Mtn. View continues outreach to RV dwellers (California)

Los Altos Town Crier ^ | 3/14/18 | Bruce Barton

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Mountain View will not ban people from living in parked vehicles, despite rising pressure to do so.

Instead, the city council last week granted police greater discretion in issuing fines and ordering vehicles towed.

Mountain View is home to an estimated 250-300 vehicles parked on city streets. City code calls for moving parked vehicles at least 1,000 feet every 72 hours.

But seeking a balance between enforcement and compassion, council members also reviewed $230,000 in services, including a waste dump program, biohazard cleanup, a “rapid rehousing” program in partnership with Santa Clara County and funding for a safe-parking pilot program.

The council’s lengthy discussion of the complex and controversial topic March 6 featured numerous speakers, mostly advocating for the vehicle dwellers. Some residents living near the parked, lived-in vehicles expressed frustration with the unsanitary conditions and the city’s tolerance. The council also heard complaints that the parked RVs take up parking spaces and obstruct views for street crossing.

Others decried the housing crisis that has prompted people to live in their vehicles. Members of the Mountain View Tenants Coalition were on hand to support the vehicle dwellers. Members held a rally prior to the council meeting.

“It was pretty clear to the city council that people want to be compassionate to their neighbors,” said coalition spokesman Daniel DeBolt.

The number of homeless in Mountain View has skyrocketed – city figures report 416 in 2017, up from fewer than 150 in 2013 – the result of housing demand and escalating rents.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Good lord -- "$230,000 in services, including a waste dump program, biohazard cleanup, a “rapid rehousing” program in partnership with Santa Clara County and funding for a safe-parking pilot program."

Mountain View is where Google is headquartered. Google's fantastic success largely caused this problem (together with Facebook, Apple, LinkedIn, Cisco, et al) and Google could fix this problem with their earnings made in the next 5 minutes. They should set aside land at their new HQ by the Bay with sanitary hookups for RVs and catered food services. Then they could have tens of thousands of RVs there and their employees would have only a 1 or 2 minute walk to work. The new "Company Town" concept!

That would be far better than $4,000 per month for a 600 sq ft. "efficiency apartment."

[ProtectOurFreedom]

SV Ping

[ZOOKER]

RV's still need access to water, sewer, electricity. None of these are available at the curb.

You would think an RV park would make money here...

[smokingfrog]

Put up some overnight parking meters on the streets that don’t have much traffic at night. That should help to pay for some of that stuff.
I guess land is too expensive to build some RV parks?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Land is about $8 - $10 million an acre in this area. You’d need a fifteen story structure to pack enough RVs in to make a nice profit. You can go 90 minutes south and get bargain land, but nobody wants to drive a 50 mile daily commute in a gas guzzling RV. I don’t know what they do with their waste.

[Vendome]

There is a crazy Street on the edge of San Leandro and Oakland that is nothing but RVs

Fortunately it’s in a industrial area but, they shouldn’t be parking on public streets in presidential

[Lean-Right]

Homeless people living in cars.
One would think, since vehicles must
be insured and registered, much less
the gas and regular maintenance. that
the homeless can’t afford to own a vehicle.
Are the cops overlooking these laws that you and I, who are not homeless, must
must adhere to?
Tow time...laws are in place for a reason.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

These aren’t so much homeless as people making $80k who can’t find a place to live. This area is a victim of its own success.

[KJC1]

RV's still need access to water, sewer, electricity. None of these are available at the curb.

No, they don't. Most RVs can handle all of the above for maybe two weeks: they have holding tanks, and some have generators.

You would think an RV park would make money here...

RV parks in the Bay Area, at least the ones that are decent are not easy to find or book. A money-maker RV park, in my opinion, would be quite a few miles and hours away.

[Yossarian]

Please add me to the SV ping list!

[DoughtyOne]

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Just $260.00 dollars to 92.00%

[InABunkerUnderSF]

The answer is simple. Install the disposal sites at the dirt lot up by the dog park. They could use the sewage to fuel their Bloom Boxes. While they're at it, feed their guests at Charlie's on campus and let them use the showers at the fitness center.

It would be a great exercise in "social justice" for the privileged young people Google hires. We'd see how they really feel about the Untermenschen.

[Celerity]

These mega-billion dollar employers are LOVING THIS.

It reminds me of the oil producers in the middle east. Their labor, almost slave labor (Like, just barely paid and then charged what they are paid to live there) live outside the gates in shantys.

You’d think that the employers would want to build some sort of decent housing for them - employee morale and all. But they don’t. They get more from them by keeping them desperate.

[kearnyirish2]

Old mining camps...same story. When the ore was tapped out, pull the nails out of your shack and move on to the next vein...

Modern “Okies”

[Silentgypsy]

If SV is the same as RV, would you please add me to your pinglist?

[Afterguard]

As a young sailor stationed at NAS Moffett Field in the early-to-mid-’70s Mrs Afterguard and I lived in two very nice apartments in Mountain View. They were hideously expensive even for the time (about $350/month) but we scraped by because we enjoyed the place. Later in the ‘70s it became so expensive that I begged the Detailer to ship me outa there. He sent us to Florida! Until recently that was the best thing that ever happened to us.... Now I understand you can’t find anything with a roof on it for less than the $4000 you mention.

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Martin Fierro maintains the SV Ping List. Copying him...

[ProtectOurFreedom]

That's the way it was in the town of "Tesla" just a few miles east of Google at the turn of the 20th Century. The coal veins gave out and the mines disappeared as did the entire town. They also dug kaolin clay here and made pottery, bricks, and sewer pipe in the same area, but those towns are completely gone, too. Nothing left at all except the Carnegie Off Road Park.

You make a good analogy that this modern "boom town" isn't much different than the old boom towns. I lived in Boom Town Rock Springs, Wyoming for a bit in the early 70s. I stayed in a mobile home. Instead of pulling the nails from the shack, they towed my shack to the next boom town.

Tesla, California is shown below. Yes, even then, the entrepreneur / industrialist who built the coal mine and ceramic works (John Treadwell) named it for the then-new guy named Nikola Tesla, the "Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current electricity supply system."

"Treadwell planned to use Tesla's invention to send electricity to Bay Area cities from a coal-burning power plant at Tesla. However, this plan never materialized for fear of competing with the new hydroelectric power plants."

[ProtectOurFreedom]

Not quite the same...
SV = Silicon Valley
RV = Recreational Vehicle (or, more accurately, Digital Nomad Temporary Home, not “RV”)

Do you want Silicon Valley news? Or RV news?

[ProtectOurFreedom]

I first moved to CA in '73, but was all over the west and world as a field service engineer. Came back here to settle in summer '78 and stayed at the Oakwood Garden Apartments on Moffet Blvd at Middlefield. Fortunately, the company that hired me paid for my relocation and for the apartment for a few months until I could find permanent housing. You are absolutely right! It was horrendously expensive back then, too. That same year, I bought my first house, 900 sq ft (including garage!) for 2.5X more than my Dad had ever paid and I got 1/4 of the house he got and 1/6 of the lot size. He said "Son, that's the stupidest thing you've ever done!"

Remember the "St. James Infirmary"?