Posted on 05/28/2023 9:55:20 PM PDT by Morgana
The owner of a party bus company, Rikers Island prison guards and an Amazon worker are just some of the eclectic bunch who have formed a community of 'working homeless' people living out of RVs in the Astoria section of Queens, New York.
Similar communities have formed across the US from New England to California where people have chosen a nomadic lifestyle amid a national cost of living crisis.
Rising costs across all sectors have caused pain for Americans in every state, particularly those living in rural areas, over the past 12 months. Rental prices continue have risen eight percent compared against the same time last year. In New York, they've reached record highs with a median cost of $3,410 a month for a one-bedroom apartment. Mortgage rates have more than doubled since the Federal Reserve's key interest rate hike in March 2022, and last week hit 6.52%.
'Compared to an apartment it's better because it's my space, nobody's going to bother me,' Luis Quintero, 30, a party bus owner, told DailyMail.com.
Locals and businesses, including a Verizon repair hub and a Dollar car rental have complained about the presence of the campers on the street and residents say that RV dwellers leave mountains of trash strewn across the street, something Quintero denied.
The area around Quintero's home was immaculate, there were even two bottles of ammonia by his front door. DailyMail.com did see garbage as well as discarded furniture and a TV just left by the side of the street. A college student who attends school in the area said the street is often filled with trash because sanitation workers avoid the street because there are no homes or storefronts on it.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Nice way to live. We owe them a big parking lot out of sight so they can be out of mind.
Makes me wonder if the left would like to take over all trailer parks for them.
The MSM would be spotlighting a different homeless family every day, getting every one of them to beg President Trump to please do something for them. We'd be hearing about how oil companies and financial institutions were making record profits, and how Trump was helping them do so because he's a member of the rich guy's club.
But Donald Trump isn't President. The man who is President is — in fact — a very wealthy man, from a very wealthy family. This man has made many decisions that have caused prices to shoot up for everyone in America.
But the MSM will not make the connection, and instead direct anger in any direction other than the correct one at every chance they get.
Oh come on now. I’m sure there are very nice parking lots available down at Martha’s Vineyard. Why not there? Be reasonable now.
My only problem with this is that they’re basically parked clogging city streets and neighborhoods. Just like street vendors, usurping the space shared by nearby owners and businesses. Public lands should not be abused in this manner. How do you nearby businesses and homeowners recoup the loss on their property value and business access?
There are more than a few people in RVs who work in and around Stanford University Hospital. Their actual residence is hours and hours away. They work their 4-5 days, and then go home to their family. There are many police officers and firefighters who do the same thing.
Another growing issue is people living in rented storage units. We’ve had two recent fires in our town caused by people living in units that were not designed to have people living in them, creating a hazard to themselves and other people and their property. The first of these storage facilities was quite large, and ended up being completely destroyed, along with the property of all others who were renting the units for storge.
i generally take it that the homeless workers represents a new economic phenonemonin which semi-skilled workers are no longer able to afford a mortgage or apartment rent, and are forced into a permanent RV lifestyle from which it is difficult to escape. They can descend, but climbing is very difficult. Under my presumptions, this is not just because profit margins are thin, but because there is multinational corporate greed and a corresponding lack of concern for employees in general. The RV housed semi skilled workers, being at the bottom of the multinational corporate pyramid, are the symptom of multinational corporate greed. I’m fairly certain that this was not a phenomenon in the 1950s through the 1970s.
Ideally the problem would solve itself if corporate management concerned itself more with longer term employee welfare. However, it seems as if current laws and regulations discourages corporations from taking interest in employee well-being. I think a harbinger of that trend was the transferrable 401k plan. Transferability of retirement plans is generally a good thing, but it ushered in an age in which job changes occur every three year on the average (if that long), corporations are reluctant to invest in employees through training, and pensions (outside of government and government mandated pensions) are a thing of the remote past.
If the future is represented by corporate sentiment to the effect that people will own nothing and be happy or happier, then the RV housing phenomenon will become a future that awaits most of us and our descendants.
Problem is, we don’t build affordable houses anymore, every house is a big and cost at least a half million, if you can’t get those prices, builders aren’t interested.
If you take a look at the homeless camps, you see lots of white men, some white women, and black men and women in more equal proportion. You see some Hispanic males but very few Asian people. Empirically I observe mostly white males. The question is why there aren’t huge crowds of Mexican immigrants. The answer is that there is money available to welcome new residents and non for the citizens that are already here.
I believe that the housing is being provided for immigrants and the rent is subsidized. The subsidies make rent higher because the landlord can charge more and be guaranteed payment with low risk of having to evict deadbeats. The availability of housing is decreased because occupancy is higher y immigrants and the rents go up because the supply of housing is shrinking.
Another effect of homelessness is that the people living in tents are effectively disenfranchised because they don’t have addresses any more and they get rousted out of their camps every few months. They can’t vote in their own self interest. This is also why drugs are so readily available. It keeps the homeless doped up and uncaring because they are having their addictions supplied.
From the article:
Quintero said many of the Venezuelan community in New York City live in shelters and, other than his brother, there are none of his countrymen in the area.
‘My country now is crazy... a lot of people are coming across the border now. It’s crazy. They’re asking for apartments, the want money. It’s crazy, you gotta work, bro. How you gonna come to another country and you don’t want to do nothing?’
In the 1990s, I drove through and past Palm Springs. The city looked pristine and affluent. It has a reputation for attracting wealthy celebrities.
But on the city's outskirts, I saw shabby trailers and RVs. I assumed those were for the minimum wage clerks, waiters, landscapers, pool boys, and baristas servicing the city's affluent.
If I was living like that, I would find me a place in the boonies
So they live on public land without permission and they pay no property taxes like the rest of us.
I live in a condo, and part of our monthly association fee goes to pay for trash pickup. RVs don’t pay for trash pick up or sewage fees.
i do not have any demographics, but i suspect that many of the entry level semi-skilled jobs are being filled by illegal migrants.
when blue collar jobs are eliminated, the blue collar worker falls to the next rung of the economic ladder, semi-skilled positions. but there are many illegal migrants who can also do that work. over time, illegal migrants take over semi-skilled occupations at the expense of unemployed us citizens.
many countries outlaw or severely limit this displacement as a safeguard to prioritize its native citizens over its illegal migrants. the usa only makes a half-hearted attempt to do so.
i agree that unemployed white males in particular do not seem to be the recipients of very many government subsidies and benefits.
Xidenvilles.
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