and move it from city to city, and pop up above ground to enjoy local tourism.
From an engineering perspective, cars and trucks aren’t that heavy, because their weight is spread over a large area, and they can’t squish together like humans.
Roughly, you’re not going to get over 60psf with vehicle traffic or storage.
People jammed together can be 200psf, as can library stacks, and indoor pools are potentially even worse.
Uh, the non-existence of RV parks in SV is hardly an oversight. The social stigma of the "trailer park" is high but that's ultimately a marker for trailer and RV parks reducing home values. And why that reduced value? Sure, perception are a big thing but these funnel into increased supply means reduced prices.
Even in situation of hardship, “I would have bought my house next to a trailer park if I wanted that — but I didn’t," becomes the ultimate reaction [1].
If you fixed the zoning issues preventing you from building an RV park you're 80% of the way to solving the housing issue entirely. So, go for it I guess!
I know for a while there was a guy living in his camper in the Google parking lot (and was an employee). They were even nice enough to allow him to hook up to their power, and he was in range of the wifi. He basically just went inside to shower and eat (and work of course). Not a bad deal. Not sure if they allow that anymore though.
There have been many such people. You have to do it stealthily though, because if Google finds out, it has to kick you off campus due to zoning issues.
Any support the company gave is in the long past now.
I wonder, can you get away with it at the Mountain View Walmart? In most of the country Walmart is ok with letting people sleep in their cars/rvs there. But I could see the Mountain View location having different rules
Walmart generally allows it, but if local ordinances don't, you can't. You can't in the Mountain View Walmart, I assume for that reason. I ended up there once on an 8 month road trip and they asked me to leave.
But there are so few good places in the valley that they may have had to disallow it in order to not become an RV lot.
Many Walmart’s have banned this type of activity due to people dumping raw sewage and trash everywhere. A few stealth camping YouTube channels talk about stuff like this.
Wal-Mart likely intended for you to stay in the lot overnight after some shopping during your trip, not live there. Which is why a lot of Wal-Marts (or by new city ordinance) don’t allow it anymore.
One of my friends lives in a shipping container in Oakland in a trailer park. She loves it and pays around $250/month for the space.
When I was visiting, the people there are so nice. It’s a community in which people help each other, not like the upper class neighborhoods of my youth. In a span of one day, I got some weed, some beer, and an popsicle.
A far cry from many upper class neighborhoods in which no one is willing to talk to each other.
Your experience is the opposite of most people's experience. I am from a poor rural area full of trailer parks. My experience with them is a place with heavy drug use, domestic abuse, extremely frequent robberies and violence. Definitely not a place most people would like to live given the choice.
Depends pretty heavily on the place. South Dakota has some really good ones and some really bad ones. Checking the light poles generally tells the tale.
There are plenty of middle and upper income neighborhoods where there is community. There are plenty of low income neighborhoods where everyone treats everyone like an enemy.
As a heavy introvert, I'm happy not to live in such a situation. I say "hi" to my neighbors, chat a bit sometimes, and other than that we live entirely independent lives. And that's what I like. Even living with close friends can be exhausting to me.
I can't argue with the logic. It means $24,000 a year to apply toward student loans or what have you isn't a bad deal. And he will eventually pay off the motorhome giving him some security there.
Sadly, most people won't talk about their situation (I tried by walking down a road and knocking on doors) I was hoping to get a sense of how many people were living in motorhomes because they wanted to (like the guy I talked to) and how many were there because they felt they had no choice. I don't have any good ideas on how to get that information.
I did enough research to know that building a small lifestyle business out of offering black/grey water pumping and garbage collection services for the folks who were doing this by choice was probably viable. You would need a couple of custom trucks[1] that were capable of being mobile RV dumping stations and a business with sewer rights to dump (the City of Sunnyvale will license a business to have an RV dumping station on site, so starting there would work.) I think it would be a "pump and dump" scheme that would be both good for the neighborhood and probably make enough money to employ a few folks.
[1] To be full service you'd probably want a fresh water tank, a propane tank, and a sewage collection tank. Then you could dump the grey/black tanks, refill fresh water and refill propane. Personally I think it makes way more sense than these companies that were sending trucks out to refill your gas tank.